I was sitting in a meeting the other day and was once again moved by one simple fact. That everyone who was in attendance had an intention at some point during their day to come to that meeting. Whether they arrived by plane, shoe, train, canoe, camel, car; from near or afar; through snow, rain, heat or cold, healthy or infirm; nuts or not so, they came.

With the express purpose to share their hearts and listen to others do the same. To attempt, to the best of their individual abilities, to speak the truth about themselves. Their past, their present and their futures. The fears and doubts and worries and conflicts; the dread, the grief, the joy, the crushing of hope, the release from despair, that they experienced that day, or the one before, or expect to experience tomorrow or days to follow.With any luck and a variety of efforts.

They come to commune in the ways of the heart and mind and the expectations of hope and the profound mystery of trying to re-connect, to bind on to the thing that they feel disconnected from, somehow, and they have no real idea of what That is. Oh, they do have ideas but they question them and doubt them and want to believe and ascribe magical powers and mysterious ways and unknown guiding hand properties to that from which they feel disconnected.

And yet, not knowing what that it is, they sense that, if they come together, and speak of this life and the crushing beatings they administered to themselves in the mistaken idea that they could connect to that from which felt separated from, by using alcohol, drugs, sex, money, power, fame, and all the distractions and diversions that keep us in a state of ignorance, yearning, and bewilderment. Those states of mind where we have no sense of the present, know only regret and remorse over past time wasted, and a fear of the future based on that misappropriation of time already spent.

There we all sat and talked of the past and the present and the future and our current places in that journey. The whole human form (forum), and diversity thereof; sitting and talking and listening and hearing and communing and distracting and attending and drifting in and out mentally, emotionally and physically during that hour of trying to touch one and the other, heart to heart, feeling to feeling, mind to mind, aspiration and desperation, contentment and fear, hope and despair, attempt and resistance, reaching for and pushing against; each other and ourselves. To continue this puny and wondrous intent to connect with each other and to connect to that which we know not what it is but never the less, we feel separated from. Is it inside or outside of us? It is both?

Discussion to be continued on another day in another room. In another town, city, village or neighborhood. Another church basement or venerably scruffy hall, rented or owned, sometimes with good coffee, sometimes not so, often with cake, cookies, donuts. Folding chairs and beat up couches and other stationary conveyances for seekers of a truth that will begin the journey of freedom from the bongage of the Self. A journey to another shore. Across oceans, rivers, lakes, and sometimes just a ditch. A journey in the true sense of the word. Ask the Sun.