This was supposed to be the culmination, the end. This was supposed to be the place of dissolution and rest. The dune field stretches on all sides, miles and miles of sinuous ridgelines, minute and perfect furrows, infinite gradations of light and shadow, all unmarred by any visible vegetation. The promise resonates in an inaudible hum; the orders and harmonies are firmly established here, and it is clear that Nirvana is in its place. Yet, passing an eternity on these dunes is not beatitude, but tedium. The subtle rhythms of the dunes accentuate his discordance. The red-tailed hawk’s screams rip at the fragile veneer of his counterfeit placidity. The tracks of the sand beetles arc out in unordered confusion. The enormous silence does not soothe; it only deepens the contrast of his agitation. The seeker stands alone in the dune field under gray skies, feeling no appeal, no attraction.
He sees suddenly that he has arrived too soon. He is not able to surrender. The emptiness of this place is overwhelming, too much to absorb, too much to understand, too much to benefit by. Abruptly, he understands the value of experience. He feels the faint calls issuing forth from far away like the whisper of wind through the highland pinyon pines, calls to leave this silent vortex and return to the periphery to pursue its demands.
He receives an assurance before he leaves:
The dune field will always be here. Return when the sun shines and the sands are a dazzling white.
This is your summons to effort. This is your call to scale the sheer walls of the West. Anchor your rope on the only flake that does not pull loose by the force of your hand. Feel the butterflies wring your stomach. Hand your lifeline and your trust to your partner. Feel the granite biting your skin and the sweat running into your eyes. Step up on quarter-sized knobs with two thousand feet of nothingness sucking at your back, pushing it higher and higher, pushing it beyond reason and common sense, through fear, into a realm where the gods of Ecstasy reside and beyond, until the summit is crested and the world abruptly expands to seemingly limitless horizons. This is the challenge of effort: to find that thin thread of identity that is you in the midst of a torrent of deeds and to maintain your grip on that thread throughout all you may do.
This is your invitation to play and leisure. This is your call to take to the sheltered passages of the coastline by your own gentle efforts, to slide silently by countless fiords and glaciers, past evergreen forests that kneel at water’s edge. Move through the mists at water level like a specter in the night. Smell the spray of the sea and marvel at the isolated sea stacks crowned with firs. Join the frolicking pods of killer whales and hear the incessant barking of playful seals. Listen to the muffled splash of your paddle in rhythmic stereo until it draws you into the heart of silence, where each pulse is timeless and coexistent with every pulse. This is the task of relaxed play: to find that living pulse in the most timeless repose and to feel true rest springing from a tide pool of creation.
Do not forget the beckoning freedoms. This is your chance to fly, to throw your prudence to the wind and sail aloft on glider wings, to surge into a limitless blue expanse with no concern for what is left below, to overlook the familiar from a new perspective, to hear the persistent shssssss…. of air against your wings and the snapping of canvas like a flag on the breeze. Close your eyes and feel the wall of air pressing your face as you work from side to side, feeling your way towards a release unseen. Let your hands dance with the control bar in response to the wind’s lead. Watch the visible effects of the invisible as trees and shrubs bow before you signaling an approaching thermal. Feel the sudden turbulence as you are sucked upwards, bucking at every turn. Feel the tightening spiral, higher and higher, above the hills, above the mountaintops, skirting the bases of cumulus neighbors, carving through the icy virga, as your world narrows to heartless motion and wind-chilled cold while your senses shut down until you are suddenly spit out and you soar through peaceful frigid air three miles high, free to caress the earth and kiss the sky, free to float, freed from all resistance and agitation. This is the essence of freedom: to will a spectacular rise to a commanding perspective and mastery in order to relent your ambition and let the winds carry you as they will.
