I’ve been reading Phil Cousineau’s brilliant book The Art of Pilgrimage. I do so in preparation for my trip to Transylvania, but also as a way to live a more fulfilling and conscious life.
My Take-Aways:
- In each of us is a pilgrim who longs for the sacred. That may draw us across continents, or like poet Emily Dickinson, into our own fine minds.
- The sacred is inside us, it’s nature, it’s the heart of joy and the divine. We meet it in all kinds of ways. Accidents, illnesses, loss of something we hold dear. A rupture may not feel like the divine acting through us, but that tumbling down takes us like Alice through the looking glass, through what we assumed was all there was and calls us to see more, to look deeper, to be willing to change.
Initiation comes through experience, whether it’s more inner, as with Dickinson, or while simultaneously trudging an unknown outer path. - We are in the midst of discovery and mastery over the odds even when the odds seem to have mastery over us.
- Throughout history, we’ve sought direction from the divine.In ancient times, people sought wisdom and divine direction through the Oracle. Oracles spoke in riddles that perplexed the seekers’ minds, yet gave them ground to think, decide, to consider options they hadn’t tried.
- You are a seeker. Especially when you book a psychic reading. Modern psychics are less likely to speak in riddles, or if we do, we must couch it well. In olden times, people went on a physical journey as they sought out the Oracle, such as the Oracle at Delphi. Today, you encounter different obstacles.
- You can create a kind of pilgrimage to open and prod the answers you’re seeking. You can create a space in your mind, a quiet contemplation, a sense that as you seek knowledge, knowledge seeks you, and you are creating something sacred. It’s a spiritual field and not just a place or a person.
It’s the process.You’re initiated into higher planes of consciousness. You want it, and yet you want to avoid uncertainty. We want to travel while keeping our feet firmly planted on shore. - Spirituality makes it easier. It allows you to place our faith in something higher than your best thinking, call it the Universe, God, the Ascended Masters, whatever name you choose; some divine order that holds all things together even when our smaller minds see only chaos.
- The object of a pilgrimage “is to throw down a challenge to everyday life. Nothing matters now but this adventure…the adventure of self-conquest has begun,” according to renowned religious Professor Huston Smith.
- So wherever you are today, you can look at yourself as a traveler. Your adventure of self-conquest has begun. The quest? Becoming more intrinsically whole…
