Wanderer

 

"Be a wanderer." ~Jesus, Gnostic Gospel of Thomas

"Not everyone who wanders is lost." ~Tolkein

I am most aware, most present, when I am wandering. When I am a pilgrim. When I’m good and lost, I find myself. Open, vulnerable, alive. Not when I claim to have already arrived, in the Kingdom of Non-Duality, but when I wander in the vale of uncertainty, which is the liminal space between One and Two, the bothness of being on the Way, and arriving.

 

There is something authoritarian to me about "Non-Duality," and those who claim to be instantly enlightened just by saying, "All is One." The One can be quite oppressive when it becomes a doctrine, a belief, when it is not stumbled on in a journey of wonder. And for a journey to occur, there must be the dynamism of twoness, the beginning, the arriving, even if they turn out to be the same place. Both the eternal, and the not-yet...

 

Those who claim to be "non-dualists" seldom deign to call themselves seekers, disciples, or pilgrims. They only want to call themselves "spiritual teachers." Their message is, "I have arrived." And they’ll tell you that you have arrived too, even if you haven’t.

Being-there gets rather smug with no more journey, and no more path. Jesus' words, "Be a wanderer," call me to a Wayless Path, which is different than being "lost." Those who feel lost assume there is a destination. They are dissatisfied with where they are, because there must be somewhere better. But wanderers discover beauty in each step. They never yet always arrive. This is the lively paradox, the blessed not-yet, of enlightened Duality.

The Gnostic Jesus doesn't say, "Follow me," pointing up the mountain to a final resting place. He shows me the never-ending labyrinthine spiritual power of waylessness. If I follow, I follow the one who leaves no footprints on the water. Each breath is the end, the beginning.

I learned this not from Jesus, but from his favorite and most beloved companion, Mary Magdalene. She became my “anam cara,” my Heart Guide, when I was wandering down the Medieval pilgrimage routes through southern France many years ago, knowing not at all what I was looking for. And back then, I had no idea about her-story, for it was still submerged in history. This was a decade before the publication of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," and long before "The Da Vinci Code."

According to Medieval tradition, after the first Easter, Mary Magdalene became a wanderer. She was lost at sea in a rudderless boat, tossed up on the shore of southern France, at what is now Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. A pilgrim, a stranger, she found herself with no map, no compass. That is how we all find ourselves. She finally arrived at the beginning of her journey, awakening Christ-Consciousness in the Western world, before theologians and evangelists were ever invented. And even now, she is the Friend who blesses me when I am most fallen and far from any path.

I must say, in my old age, as I no longer try to go anywhere, it is delightful to realize that such great soul-beings as Jesus, Mary, Krishna, Radha, Qwan Yin, Lakshmi, Gurudev, are not mere archetypes, abstract symbols dissolved in some non-dualistic pablum. They are living Persons I can know with intimate precision, in the glory of friendship. When I abandon the destination and just become a wanderer, I often bump into them somewhere out in Rumi's meadow.