Walk Pilgrim Walk

I think about the most insistent/persistent/consistent thing which I have done in my life, and the answer is clear.
I have walked. I walk and as long as my legs shall support my breadth, I shall walk.
I have been told that I started using my legs, exactly on the day of my first birthday. I could stand and walk in one go, and I am thankful for this grace bestowed. For this is one of the fondest and most meditative acts which I have been able to do time over with relish.

Walking is at some level genetic, instinctive and eventual in any humans life. Those of us who haven't been able to enjoy walking for one reason or other (mostly laziness) can never enjoy the true carnal pleasure of wanderlust. Of absolute freedom from direction or rules. Freedom to go where one pleases, when one wants and when one chooses!

I am not a big fan of man-made transport. Its needed in concrete jungles where walking is sheer pain rather than pleasure. But when we have the open space above and beyond us to explore. Then the walk becomes the goal-less goal. The pathless path. The meditative spiritual state of reality- where the truth is that there is no walker- there is no walk- there is no path. There is just one-ness.

I know for sometime now- that when pilgrims/walkers are able to go long distances (just like myself); they experience special peaceful states (theta brain wave states) which are absolutely the same states which lucid dreamers and meditation experts can extract.

There are many pilgrimages in India (way too many), and its really wonderful to walk ways which lead through Indian rural sceneries to places of power, the act of walking is so slow and strenuous that in a period of time; the pilgrim starts experiencing a slower pace of the mind. He starts with viewing the external world in a slower light (try it.. cause the only way most of us know how to move is with a car/bike/mechanical transport- which takes us through our visual externals at a faster pace, but walking is so slow- that it allows you to change your scenery at a constant slow pace- inducing visual delight to the pilgrim to enjoy and understand the external world around us, while enjoying the internal rapture of walking meditation).

There is a beautiful movie on walking pilgrimage which I recently saw, its called "the way" starring martin sheen in a very composed and strong lead.  He walks the ancient pilgrim road- "The way of St. James" or the "El Camino de Santiago"  spanning over 800 km's. The movie is a sheer visual delight as they show a lot of pit stops which the pilgrims go through as they make their way to the holy ruins of apostle St. James located in the west most point of spain in gallacia. The entire route is laden with holy power places where pilgrims can rest and contemplate. Most pilgrims walk to and from santiago atleast once in their lives.
I loved the movie which was able to show case the serenity and rest that a wanderlust-ing pilgrim on his way to his maker feels. There is no maker on this earth, but there are such beautiful natural power-places strewn all across- that its quite literally a sin not to walk on our feet and explore the beauty of this green earth!
And that is what walking is for all its worth. Its that innocent sense which most us city dwellers have left far behind... Imagine being able to walk amidst dense jungles, or snow peaks or uninhabited islands, or green misty valleys and so much more... exploring and seeing things for the very first time! Thats what nature's grand vision to teach us is... to show us the beauty of heavens right here on earth, but these beautiful mysterious grand visions won't come to us if we sit and slack inside our 4 wall cubicles. These mysteries and visions are not there on a road map or even on a road... they are there where man has yet not visited, and I assure you that our mother-this earth has many many places like this. Completely invisible to the fool, and only pleasing those who work hard and walk silent without expectations!

Walking makes one a man! It brings patience and faith of a just path/goal. It brings strength and endurance to stop the world/or atleast slow the world (stopping the world- quite literally stopping what the external is projecting). Walking brings out being and character. It is a conversation (not a monologue) which one has with oneself. It results in ending of the conversation, replaced by the true state of one-ness.
Walking appeases the beast in man, It cures wanderlust and the diseases which ravage the mind and body. Depression and insomnia, obesity and lust, materialism and hedonism. Everything is balanced when one walks with his walking stick (you can see ancient iconography of most gods of ancient lore- and you will see that most carry a walking power stick in some form or other). Everything remains in perfect equilibrium... this realization so strong and in grand magnitude hits the enduring pilgrim, who walks day and night; sun and star to no end and to the end of the world for the pleasure of it.

