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Climbing The Mountain of Awe

For years, every morning when I awakened, I reached out in my mind for the land of awe. Most of the time I was able to get there, no matter how difficult were my days in semi-darkness, even if it took me to mid-day and just for a moment to attain it. Those were the years, 1998 – 2006, when I was blind and recovering from being blind.

The whole of the ordeal; being blind and recovering from it, was like being out of this world, yet in it somehow; a place where the physical and the spiritual were one. They had to be, if I were to survive. The adventure, if one can appropriately call it such, made a shaman out of me.

Now having recently lost the sight in my right eye, I am faced with the possibility of living this way again. The shaman’s journey is always one of birth-death and rebirth. I would not have purposely chosen it. But here it is.

So how does someone even begin to describe what it was like to be blind and to recover from it? And, what it is like now, again?

There is no language for that which is so completely unseen; the being in a place where the physical and the spiritual must be entwined, if one is to survive. Yet I want to reach out to our readers with whatever language can allow to speak of it here and now as best I can.

And, with this telling, help you to come to know and understand why it is that the New Horizons Small “Zones Of Peace” Project model for building exceptional communities is both so viable – and – so critical for all people in our time, here and now.

Language – and – a few graphics and photos is all we have here. And, it is more important than ever that I do my utmost to convey what it is that makes the climbing of the mountain to awe so imperative to me that I would risk this sheer nakedness here as I am doing.

You see, climbing the mountain Of awe in my own mind was not the only ascent I made during my term of blindness and recovery from it.

During this time. I was inordinately blessed, almost miraculously, to meet Murat Yagan. And, to find a near-by community that was learning the practical application of the ancient ways of Murat’s heritage, the ways of the Abkhazian peoples of the Caucasus Mountains. This too was a pathway to awe.

Because I was limited in my ability to travel due to my eye problems, I decided to connect with this close-by group and learn what I could by making myself a visiting member of it. This affiliation which was to last, from start to finish for about seven years, combined with my previous twenty-five years as a psychotherapist, running a therapeutic community, is how I learned that “awe” is a place one can reach not only on one’s own, but also with others in a community, purposely, as a way of life. I want you to know this!

Thus was the New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” Project first envisioned in my mind when seeing in my mind was about all I had.

I hope you will want to know more of this tale and its lessons, as myself and my hearty, new team of Climbing The Mountain of Awe GAME players strive, under challenging circumstances, to climb, once again, the mountain of awe together.

More to come.