Today, I re-discovered these words by David Whyte:
“How do you know when you’re on your path? — because it disappears — that’s how you know. How do you know that you’re really doing something radical? because you can’t see where you’re going … that’s how you know…
Then everything that you have lent upon for your identity has gone and so you’re going to enter the black, contemplative splendors of self-doubt at the same time as you’re setting out on this radical new path, so you need to know how you know where you are.
But, actually, poetry shows how incredibly precise it is in there. It’s the story that would be told to a young [person] who would ask the question, ‘what do I do when I’m lost in the forest?’
The elder says, ‘Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger. You must ask permission to know it and be known. Listen … the forest breathes. It whispers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it you may come back again saying, here.'”
