The Definitive Journey

I went running up in the East Mountains in Albuquerque today. When I run up there, I feel as if I am stepping into a painting. It's difficult to describe but the sagebrush, the cactus, the few desert flowers, and then the view down over all of Albuquerque, stretching out into the distant dormant volcanoes on the westside, and into the vast barren stretches to the south, all of it transports me, it takes me out of my normal everday self.

Today as I was running, my mind grew silent. I could just hear the sound of the wind, my footsteps, the sound of my breath. As I entered deeper into the silence I felt as if I was forgetting who I thought I was. I was forgetting my life story, all my beliefs, all my reference points, all my hopes, my dreams, my fears...all of it just vanishing into the vast desert sky. All the things that I felt so concerned about seemed like nothing more than illusions.

And there I am running. And it's like I don't even know what day it is, what year it is...it is just Now. Here and Now. And the vast infinite sky. Here and Now and the Vast Infinite Sky.

Just then a passage from a Castaneda book comes to mind: "And I will leave. But the birds will stay, singing; and my garden will stay, with its green tree, with its water well. Many afternoons the skies will be blue and placid, and the bells in belfry will chime, as they are chiming this afternoon. The people who have loved me will pass away, and the town will burst anew every year. But my spirit will always wander nostalgic in the same recondite corner of my flowery garden."

And so I run through the silence, with no name, with no face, just a being, barely existing in this world. The words come slowly, they drift into my body, they resound off the empty caverns of my mind, like the breeze breathing on these cliffs. Who is there to hear them? It is such a strange pleasure to be alive.