IMAGINE: You are walking down a long, long road. The road winds its way up through thickly wooded hills, up across craggy mountain passes and down again into lush green valleys. It takes you through barren rocky wastelands, harsh desert landscapes and across dusty hot plains that seem to go on for ever. Sometimes you meet and talk to other travellers and find comradeship for a while.  Most of the time you travel on your own.

 

 

 

What road is this? It is the longissima via. It is the path of your life and you are obliged to travel down it, one way or another. How can you not?

 

 

 

Every so often this road comes to a sheer drop: it seems to lead straight into a yawning void. You have just reached one such apparent impasse! You cannot see any further, white mist obscures your view. What lies beyond the cliff top, if anything, you cannot know…

 

 

 

You know that despite this, you must continue. You must follow the road, even if it leads into oblivion. You know that your only course of action is to take a run and try to leap across, and trust that the path does continue on the other side. Even though, on the face of it, such a course of action is certain suicide. You could try to go back, or just hang around until you find the courage to do something decisive. But eventually, you know, you would find yourself back here, faced with the choice that is no choice.

 

 

 

You must make that choice and do what you have to do!

 

 

 

You leap and the ground disappears from under your feet. There is a moment of pure electric uncertainty. The world dissolves. You dissolve……

 

 

 

And then, after a period of time that might have been a second – or a whole life-time – your feet hit solid ground again. There, ahead of you, lies the road. Only this time you can’t recognize where you are. You’re in a new, different world. Or maybe there is a completely new “you”: either way it doesn’t seem to make much difference. You have passed across the transformative void and instead of death you find rebirth. A different you in a different universe.

 

 

 

New, enchanted horizons beckon you on…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image – wallpapersafari.com