Journey Metaphors And Insights

Table of Contents

• Circular Paths and Spirals
• Crossroads and Decisions
• Infinite Possibilities and Horizons
• Obstacles and Challenges
• Paths and Destinations
• The Unknown and Mystery
• Fate and Guidance
• Intersections and Connections
• Life Lessons and Growth
• Other

Circular Paths and Spirals

Straight lines go too quickly to appreciate the pleasures of the journey. They rush straight to their target and then die in the very moment of their triumph without having thought, loved, suffered or enjoyed themselves. Broken lines do not know what they want. With their caprices they cut time up, abuse routes, slash the joyous flowers and split the peaceful fruits with their corners. It is another story with curved lines. The song of the curved line is called happiness.

When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.

His way had therefore come full circle, or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral, following as ever no straight unbroken line, for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry and not to Nature and Life.

Life is a spiral.As long as we lived, we would keep moving forward. But on a spiral path, getting closer to your destination meant periodically passing the same things—emotions, issues, character flaws—over and over again, the way a person walking up a spiral staircase would continually find himself facing north every ten steps or so.

We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

Life is a spiral. As long as we lived, we would keep moving forward. But on a spiral path, getting closer to your destination meant periodically passing the same things—emotions, issues, character flaws—over and over again, the way a person walking up a spiral staircase would continually find himself facing north every ten steps or so.

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

The wheel turns. In the end we all return to what we are and to where we began.

If you continually cut corners in life , you will eventually end up going around the same endless circle.

If continually cutting corners in life , you will eventually end up going around the same endless circle.

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

Sometimes travelling to your very edge is travelling down to your very core.

I saw that everything, all paths I had been following, all steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point - namely, to the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the center, to individuation. I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate.

Crossroads and Decisions

[G]radually, skillfully, [Parmenides] conjures up the image of us humans as stuck at this place where the road divides—unable to decide between the two paths, incapable even of seeing what the choice involves, just dithering in the space in between.

When you get to the junction of choices, ponder!

One’s options in this world are as vast as the horizon, which is technically a circle and thus infinitely broad. Yet we must choose each step we take with utmost caution, for the footprints we leave behind are as important as the path we will follow. They’re part of the same journey — our story.

Show us not the aim without the way.For ends and means on earth are so entangledThat changing one, you change the other too;Each different path brings other ends in view

Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it. You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth.

One does not simply walk into Mordor

For there are many twists and turns on any given path. How or where it ends is either destination or mystery.

Strange, is it not? That of the myriads who Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the Road Which to discover we must travel too.

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

A lost trail always extends beyond the evidence, and even the trails we find are only fragments of the trails that lie beyond our comprehension.

It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves

Man finds his pathways: at first they were foot-tracks, as those of the beast in the wilderness; now they are swift and invisible: his thought dives through the ocean, and his wishes thread the air: has he found all the pathways yet? What reaches him, stays with him, rules him: he must accept it, not knowing its pathway.

Show us not the aim without the way. For ends and means on earth are so entangled That changing one, you change the other too; Each different path brings other ends in view

Infinite Possibilities and Horizons

All paths are seen, through the prism of fate

In the 'Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,' the trajectory of your life is no longer just one straight path to an eventuality, but is instead one path of many, on an ever-branching tree of possibilities.

Fate had a weird way of circling back over paths that were meant to cross.

If you want to be the horizon itself, walk to the horizon without stopping!

Not all destinations are found in the junctions of your palm lines.

Where all lines and rays convergeWhere no one can travel furtherOne finds the abode of the soulAnd here, all routes one can augur

But India did not pass me by without a trace: it left tracks which lead me from one infinity to another infinity.

One never goes further than when they do not know where they are going.

There are infinite modes of expression in the world of art, and to insist that only by one road can the artist attain his ends is to limit him.

Our road not marked on maps. Fugitives of the centuries,our origin is the breathing and our destination is exhalation,A thousand suns are flowing in our blood,and the vision of infinity is always chasing us.The form cannot tame us, Our days are a fire and our nights a sea.

All things are like spring dreams, passing with no trace.

Almost nobody travels willingly from sameness to sameness and repetition to repetition, even if the physical effort required is trivial.

Sometimes a journey arises out of hope and instinct, the heady conviction, as your finger travels along the map: Yes, here and here ... and here. These are the nerve-ends of the world ...

Obstacles and Challenges

Some of the obstacles in life. They are not dead end, but they are there as a ladderto lift you up. More obstacles you get , the higher you go.

As you walk, you must make the universe understand that you are extremely determined to reach your destination no matter how many obstacles intercept your path! When you do this, obstacles start disappearing one by one!

No matter how narrow or how impassable life's paths are, with mind-power we can always find or create a passageway to pass through!

In the flow of this world, some are faced with a marble path, some are faced with a thorny path, some are faced with a tar road; but everyone will have to cross the road, won’t they?

If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

Some of the things are the same no matter which world you're in, kid. One of 'em is this: The quickest way out of something is usually straight through it.

Drinking, drugging, sleeping around, it's all the same thing. You have these lines you won't cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won't instantly come to an end.

