For myself, I know that I am on the right path, but not because I have yet found the answers. I know my way is true because I have found the questions, specifically how, why, and where.
How did I, did anyone, get here? Was it by a course of natural occurrences, or the designs of a creator or creators, or are they indeed one and the same?
In either case, why am I here? Is there indeed even a reason, or is it all pure chance and randomness?
And perhaps the most important question to any reasoning being, where will my journey take me when I have shrugged off this mortal coil?
I view this last and most important road as ultimately private. These are questions that cannot be answered to me by anyone other than me. I see many people, most people, finding their "answers" in the sermons of others. Words sanctified by age or the perceived wisdom of authors who provide a comfortable ending to their spiritual journey, provide answers to truly troubling questions. No, not an ending, but a pause, awaiting the resumption once this present experience of life as we know it ends.
Perhaps I am being unfair to the various flocks. Perhaps many within have asked themselves the questions and have found their personal answers, then found those of similar ilk with whom to share their revelations and comfort. If that is the case, if it is not a matter of simple indoctrination, then I envy and admire those who have advanced along their spiritual road farther than I.
For myself, I have found Mielikki, though I still have no definitive manifestation of that name in mind. And far from a pause or the ending of my journey, my discovery of Mielikki has only given me the direction I needed to ask those questions of myself in the first place. Mielikki provides me comfort, but the answers, ultimately, come from within, from that part of myself that I feel akin to the tenets of Mielikki as Montolio described them to me.
The greatest epiphany of my life came along this last and most important road: the understanding that all the rest of it, emotional and physical-and material-is naught but a platform. All of our accomplishments in the external are diminished many times over if they do not serve to turn us inward. There and only there lies our meaning, and in truth, part of the answer to the three questions is the understanding to ask them in the first place, and more than that, to recognize their penultimate importance in the course of reason.
The guiding signs of the spiritual journey will rarely be obvious, I believe, for the specific questions found along the road are often changing, and sometimes seemingly unanswerable. Even now, when all seems aright, I am faced with the puzzle of Ellifain and the sadness of that loss. And though I feel as if I am on the greatest adventure of my life with Catti-brie, there are many questions that remain with me concerning our relationship. I try to live in the here and now with her, yet at some point she and I will have to look longer down our shared path. And both of us, I think, fear what we see.
I have to hold faith that things will clarify, that I will find the answers I need.
I have always loved the dawn. I still sit and watch every one, if my situation permits. The sun stings my eyes less now, and less with each rising, and perhaps that is some signal that it, as a representation of the spiritual, has begun to flow more deeply into my heart, my soul, and my understanding of it all.
That, of course, is ray hope.
Chapter 15 INTOLERANCE
"Ye're really meaning to do this?" Shingles asked Torgar when he found his friend, fresh off his watch, at his modest home in the Mirabar Undercity, stuffing his most important belongings into a large sack.
"Ye knowed I was."
"I knowed ye was talking about it," Shingles corrected. "Didn't think yer brain was rattled enough for ye to actually be doin' it."
"Bah!" Torgar snorted, coming up from his packing to look his friend in the eye. "What choice are they leavin' to me? Agrathan comin' to me on the wall just to tell me to shut me mouth . . . Shut me mouth! I been fightin' for the marchion, for Mirabar, for three hunnerd years. I got more scars