🚶‍♂️‍➡️Silent Pilgrim (Allgäu-Zillertal)

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” ― William Blake

It is Sunday in the Allgäu, Germany’s Alpine foothills known for cheese, Neuschwanstein, and pretty churches with onion domes. It’s raining and I am supposed to check out of the hotel. The trouble is, I have no idea where to go next.

I want to revisit the Alps but put off picking a spot for months. A master stroke of procrastination. For the first time, I am driving without having booked a place to stay. It’s alright though because moving towards the unknown — and even driving in the rain — is part of the answer.

Sometimes you’re playing catch-up with yourself and by the time you’re leaving, your self is way ahead already. Sometimes, where you’re going only reveals itself once you overcome inertia.

The Allgäu covered in clouds

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For a while, I drive in absolute silence. Then I open the windows and listen to the patter of rain and the gentle whoosh of tires on the wet road.

“There is nothing more alone than being in the car at night in the rain,” Robert Penn Warren wrote. “They say,” he added, “you are not you except in terms of relation to other people,” which turns the lonesome car into a place to “lie back and get some rest” from the self, a “vacation from being you.” This strikes me as half-right.

As an introvert, I love a leisurely road trip because, yes, you get to leave behind all versions of yourself created to relate to others. But it’s only a vacation from your social self, not from what is resting beneath the surface. The masks drop and you get a glimpse at what remains. Rather, it is a place for things to move and emerge and be expressed in their raw form and without fear of judgment. Where do people find the courage to sing? In the shower and the car.

I stop the car and stare at the drops hitting the windshield. I realize I’m on a pilgrimage of sorts, one that started by accident and lacks a destination.

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Some things you can’t unsee — or unhear. Sometimes you know you are living through a turning point in your life. You can feel the page turn, a new chapter being opened. In extreme cases, you can feel the weight of an entire book closing and a new one being pulled from the shelf. That’s what it felt like the first time I disappeared to the sound of a gong.

I was lying comfortably on a mat, eyes covered with a mask, and had taken a dose of psilocybin (which thankfully has been decriminalized in parts of the world). Listening to music and live instruments, I had sunk deeply into that inner outer-space of colorful fractal geometry when I heard a deep and gentle rumble. It was like the surf of a cosmic ocean rising and roaring, like nothing I’d ever heard. Oh, I thought, this is different. And it was.

At first, my mind tried to decode the mysterious sound like an auditory Rubik’s Cube. There seemed to be no end to the waves and no limit to their layers. While my intellect was busy, the vibrations kept rolling through my body and began to gently carry off every thought into the ether. Then I simply let go.

Thinking seemed unnecessary. My body turned into a vessel of resonance and lost its weight. The self started to fade. Then something detached deep inside of me and I felt myself floating off, like a balloon whose string was cut. I let myself be carried away by the low droning sound, let myself fall into the nothingness until I wasn’t any longer. There was not even darkness or silence, everything that had filled — or defined — my sense of awareness disappeared and left a void that defied description.

I reappeared as my own breath. Not as a person breathing but as nothing but breath. It felt like I was drawing my breath in from a great distance and with every inhale, my awareness returned and took on shape. I’d never breathed this deeply, slowly, steadily.

And with that, I realized, I was again. My thoughts had returned. My awareness had shifted back to a sense of self that was experiencing all else. I had returned to a deep and delicious darkness, but I no longer was that darkness, let alone its absence.

“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.” ― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

The gong and other instruments for a (sober!) sound meditation at a local yoga studio.

I expected to find clarity, but instead emerged, as Huxley put it, humbler and more aware of my own ignorance. A couple of years later, I am sure of little except that there is a mystery on the other side of the veil — that there even is a veil.

I probably wouldn’t be writing about any of this if it had not created such a disconnect in my life between inner and outer movement. My infinite ladder was straining under tension and any move seemed better than staying in place.

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By mid-afternoon, I arrive in Austria. It’s cloudy but the rain stopped. Perfect. I switch into my boots and head for the forest, ready to walk until I find my inner stillness again.

I don’t know where this pilgrimage will take me or what is waiting at its end. I don’t even know if there is such a thing as arriving. There is no point wondering who we will turn out to be. The only way to find out is to take the next step.

Frederik

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Mayrhofen, Zillertal