In French we use the word "journée" so close of the english "journey" to mean "day".
This is why I love the use of this expression at the end of a French letter. It became more in more popular over the years. Some even went so far as to caricature our new art of communication, denouncing the overuse of "wishing you a nice journée", "a magnificent journée" and "a wonderful journée to you"!
Yet this French word, when listened to with English ears, reminds me that a day is also a journey.
And what could be truer than the realization that we are perpetually on a journey? A day is a transition between yesterday and tomorrow. Perhaps an earthly life is also a transition between nothingness and infinity. In the end, we're in transit, traveling, passing through. Passers by...
What else is but exploration? The art of the traveler that we are. There's that courageous adventurer in us. Otherwise we wouldn't last five minutes!
The Indian spiritual master Sadhguru confessed that he was no longer in agreement with a conception of science that had become fraudulent, and which, starting from its origins in exploration, had slipped into our use: exploitation.
What if it was time to return to the deeper meaning of our true being?
This exploration.
Useless. Neither better nor worse. With no objective to reach other than that of the path, exploration is the art of the curiosity in the noblest sense of the word. Is this not the archetypal artist, since art is above all a "means", a path, an art of...
Then, suddenly, there is no drama, no tragedy any more. For there is neither defeat nor success. The pilgrim on the famous Camino de Compostela reminds us that his wealth lies in his journey, not in his arrival. The place he reaches, if he has completed his pilgrimage, tells him that it is only good because of the path he has travelled. That there is no "end". This place, in itself, is just one of many, nothing special. But it is the traveler who has created his journey. His road. And there's one truth you realize when you're on this kind of adventure: no matter where you stop, be it halfway or seemingly at the end of the road, a strange realization emerges, one that tells you that the road never ends. Once you're on the bus to take you back to your starting point, once you're on the train to take you home after this great journey, you realize that once again : the road goes on. Over and over and over... It's a road made by discovery, by the heart, by the mind and the body. It's the one that whispers to us, at last, the meaning of our lives: to be the creator of that meaning! The creator of the path... When we set out on this great journey, we don't yet realize what magic we're about to discover: "I was already on the road! I've never stopped being there! And I'll continue to be there every second!"
That's the transcendent - and so simple - realization!
Then life reveals itself to be a celebration! And from the celebration of a passage from one year to the next, we realize that it's every day and every beat of our hearts that Life is celebrated.
The coming years seem to me to be decisive, it's true. We are asked, more than ever, about the path we're on. Not in its trajectory. Not the goal in term of a place to reach. But in the way we take it. Because that's the only way to make sense of whatever quest we're on.
We are then asked, profoundly, whether we wish to continue to want to exploit, be it a tree, atoms or even a human being, or whether we are ready to make peace with our fears, our tyrants, our ignorance... that of a mind that doesn't quite know what it's for. And, just as when I accompany these men and women to sessions, just as when I observe it on myself, there's that moment of epiphany when we realize that everything was perfect and that our worst tormentors have, in fact, pushed us towards our deepest, most luminous truth. Then this impulse to exploit, use and abuse will have pushed us to realize the value of exploration, of living without seeking to grasp, of understanding without seeking to take, of enjoying like a sigh that inspires and releases. Useless, curious, abundant, infinite.
At that instant of a tiny movement, that of the sigh of peace, within oneself, an immensity opens up, unknown as the One we already know, that is, that we discover, in the literal sense of the word, perpetually present.
It's this journey that I wanted to talk to you about on this New Year's Day.
Music tells us stories, like the ancient tellers of the first centuries. And surprisingly, the ability to tell stories allows us to travel to the firmament of our souls, or to sink into our personal dramas. In both, it's always about story. Healing or killing.
It's up to us to take up the telling of our true story, not that of a Helene or a Jack. No, that of our souls, of the Soul of the world!
I wish you a wonderful day,
One of those days whose journey without beginning or end
Takes you by the hand like the best of all companions!
Happy New Year,
Hélène Tysman
