Be A Wanderer - Fred LaMotte

"Not everyone who wanders is lost" ~ Tolkien

I am most aware and most present when I am wandering,
when I am a pilgrim.  I find myself most vulnerable, alive,
and open then.  Not when I claim the kingdom of "Non-
Duality," but when I wander in the wonder of duality, the
both-ness of being on the Way and arriving at the same
time.

There is something authoritarian to me about "Non-Duality,"
and those who claim to be instantly enlightened just by 
saying that all is One.  Oneness can be very oppressive
when it is a "spiritual teaching," when it is not lived as a
journey of constant opening and discovery.  Yet for a
journey, there must be the dynamics of twoness.  There must
be eternity, and not-yet...

Those who claim to be "non-dualists" never deign to call
themselves seekers, disciples, or devotees.  They are only
content to call themselves "spiritual teachers."  Their message
is, "I have arrived."  But doesn't being-there get rather smug,
rather boring, when there is no more to [discover] and no more
wandering to unfollow?

.....a pathless Way is different than being "lost."  Those who
feel lost assume there is a destination.  They are dissatisfied
 with where they are, because there must be somewhere better. 
 But wanderers discover beauty in each step.  They never and
always arrive.  This is the lively paradox, the blessed not-yet,
of enlightened Duality...

The Gnostic Jesus doesn't say "Follow me." pointing up
to a final resting place.  He shows me the never-ending 
labyrinthine spiritual power of waylessness.  If I follow,
I follow the one who leaves no footprints on the water.
Each breath is the end and the beginning of my pilgrimage.

I learned this not from Jesus, but from his favorite and most
beloved companion, Mary Magdalene.  She became my 
anam cara, my Friend, when I was wandering down the
Medieval pilgrimage routes through southern France, 
knowing not at all what I was looking for.  And I had no
idea about herstory, for it has been submerged in history.

After the first Easter, she became a wanderer.  She was lost
at sea in a rudderless boat, tossed up on the shore in southern
France, at what is now Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.  A pilgrim,
a stranger, she found herself with no map, and no rudder for
her boat.  That is how we all find ourselves.  She finally
arrived at the beginning of her journey, awakening Christ-
Consciousness in the Western world, before theologians
and evangelists were ever invented.  And even now, she is
the Friend who blesses me when I am most fallen and far
from any path.

I must say, in  my old age, as I no longer try to go anywhere,
it is delightful to realize that such great soul-beings as Jesus,
Mary, Krishna, Radha, Qwan Yin, Lakshmi,Gurudev,
are not mere archetypes or abstract symbols in some pablum
of "non-duality."  They are living Persons I can know in
the wonder of friendship.  I bump into them somewhere out
in Rumi's meadow, when I abandon the destination,
and become a wanderer.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering