Day 39f: Where mountains mark The Way … (05/23/2019)
“Mountains have long been a geography for pilgrimage, a place where people have been simultaneously humbled and strengthened. Many have traveled to them in order to find the concentrated energy of the Earth and to realize the strength of unimpeded space that resides equally within. Viewing a mountain at a distance or walking around its body we can see its shape, know its profile, survey its surroundings. And yet the closer you come to a mountain the more it disappears. It begins to lose its shape as you draw ever nearer, its body begins to spread out over the landscape losing itself to itself. Then, on climbing the mountain the mountain continues to vanish, disappearing in the ever greater detail of each added step. Climb it long enough and its crown becomes buried in space, its body becomes buried in the breath. Finally, on reaching the mountain’s summit we can ask the question, “What has been attained?” and yet the journey walked to get there has us knowing that this question and all like it are meaningless; that — just as life can only be fully lived in each single moment — every pilgrimage is fulfilled anew in every single step taken BEFORE we reach its end. And it is with this realization that the mountain begins to live inside our bones, to pulse inside our heart-drum. It stands like a overarching Soulmate in the atmosphere of our minds. Heaven, Earth and Human meet in the raining of the past, just as Heaven, Earth and Human meet in the winds of the future. The mountain in this moment becomes a birth gate that joins the above and below, the then and the now, the self and the other.” ~ inspired by Joan Halifax
;