The Pilgrimage

She looked so beautiful, crying and helpless.

'I didn't hurt you, did I?'

"You couldn't hurt me if you tried.", she said and smiled her
certain way. Oh that smile.

I stopped to marvel at her, nearly unaware as my fears
matured into doubts and my doubts into questions:

Where is it that I end and she begins?

Is this physical state the greatest lie or most sacred
union?

Is our deviance still within acceptable limits?

And if so, what's next?

Am I the only place her soul can find kindred, or do we share
the devotion of love?

Does she understand that certain peace that comes with
submission?

The ties that bind bring the 'Tethers Of Love And Trust'
to light.

With love, a true love of resonant depth, comes trust,
understanding, faith, admiration and an almost servile devotion.

Then, once the agreement is binding and the audience
captive, where is there to go but through the portal and
beyond the darkened mists of solitude and separation.

There, we realize a place where there is no point of origin nor
a destination, where only the journey itself exists.

In a succession of mere moments, mentally suspended in
time, we acknowledge the only way to go from there is up.

And so, together, we ascend past the seam at which the
mists become clouds.

Further still we rise until we break through the storm's
terminus and the shockwaves of an eruption of light wash
over us and welcome us to their lofty height.

Drifting, tranquil and oblivious, we are pleasantly lost in the
continual flow which permeates all being.

Blissfully awestruck and absorbed into everything, we are
made aware of infinity.

Logic or emotion, man or woman, sated or starving; these
things have no power here for they are unknown.

We linger as long as our fears will allow.

But without a true and complete understanding, we slowly
start to descend.

Terrified, as we realize we are slipping away from the very
threshold of grace, we throw our hands out grasping at the
ether in a maddened attempt to hold onto this purest form
of being, that which mankind has searched for since
his birth into this world.

Unable to let go of our self-centered desires to own and
possess, to conquer and control this state, our plummet is
accelerated as if we are being cast down from Heaven by
the hand of God himself.

Swallowed once again by the storm, our punishments are
swift as she drenches us in her fury.

She thunders curses of her disapproval and lashes into our
backs with arcing whips of electricity.

And slowly, as she is once again convinced of her subjugation
of our wills, she releases us to the winds of her own
internal chaos.

The winds howl in agony as they tear into the form of a vortex
whose vacuum hastens our delivery back into the mists.

As she is the mirror-minded opposite of her resentful sister,
the lady of the mists is all too familiar with this cycle, and
our arrival is expected.

She whispers a tentative welcome as she tends to our
wounds.

She soothes our burns with her cool touch, and the steady
rhythm of her breath brings our senses back to ground,
calming the confusion of loss within us.

Only rest will serve us well now, she tells us.

Then, as she drapes her opaque blindfold over our eyes once
again, the familiarity of our self-imposed limitations
becomes the only comfort that lessens the impact of our
rearrival.

With time we recover from this ordeal, but now the knowledge
and memories of our hearts have recreated us as pilgrims,
and call us to journey ...again.