Growing Up along the WAY

There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. Seek not to retain the toys of children. Put them away, for you have need of them no more.
(A Course in Miracles)

I remember a time as a boy when I was lying in bed with toy guns and played Cowboys and Indians in my imagination. I remember vividly thinking, ‘hey, aren’t you too old playing with this stuff?’, but then I shrugged my shoulders and concluded that it is fun, so I continued anyway. Sure enough, the boy grew up but the fantasies would mature with me, professional and career aspirations, the more steamy fantasies, wishing that problems I was facing would go away, and so forth.

A spiritual path often starts when life differs from what we expect. Pain has an amazing wake-up function. I met countless spiritual travelers who started their journey because one fine day they fell to the ground screaming, ‘there must be another way!’ Sadly, for many of us that is the only time when we start recognizing that a different world is waiting for us. Perhaps that’s the reason why Yoshua reminded us that ‘those who are last shall be the first and those who are first shall be the last.’

Along the Way there are no fantasies of any kind. I have been a mind-driven person all my life and I can tell you that ‘thoughts’ cease along the Way. Thinking stops and gets replaced by insights. Images pop up with a message for us. Sometimes they tell us what to do, sometimes they explain a spiritual function to us, and sometimes they make explicit to us why the craving of the ego is not worth our while. In short, all thinking about the future stops unless it is a spiritual Vision of sorts, alerting us of the things to come.

If you find yourself wishing for something that you think you don’t yet have, go after it. Trust life. Either it will get you there or show you a manifestation even more worth your while. One day you see only the Holy Now and nothing but.