Lost and Found

I just read a story about a man from L.A. who was lost in the desert of Joshua Tree for six days without food or water. In order for him to survive he stayed put and wrote love notes to his family on his hat, giving instructions about his funeral and focusing on his love for them and others in his life who meant a lot to him. This I see is the path of the spiritual warrior, who focuses on the Essential in life by remembering that every moment may be the last. By preparing for one's death, one paradoxically goes through life fully alive. This is one of the reasons why war is such an attraction to males who do not naturally have that threshold experience of childbirth that women can have. When one stands on the threshold and faces the unknown of death, one looks straight into death's eyes and one sees one's mysterious Self, not the self of everyday pursuits and concerns. Then when one comes back from the threshold the everyday things can take on the glowing light of gratitude.

What was different about this lost man from the rest of us was that he knew he was lost and death was real. For the rest of us who run off to our offices to make the money to keep everything going as it was the day before, trying to be safe and secure and complete by what we have around us, we don't know we are lost and so we cannot be found. The same could be said about prisoners. They know they are imprisoned and so want to be free, while those on the outside believe they are free and so do not look for Freedom.