Polished Spit

A few days ago i posted this quote on my Facebook page because it seemed so very appropriate given that i have just returned from Shikoku.

"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our methods of questioning."

Werner Heisenberg

This afternoon i found the cousin to that quote. Comes from the same parental stock, just delivered of a different person.

"Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more — more unseen forms become manifest to him."

Rumi

What we see on the henro trail, what we experience, the answers we receive, all depend on the nature of our questioning. And that, almost completely depends on how polished your heart is. Polish it more often, polish it more consistently, over longer periods of time, and the experiences and answers deepen. Do no, or minimal, work and what you get is the Lonely Planet version of the walk.

Polish well enough, however, and an amazing thing will happen. Over time you come to notice that there are no experiences to be had, no answers to be heard, and you won't even walk the trail. Polish well enough and you may go to Shikoku but you'll never go home.

If you polish all day, every day, you disappear. There are no experiences because there is no experiencer. There are no answers because there are no questions, no one to ask them, and no one to ask them to. Polish diligently enough and there is no one to go home and nowhere that isn't home.

That's the nature of the henro trail. It eats you and spits out One, it eats doing and spits out being, it eats duality and spits out reality. The trail eats people and spits out henro.

All you have to do is approach it with a better nature of questioning and be willing to walk into it's mouth.