This is like sharing with someone. A moment of pilgrimage can be sitting and conversing together. Pilgrimage occurs when you see the sharing as a sacred happening, you are inviting the other and the experience you both are having intimately into yourself. You welcome the dissolution of the sense of distance between, into intimacy with. So, when we live life as pilgrimage, that affects how we relate with others and with the Divine. We are no longer content simply to surf the surfaces, we wish to give ourselves to the Depths. This is our self-oblation.
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What is central, as noted above in contrasting pilgrimage and tourism, is intimacy. In pilgrimage the knowledge one is open to is of the Sacred, the Holy, Life, not merely knowledge about someone or something. In pilgrimage one cannot adopt anyone else's knowledge or experience, one has to give himself or herself to the Sacred, inviting oneself into Life and Life into oneself. This is very intimate. Here, Life and one becomes united in a mutual-subjectivity of knowing and experience. So, yes, very close, so close many will prefer to keep a distance, preferring a pre-packaaged life to conjugality with Life.
So, the parable "The Explorer," by Anthony de Mello, in his The Song of the Bird.
The explorer returned to his people, who were eager to know about the Amazon. But how could he ever put into words the feelings that flooded his heart when he saw exotic flowers and heard the night-sounds of the forest; when he sensed the danger of wild beasts or paddled his canoe over treacherous rapids?
He said, "Go and find out for yourselves." To guide them he drew a map of the river. They pounced upon the map. They framed it in their town hall. They made copies of it for themselves. And all who had a copy considered themselves experts on the river, for did they not know its every turn and bend, how broad it was and how deep, where the rapids were and where the falls?
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So, when we speak of the Spirit inviting us to our soul longing, this is not the knowing about, which is information, is intellectualization, but knowing without an object known, which is intimacy, is love. When you fall into Love, you are on an adventure, an exploration, one that is a sacred pilgrimage from life to life. So, this intimacy is self-replenishing, never repeating, always fresh. Pilgrimage is not merely how we live or what we believe, pilgrimage is alive with our life, is Life. And, here, you may often feel like you are on your own, and, in a sense, you are and always will be, and others are too. So, there is a big communion out there, seen and unseen, and maybe we who are welcoming it are, to an extent, confused, but we are alive with Life, we are saying "Yes" and "Yes" and "Yes" to it all...
Video can be accessed on original site via below upper left artist-title...
(C)Brian Wilcox, 2020
*Account of Larry Walters from Leadership, Summer 1993.
