Expect a miracle on the pilgrimage of life

Trish O’Reilly offers: “When I leave I want to leave free, unencumbered. To do that means breaking the rhythm of what I’m doing at home… If my trip is going to be sacred, I need to see differently. I need to think new thoughts, not just conditioned responses.” (quoted in The Art of Pilgrimage, p73)

For, as Phil Cousineau supplies, “The traveller soon learns that it is difficult to unlearn a lifetime of habitual seeing, the ordinary perception that gets one through a day at home, [which are] inadequate to the task of comprehending the suddenly unfamiliar, strange, even marvelous things.” (Art of Pilgrimage, p100)^{^[21]}

We must get lost along the way, or we shall lose the gift of spontaneity and grace. We must forget our route, our way, and our destination, if we are to become the journey of ourselves. We must rise to the level of open honesty which continually does not try to see what has already been seen, nor what we expect to see, but only 'what is'. We must look without knowing what we are looking at, that is when we shall truly 'see'.

Says Herakleitos, "In searching out for the truth be ready for the unexpected, for it is difficult to find and puzzling when you find it."

That is, be prepared to be puzzled, or, as a modern-day bumper-sticker says "Expect a Miracle". This is a very succinct way of saying: have no expectations for then "wonders come of themselves."

Malcolm Lowry wrote of one of his characters, “…the day before him stretched out like an illimitable rolling wonderful desert in which one was going, though in a delightful way, to be lost.” (Under the Volcano, p143)

That is, we cannot simply 'wander aimlessly' when we are full of intent and presumption; in that case we end up simply moving forward like programmed somnambulists, rather than alert, attentive beings.

As the master don Genaro related to Carlos Castaneda: “I roamed around the hills aimlessly. I had no idea where I was going and although I had lived all my life there I got lost. I walked in the rain and didn’t even feel it. It seemed that I couldn’t think.” (Tales of Power, p64)

[21] Miller offers: “Nothing was too petty to escape my attention. If I went for a walk- and I was constantly seeking excuses to take a walk, ‘to explore’, as I put it- it was for the deliberate purpose of transforming myself into an enormous eye. Seeing the common, everyday things in this new light I was often transfixed. The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnified world in itself. Almost an ‘unrecognizeable’ world.” (Plexus)