Signs Part 2

Lonely is the Sage

Desert Lilacs blowing soft

I walk and I walk

In Shambhala Fe I have started walking. I have started walking ten thousand steps a day. I have started walking aimlessly. I have perfected the science of the Lindy Walk. But the Lindy Walk is not science, it is an Art. In science, you follow a formula, a protocol. The Lindy Walk is the opposite of science. The formula being, follow your intuition (literally).

Pay attention to the direction that the wind is blowing. Is there a house coming up that has loud barking dogs in the yard that I want to avoid? When I walk west, is the sun in my eyes? How many feet ahead of me is there a car, a person, an animal, another diversion in the path? Am I going to have to traverse up another steep hill? Will the shoes I chose to wear let me float downhill with ease? Is the road rough or smooth and are there jagged rocks ahead of me? Has someone thrown a beer bottle out of their car window last night leaving the glass shattered across my path ahead? Is there a road sign up ahead? Can I read it from where I am in this point in space and time, or do I need to get up closer?

On these walks, I have taken a favor to walking uphill as often as I notice the path winding upwards. Walking uphill my legs feel strong. Uphill I am usually going against the wind. Uphill my lungs are straining from the three cigarettes I smoked last night. Uphill I’m making my lungs stronger. Uphill I’m making my body stronger. My body will tense and brace against the wind my body will tense and brace against itself and I feel like a solid, steady object in space. Most of the time I feel like I’m floating around and blowing around at the whim of the extraneous forces that blow my life in every single direction all at once. I am ZEN. I am relaxed. I let life flow through me and I bend to meet her at each turn. But walking uphill, I relinquish that state of aimlessness and passivity that I inhabit by default.

My favorite thing about walking uphill though, is that I can’t see what is ahead of me. All I can do is stare at the ground in front of me, merge my disparate seperate floating mind into my body and focus on the act of faith. There is a surprise waiting up there and I must walk and walk and walk knowing that I’ll reach the top eventually. What is waiting up there for me may be vast and expansive view of the rolling desert mesa. Or it may be a dead end leading to a gated residence. Either way, I don’t care. I just know that going uphill feels good. The outcome will be new. There is an eroticism in the mystery of the unknown view at the top of the hill. This invisible force is what blows behind me, guiding me subtly on my walk up the hill.

On one of my walks up the hill recently, I encountered another sign that stood out:

HILL BLOCKS VIEW.

I giggle to myself. These signs in New Mexico are like the divination of tarot cards — they tap into some place within that pulls out everything that’s already laying wait in my subconscious. I like the road signs more than tarot cards though because I don’t have to interpret esoteric symbolism from the early 1900s to receive my message. The road signs are clear. The road signs scream my special message right in my face. I don’t always absorb the message right away, sometimes the message comes to me later, but with the road signs it’s very obvious. I can’t miss the sign. I’ve been known to ignore the subtler signs in the past. I need to be screamed at by a bright yellow road sign because the last year of internet addiction has rubbed away some of my faculties of perception in some ways. I’m working on getting those back. I’m lucky I am more perceptive by nature than most.

Down in the underworld of Albuquerque, I didn’t know where my life was going. I felt flat like that desolate scolding basin. The river barely ran through it. It was always dried up. Once I drove up to Santa Fe and ascended up the highway to Shambhala, I gained an extra thousand feet of elevation. Those extra thousand feet made all the difference. Once I arrived I immediately felt the effects entirely.

Physical: the air felt thinner, I paid more attention to my breath at the higher altitude. A deeper sense of calm comes with a closer attention to the breath.

Mental: A completely new territory, a visually aesthetic beauty marked by the snow covered Sangre De Cristo mountain range surrounding my house on the top of a hill. Clearer sky. A circular living room. A living space that I fit into easily. No more homeless vagrants leaning over high off fentanyl on San Mateo and Lomas. No more screaming in the alley behind my rectangular house whos edges felt sharp and jagged in the corners of my mind in a struggle to simply survive through each day.

Spiritual: The physical and mental elevation led to an effortless spiritual elevation. My consciousness driving up the hill became sharp. Pointed. Clear and cunning. The perception I lost is coming back more naturally. Ideas stream down to me from above. Probably because I’m closer to the sky now.

Arriving here did not feel like scaling a cliff with a boulder against my chest in some grand Sisyphean struggle. Arriving here felt like ascension. I’ve arrived at the Base Camp of my life and I will ascend uphill to the top of the mountain with great ease. Going uphill imparts the lesson of faith. Going uphill cultivates complete trust in God carrying me up the hill. Going uphill has eliminated fear and doubt. I walk and walk and walk in the Holy Faith miles and miles and miles up the hill despite the view being blocked. I don’t see where I’m going but I know I’m going up. What is waiting up there for me is of none of my concern at the moment. What is waiting up there for me is my birthright.