Snow Melt

Wanderer

4 Rahmat 164 BE – Wednesday, June 27, 2007 [Insert Time] PDT

The Wanderer or the seeker roams through seven valleys or seven cities in search of the Beloved. Each valley has it’s own steed, it’s own tests and a specific spiritual attribute that The Wanderer must reflect before she or he can go to the next valley. To succeed in this quest The Wanderer must overcome self, preconceived ideas and superstitions to read the home of the Beloved. To achieve the goal of his or her quest the wandering seeker must sacrifice everything from acquired knowledge to the mundane desire of daily existence.

In one sense, we are all seekers, but many times we don’t know what we’re seeking. In order to fill the void in our souls, we attempt to acquire material treasures, but the soul or spirit isn’t satisfied with these items. It wants something more, something that can only be supplied on a spiritual level. We are Wanderers roaming through the valley of shadows searching for something, but not knowing what. While we remain in the shadow’s valley we can’t find the goal of our desires. To find the Beloved we must leave the valley and ascend over treacherous mountainous terrain a path that often disappears as we climb toward the cloud-shrouded crest.

Once we have left the valley of shadows and reached the mountain’s crest our goal isn’t reached. The only thing we have conquered at this time is the point of no return. It is too late for us to go back, even if we wanted to. The journey to the crest was so difficult that we began abandoning everything we carried with us because we needed to lighten our load to ascend the steep and sometimes vertical pass. If we carried a map with us, that was probably the first thing we abandoned, because we found it didn’t reflect the trail we were walking on. Each person must conquer this pass for him or her self, the passage that worked for one person doesn’t work for another. The trail that one person mapped, was destroyed by icefalls and earthquakes.

We may find babbles and gems strewn along the path that earlier travelers, who accidentally came across this section of the climb abandoned when they realized that the items didn’t apply to them or encourage them. If these things give us encouragement, we pick them up and carry them with us as long as the give us help, encouragement and hope. Otherwise, we leave them laying on the trail, perhaps for another seeker to stumble on in the future. Or to be picked up by birds and animals that carry them back to their dens or nests.

In reviewing today, I ran across one of these gems. "Invalid Item"   [] by A Guest Visitor gives encouragement to the seeking wanderer as she or he travels toward the crest of no return. I would encourage anyone encountering this journal to read, rate and review it. There are other gems, hidden among the genre on writing.com that gives the seeker encouragement. There are gems scattered in libraries and across the internet, we just have to search for them. We must search for them with an open mind, putting aside preconceived knowledge either acquired or given to us. To find the Beloved, the soul and spirit must be free and unchained to anything that will prejudice it. Another gem I’ve found that may help the seeking wanderer is The Seven Valleys by Baha’u’llah and translated by Shoghi Effendi.

While in the valley of shadows, the soul remains chained to superstition, fear, and dogma. Once the soul decides to break the chains and leave the shadow’s valley, and take the step of search the tests and sacrifices begin.