I was sitting outside having coffee this morning trying to come up with a series of bucket list destinations I wanted to visit and experience. I’ve done some amazing trips myself and recently found myself jealous of friends I know to be heading out on long adventures. I’ve always believed travel and experiences are where to spend one’s money and time and was assembling a list in my mind of the type of life changing / enlightening destinations I could visit in the future.
Here I am with my son in the Kaiser Wilderness in the High Sierras. It was beautiful. I was inspired. I wanted more. In fact I bet I spent time there – time I could have been simply reflecting on nature’s majesty – thinking about how I could get back.
Of course the universe loves to give nudges in life, some of them subtle, some of them not. So minutes after assembling a list in my mind that covered Alaska, Zion National Park, Africa, you name it, I was reading a passage from Rumi in Coleman Barks ‘The Essential Rumi‘ and the page I opened to contained this poem.
The mystery does not get cleared by repeating the questions,
nor is it bought with going to amazing places.
Until you’ve kept your eyes
and your wanting still for fifty years,
you don’t begin to cross over from confusion.
Loosely translated, sitting in the High Sierras asking questions about how I could get back to the High Sierras or sitting outside on my patio having coffee dreaming of the amazing places I could visit to find peace, serenity and connectedness are not going to clear up the mystery of why we’re here and what it’s all about. Stop asking. Stop seeking. Stop looking. Stop wanting. Only then might you find it. And it, I imagine, is internal.
But I really really want to think about a yacht sailing in the Caribbean. So my fifty year clock starts again.
And He Says 