I love to walk. I love to see this beautiful perfect Earth through my eyes, No I wont have it- that someone else will tell me about what is what without me seeing it for the very first time myself, and this is what walking is eternally. Seeing and being for the very first time. Like never before. It couldn't be so without the strength in my legs and the fire in my heart. It could be only so... with the wind in my hair and my eyes in awe twinkling like stars! Feels like seeing things for the very first time!

Peace

The new clubbing scene (project Mayhem)

The real club is here baby, come on you aren't afraid are you?

All through your life, you avoided uncertainty, and now finally your nimble mind has given up on thee. Hey you aren't afraid are you now?

Oh you are, what a shame, for the only true spirit is in the spirit of this game. Its starts in the ring, but you probably ought to know the rules. Here it goes, before you for sure... 

Rule No.1: You do not speak about fight club.

You want to know rule no 2?

Rule No.2: Everyone is expendable in project mayhem

Welcome to the wicked yet real and believable world of Tyler Durden. 

Its a party, so come on in, drink some punch and get ready to fight to death... 

All through my undergraduate years, I had this wicked and incessent need to punch myself and others and be punched, It was our personal private fight club, to explore the boundaries of pain. For as you all very well know ladies and gentlemen, there is no other teacher than pain. 

Oh its instant, to the brain, requires some smarts but all the balls you can muster up again and again. Stand up, You can still stand up, well its time for you to be wacked some more, so that you realize that this is just a fight, not to settle any scores. 

No opponents, no enemies, no one here but yourself and me; why dont you start; give it a good shot; you made me bleed, I like it, the smell and taste of my blood; done with half the deed. I strike back, sternem and above, puncture your lungs, so that you puke some more blood... elixir in this fight; my real respect to my enemy tonight..... 

You are not my enemy; the conditioning of my head is the true deal, look ahead and behind; we dont got no seatbelts strapped on, let go, tyler cries; I let go and leave my secret spot behind. I am free, Flying soaring in an all out blood fest. Welcome to our club, we are here for your service and your service only.... 

Its good to get drunk and fight, but you know what; its even more bloody real when you let it go on your own face with your own fists all sober and with no one to sight. Trying times when you think you are demented after all you have created the double to see you through what you could not accomplish by yourself ever. 

Fight club is not an invention, It is our inner most desire. To learn from the greatest teacher here on this earth, the powerful fist; the raging veins, the subtle dementia all through my brain. 

Some very alternate quotes from the script of this epic movie

Narrator: "I... I don't know. I guess... when people think
you're dying, they really listen, instead..."
Marla: "-Instead of just waiting for their turn to speak." 

"Like everyone else, I had become a
slave to the IKEA nesting instinct.
If I saw something like clever coffee
table sin the shape of a yin and yang,
I had to have it. I would flip through
catalogs and wonder, "What kind of dining
set defines me as a person?" We used to
read pornography. Now it was the Horchow
Collection. I had it all. Even the glass
dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections,
proof they were crafted by the honest,
simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of
wherever."  

"With insomnia, you're never really asleep;
you're never really awake."  

"This is your life and it's ending one
minute at a time." 

"I am Jack's smirking revenge."
"I am Jack's cold sweat"
"I am Jack's raging bile duct"
"I am Jack's broken heart"
"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise"

"With a gun in your mouth, you speak only
in vowels." 

"If you wake up at a different time
and in a different place, could you
wake up as a different person?" 

"After fighting, everything else in your life has
got the volume turned down." 

Tyler continues:       

"Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War.
Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives." 

"You are not your job.
You are not how much you have in the bank.
You are not the contents of your wallet.
You are not your fucking Khakis.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of
the world."

"How much can you know about yourself
if you've never been in a fight?" 

"It's only after you've lost everything
that you're free to do anything." 

"You just had a near-life experience." 

"You are not special. You are not a
beautiful or unique snowflake. You are
the same decaying organic matter as
everything else."

"Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat! It's not a seminar!
You have to forget everything you know, everything you think
you know -- about life, about friendship, about you and me."

of course the most profound and least known quote of the author and the most cryptic is repeated by marla character in the movie: it goes like this, 

"S-L-I-D-E"

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I make and sell soap"- Tyler the alternate fuck up Durden        

Waking Life

Waking life remains an all time must watch. Its slow, drags yet never ever remains constant throughout its journey. The journey is the goal, It becomes the path and the destiny which is freedom beginning to end.
Waking Life is a continous conversation between self. Viewing different perceptions within the time frame of one life time. Never shielding or defending any one, and of course not shunning any one or all of them too. The lovely breath taking scenery portrays dream landscape which is of course our waking life. Just seen new through the eyes of a child seeing it for the first time.
Its surreal and refreshing, not dull and boring like what we are used to seeing day in and out. Not the conversation we have heard or known throughout our life; It something more than intriguing; maybe even stirring.
But it requires patience and faith to see the movie to the end, the movie of my life. Where shall it wake up to next. Where shall it wander off to last.. a vast intricate web of rich tapestry called ideas and imaginations driven through e-motions, making it a complete matrix of one. Its waking life indeed.
The movie interviews the mind which is the philosopher, the dramatist and artist, the dreamer and the traveler. The showman and the lover; the sleeper and stalker, the music and of course the beat to make it all come alive. Where all can it be found but in this mind, drawing energy from the surrounding; the macro and microcosm. I live by these words of the movie; Yet I wish to truly die by them. For it is in death that reality opens up like the petals of a blooming lotus. The thousand petaled lotus of dream and life....

“Dream Is Destiny.”

“The idea is to remain in a constant state of departure while always arriving. It saves on introductions and goodbyes.”

“When we communicate with one another and we feel that we have connected and we think we’re understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion…I think it’s what we live for.”


“I believe reincarnation is just a poetic expression of what collective memory really is.”

“I want freedom! We have got to realize that we’re being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state.”


“While technically I’m closer to the end of my life than I’ve ever been, I actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world.”

“Which is the most universal human characteristic, fear or laziness?”

“There’s no story. It’s just people, gestures, moments, bits of rapture, fleeting emotions. In short, the greatest story ever told.”

“A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny.”

“They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn’t you say the same thing about life?”

“The worst mistake that you can make is to think you’re alive when really you’re asleep in life’s waiting room.”

“You can have so much damn fun in your dreams. And, of course, everyone knows FUN RULES.”

“If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible.”

“Whatever you do, don’t be bored. This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.”

“I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to be an ant.”

“I’m not in an objective, rational world.”

“On really romantic nights of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.”

“The ongoing WOW! Is happening right now.”

“You haven’t met yourself yet.”

“It’s sort of a dream within a dream.”

“Doesn’t it make sense that death too would be wrapped in a dream? That after death, your conscious life would continue in what might be called a dream body?”

“It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical.”

“If you’re going to microwave that burrito, I want you to poke holes in the plastic wrapping because they explode and I’m tired of cleaning up your little burrito doings.”

“If you can wake up, you should because someday you won’t be able to.”

"You can't fight city hall." "Death and taxes." "Don't talk about politics or religion." This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda, rolling across the picket line. "Lay down, GI! Lay down, GI!". We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now on the 21st Century, it's time to stand up and realize, that we should NOT allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not SUBMIT to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned with what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control. Those that control my life, and those that seek to control it EVEN MORE! I want FREEDOM! That's what I want, and that's what YOU should want! It's up to each and every one of us to turn loose of just some of the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities, because that is the central mode of control, make us feel pathetic, small, so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have GOT to realize we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century's gonna be a new century! Not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance, of classism and statism, and all the rest of the modes of control... it's gonna be the age of humankind, standing up for something PURE and something RIGHT! What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it's all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated! The TRUTH is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of LIES! I'm SICK of it, and I'M NOT GONNA TAKE A BITE OUT OF IT! DO YA GOT ME? Resistance is NOT futile, we're gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, WE'RE NOT A BUNCH OF UNDERACHIEVERS, WE'RE GONNA STAND UP, AND WE'RE GONNA BE HUMAN BEINGS! WE'RE GONNA GET FIRED UP ABOUT THE REAL THINGS, THE THINGS THAT MATTER - CREATIVITY, AND THE *DYNAMIC* *HUMAN* *SPIRIT* THAT REFUSES TO *SUBMIT*! WELL THAT'S IT, that's all I've got to say. It's in your court now. 

“There’s only one instant, and it’s right now, and it’s eternity.”




Such is the case of here and now..... 
Peace