When two paths open before you, choose the hardest one.
– Buddhist saying
“You’re kidding Tamarack!” were the first words out of Meg’s mouth after trekking up the new trail to my lodge. “What is wrong with the old trail? You’re going to break your neck trying to get up this one at night.”
“Perhaps, but only if I don’t learn how to walk better at night,” I replied.
My lodge rested atop a steep-sided rock outcrop. The original trail to the lodge wound around the backside where the slope was more gradual. It was an easy walk. I had it so memorized that I could do it blindfolded even when loaded down with supplies. The new trail was steeper and went right up a small rock face at the very top. It was a safe trail — if you accounted for conditions that might make the rock slippery and paid attention as to where you were placing your feet. It was a Teaching Trail.
Teaching Trail is a metaphor for a state of mind, an attitude, an opening. It has become a metaphor for my life. With everything I do, I strive to walk the Teaching Trail. I’ve become adept at making challenges out of the commonplace. No set of steps is just a set of steps for me. I’ll take three steps in one stride and then one and then two, or I’ll go up or down the steps backwards or while rotating.
The Teaching Trail is anything but a trail of recklessness and daring. It is a path of conscious growth. It is a path of choices, and at the same time, it is a path of no choice. It may seem as though I have a choice, but that is just an illusion—a game that the ego plays so that it feels that it has some control. The actual me—the whole me has no choice. If I am going to live, I must live who I am. Otherwise I am merely existing—merely taking up space. Free will and the right to choose are not intrinsic to our core being. When we are in Balance with our Self, when we are centered in our Heart of Hearts, we know that the Teaching Trail is the only trail.
Our pre-civilized ancestors knew how to walk the Teaching Trail. But today, it is extremely difficult for those living in our modern culture to walk this way, as it runs contrary to the “do it in the fastest, most expedient and productive way possible” goal of civilized ego existence. With the Teaching Trail, the walk itself is the destination. It matters little where I’m going or what I’ve set out to do, or whether I ever get there or accomplish my task. In that sense, every step on the Trail is its own goal, its own accomplishment.
When walking through the woods, select a Teaching Trail—one that will challenge your senses and abilities. Suppress the tendency to take the easiest route. Let your goal be far more than to get from point A to point B. Find a trail that is slightly more challenging than one you would normally choose. It doesn’t take much to keep us in the moment and attuned to what we are doing, so be careful not to over challenge yourself. How do you know when you are on the Teaching Trail? If you are not occasionally slipping or tripping (literally or figuratively), you are not pushing the edge of your skill, the edge of your awareness, or the edge of your defined world. If you’re staying in your comfortable envelope, then you’re not learning.
An interesting paradox of the Teaching Trail is that it usually takes you off trail. The trail is the known, the comfortable, the predictable. Let me give you the example of a literal trail, the one out to my Wilderness Camp. The established trail is the easiest way there and I go there regularly. In the fifteen years that I’ve had my present camp, I’ve come to know the wilderness between the trail head and my camp as well as you might know your house. The plants and animals who dwell there have become my sisters and brothers. Continually taking the same trail into camp would be like continually walking down the same aisle every time I visit the store. I would have little idea as to what the rest of the store might hold, and I would not know how well my favorite aisle reflects the rest of the store.
Imagine if you were meeting someone new and wanted to get to know them, but chose to ignore everything except his left arm. As time goes on, you develop a relationship with just that arm. How well would you know the person? That is exactly what we do when we keep walking the same trail. It matters little if it’s the same trail to the woods or the same mental pattern or emotional rut; sameness is the antithesis of learning, growing, and discovering. With the Teaching Trail there are no limits, no boundaries, and no directions. For many of us, our only limitation is our acculturated self.