The Fool's Journey

This is an experiment.

I made a decision that the choices I make this year will come from love, not fear. I've tried it the so-called "rational, practical" way and I don't think it got me what I really wanted. In fact, it was not rational at all. My decisions have often been based on fear rather than love, but we call that "being practical" and therefore "rational."

Give me a break. Basing your decisions on fear is just as irrational as basing your decisions on love. In fact, when you look at it that way, it's even more irrational.

I made a decision this year to try something different. And because I can't sort it out rationally, I thought, "Well then, just try it out as an experiment and see what happens." I already tried it the way society says it's supposed to be done and I wasn't deeply happy. Not that I think a person should be happy all the time, but one ought to at least feel a general satisfaction with one's life.

So I'm going to go further out on the razor's edge and see what happens. The razor's edge is the difference between what you know and what you don't know. That's why most people won't go there. They'd rather stay imprisoned by the devil they know than risk moving toward the unknown.

This sums up the story in Revolutionary Road, a film that had a powerful effect on me when I saw it in a local indie theater. Both the characters, Frank and April, knew they were unhappy. On some level they knew they were imprisoned in the "hopeless emptiness." But when the devil offers Frank a slightly better lifestyle in the hopeless emptiness (a promotion and a raise), he decides he'll take a more comfortable prison rather than risk the unknown. But April doesn't want a more comfortable prison. She wants freedom and she's willing to pay any price to get it.

The ultimate price is death. Though that certainly wasn't her goal, it shows her commitment to escaping the hopeless emptiness.

As Patrick Henry said when he made the idea famous, "Give me liberty or give me death." In order to truly be free, you have to give up the fear of death. I'm not afraid to die. I don't want to die, but I'm not afraid of it. In fact, I'm not afraid of much of anything anymore. Fear has little hold on me.

My desire for love in every area of my life is too strong for fear to get its vice-like grip on me. The anger I feel at not seeing my desires fulfilled is also stronger than the fear. Together these two energies -- the energy of love that pulls me toward my future -- and the powerful energy of anger that burns through the bindings of fear -- has lead me inexorably toward the unknown.

The reason I have to write about it is because the path is as unknown as the destination. So it's almost as if I create the path as I write.

For example, when I ask myself "What should I do with my life?" I'm not even thinking in terms of career or money. Instead, I ask myself, "What is it that I truly want to do? What is it that my heart is calling me to do?"

In order to do this, it is absolutely necessary that I trust in abundance. I have to trust that I can meet whatever comes my way. I have to trust in my own innate resourcefulness. I have to trust in my ability to draw the resources to me when I need them. That's why so many people make their life choices based on fear because they don't trust their own resourcefulness.

I'm going to do an experiment this year. I'm going to trust myself. I'm going to trust my resourcefulness. I'm going to trust my inner guide, my daemon, whom I call Artemis. I do trust myself and I trust my daemon.

This is not about, "How can I make money?" It's about, "How can I express my True Self? How can I fully express the person I am meant to be? If I do that, will the rest take care of itself?"

That is the basis of the experiment.

It's about following my heart, trusting that if I do so, things will work out okay, maybe even better than okay. It's about love, letting love guide me. I want to bring love into every area of my life.

This is what people think of as a "spiritual journey." You start from your core, your deepest inner being, rather than what's on the outside. As I said, I'm not looking for a job or a paycheck. My desire is for true self-expression. This is not a fashion statement. It's a statement about who I am at the core of my being. It's about the meaning of my life.

When you weigh a pile of money against the meaning of your life, there's no contest. How can a person ever sell out the meaning of their life for a pile of money? That's not to say you can't have meaning and money, but I'm talking about trading the meaning of your life for money, so there's no more meaning, just the money. Even if it were a billion dollars, without meaning in your life... it's... well... meaningless. It's empty. It's pointless. It's the "hopeless emptiness."

Yet people make that trade-off all the time. They don't want to face their fears of the unknown. They don't want to face failure. They don't want to face the death of their ego, but a part of you dies anyway.

The image and symbolic meaning of the Wheel of Fortune in the tarot is helping me a lot this month to keep things in perspective. The key word to remember is "Surrender." There are some things that aren't worth fighting. You have to find another way to deal with them.

But it's also about feeling fragmented and whipped around by the circumstances of one's life when you're out on the edge of the wheel. When that's happening, the solution is to surrender, let go, stop fighting it, get centered, get grounded. The hub of the wheel is the place where one gets centered, aligned, and grounded. There are different ways to do that. One of the best ways is through meditation.

I often use writing. Some other ways are walking, hiking, or biking. Like today...