The path IS the way ...

A road to nowhere
Originally uploaded by playzwifstonz
The photo here is of the alleyway I walked my dog on yesterday, where we discovered the chair. A sweet conversation with my love today about this experience helped me to understand more fully, as she gently observed and noted, that being on this path yesterday and the experience with the chair IS the way -- of "being here"-- and not a road leading up to something or some place but rather the walk, the path itself, the taking in of the chair is what is here, the place where I can discover and uncover and explore and learn about myself. I do not have to travel TO anywhere for understanding more about myself; each moment, every step, every pausing to glance or be still are all part of the way.

By nature, I am a seeker of things. I want to learn about this concept or that strategy or this intervention or their way of communicating or this type of spritual practice, etc... Seeking outside of myself, toward something will have me missing the very thing that I need to know and learn that is right here in front of me. In the seeking, just as the path, IS the way.

In the Kabbalistic practice of Impersonal Movement, it is the ultimate in being with what is right here. The movement is not a going outward toward anything but a "being with" . And in this space, there is not a concept of actual physical space nor time for me. Entering into this space requires a practice called "Forgetting-Remembering" . Upon doing this piece of the practice, I transcend and am transported to my being-ness and oneness,  not a separate self ... connected to a vast, expansive WHOLE, the Universe, G-d (this is the Impersonal part) and also I can visit with the intricate strands of my personal being, all of the things that to date comprise the whole of me, including my history and my story lines and my identities and my reactions and my defenses and my qualities and my beauty. And I can even touch the seeds of possibility of me-ness planted by my Future Self. For some of my fellow travelers, this is an uncomfortable and scary place to be, something to be avoided and pushed away. For me, it is about being in the purest sense of "home" that I can describe and yet it is not something that can be captured in a tangible way. In this space, there is just "being". And maybe this familiarity of "home" is because of my experience of entering this world in darkness. Not bonded with my biological mother and not knowing where I was for the 1st 9 months until I was adopted. I would venture to guess that my existence was in this place of just "being". And from that state (and not being able to make sense of it at such an early age,  so I reckon it was full of terror) , all of my earliest anxieties and neuroses were formulated. And it has taken 47 years to unravel and unwind them.

Being here, right on this path, is the way. It is being at home in me. It is being at home with G-d. It is being home. It is just being.