“The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.”
-Rabindranath Tagore
One day you will wake up and you will look in the mirror in disbelief at a face you are beginning to no longer recognize and wonder how you arrived at this moment. In this defining moment between you and the mirror it will not matter all of the things that you intended to do, all of the ideas you once had, the dreams, both large and small.
As you look into the mirror on this fateful morning and into your own weathered eyes, the window to your very soul, all that will be there with you in that moment is the sum total of the choices you have made, the experiences and lessons and wisdom you have taken in from this brief lifetime of experience. You will take an account of all of the people and relationships, loves and losses who have been a part of your life, everyone who has come and gone, those who still remain, and all that will be left will be the sum total of who you now embody at this milestone on your journey. It will be like watching a movie.
In my case the life review looked like this…I had lived in more than 25 different “homes” over the course of my life, explored 14 different countries, given 15 years into two marriages and 25 years into being a father. I spent 25 of those years striving underneath the definition of the American Dream in the corporate world as a successful salesperson and trainer. I successfully launched and ran my own publishing business for 4 years, owned a simple home on own. I sold my tiny Zen home. I explored China, Hong Kong, S.Korea and Japan, living for one life-changing year in Kyoto. I have now lived for almost a year in Central America, moving between Costa Rica and Panama.
As of this writing, I own no home, no car. Both of my daughter’s are now grown and living their own lives. I am no longer tied to any company or business. For the most part, I am now taking everything I have learned over the course of this life, traveling solo in the world and writing.
You may find yourself in a place in life where you have played this game of life well, according to the rules and values of our current culture, which largely values material success, accumulation and your financial profile as its scorekeeping criteria. This is how the game is played in the world we live in. Like a never ending game of Monopoly, you may be holding all the property and all of the cash. On the other end of the spectrum, perhaps you have played the game well and been “on top” many times, holding all of the property, all of the hotels and all of the cash. But then as the game continued, you lost your stockpile and now you find yourself on the returning leg of life’s marathon contemplating what was really important and what was not.
In our current world, amidst this time of planetary transition and uncertainty, the extremes between those who have much more than they need and those who do not have enough have never been more pronounced.
Whether you find yourself at the top or at the bottom, it is your soul that is keeping score on a completely different kind of game, one with a different scorekeeping criteria in this very brief game of life we call the human experience.
To be more specific, your soul knows nothing of even the idea of keeping score. Your soul is on a very different kind of journey than this human experience you are having within the constructs of our socio-economic system. This immediately puts the path of the soul at direct odds with the many current scorekeeping methods of our modern world.
Reaching this point of awareness in the game of life takes tremendous courage and fortitude to take a deep, hard look at yourself from the perspective of the soul and honestly look at where you have landed after all of these years playing “the game.” This is not for the weak or faint of heart. It is a journey one must take alone. No one can do it for you and no one can come to save you. Many, if not most, will never take this moment, this rare window of opportunity to look deeply into the mirror and wholeheartedly within themselves to begin taking a real stock and asking themselves the very hard questions.
So what is the measuring criteria you are using to evaluate your life at this point?
Are you measuring your life according to the scorecard of the current mainstream world we live in, or are you playing another game with a different grading system altogether?
Are you clearly defining and setting your own rules for your own game?
In reality, that is the game your soul is playing.
One of the most significant things you can do is to get extremely clear….absolutely crystal clear….as to the criteria you are using to not only evaluate the life you have lived, but to set your own definition of measurement for the life you intend to create in whatever time you have left ahead.
This is the path of the Soul.....
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.
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Zen and Ink Journals represents hundreds of hours of writing over the past decade, sometimes from a train in remote China or a coffee shop in Kyoto, a hammock in Costa Rica or a simple cabin on a mountain in Boquete, Panama.
Zen and Ink Journals is a simple offering of words in the hope of inspiring others to a simpler, more mindful way of life in these chaotic times. I invite you join me each month on the journey for a glimpse of the larger world, reflections on living more simply and quietly amidst the chaos of our modern world.
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Zen and Ink was born over a decade ago out of my own personal journey to find peace and tranquility amidst the ever-increasing chaos of our modern world. In the last ten years, the pace of our modern world has only accelerated and we have moved further out of sync with nature and the rhythm of our souls. Zen and Ink offers a quiet space for anyone along their journey seeking more balance and Zen in their daily lives.
Zen and Ink provides an oasis for those who are drawn to a slower and simpler way of life; to provide a portal for awakening, tools and resources that many will find useful in their own quest to find the Zen which is already there and always within and around each of us.