The Price of Enlightenment
I once visited a Guru in Varanasi who charged me the equivalent in rupees of $80 for a palm reading. Who knew the price of enlightenment was so high?
Were it more spiritual guidance and less blind guessing, it may have been worth the price. This is not to mention the fact that I am the one who forked over the money in the first place and was never forced into parting with my cash (although how could you say no to a man who has read the palms of Goldie Hawn and Michael Jackson?). Still, I already knew that I have three family members and am destined for greater fortunes. I didn’t need a prophet to tell me that, especially one who ends saying that without his $110 talisman and $90 massage oil, I will never fully achieve enlightenment.
In truth, I think journeys are the key to enlightenment, in whatever form they might take. Unsettling yourself, extracting your mind and body from the daily grind, and immersing them in a barrage of the foreign seems the best manner of testing your own mettle and finding out just what this mettle has you meant to do.
An old adage says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” This proves true as convincing yourself that you can afford (monetarily, spiritually, and emotionally) to take a break from your everyday pursuits to seek higher goals and loftier (and sometimes more invisible) meanings is oftentimes harder than the journey, itself. Really, once you have taken this first step, you have sparked your momentum. While we’re not in space, it is often very difficult to stop yourself once you’re on the move.
Each destination you reach is ultimately transformed into a stepping-stone leading you to places even more fantastically foreign. This change happens most often as a result of the direction and experience of others, and makes you both thankful that they have done what they have done, and also long to be able to direct others into the same bliss.
Your momentum builds steadily as you further yield yourself to it. It fills your legs with the urge to run, and your eyes with the urge to gaze, and your mind with the urge to absorb. It shuts off your warning bells, and cuts loose your safety harnesses, and encourages you to look harder and reach farther than you might ever have in the safety of the world you know too well.
Momentum can be dangerous, too, if you allow it to carry you too far past your goals and too quickly by the sights. After all, even traveling can become habitual if you allow it to. The challenge is to know when to hit the gas and propel yourself out of a comfort growing too strong, or when to hit the brakes so as to have plenty of time to drink in and digest the space you’re in, and even ask it some questions if it will let you.
It is also said that you can only learn to run after you learn to walk. Sometimes, no matter how agile you are, you will fall flat on your ass. But any of this is better than never having raced against yourself in the first. If you haven’t done so, however will you come to know if you can beat yourself?
There is no victory sweeter than that won over what you thought you could not do.
