LIFE 'S JOURNEY
In order to
help share my perspective of the co-creative relationship between man and his real self I'd
like to share an imaginary journey in which there are many parallels to the daily journey each of us takes.
I am going to invite you to take an imaginary
journey through a forest and ask you to follow the path and as you do to use your knowledge, skills, and
senses to experience the journey and to bring music and harmony to your environment as you pass along.
Before you start I offer the following information to help you
understand the, nature of the journey and your opportunities along the way. A number of colored boxes have been placed
along the pathway in order to symbolize opportunities to serve. The boxes are painted different colors of the rainbow and
you have been given seven keys, each tagged with one color of the rainbow. The boxes are of different sizes; some are very
obvious on the side of the path and others quite inconspicuous. Also, all the boxes accept the key tagged with the
same color. In addition there are many boxes painted white along the path that any key will fit and there are many boxes painted
black that no key will fit. There are many forks in the pathway but signs are placed to show your direction.
Taking the wrong fork may lead you to a deadened
end and you will have to backtrack or may rejoin the pathway again further on or further back after a short
or long side trip. On side trips, all the boxes are painted black. On each box there is a sign saying whether to turn the
key to the right or left. I ask you to carefully read the signs and you will find that each time you turn the right key in
the right box it results in music filling your journey. The music will always be harmonious, it will fit the mood of the situation
in which you find the box and enrich your environment. However, if you use the wrong key or even turn the right key in the
wrong direction your pathway will be disturbed by inharmonious noise, which will disturb the peace of your environment.
With this information you are ready to start
the journey. I would like you to take this imaginary journey with a sense of love, peace, and joy. Your mental
consciousness and inner voice are in harmony, your senses fully awake. I encourage you to use your active imagination along
the way and to pause occasionally as you follow the journey in your mind.
I'd
like you to imagine the forest before you and a pathway into the forest. You start along
the pathway feeling fully alive, enjoying the experiences of your journey with all your senses...Then Id like you to notice
the first box...you notice its color, find the matching key, turn it the way indicated, and your environment is filled
with harmonious music and all that you perceive seems to vibrate with the sparkle of life because you accepted the opportunity
of the yellow box and you acted in the right way.
Imagine you walk on and reach a fork in the road...a sign indicates your direction...you walk on
through the forest feeling fully alive and with a feeling of joy, peace, and love...you find box after box and at each one
you accept your opportunity and by your actions help enrich your environment. You particularly enjoy the white boxes...any
key fits them, and when it is turned in the right direction, the music is always very beautiful. You see quite a lot of black boxes but you know they are not
your opportunities and you pass them by on your journey...you follow your directional signs and reach the
other side of the forest having by your actions enriched your environment on the way. It has been a rich experience and a
day well spent.
This
imaginary journey can be used as the basis for a guided meditation. If it is, there will be as many different
ways of experiencing the journey as there are people who guide it and people who take it. This sort of experiential journey
offers a chance for us to understand and in understanding accept the way different people experience life and in particular
have a chance to look at the way we experience life. Do we dash through the day just getting to the end of the journey without
ever bothering to look at the opportunities along the way; are we able to experience the environment with our senses fully
alive. In their daily journey some people may be so busy looking for boxes that they miss the experience of the journey and
make little progress along the path. They don't want to miss an opportunity to serve and they miss a sense
of life. Others may be so busy experiencing the flora and fauna with their senses that they move through the journey unaware
of many of the opportunities along the way. At least some people experience their pathway. Unfortunately in society today
many people journey through their day with their mind not on their pathway, or on the opportunities the day offers, but preoccupied
with worries aid fears about things that are not of that day or that journey and in many cases about world situations with
which they have no personal relationship.
The imaginary journey you have just experienced is rather idealistic and simple in
relationship to our own daily journeys. I'd now like you to take this journey again, this time with the conditions a little
closer to those which we normally experience. This time your mental knowledge will be incomplete. Some of the signs at the
forks in the road will not be there, and some of the boxes will not be painted and thus you won't know whether
they're colored,-black, or white. Also, some of the boxes will not bear signs of which direction to turn the key. You
still have your seven keys, each tagged with a color of the rainbow. Also I'd like you to take something with
you on your walk with which you can make your own signs and label the color of the boxes when required.
Now I'd like you to start your journey again. This time it
is much more an adventure of discovery
and learning. Fortunately you find that most of the boxes are painted and most of them have an indication of which direction
to turn the key; also most of the forks in the road have signposts showing the way. You almost take for granted the painted
boxes and the signs; you find that the challenge and opportunity of the journey is where the information is missing. You find
it difficult to both experience the journey and the challenge it offers you. You find that you have the most difficulty when
you take a wrong fork because when you do you find that all the boxes are unpainted. Yet you accept the challenge of each
unpainted box turning different keys in all the directions and only after a lot of disharmony in your environment do you accept
that this must be a black box; and it sometimes takes quite a few sequential unpainted black boxes before you fully understand
you must be on a sidetrack.
On your journey you have the opportunity to
discover that your inner voice knows the right path. Thus at each fork, with no sign, you can start to learn
to trust your inner voice and let it help keep you on the path. At each place where you learn the direction you leave a sign
in case you pass that way again. When you are on the right path with colored box after colored box and harmonious
music largely filling your day the occasional unpainted box is not so threatening...you start to understand that really the
unpainted boxes are the important ones as these are the ones in which you have a chance to learn...you both try and guess
the color of the box and try to consult your inner voice and again you find that your inner voice somehow knows the color
of the unpainted boxes...it can guide you to find the right key, or to tell you-that it's a black
box and you should pass it by.. you find that it is much easier working in cooperation with your inner voice, listening to
it, accepting its advice, as it helps in making the choices on the journey. You put the color of the box on each box on your
path so you'll recognize it if you pass that way again, and in the hope that others may see your sign. You use your marker
wherever possible to provide a mental record of the information you have learned from your inner voice and the experiences
of the journey. You
find the only point at which your inner voice is sometimes wrong is when there is no sign on the box indicating
the direction in which to turn the key. A lot of the time the inner voice knows the right way to turn the key, but occasionally
it doesn't and thus there are occasions when your actions bring disharmony into your environment. However, you soon learn
to turn the key in the other direction and that this learning is the real purpose of your journey. You learn you now understand
that the journey of life enables you to learn by following the guidance of your real self and both you and your real self
can learn when that occasionally leads to some disharmony. You are able to record your experiences to help leave signs to
help future generations. Your real self is able to include your experiences in its knowledge.
By taking this imaginary journey you have the
opportunity to understand that by walking in cooperation with the spiritual force that moves through you
there is the chance to recognize many of the opportunities of your day and to act in such a manner as to bring harmony into
your environment. Also you can understand that by ignoring your inner voice a lot of your energy can be used on searching
along sidetracks and in making wrong choices, and that by so doing you can fill your environment and the environment of others
with disharmony.
This
imaginary story provides the opportunity for you to understand the positive co-creative role between man
and his real self. However, for you to be ready to let the force of the real self guide your life you must be ready to accept
its existence and sense its force. The next section is offered to assist in this process.
