Siddartha Gautama aka Buddha - you could have mentioned.! NT

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: : : : This reminds me of the main character in Siddhartha, whose names, coincidentally, happens to be Siddhartha. You may know the story, boy is son of royalty, set to be brahmin, denies his royal heritage and goes to find his own way among beggars and spiritual figures, goes through a period of denial and poverty, then a period of riches, carnal experiences and excess. Finally he comes to a river crossing and stays with the ferryman, who teaches him about listening to the river. As he grows older, he hears more and more things that the river says about life, the world, etc. and finally he becomes settled in this life with the ferryman, who it turns out, is really the enlightened person he'd been seeking his whole life. Did his path make sense? Wouldn't it have been more logical if he had gotten to the ferryman first, without going through either of these other "misleading" paths? The point is it's not a matter of choosing a straight line from A to B but what kind of path you choose that will lead you to the right place, even if that means the terrain gets mighty different as you go along. : : It also reminds me of that trick where you choose any number, multiply it by 7, subtract 43, etc. etc. and you wind up with the same number no matter what you chose originally. : : And that leads to the problem of how much free will we really have, but let's not go there... : : I have to confess I'm not one to really "get" nature in the way you so eloquently described. I just appreciated the type of experience you have, not neccessarily that I've had it in the same way. Anyway, thanks for sharing. : : Julian : : : After sitting at the computer for an hour today after first waking up, I decided to do something with my day. I am growing extremely tired of identical days reproducing themselves uncontrollably, making my life repetitive and boring. So, spontaneously (for once) I got up from my computer chair and drove an hour out of town to my favorite state park. Platte River State Park it is called, full of woodlands, a beautiful lake, all sorts of hiking trails, and to my great surprise...migrating geese! I sat on an old dock with no one around by the lake, at sunset, reading my enneagram book, when this flock of geese approached me curiously. I fed them with fish pellets that were left behind by someone probably days before me. It was a very different experience...seeing these canadian geese up close, almost 30 of them, right next to me. (I'm a closet bird-watcher, by the way. =ox I'm not proud of this hobby...but it is so much fun!) : : : Today was a perfect day to do visit. It was a refreshing mid-November Nebraska day. The air had an invigorating and crisp bite to it...I DO love Fall. :) : : : Anyway, I stopped at the fist trail I saw that led up to some small waterfalls. At first, I was mainly paying attention to Sensing things. The smell of the air, the sound of the brook running alongside me, the feeling of the rocks under my shoes, the sight of the Downy Woodpeckers chasing after one another. But then, of course, my dominant Intuition budded in. Suddenly, my mind was INVADED with metaphors in the forest, symbolisms, hidden meanings that I wonder if anyone else on the Board has ever experienced...I'm sure you all have. It was as if Nature was whispering to me, ever so quietly, secrets and answers to questions I had not yet asked. One example of this is when I stopped to look at a very small waterfall. It was amazing to me...how things just kept on flowing. I actually TRIED to just see it as scummy water falling from some dirty, green rocks...but I Couldn't! I kept comparing it to life, and how it carries on with or without us. I Love being an i*N*fp!!! : : : At one point, I came to a fork in the path I was walking. I stood there for a short while, wondering where each would take me, and where I would end up if I chose one over the other. I chose my way, and to my pleasant surprise, I ended up in the same spot that I would have if I chose the Other path! Of course, and I may read into things too much, but to me, this reminded me that it doesn't matter which path we choose in life...most likely we will end up where we are supposed to be. : : : One fork after another...this was hard for me. Every time I made a decision to go one way, the forest threw more options at me. Everywhere I went, every path I chose, there were still more decisions to be made. Again, this is like life. There are so many choices to make, and so many options staring us in the face. We just have to use our judgement, and choose whatever feels most right...the path will eventually lead us home. : : : Also, there seems, especially in America, to be one path that is preferred over another. This is the high school, college, marriage, parenting, retirement path. Everyone seems to take this road, EVERYONE it seems. But, what happens when someone chooses the other way? They are lost in the woods, because they must dig their own road, and uncover mossy paths that others left behind. The thing is, who is to say that just because this way is less traveled on, that it's Bad? I'll answer my own question: Society says it's bad. "Why not just do what you're supposed to do?" is the message I get from school counselors, my mom, my family. "Just go to college and get it over with." But I don't want to follow their path. I want to go my own way. : : : But the most important lesson I learned today, the most rewarding hidden secret that I wasn't looking for, is that life truly is not about getting somewhere. I know a lot of you are probably sickened by my fuzzy interpretations, calling me a stereo-typical 4 or iNFp, but I really feel renewed. : : : Life isn't about the end of the path, it's about how we choose to travel it. : : : -Emily, the nature-loving, stereo-typical 4w5 iNFp...and loving it :)

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