Steps walked alone are the best mirrors and teachers of the self…
It wasn’t just the wandering journey through Peru’s sacred valley that taught me about myself, it was the journey to the journey, the path of discovery and curiosity that led me to the awareness that a journey of some kind was exactly what I needed. As I walked for hours on a vertical climb to a little known view of Machu Picchu from across the valley I had heard about, I began to understand that the journeys made alone are the journeys that provide the most lessons about the self. There is time to reflect, energy dedicated to pushing the body along with the mind to a destination, in some unforeseen place or unforeseen idea. I tuned in to many ideas and realizations, such as the one about walking on an old path is walking with ancients, or how maybe the builders of the ancient path knew very well he was communicating with the distant future, why else would you make a path out of stone? I began to see myself in the ancient builders I was imagining I was walking this path with, as wanderers, curious healers of the world, brothers to various forms of life calling the valley home. Five hours of bliss, alone in the sacred valley, a light rain at times, and new temporary understandings as my company, taught me the value of a journey alone, in that what comes out of it, like any journey worth taking, is always unfolding, like any good teaching.
