I leave in one week to another country with no friends and little money to greet me. I am writing this to remind myself of why I must.
Things are comfortable here. I have friends, family, the affection of a beautiful woman, a great degree of personal freedom and no financial woes. For now, at least... These things are the pursuit of others, but I am cursed (blessed really) with another view. Comfort of this sort becomes the comfort of morphine. It is of the kind that would rob a man of his years by quieting his mind, dulling his senses, and infusing his spirit with a most insidious happiness. I do not shun happiness. I seek to be awake and alive, and that is not accomplished by maintaining routines.
I manifest now a bodily expression of what has been an internal journey (though they are really the same). Not too long ago I came to the most improbable yet inescapable conclusion that I and the universe, the whole blinking cosmos, are indeed the exact same thing. The intelligence that controls my body and that which determines my outward circumstances have always been in a most elegant interplay, though I could not see it. I felt forlorn, meandering, abandoned. I had been blinded by ego, but now I am stupefied by the infinite.
My conclusion is the only conclusion. Try to wrestle with it and it will destroy you utterly. All science, all philosophy, ends here. Anyone with sincere intent and courage can see it. You can wake up if you would but learn to shun the comfort of dreams.
Whitman said "I am larger, better than I thought. I did not know I contained so much goodness." I am leaving now to delight in just how large and good I am. I remove and destroy old crutches, habits and comforts along the way that I may delight in what will take their place. I walk a road which yet not exists and I will marvel as it materializes beneath my feet. It always has. The day that road ends, the day I am no longer held up, I am content to fall. I have been given much and swell with gratitude. I have never been far from my appointed place. I am no stranger in this world. I have always belonged. Universal intelligence that brought me forth out of infinity still carries me. The same is true for you, Traveler. I tell you a secret now. We are the same.
