William Butler Yeats and the winged with awe

            To conclude this web-book, I have created a chapter devoted to perhaps the most organic activity of all- walking. Walking is something we all do, it is absolutely natural, absolutely simple, and absolutely utilized by almost every individual on earth. Yet for most of us it is seen only as a method of getting from here to there, or perhaps it is used as a form of exercise. Rarely, however, is it seen as God's way of helping us get lost.

Only the homeless vagabond really knows what it is like to walk without a thought of direction or destination, without care or concern about where one is, where one is headed, or what one will find along the way. And yet each and every one of us, no matter what our life's station, has the capacity, should we decide to employ it, to transform the simplest evening stroll into the exploration of an alien land; the greatest realizations of the most profound mystics exist no further away from us than our own two feet, all we need do is soften our sight, loosen our minds, and then walk out our door without knowing who we are, where we're headed, or anything about what we cannot help but unexpectedly see.

I offer this short chapter firstly as an example of possibilities- that in order to return to the blessed state of limitless rapture, we do not have to take extreme measures, drastically changing everything we are, and everything we do; we need only live with complete mental abandonment, spontaneity, and absolute attention- and secondly because wandering implies a journey, and therefore offers a tangible metaphor for all of life.

"See, they return; ah, see the tentative

Movements, and the slow feet,

The trouble in the pace and the uncertain

Wavering!

See, they return, one, and by one,

With fear, as half-awakened;

As if the snow should hesitate

And murmer in the wind

         and half turn back;

These were the 'Wing'd-with-Awe'”

William Butler Yeats

To become the 'Wing'd-with-Awe", is to find wonder in everything we are, and everything we do; for the world is mostly a vast labyrinth of new possibilities and unexpected benedictions just waiting for the child in each one of us to stumble playfully upon them.

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These excerpts on following the heart and aimless wandering are taken from unpublished chapters of THE WAY OF WONDER, by Jack Haas