In the torrid June of 2004, I found myself holed up in a town fortunate enough to be overlooked by the New World Order of the MTV, CNN and Limp Bizkit nation. How I found myself in that place is a story that shall be shared at some other time. For now, the reason that my road led me there, and is continuing to lead me places, is of importance.

I succumbed to the pressures of the American dream, the romantic notion of the morbid, self-indulging lifestyle, and the incomprehensible demoralization of ME. I pictured myself on a mission from some galactic wave of incense, eye-drops, orange juice and pepper mints. The breakthrough to truth lay at the end of the new back road I had claimed to have discovered, but in reality, had been told about or been shown to by someone else. The next volume of music would release me from the chains of ordinary life to a universe that few had discovered.

Having spent the better part of 10 years, if not longer, pursuing this destination, I had traveled down a path that lead me to a self-centered dreamworld filled with Frank Sinatra posters, Johnny Cash CDs, monkey and chicken costumes, a bookshelf strategically filled with titles to keep myself in a fantasy and, finally, commercially advertised spirituality that could have sold a pair of pants or sandals.

Having arrived at the perfect latitude and longitude for retiring elephants, I was presented with two options, or paths, to take. One was to continue down that bleak, black asphalt highway, which had produced an untold amount of misery and frustration, the other was to start walking, or rather crawling, on the path of spirituality.

“Well, I must admit that the plans I had made for myself back in high school had not worked out,” I confessed to myself.

Pondering the notion of spirituality, I came to the conclusion that, in all honesty, I did not have that much to lose. I suppose I had the vague idea I would enter into a realm of thought and action that was completely foreign to me. Sure, I read a little of Saint Augustine’s “Confessions,” and I was somewhat familiar with all those extremely strange individuals called mystics, ancient shamans, Indian gurus and Catholic Saints. I had even talked to some Buddhists and Hare Krishnas, but I did not have the slightest notion of what it meant to walk a spiritual kind of life, to be dependent upon something that could not be understood by using the five senses.

Again though, it was suggested to me to look at my “track record,” that is my decisions and the consequences of my actions. Was I happy with the life that I was living? The answer was capital N, capital O. Also known as NO!

So here I am: bags packed, underwear cleaned and with a pair of new boots, standing at the jumping off point of a trail that may or may not have an end. Looking like some kind of broken down sidekick of a hero of a time that is long gone, I began the first leg of the journey for a view from the top of the hill.