Apparently fatigue along the way is quite common and it’s best to rest one’s weary mind in a safe place. When the ‘land-scape’ turns against you on your journey out of madness don’t try to do more than you’re capable of in that moment. Remembering that you are never alone – regardless of the surrounding population present or absent – finding yourself in times of trouble is the best of times to listen to that ‘other’ voice.

The voice is really only a signature of the inner presence and it is the presence, the awareness of your other, that has the power you may believe you lack as you face the sentinels in your landscape placed there to keep you put. You see, you must have opened the envelope containing the note with the three questions that almost all fellow sojourners have spoken of. Their form varied to best fit the circumstances of the individual’s life but they break down pretty much as follows:

1) Is there a place to get to?
2) Are you there?
3) Are you ready?

And so it began. There have been steps along the way where you have had to cultivate trust in this inner, invisible guide that may at times seem to go silent or even disappear completely, but eventually you realize that all that really happened was you leaving the presence to enter another shop in the mall of life. (That was mall, not maul…) Eventually you come to understand that this voice, this inner presence, is showing you another way to see yourself and seems to know you as a different entity than you believe your self to be.

Now you can stay in that shopping mall of consciousness, that monster Cineplex, for as long as you want, but eventually you will remember that there is indeed a place to get to and that where you are right now is not it. And with infinite patience your inner guidance mechanism picks right up on cue and accompanies you through the circumstances surrounding you in this world of wonder where the ‘wrap-around, surround-sound totally interactive theater-of-mind’ is presenting its latest headliners in the game show so affectionately known as The Truth of Consequences.

My guide uses music to get me to listen. Early on it was Dionne Warwick singing ‘take it easy on your self…’ then Peter Gabriel’s back-up team chanting ‘…don’t give up’ and even last night on the Showtime special on the boob-tube where Neil Young was telling me that it was okay, that my Inner/Other was ‘…still in love with me’ and wanted only to see me dance again. I know, crazy stuff, but as real as real can be for me.

Are you ready?