A Guiding Vision
Shortly after this idea of Faith in the Journey came to me, I had a vivid visualization of the perspective offered by this psychological and spiritual perspective. Like many such visions, mine transpired in that magical mental state that sometimes come to us in-between sleep and waking. Lying half-awake one morning nearly 15 years ago, I saw myself on the edge of a small hill. I’m standing in a cone of intense golden light, a cone that only extended a short distance in front of me, beyond which was a deep, swirling fog. Confused by what I was experiencing, I asked, of no one in particular, a question: “What I should do?” The answer came back to me in the form of a deep, resonant voice which said “Look behind you.”
In response, I turned around and was surprised to discover that the cone of golden light, unlike the view going forward, extended all the way to a distant horizon. In between the place where I was standing and the horizon was the path by which I had arrived at this moment in time and space, a track which extended back as far as my eyes could see. Intersecting this track was a delicate web of other pathways, all of which I understood to be the intersection of my journey with those of everyone I had ever encountered. At various places along the way I could perceive where I had turned to the left or the right rather than proceeding straight ahead, sometimes going backward a distance before turning around, sometimes retracing my steps after finding myself in dead ends.
I stood mesmerized by this vision for some time, but eventually found myself once asking the same question: “What do should I do.” This time the voice said “Turn around again,” which I did, only to find myself confronted once more by fog blocking the view of what lay ahead. This time, however, I noticed that there were several grey stepping stones extending from where I stood forward into the murk. Yet again, I asked “What should I do?” and yet again the voice responded, this time simply saying “Take a step.” I did as I was guided and, much to my surprise, the cone of golden light moved one step farther ahead, dispelling the fog a short distance further. I repeated the process by stepping ahead onto yet another of the stepping stones, which I now understood extended indefinitely into the time and space ahead of me. Each step I took moved the light just that much farther ahead.
As I later reflected on this vision, I had the sense that if I continued onward, following the steps laid out before me, that the blanket of fog would, from time to time, lift for brief periods. During those moments, I knew I would have glimpses of wherever my journey was headed, the destination I was headed toward in this next stage of my life journey. I also knew that that destination would not be the end of my journey, that the journey wasn’t really about arriving at any particular destination at all. Rather, I understood, the purpose of the journey was to engage whatever and whomever I might meet along the way and learn whatever I could from these encounters.
In the years since having this vision, the psychological and spiritual perspective offered by the paradigm of Faith in the Journey has continued to evolve, both in my own life as well as in my work with others seeking to incorporate this perspective into their lives. At the same time, I’ve come to value ever more strongly the role of the mythic perspective — together with the archetypal, symbolic, and metaphorical consciousness which is its source — in the ongoing search for an ever-deepening faith in the this journey we call human life.