The idea that life is a journey is an old and familiar one. Just as the sun travels its course across the sky from dawn to dusk, so do we set out at birth upon an unknown road, following its twists and turns through childhood and adolescence, adulthood and old age, until at last death steps forth, calling an end to our adventure. The sun’s path is unswerving, its purpose and destination never in doubt. Not so with the journey we make.

For within life’s journey, there are many side journeys that call to us. We travel down byways of relationships, career, and family. We eagerly explore those trails that promise happiness and success. We seek the fair maiden, the handsome prince, the dragon to be slain, the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. We pursue our own versions of Ahab’s white whale, Kurtz in the jungle’s heart of darkness, and Shangri-La.

Behind all these journeys, however, there lies another, more fundamental journey, one that enfolds all the others in its scope and purpose. This is the spiritual journey—to discover, and to recover, our innate spiritual nature and the absolute freedom that comes with it. The spiritual journey is by its nature transformational, for it takes us from a limited, ego-bound sense of who we are and how we fit into the world to the recognition of our true Self: timeless, boundless, and extending well beyond the realm of the five senses.