There’s a Sufi exercise where you walk behind your practice partner, imitating their gait so as to fully experience their state of mind – the soul is in the stroll, so to speak. Today, there seems no distinction between my body and the trees, the rocks, even the lizards – it’s the closest I’ve ever come to a feeling of no separation. I would be invisible to my practice partner, and even if discernible amidst my environs, my walk would be a motionless glide. The only being who could imitate me right now would be an angel.
Angels travel upward, but I’ve already climbed every peak within walking distance. I follow a track downhill, through thicket, past Painted Cave, off the map. No vistas, no visions, no visitors here. As I turn a corner in the bottom of the valley, I am delivered into a secret expanse, an oval of grasses and wildflowers. One solitary sun-bleached wooden bench. I know this hidden place instantly, and it’s not outside at all. I have the shocked sensation of my psychic landscape being turned inside out, translated by topography. Amanpuri, place of peace. I take my seat.
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