The Camel and the Journey
What lands have you seen across this planet? How far have you ventured out of your neighborhood? Will you, at the end of your life, be able to say that you've seen this planet from a variety of perspectives?
Have you walked a ghetto? Have you cruised the Caribbean? Have you made a trek across the American West? Have you been Down Under? Have you visited a farm? Have you gotten to know a small town?
How many times have you flown? How many times have you taken a subway? How many different smells of the countryside have greeted your olfactory receptors? How many skyscrapers have you ridden the elevator to the top of? How many different climates have you experienced?
How many different kinds of food have you tried? How many languages do you speak? How many bodies of water have you dipped your toes in?
How closed and small is the opening through which you experience the world? How many strangers have you met and talked to? How far away is your closest friend?
When walking down a deserted country road, where are are your thoughts? Where are they on that crowded subway?
What kind of boundaries do you set for your self? What limitations do you put on your experiences and expressions? Will you talk to anyone you meet? How willing are you to learn about something that seems to have no relation to you?
When you get on the internet, where do you go? What are you looking for? What kind of energy do you expect to get back? How diverse are your internet experiences?
There once was an old man who tended camels. He fed them, lodged them, and looked after their health. He knew how to treat all their problems. He knew how to prepare a camel for a long rigorous journey. He knew their temperaments and their habits. He was a camel expert.
Except he had never taken a trip on a camel. He had never traveled more than a mile out of his own town on a camel.
How close to this man are you? Are there any similarities? Can this man truly be an expert? Can he possibly know what the camels know?
And can the camel truly know this man....or any of the humans who rode it across continents? The camel travels without judgment. The camel travels because it is its nature. It cares not for those humans it interracts with along the journey.
When the rider gets off the camel the journey, for both camel and rider, is uninterrupted.
The journey never ends. The rider, camel tender, and the camel never end either. It's only the awareness of the journey and its many ports of call that change and that may very well be an illusion, too. When you journey are you the camel, the camel tender, the rider...
...or the journey? Can you be all of those things? And if none of these things ever end what part of the journey do you concentrate on? What and where are you on your journey?
Have you walked a ghetto? Have you cruised the Caribbean? Have you made a trek across the American West? Have you been Down Under? Have you visited a farm? Have you gotten to know a small town?
How many times have you flown? How many times have you taken a subway? How many different smells of the countryside have greeted your olfactory receptors? How many skyscrapers have you ridden the elevator to the top of? How many different climates have you experienced?
How many different kinds of food have you tried? How many languages do you speak? How many bodies of water have you dipped your toes in?
How closed and small is the opening through which you experience the world? How many strangers have you met and talked to? How far away is your closest friend?
When walking down a deserted country road, where are are your thoughts? Where are they on that crowded subway?
What kind of boundaries do you set for your self? What limitations do you put on your experiences and expressions? Will you talk to anyone you meet? How willing are you to learn about something that seems to have no relation to you?
When you get on the internet, where do you go? What are you looking for? What kind of energy do you expect to get back? How diverse are your internet experiences?
There once was an old man who tended camels. He fed them, lodged them, and looked after their health. He knew how to treat all their problems. He knew how to prepare a camel for a long rigorous journey. He knew their temperaments and their habits. He was a camel expert.
Except he had never taken a trip on a camel. He had never traveled more than a mile out of his own town on a camel.
How close to this man are you? Are there any similarities? Can this man truly be an expert? Can he possibly know what the camels know?
And can the camel truly know this man....or any of the humans who rode it across continents? The camel travels without judgment. The camel travels because it is its nature. It cares not for those humans it interracts with along the journey.
When the rider gets off the camel the journey, for both camel and rider, is uninterrupted.
The journey never ends. The rider, camel tender, and the camel never end either. It's only the awareness of the journey and its many ports of call that change and that may very well be an illusion, too. When you journey are you the camel, the camel tender, the rider...
...or the journey? Can you be all of those things? And if none of these things ever end what part of the journey do you concentrate on? What and where are you on your journey?
Copyright © 2007, by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.
Labels: Ramblings
posted by White Feather @ 9:24 PM
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