The Causeway
The stones are not granite, at least not now. The stones falling into place ahead of me are sandstone now, cool and delicately rough under my bare feet. The metaphor for this journey has changed and I've made it my own. I'm no longer in a forest, lost and tentative. Instead I am at the beach of a great ocean and it is dark and moonless. The sand is constantly shifting and I must cross it and cross the water. Surrounding the tiny patch of sand are only cliffs that lead up to nowhere and down in a deadly drop to the lapping waves. The ocean isn't particularly violent but it is the ocean and even in a calm there is some violence implied. One is foolish if one doubts the elemental power of water.
The stones do not seem large enough to form a causeway in the waves and yet they do. While I can hear the of the great machine placing the stones ahead of me but I cannot see it. I wonder what I'm missing? Is this mechanism important? Is this a how that I am missing? Would being able to visualize this behemoth allow me some further, deeper insight? There's a twinge there although it's a mild one, and now it's written down: marked for later.
Right now the causeway is very narrow. On one side there is the danger of overbalancing into my tendency to devalue myself and on the other side is the danger of my ego. A single misstep would mean disaster and yet I have no fear of falling. My walking must look graceful to an outside observer but it isn't grace that keeps me on the path. Balance is key, and while I experience each step fully as a thing, as an action involving all of me and all of the stone and the causeway and the dark sky and the lapping waves and the warm breeze that caresses my skin, while I experience this there is no possibility of a misstep because each step simply is. How could it be otherwise?
A shield is a heavy, heavy burden, but what warrior, once trained to fight with and depend upon his shield, would willingly go without it?