Understanding the Path Concept

You hear it all the time: Discover the path to enlightenment, the path to freedom, the road to financial success. You can even get a path to finding your soul mate. How about this, it’s my favorite, find your true purpose in life. Or find the meaning of life. That last one is just plain wild.

So do these paths exist? Is it possible to sign up and get a personal path to happiness in the mail? Or download the secret to your lifes purpose in an e-book? Well, you can certainly get them. You can hold them in your hand and you can read them. What will become of it? What good will be gained? Peace of mind? Eternal Bliss? Financial stability? True love? Do I have a path you can follow? You’ve read the title of this page and expect me do provide something. The first thing I’d like to provide is an understanding of “Paths” or “Roads”. The pertinent question is: Are they real? Some of them are – some are some aren’t. But that’s not the most important thing to know about paths.

The most important bit of knowledge I can provide concerning paths is this. Somewhere in your house or your car there are a bunch of maps. OK maybe not a bunch. Lets pretend that in the glove box of your car there is a map of the united states (or any country). On this map is a well researched path to every destination in the country. It’s real. We all believe that if we follow the paths drawn on these maps we’ll arrive at “A Place”.

Why would you choose to go to any of these places? Lets pretend there is a little town named HappyVille. What would inspire you to go to a little town like HappyVille? It’s name implies – a happy place. Why haven’t you been there yet? Isn’t that the way it is with maps? We know we can visit these places. All we’ve got to do is follow the map.

But, all the maps in the world don’t put us at the destination. That seems obvious but it’s important. People are looking for “places to be”. Places to go, other than where they are. So they look to see if they can find a path. They’ll find one if they look. They’ll find one because there are people who seek to provide what people are looking for. Some provide out of concern for others. Some provide for profit.

Lets pretend they lucked out and fell in with someone who could indeed give them the direction they needed. Lot’s of people have gotten to this point. They are the people in the story with maps in the glove box. Real maps. But they don’t go anywhere. You might say, “They’re probably busy…”. You’d be 100% right. Lets pretend that “Rumor has it” there is a billion dollars worth of gold in HappyVille. All you have to do is stop what we’re doing and go get it. How many of would be leaving today? Your guess is probably as good as mine here. How many? One in a hundred One in a thousand? Why?

There are two qualifiers that have to be in place before people take action. One: we have to believe it’s true. Let’s say we’re convinced there is a billion in gold and all we have to do is get to Happy ville and it’s ours. Now how many are out the door? How many are packing bags and calling to get someone to look after with the pets?

Are they on their way with only one qualifier met? Nope, there was two. One, it’s there. Two, I want it – I really want it. That’s what it takes – it’s real and I want it.  We can have all the maps and paths and “secrets to this or that” in the world laid at our feet and nothing will happen until we decide for ourselves if they’re real and that we want them. Can’t go with just one. I want it but I don’t believe it’s real equals no action. It’s real, but I don’t want it equals no action. Put the two together and Bingo – we’re off and running.

So lets pretend we are considering investigating the concept of tranquility. Why would someone do that? Why would it come up as a possible fulfillment interest? People who are looking for tranquility are looking for tranquility because they heard a story told about tranquility. Can’t be anything else. Tranquility is a word used to describe something to people – a story.

There are fiction and non-fiction stories. There is fiction passed off as non-fiction and the other way around. So we hear a story about tranquility, or peace of mind, or universal harmony. Why would we be interested? Simply put: we’re not completely happy. Nothing wrong with that, very few people are completely happy. So we’re looking and listening and someone talks about peace of mind or nirvana and we think – Is that what I’m missing? Lets pretend we believe we are lacking in the nirvana department and we’ve begun our investigation. Right now we’re operating on – might be real and I might want it. Are the essential qualifiers are actually in place? What we believe is – we want something and it might be real. It could be out there somewhere. So we look.

At last after looking at a lot of material we’ve decided to get Rosalinda’s Path to fulfillment. We have it in our hands and we have a tingling hope that our lives are about to change. Hey, we have new hope – that’s better already. One week later it’s in the glove box on top of the map to HappyVille. What the hell happened? We were there, moving, on the path – What happened? One of two things – didn’t believe it was real or didn’t want it.

Does that mean that it wasn’t a valid path? Does it mean that following the steps along the path would – Not – lead to perfect peace? Not necessarily. Of course it might have been trashed because about the time it started to get interesting we’re told how to buy the next step at a discount -  limited time offer. But, not necessarily. Lets pretend it was real. Lets pretend we read it, it made sense, we found out what the process was and believed it would lead to a state of tranquility but decided it really wasn’t something we wanted? Glove box. Why?

Somewhere along the way we lost interest. We changed our minds. We’re back to where we started. We really don’t know what we want…

I believe that “The Path To Knowing What We Want” might be the best path to be on. I can tell you what I think is the easiest way to get started: write down everything you’re positive you don’t want. Hang it up so it’s visible. Add to it. Get a pocket size spiral for when the list is out of reach and transfer what you write  in it to the main list when you can. This would be a good place to start on ” A Self Determined Path”. In this way we can narrow our search.

The Path To Recovering From Addiction

When it comes to addiction there is a path that when followed will allow people an opportunity to recover. Do I believe I have “A Path”? I believe I’ve found a good system. It’s not mine. It’s a collection of principles and ideas. The system for getting started on a self determined path is to start collecting facts. You find out what’s real and put it in a “Stuff that is Real” place. You start a collection. So pretty soon we’ll know a few things that are real and we’ll recognize a few things we don’t want. We’ll also have them at hand if we’ll write things down. That, at hand business, is really important – because we forget things.

Something To Remember

Everyone already knows what they want. Everyone wants to be happy. There is an exhaustive bit of writing on this and you can follow up as you see fit. Decide if the ideas you have about happiness goes in the “Real Stuff Box”.

If we are on a path to recovery we’ll meet others who can, and will, help us. Others who have done the same thing and have useful experiences and observations to share with us.