When it began, there was darkness: a warm and pulsing darkness, washed with the sound of waves from an unseen ocean. There were four senses. Each sense understood protection.

It began, before it began for you, and that same pulse which has always been there and which will always remain became, in a moment of ecstasy, the spark which drew one man to one woman, which flew one cell toward another cell, as if by chance, as if an opportunity for that pulse to grow stronger, and louder, and larger, protected until the last moment by the warm and pulsing darkness, a darkness so dense that breathing was impossible, and one so complete that only four senses were awakened, the four that really matter.

The rest, after that bit of magic, is rather anti-climactic. It’s just a life: steered by custom, then by schooling, then by rebellion; driven by need, then by desire, then by the emptiness after desire, until finally, with a little luck and force of will, the gas runs out of the tank, the wheels go flat, the map unravels, and a new darkness falls. Just in time for you to lose your bearings. This darkness not as complete as the first, perhaps, but certainly less protective. Before there was only one path to follow: out! Now, there are a hundred, a hundred thousand trails weaving in and around each other in the dark, in a cold that gets cooler every day, with you left to follow as best you can, untrained for this sort of navigation, having received meager guidance from your common schoolbooks and retouched histories. Ah, the beautiful, frightening crash when the obvious turns to dust. Untrained for this sort of navigation, what replaces the obvious is darkness.

The Well-Lit Path exists. It is lit not by the sun, nor by anything which your eyes might bring to you — sight, the last sense to open, the weakest sense — but lit from within. It is illuminated by all of those who spent their lives cultivating Light, who found a way to point at the sun. A few recognizable faces are along the margin of this page. Many more have lit up all of history, and light up the present, in large self-important cities and in modest towns. They live in books, and they live in physical practice. They live hidden in the dogma we receive from our elders, and in the unformed words of tomorrow’s seekers. They all walk the Well-Lit Path, and in walking it, become it.

It is there for all of us: all it takes is a place to start, and a little practice.

If any of the ideas we glean from our travel stretch your imagination, maybe there’s the beginning of a trail — where it ends I am quite certain belongs to you. To begin, to begin: that is the most important thing.

Close your eyes: what do you see?