|
Managing the pilgrimage
The astute
pilgrim plans, organises and then manages her pilgrimage. Once a clear goal
has been set, the (initial) means (and which includes skills) to it are acquired.
Since they can’t all be acquired or trained at once, because pilgrimages are
highly dynamic (i.e. the formal means and functional skills change as the
pilgrim proceeds), a flexible management plan must be developed (in much the
same way as a plan is worked out that will bring a infant swimmer through a
serious of stages to the Olympics where she may win a gold medal). The
management plan includes highly disciplined periods (or units) of work/effort
(i.e. the Outer Pilgrimage) - and the higher the peak to be achieved the
greater the work/effort -, periods of rest (such as sleep or general
idleness, and which allows the Inner Pilgrimage to proceed), periods of play
and enjoyment, and so on. The key elements of managing the pilgrimage are
pacing, near @best application of means and skills and flexibility. Overdoing
it or under-doing it leads to failure, i.e. to irreversible burnout or fading
due to loss of energy. Management
also includes enforcing continuous focusing on the goal and on its means of achievement
in order to exclude (i.e. sacrifice) all other goals and the means to them,
the latter distorting, fuzzing or depressing (i.e. the energy state) of the
goal to be achieved. Since adroit management comes with experience, and which
the young pilgrim does not have, teachers and schools emerge to satisfy that
need. The urge to
achieve one goal perfectly, thereby becoming wholly fulfilled and reaping the
reward of the rapturous joy of fulfilment, demands the sacrifice of all other
goals. Sacrificing all for one is the mark of
the true pilgrim. The goal of
the pilgrim, her ‘mark to be achieved’, draws (in some cases ‘calls’) her to
become absolutely whole and complete as a particular (differential) identity.
Achievement of the goal makes her whole, therefore ‘holy’. All goals are
‘holy’ in so far as they lead to wholeness (read: goodness, that is to say,
full functionality). Bluntly put.
The true pilgrim develops a one-track mind (i.e. a psychotic state), i.e. the
unwavering gaze upon one steady state focus (i.e. her desired True Self, or,
put differently, the Self (religious or non religious) that will make her
true), then ‘goes for it’ with sheer hard work, perseverance, cleverness,
natural cunning (read: behaving naturally, spontaneously, and which lets the
genie do her thing) and the fully dedicated help of her genie. She never
loses sight (or remembrance) of her goal, no matter what. She never stops
advancing towards it, no matter what. If she is
distracted from her goal, and that happens at every step of her path, both
Inner and Outer), then she reorients her path as soon as she has left that
step.
|