Don’t confuse self with circumstance. Don’t confuse body with being. There is a trail. There is a traveler but neither one is you.

The trail gives the illusion of going from one time to the next (like from breakfast to dinner). It allows us to believe that we’ve gone from somewhere to elsewhere (like from the kitchen to the dining room).

The trail is how we visualize the illusion of time and place.

We see a man on the trail and assume he is a traveler. But he is stationary. He looks at the world through the lens of a kaleidoscope. So what he sees, the constantly shifting shapes and colors, the oceans and deserts, the sparkles and shadows are created by his own hand, like a conductor waving his stick.

The trail weaves its way from yesterday to tomorrow but the traveler can only be in the now (which is always here). He is the steadfast witness to ever changing scenes. Like an anchor deep down on the calm ocean floor, he steadies body as it bobs back and forth in the froth of the days. Body is not the witness. The body is just his cloak, his camouflage, his cave.

Love the trail for its unique view. Love your body… even if it isn’t you.

The body is your backpack with compass, hiking gear and sleeping bag. It has all you need for your trek along the trail.

Circumstance is not self. Body is not being. But together they create a lifetime (the time of your life). Being discovers itself by witnessing what it is not.

Life is a gift. It is a nonrefundable, unreturnable, inexchangeable gift. However, we usually hate it. We wish there’d been someone different in our box. We wish our box had been placed under a better Christmas tree.

But the gift of life isn’t in the box. That is what we discover when body and trail meet at The End.