Yet, with the freedom, you are compelled to explore subjection as well. Learn to face and grapple with your limits often to build endurance and strength. Tie on the trail shoes and run through the woods to confront these adversaries. Flash through the glens and the groves, through god-beams and deep shadows. Feel the load slowly descend on your shoulders and chest. You will trip and stumble on the rocks in your path, but press on. You will ooze perspiration that will compound your misery in the humidity. You will rasp at the gentle afternoon air with your lungs on fire. Endure the ache in your shins and the pounding on your frame. Feel the increasing drag of your weary body as your ears roar with blood. Endure until your body is a white-hot sear of pain and longer. Back down if you must, but if you are fortunate, these oppressive realities may release you. This is the challenge of subjection: to endure until those rare moments when the limits disappear and to seize these moments to establish a small claim to mastery.
This is your call to reign. This is your call to walk the high places, where eagles glide in the space below you, where verdant valley floors send their murmurs floating up in the tongues of running water, where blue skies inhale around you and take you up in airy breaths, where staggering walls of granite form a corridor of the gods, where elevation and perspective combine to bestow eminence on every pair of eyes that revel in this panoramic blessing. Walk the ridgelines of the mountains. Set your foot beside the columbine and the aspen. Listen to the whistling of marmots, the squeaking of pikas, the hushed babbling of baby springs. Feel the heady expansion of mountain air. This is your call to expansion and purity, to a vast and deep peace.
This is your call to suffer. This is your invitation to walk the desert floors in the heat of the summer, to feel the unobstructed sun pound on your head, to see the smoky blue haze of the creosote hanging at eye-level for miles and miles in all directions and jagged skylines eclipsing your horizons all around, to wonder where your next drink will come from, to jump at the buzz of the rattlesnake, to walk until your feet are blistered and swollen, to taste the vastness and utter impersonality of the desert and swallow it without wincing. This is the challenge presented in suffering: to keep one’s balance and equanimity when nature’s Copernican shift threatens to overwhelm one, when the eminence and adulation of the peaks turns to the indifference of the desert.
These are the lessons of the school of experience. And as you advance, you feel your way towards a conviction that experience has its place and purpose – to allow one to come to know himself against the molding forces of resistance, opposition, otherness: this for those who do not know their identities without otherness. But there is another school, a higher education that awaits.
This is your call home.
When your restlessness has been vanquished, when you have done all of these things and more, when you have tasted of the land in a myriad of ways, when you are well-acquainted with effort and play, freedom and subjection, mastery and suffering, when you have weathered every tempest and basked in every cloudless day: when, and only when, you have exhausted experience; only then can you leave the periphery and return to the dune field silently waiting in the valley.
Feel this deep silence. This silence is sacred: it is the first test and guardian of the final mysteries that wait beyond unveiled. Who cannot speak with the silence and understand is not ready. He is the one who would not know what it means to watch a set of tracks being obliterated by the rising windstorm. Nor would he know how to read the wind’s invisible vortices and thereby profit. He is the one who would take fright when the rattlesnake approached and rolled over at his feet to have its belly stroked. Such must be protected from the final mysteries. Silence agrees and diligently shields. But for those who hear its beautiful tongue, silence invites them deeper, onward. Silence draws the senses forward.
Let your senses be drawn forward. Sit on the highest dune and watch.
Watch the sun and the moon chase each other across the sky. Watch the stars appear and vanish. Watch the forms of the clouds blossom and melt in the sky. Decipher the hieroglyphics of the curving ridgelines and the chiaroscuro of the dune crests. When the wind arises, set your cheek on the surface and let the fine shower of sand grains pummel your face. Let yourself immerse, and receive the communion that awaits. These are your new exercises, the elements of contemplation. They do not bleed energy, as the school of experience does, but enrich it, deepen it, strengthen it.
The dune field is the locus of gnosis. This is where the profound significance of emptiness waits to be assimilated. For those who have arrived through the gates of experience, learned its lessons, and milked its value, this is the final home, the place of Rest. You belong here now. You are ready to absorb the pulse of this place, to let it permeate you, become you. Take a long draught and refresh yourself; you have earned the right to drink of this cup.
Dune field gnosis is a sweeter nectar by far than the milk of experience.
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