Escape

The morning has remnants of yesterday with clouds still sitting "lightly" on the horizon.  The air feels warm despite the grey and the temperature is 68 degrees fahrenheit.  Today is Sunday.

Listening to conversations about our world as it operates today, the theme of "escape" comes up frequently.  Whether it is an idea about where to move to avoid climate conditions that are life threatening, or a place to go that is less difficult to navigate due to a lack of affordability, or a quieter space perhaps closer to nature - people are talking about going "somewhere else.".

The problem is that no matter where one may go, the same mind goes, too. And that means, the same desire will arise again if there is no fundamental shift in awareness.  No matter where the place may be - even in creating a space entirely out of imaginations - there will come a time when one may wish to move yet again. Moves often can't be helped, true.  But how does one discern when this desire is one that is yet another of an infinite number of desires that interfere with the search for one's true self?

The idea that moving somewhere else is going to take care of that itch to go to a new spot and experience the freshness that comes from not knowing much about a place and its community is a common one.  It may allow for a fresh start with people, routines, and encounters that may grow into relationships that matter. A move will be a way to unload the many objects that one tends to gather, allowing for clutter to be cleared.  The move will bring peace (maybe boredom) so that finally, one will have "the space" and turn to things that have been postponed: learning to play an instrument, to paint, to sing - all things that had to be delayed because of a belief that here and now, just wasn't the right place and time.

But here's the conundrum:  If the same mindmakes that move, the likelihood of the same desire to escape may arise again.  And this is because it is a tendency that has become a habit of thought.  A habit that wants to imagine that somewhere else is somehow better than here.  People go to places like Black Rock City every year to experience the imagination, manifest.  And after a week or two - it is done, literally destroyed because it is a community imagined that allows for a complete (but unsustainable) transformation of what might give meaning and inspiration in life.

Perhaps the escape is not one that is calling for a change in the external conditions; rather, it is a calling that is surfaces from within.  Perhaps the need that wants to be fulfilled is not one that is material;  rather, it is one that is of the spirit and soul. It might be worth considering that the journey is less complicated than one imagines but more arduous.  It requires one to move into stillness and silence to discover the escape has already taken place.