"Do Not Go......"

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

I was reading Emerson this morning. Good man in my humble opinion. A free thinker. I like that. Conventional thought is not something I am in the habit of chasing after. Fear is the only thing that drives me anywhere close to thinking along conventional lines. Mostly fear of "what if I am wrong" kind of thinking, of course this is only in regard to spiritual things. I can blaze my own trail on most other issues, but somewhere, actually I know where, the fear of Gods wrath is high on the list of how my spiritual path goes. But the problem is, I don't believe the conventional way, but I keep trying and trying to make it work. Its like swimming upstream and its down right exhausting. I love to hike. Its a passion for both Emery and I to put on our backpacks and hit the trail. We stray a bit off the trail on occasion, not far, but enough so that we can feel the thrill of exploration for a bit. Become trail blazers. Its a great feeling and every single time we have discovered something amazing that we would have never seen had we stuck right to the trail. We are cautious though and know what we are doing. We are not new to this. I have been hiking since I was 16 which gives me nearly 38 years of experience.

I honestly feel that this world is on the brink of becoming a much better place. We are aware of so much more, we live more globally. We have progressed. We live with a better grasp of the "common good" (just had to use that phrase "common good" Hillary Clinton was deemed a Marxist recently for using that phrase and that made me laugh. It's a good phrase, we should care about the common good of mankind and it was talked about long before Communism arrived on the scene, wonder why no one is calling her a follower of St Thomas Aquinas ?)

.Aristotle was talking about the common good long before Marx when he said these words "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill.” And, Thomas Aquinas said, "Law; an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community. "

Today I feel strong enough to hike through the thicket and go where there is no trail and blaze my own trail. One, with which I can experience freedom. Leaving fear behind, back at the trail head, all that fear from the prescribed notions and beliefs of others that don't work for me .

Now, the difficult part, to just remain in this moment !