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I told an acquaintance recently, when living in Florida I was paying rent, living alone, enjoying life. As some say, seeming to be going nowhere. One day, suddenly, a thought arose, "Why am I sitting here, paying to stay in this cabin, when I can go somewhere else and have an adventure?" Within about two months I loaded my truck, after selling my other truck, loaded it, and was on the road from sunny Florida to a winter in snowy, cold Maine, and never having been in Maine, not even having seen the cabin I had already rented for the winter. This move helped me embrace life more as adventure. I am still, after sixteen months, in Maine, but who knows, the adventure will continue here or it will continue elsewhere. And, as the Dalai Lama spoke of looking forward to the adventure death would bring him, that too is my prayer, to prepare to welcome beyond death as a new adventure. So, if we choose an adventure, life will be an adventure, and it does not mean having to load a truck and move far away or dying, the adventure is already here. Life has already offered itself to you, not the events of your life, the details, but Life. A question is, "How do I work with the life given me to create a sense of this very life being an adventure?" Yes, "How do I invite Life into myself?" And, "How do I welcome the unknown ~ which is part of all adventure ~, not seeing it as a problem to solve, but a gift to embrace?"
One thing that has helped me in embracing the sacred pilgrimage and of which I have written before is: Life is its own purpose. Why do we assume life must have added to it some meaning or purpose not life itself? If there is a meaning or purpose, that is fulfilled simply by our welcoming life, embracing the adventure of living with gratitude and courage and joy, and, of course, love.
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The definitions of "adventure" tend to mislead as to what adventure means in the soul-spirit, as opposed to the ego, or sense-of-self. They speak of danger, unseen risks, excitement, something remarkable. While these qualities in a soul adventure may be present at times, this is not the usual sense of pilgrimage.
A friend recently wrote to me that she liked my use of the word "pilgrimage." I recalled writing years prior of the contrast between a "pilgrim" and a "tourist." A tourist is passive, viewing and being informed of apparently important sites and objects. A pilgrim is actively engaged, intimately, as a participant in sacred journey. We could say on pilgrimage one is inviting a sacred adventure, as contrasted with a site-seeing tour. In pilgrimage, one is inviting the outside into oneself, and oneself into the outside, so a sacred marriage happens in this subtle but powerful union.
We can’t fabricate our being, we can only receive it. To be alive means to receive ourselves, not once only but ever, and not from our own hand but always from the hand of something other. We exist as ourselves through the agency of what is not ourselves. "To be" means to be in relationship. Our eyes, ears, tongues, bodies are the gates of our being, the hinges upon which our minds swing. It is not so much that we take hold of life by going out through these gates as that life takes hold of us by coming in. We enter ourselves in this manner.
*Lin Jensen. Bad Dog!: A Memoir of Love, Beauty, and Redemption in Dark Places.
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