Teaching Trail (Rough Draft) By Tamarack Song 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 was 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 didn'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. I am here in this life not just to get through it in the easiest way, but to learn and grow. To explore and develop the potentials and abilities I've been given. Whenever I have the opportunity I take the more challenging route. The way that will give me the most opportunity to expand my abilities and stretch my perceptions. I'm not referring just to routes that I physically traverse, but to all aspects of life. For example, if I'm describing a scene to someone, I won't just settle for cliches like "a brilliant Sunset" or "crystal-clear Water". I'll envision myself back at the scene and describe in a more personal, feeling way what it was like to be there experiencing it. In that way I am developing not only my descriptive abilities but I'm learning to get more in touch with myself in general — my feelings, my memories, and the ways in which my experiences are meaningful to me. I'm also helping the Person I'm talking to, to grow, by stimulating her ability to envision along with her listening ability. In doing so we are enriching our relationship by making a relevant sharing out of what otherwise could have been typical "hi, how are you, what's new" type of exchange. 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. Sound dangerous? Crossing the street is dangerous. Camping in the Wilderness is dangerous. Inherent danger is there, but only in potential — I will experience it only if I actualize it. If I cross a busy street against a red light or head out into the Winter Wilderness late in the day and underdressed, I am taunting that danger to come and visit me. I've learned about this potential danger by taunting it. My left ankle and right hip and lower back bear the wounds of those early teachings that remind me to this day that the teaching trail is to be walked consciously. And the wounds are not just physical. I have emotional scars from pushing myself into situations, relationships and partnerships that I was not ready for. 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 — either take easy street or the teaching route, but that is just an illusion — a game that the ego plays so that it feels that it has some control. Whether I decide to be a couch potato or an adventurer it is actually my ego deciding to do that. 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 beingness. They are not inalienable rights. They are merely constructs that we have come up with to justify a materialist egocentric existence. 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. It is the Old Way. Our pre-civilized Ancestors walked the teaching trail. Natives of today walk the teaching trail. The few civilized People who are even aware of the teaching trail find it extremely difficult to walk it because it runs contrary to the "do it in the fastest, most expedient and productive way possible" mantra of civilized ego existence. With the teaching trail, the walking 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 teaching trail is its own goal, its own accomplishment. "Stay longer with that which you don't like, release sooner that which you do like," is a proverb I not only follow, but have become. I'll step through a doorway not because it might hold some pleasure, comfort or other gain for me, but merely because it is there. 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, as your goal – whether you recognize it or not – is far more than to get from point A to point B. Choose a trail that is slightly more challenging than one your natural inclination would lead you to. It doesn't take much to keep you in the moment and attuned to what you are doing, so be careful not to overchallenge yourself. If you do, your growth will be stymied, as you will miss some of the lessons that need to come to you in ordered progression. 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, the edge of your defined world. You're staying in your comfortable envelope; you're not learning. An interesting paradox of the teaching trail is that it usually takes you off the 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. Sometimes it will be a Moon or more between my walking of the this trail. 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 — not because we are related, but because we have developed relationships. Continually taking the trail into camp would have been like continually walking down one aisle of a store and always going back to 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 have little idea as to how well my favorite aisle reflects the rest of the store. Walking the same aisle, or the same trail, is like going to school, or reading a book, or listening to a teacher. I have put myself in a box, which means that all I can come to know is what is already in the box. Imagine if you were meeting someone new and wanted to get to know him but ignored everything about him except his arm and you developed 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, no matter whether it is the same trail to the Woods or the same mental pattern or emotional rut. It is the antithesis of learning, growing, discovering. With the teaching trail there are no limits, no boundaries, no directions.