One last stroll through the old neighborhood, I revisited everything I was, and dreamed about everything I wanted to be. That Fall day I remember it tasted a little like Kimchee on wild rice: sweet, sour, hot, sticky, even a bit slimy and salty, creating just the right blend of texture and spice.

I remembered how I used to stand at the top of the stairs, waiting for something or someone to push me down. I didn’t trust myself to go any further then and certainly didn’t trust the Universe to make sure I was safe now. All projection, plain and simple, I still really liked toiling endlessly each day to make everything perfect.

Who needed the Universe anyway?

Ever striving to set things in motion had its benefits. And I could practically pinpoint each one of those benefits and situations through adulthood. I usually got exactly what I wanted in this very manner, until it slowly stopped; and even though this train had been arriving for a long, long time at this point in life, I continued to disregard just how in control I actually was, every breath I took.

My adjustment was pretty stilted and the stakes were getting higher at the same rate of speed my train was breaking. I was about to be thrown through the engine’s windshield. Lucky for me, at least my desires were morphing and now I wanted something more hidden and way less tangible, something not acquired by doing and moving faster than a speeding bullet.

ALL STOP! At this station, there’s no place left to go, but into surrender. I was so tired of controlling my breath and heartbeat anyway, and I almost let go of the controls for a mere moment. Just long enough to be afraid, in the end I was still driving that train, releasing the brake, rolling right through the opportunity to disembark.

By the following Summer everything had shifted and my train did stop. Early in the season I ached for that past because it was familiar, and cried for the loss of it. Waking up one morning in August, though, I felt alive in a very profound way. My heart beat rhythmically all on its own. Even the idea of letting go had never been my constant companion, so here, much later, I had just started the real journey.

As I tossed away my effigy, the residual mists of the past lifted. I could see an archway of trees marking a path I’d never walked before. My heart leaped. And yet my mind was distressed, trying desperately to override the new and spontaneous command more aggressively than wind frantically funneling through the Golden Gate in Springtime. It was now up and buzzing around me like the whining of a small tornado.

“What if I loose everything?” I screamed inside with worry as clothing was torn from my body in that whipping wind. Standing at the gateway to what felt like certain death, I allowed myself the extra moment to debate the merits of entry. “Am I crazy…who wouldn’t go in?” Fear. The perfect gargoyle of self-deception.

Ignoring the monster, I awkwardly walked through into complete darkness. I immediately looked upward, frightened and ravenously breathing in moist air as though I’d been buried in a dusty old ghost town for several lifetimes. As my eyes adjusted, I noticed a spot of sunlight breaking through a canopy of giant trees…a kaleidoscope of chaotic tree branches way, way up there. It was dizzying, almost like moving through time.

Too much sudden lightness, I hung my head to let the blood flow again and began shuffling through the entropy of leaves on the ground. I devoured the smells as I churned them up. “This path seems easy,” I noticed as it spiraled around huge red trunks. Clover blanketed the ground; lichen, looking more like a sea weed, swagged from branch to branch. It only grows in completely clean air.

I was totally alone and uncertain in there, yet the easy walking pace transported me deeper into the trees, deeper into my soul. As I wandered around inside myself for a while, I reflected on my body in nature, nature in relation to the planet, the planet as a fractal of the Universe.

It was all very esoteric, pushing on my existential panic button.

Greedily I sucked in every molecule of courage from the air around me, using all senses to listen to my tiny and soft spoken inner voice. There in the woods, I could honor my dance with the elemental rhythms. It was both new and old; I was instantly at home.

All the tree and plant bodies blurred as I moved to the sounds of Earth’s tides and the beat of my heart. I saw nothing; I heard nothing; I only felt the precious bond of my soul swaying with those trees, that ground and all those fresh smells.

Too quickly I was alone again, back at the gateway, now looking to the heavens. A light rain washed my face and I smelled the dust turn to mud between my toes.

Luminosity breathed in me like a zephyr, imprinting its vivid mandala of life. Birth and death were at its core–the natural rhythms of inspiration and expiration, and its signature was identical to the fire burning inside me those last two years.

The last vestiges of my shield were liquefied by that heat, feeding the ground beneath my feet. I finally remembered why I was there, naked, cloaked only in my own austerity, wisdom and devotion.

I awakened from the old, into the new, knowing these sensations are eternally universal.