Sometime the only way t' keep goin' is t' keep goin'.

For the frightened, running in a circle is the illusion of a journey.

In life there are times you must only walk without any particular direction to find your random fate!

On Planet Dragos, everything goes the way he arranges it – unless you decide to cross him, and God help you then, because he doesn’t know how to back down, and he doesn’t ever, ever let up.

Man finds his pathways: at first they were foot-tracks, as those of the beast in the wilderness; now they are swift and invisible: his thought dives through the ocean, and his wishes thread the air: has he found all the pathways yet? What reaches him, stays with him, rules him: he must accept it, not knowing its pathway.

There's a line in everything, which is too dangerous to cross; because once you cross it, you can not go back.

Paths and Destinations

For most of us, the line between the destinations in our lives is seldom a straight one.

When we leave this world, and are laid in the earth, the prince walks as narrow a path as the day-laborer.

Never has man reached his destination by persistence in deviation from the straight path.

Everything has a finsh line. You just have to keep moving forward until you cross it.

What lies at the end of the life path? The answer is simple: Nothing lies over there! That’s why mankind must change the end of the road!

Paths cross all the time in this world of our, sometimes in the strangest places.

The world seemed to pause at the words. As if it had been following one path and now branched off in another direction.

Wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction and many go that way

Even if most of the time we navigate so carefully we might as well be bombs trying not to explode, we are still always there, in each other’s paths. Just waiting for the moments we intersect.

…the universe…sets out little signposts for us along the way, to confirm that we’re on the right path.” (p.XV)

Every body has a unique path to travel.

I suppose it’s easier to see the way out of anything when you’ve found your way out of that maze. When you’re stuck in the middle, in a series of dead-ends making circles, it’s difficult to make any sense of anything.

The wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.

The Unknown and Mystery

Just knowing that there is no gate to pass through doesn’t mean that we are at the end of the search, not if we are still standing outside that gateless gate.

For there are many twists and turns on any given path. How or where it ends is either destination or mystery.

A journey or pilgrimage also follows the parabolic curve of an arch: it swings out from a known point and returns symmetrically to a point on the same line or plane, but farther along. For this reason, ancient philosophers chose the arch as a symbol for the process of interpretation. That is why teaching stories, such as those of Jesus or Buddha, are known as parables.

A lost trail always extends beyond the evidence, and even the trails we find are only fragments of the trails that lie beyond our comprehension.

Nature has unlimited time in which to travel along tortuous paths to an unknown destination. The mind of man is too feeble to discern whence or whither the path runs and has to be content if it can discern only portions of the track, however small.

There is a thin line that separates life from death, but once it's crossed, it becomes as large as an ocean, and so treacherous that it’s impossible to cross back.

Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upwards and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be travelled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we will end.

I suppose it’s easier to see the way out of anything when you’ve found your way out of that maze. When you’re stuck in the middle, in a series of dead-ends making circles, it’s difficult to make any sense of anything.

The man that walks wit crowd, will get no farther than the crowd. The man that walks alone, will reach places unknown.

Strange - is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.

Strange, is it not? That of the myriads who Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the Road Which to discover we must travel too.

A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, towards the end of his journey, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will.

All things are like spring dreams, passing with no trace.

Fate and Guidance

All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle's or the squirrel's or the sparrow's. All are held together.

The strings of fate will draw the things you need close to you at the right moment and pull safety from you just when you think it is near. It's that way in all the world, but the strings are wound tighter when you walk in the world of magic.

…the universe…sets out little signposts for us along the way, to confirm that we’re on the right path.” (p.XV)

Life is not a maze where you have your eyes on the gaps, life is a beautiful journey, stop looking for the gaps.

O Lord, all our troubles come to us because we do not have our eyes fixed on you. If only we looked at the path we're walking, we would soon arrive. But, we stumble and fall a thousand times and we stray because we do not set our eyes on the true Way.

Straight lines go too quickly to appreciate the pleasures of the journey. They rush straight to their target and then die in the very moment of their triumph without having thought, loved, suffered or enjoyed themselves. Broken lines do not know what they want. With their caprices they cut time up, abuse routes, slash the joyous flowers and split the peaceful fruits with their corners. It is another story with curved lines. The song of the curved line is called happiness.

The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten.

Nature has unlimited time in which to travel along tortuous paths to an unknown destination. The mind of man is too feeble to discern whence or whither the path runs and has to be content if it can discern only portions of the track, however small.

I go walking, and the hills loom above me, range upon range, one against the other. I cannot tell where one begins and another leaves off. But when I talk with God He lifts me up where I can see clearly, where everything has a distinct contour.

The departure from the world is regarded not as a fault, but as the first step into that noble path at the remotest turn of which illumination is to be won.

The way of the Cross is not easy, yet it is the tuneful, the rhythmic, the beautiful, the lovely way.

Show us not the aim without the way.For ends and means on earth are so entangledThat changing one, you change the other too;Each different path brings other ends in view

A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, towards the end of his journey, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will.

Intersections and Connections

One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.

Paths cross all the time in this world of ours, sometimes in the strangest places- Charles Jacobs

Paths cross all the time in this world of our, sometimes in the strangest places.

