The Other Road

I love when a quote works in awareness, like a zen koan. This quote from Krishnamurti has that effect: "You can't ever see what to do, you can see only what not to do. The total negation of that road is the new beginning, the Other Road. This Other Road is not on the map, nor can it ever be put on any map. Every map is a map of the wrong road, the old road."

A Course in Miracles puts it this way: "Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are." (WB 139, 7:1-2)

The mind boggles at this. This world is a negation, like darkness, nothing in itself. Seeing the absolute absurdity of this is the beginning of awareness. Our human minds that imagine themselves separate from other minds collectively spin this web of negation... imagining ourselves to need this, to seek that, to achieve it, acquire it, or make it. The very act of seeking, achieving, or acquiring means we're following the map of the world, whether we think it's spirituality we're acquiring or whether we think it's material achievement. There is absolutely no difference. If we think we have a map, a structure, a path to follow that will save us or make us better, then we're simply spinning a different version of the same negation.

The trackless desert is an archetypal image in all wisdom traditions. The willingness to release all our seeking and all our maps and head into what seems like an endless desert with no distinguishing features and no way to tell where you are... this seems the height of folly. Yet this is the image that describes what is really going on. All of our signs and directions and efforting are simply mirages... an avoidance of Reality. We have to be willing to walk the desert of our own making, to become aware of the negation that is our human experience, so that we can finally see that a negation is just that.... nothing at all. And we don't need plans or maps or defenses to be what we effortlessly are, or to see what has always been true. We don't need to be told who we are. We just need to see, to really see what is not true. When the negation is brought to awareness, the unchanging Reality is effortlessly seen and experienced.

Who we are, collectively, is seamless Wholeness. As ACIM reminds us, "Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited." (T. 30; III, 3:2) We are a collective emanation from the Mind of God, of Pure Spirit: "God has not many Sons, but only One. Who can have more, and who be given less?" (T. 29; VIII, 9:1-2) Maps, directions, goals, religions, everything the world advocates, all of it, are attempts to negate that wholeness, to say that something more than everything is needed or wanted. We really are wandering in the desert with manna all around us. We really are like ostriches with our heads in the sand.

We have a way to wake up in the midst of this. We take the pathless path, the journey with no destination, no map. A Course in Miracles explains that forgiveness (the releasing of all our judgments, the maps that make up the world) is the process of asking for the miracle of healed perception. Who are we asking? Our very God-Self. What are we asking for? The awareness of the nothingness that our judgments have seemed to hold in place. We are giving ourselves permission to see the negation, and to remember our Self. And the miracle of healed perception is that we then walk within this dream with new awareness of Wholeness, each time we choose to forgive and remember. This is the Other Road.