Welcome

In this guided meditation series with Edwin Peterson, DW, MM, RCM, we will commence The Grand Adventure to unpack the lessons from your life’s experiences. We will discover and move beyond the blockages and barriers these events have created both in our inner-heart’s landscape and in our physical home places.

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Following the myth behind the Major Arcana – the Seeker's Adventure to Fulfillment – we will explore the mysteries of the journey away from home brings with fresh perspectives and abilities to see our normal lives with a new sense of discovery and sensitivity. We will return with a posture of being newly awakened – attuned to and aware of the love and value we bring to our community.

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The daily challenge is to carry over the quality of the journey into everyday life. You want to integrate the new ways of being and thinking into your life as you move into the final stage of pilgrimage: reincorporation or bringing back the boon. The intentional space created by a journey not only leaves a mark on our lives, but elbows out new permanent places in our spirit. So, while home once again, the hearth is not how we left it.  And it will stay in a state of strangeness until we are able to assimilate our lessons and experiences into stories of transformation and actions of justice.

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The challenge, and bitter truth, of coming home from a pilgrimage is that we soon learn that what is a pearl to us is mere pennies to others, especially if our epiphanies are conveyed as nothing more than novel curios. But how can we even begin to describe the depths to which our soul has traveled?  Ultimately, it is our changed life that must tell the story of our journey; no picture slide show or souvenir will scratch the surface of the truth found at the sacred center.

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Because of this journey to the sacred center, and the perils experienced to get there, you are transformed. And because you have changed, so will your home. You have encountered the Holy-experienced Divine in a fresh new way, and as a result of moving beyond your sacrifice and struggle, you will not relate to your world or those in it as you did before.

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Your challenge is to now live into the new edges of your life, inhabiting the unfamiliar spaces created by pushing through the trails of your inner-soul landscape. These are the places where dynamic opportunities lay for you to share your wisdom and bring back the boon of your Grand Adventure. You must create new ways of relating to your home – to those within it and surrounding it, which are imbued with the meaning of your Grand Adventure.

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Upon re-crossing the threshold home, the mystical methods of pilgrimage begin to unravel. The freedom from systems and modes begins to dissipate as sacred time quickly returns to linear time, and sacred space is replaced with vistas of cityscapes. It is all one can do to refrain from hiking the pack right back onto the shoulders and heading straight back out the door. It becomes evidently clear that there is real work involved in unpacking the gifts of the journey and relating them to our homescapes.

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The great value of a pilgrimage is to return with a knowledge of self that will enable one to engage the world’s needs in an authentic and passionate way. Ultimately, the greatest influence we can have on ourselves, our families, and the world around us is to live out the effects of our sacred journey on behalf of Other and the Future.

 

As a result, our personal sacred journey is global in both scope and impact, and we are invited to transformative micro-practices that overhaul how we view our homes and home environments. Our return home requires us to leave the door open to the world just beyond its threshold, maintaining a posture of looking out for opportunities to give of our transformed self.

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The gifts of the seeker’s path are ultimately not to be pocketed away and subsequently displayed like a well-traveled trinket or souvenir. The ancient call to go on pilgrimage is ultimately an archetypal instigator to recover one’s sense of self through the Divine so that, upon returning home, the boon of the journey can be translated for the benefit of the greater good, for the common good, for all and for our future. Other and the Future become touchstones for our journey, tangible way showers to which we can apply our transformed lives.

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Through the ancient practice of pilgrimage, we are challenged to live forward into deeper understanding of ourselves and our natural talents and gifts. Because the inner-journey has righted priorities and passions, we embrace the gift of relationships in our lives — loving and respecting those who have been given to us to nurture.

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We answer the call to apply our gained wisdom to justice, knowing that however we employ our calling that it must somehow serve the Other – those surrounding us in need of a voice and advocacy. We respond to the realities of our planet with care, concern and conviction, knowing that if we don’t, our children’s earth-home will be one less hospitable and abundant.

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We leave home on our Grand Adventure only to come back with a greater sense of it, with a greater impression of how to serve it, and an inspired way of how to live in it. We live forward with a renewed sense of knowing home.