Even if most of the time we navigate so carefully we might as well be bombs trying not to explode, we are still always there, in each other’s paths. Just waiting for the moments we intersect.

Not all destinations are found in the junctions of your palm lines.

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

It has been too easy letting distance form a chasm between our souls. Like digging a hole in the sand, the walls crumble in no time at all. I don’t want our separation to be the nature of things. I want us to transcend the gap in distance.

Fate had a weird way of circling back over paths that were meant to cross.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

In a labyrinth, every step is wasted which does not lead out of the labyrinth.

When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves...sometimes even physically.

[G]radually, skillfully, [Parmenides] conjures up the image of us humans as stuck at this place where the road divides—unable to decide between the two paths, incapable even of seeing what the choice involves, just dithering in the space in between.

First, he says, you have to go out into the world. This is not a simple matter of going outside one's door. No, that is simply going out. That's what one does when one is on the way to the store to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of wine. When one goes out into the world, one is shedding preconceptions of past paths and ideas of past paths, and trying to move freely through an unsubstantiated and new geography.

Life Lessons and Growth

Life lessons are not journeys traveled in straight lines but are crossroadsformed years and miles apart.

Wicca is an inward journey as much as it is outward.

Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory realm,Without looking for the traces I may have left;A cuckoo's song beckons me to return home;Hearing this, I tilt my head to seeWho has told me to turn back;But do not ask me where I am going,As I travel in this limitless world,Where every step I take is my home.

I go walking, and the hills loom above me, range upon range, one against the other. I cannot tell where one begins and another leaves off. But when I talk with God He lifts me up where I can see clearly, where everything has a distinct contour.

You have visits, then you have disappearances. You enter, then you exit. You come, you go. It would be so great if you could just get to human enlightenment on a linear path.

Nature has unlimited time in which to travel along tortuous paths to an unknown destination. The mind of man is too feeble to discern whence or whither the path runs and has to be content if it can discern only portions of the track, however small.

Strange, is it not? That of the myriads who Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the Road Which to discover we must travel too.

If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don't really know where we are standing... We may only go in circles...

The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.

In a maze, every step is wasted that does not lead out of the maze.

Some of the things are the same no matter which world you're in, kid. One of 'em is this: The quickest way out of something is usually straight through it.

If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

At the end of every diet, the path curves back to the trough.

Other

The dots are always connecting…every choice you make…every event in your Life…every detour…is always taking you to where you must arrive…

But there is no light at the end of the tunnel to see.I think there is no hope left for me.I wonder how many miles I have to walk through.And if there is a miracle coming to hit me somewhere out of the blue …

A wise man once said, there's a settled goal in the beginning of every line but a deadly race at the end of it all, for its unwise to rely on a rested hills,its a leap on a Step forward rather simplate a walk on back towards

[If you] give into your [emotional] illusions, and you will find yourself lost in a maze with no exits, nor entrances, but winding paths that lead you in circles so many times that you grow familiar and comfortable with the very place you shouldn't be in.

Answers? Ha, he would say that. More like riddles, mazes, labyrinths. If there's some power trying to show me the way, it should give better directions.

...it is rather a shame that our paths only crossed under these circumstances. In another reality, you and I could have been travelers through all of space and time.

Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn't mean they're lost forever.

Like someone excitedly relating a story, only to find the words petering out, the path gets narrower the further I go, the undergrowth taking over.

Where no paths exist, a man strays only when he misses his destination. There is no crime, no transgression, no sin save foolishness or incompetence, and no obscenity save the tyranny of custom.

We are always heading in some direction, usually on paths we set ourselves upon, yet sometimes we forget to take a break to simply breathe and watch the revolving world

There are paths above the paths, the paths of the birds! There are paths above the paths of the birds, the paths of the clouds! And there are paths above the paths of the clouds, the paths of the planets! When you are travelling on a path, never forget that there are higher paths, there are higher wisdoms over your head!

An endless path is frightening but the path that ends is even more frightening!

You travel the world on your two feet but journey the universe on your one soul.

The tram’s fate is to travel only on its track. But for man, everywhere is a track; everywhere is his fate!

We all walk along our own path. “Just because someone stumbles and loses their way, doesn't mean they're lost forever.

We walk from nowhere to nowhere, but at least during our journey we have time to think on how to be able to change this ambiguity!

I return to tracingthe line. It's not unlike the wayI trace myself back to myselfafter returning from spaces that haveno place in me. Not unlike the wayI trace over moments with you when youare no one I recognize.

Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. it doesn't just catch up: it overtakes, blotting out the future, the landscape, the very sky, until there is no path left except that which leads through it, the only one that can ever get you home.

There is light at the end of every tunnel. To get there just follow the silver lining.

On and on we wander in these pages--and we never reach the point because, happily, there is no point to reach.

There is a labyrinth which is a straight line.

The first path a human being ever travels is the path that leads out of the maternal womb. Every human being's first labyrinth is that of a woman.

With a labyrinth, you make a choice to go in - and once you've chosen, around and around you go. But you always find your way to the center.

There is no royal road to anything, one thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures.

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