“Un missionnaire du moyen âge raconte qu’il avait trouvé le point où le ciel et la Terre se touchent..”
/ “A medieval missionary says he has found the point where the sky and the earth meet..” .
Flammarion engraving (sometimes referred to as “The Spiritual Pilgrim”), unknown artist (1888)
Appeared first in Camille Flammarion’s “L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire” (“The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology”)
Sometimes, something will happen that stops you in your tracks. You open your eyes and look around finally. You begin to see the true colors of the life that you live.
You start to examine and question long-held beliefs. The crazy idea you’ve harbored for years in the back of your mind, well-kept and hidden, begins to sparkle. You decide to take the leap.
This print in my home office represents every person’s inevitable quest for “knowledge”: to become conscious and aware of oneself, to understand the world, to grasp a sense of meaning or purpose, or even of a higher order in the things we find around us and within us. This quest for knowledge is what pushes us forward, empowers us, gives our lives meaning. It is, ultimately, also the most powerful healing force we have for our lives.
But it also represents our belief systems that create our realities, and how these can become limiting on one’s quest for truth. If you are as determined or brave or stubborn as the pictured medieval missionary, you will eventually reach a point where you need to transcend the “holy order” of your own beliefs in order to grow.
This alchemical process of transformation is one of the myths many cultures and peoples around the world share. Joseph Campbell called it the “monomyth,” aka “The hero’s journey through the underworld .”
It doesn’t matter which way you venture in your spiritual quest – as long as you leave the comfort zone of what you already believe to be true and hold on to as parts of your identity.
It’s these moments that make life the lucid dream it has the potential to be.
This post is dedicated to courage. Mighty, mighty life-changer. May it come to you today as well.