Pilgrimage Within: Contemplations of a Lifelong Activist

For many years I have toyed with writing another book, one that is an interplay with the Muses who urgently invite me to put their thoughts on paper so as to share with open-hearted folks, yearning to move beyond the myopic vision offered to them by most religious and national leaders. We humans are starving for lack of real soul bread. As we are bombarded with lies and deceptions and double speak. All of which blind the eyes of our hearts, so that we cannot see anything but virtual realities which look so real that the mass of humans confuse them with the wondrous Mystery of our Existence. The reflections found in this book were born of an increasing awareness of what truly is beyond the words and concepts that have, for thousands of years, enchained us in illusory systems, whether they be religious or secular. They are attempts to listen to wise Muses as they daily invite me to write what they urge me to see, and as they help me to increase conscientizing and seeing into Reality, i.e. into what is and into All that Is, with the clarifications and corrections that appear to me, through the Muses, even as I live and write! Seventh century Zen Sage Hui Neng says it all in one brief sentence: The meaning of Life is to see. And this is the prominent theme of Pacem In Terris in Warwick, NY, an oasis of sanity in this mad world on a fast track to de-humanizing our species. Founded by artist Frederick Franck and his wife, Claske Berndes Franck, Pacem In Terris has been for many years the main soul companion of the Muses in helping me to see ever more clearly into the Reality and Mystery of the One and the Many that is all there Is or will ever Be. It is for this reason that any proceeds coming from this book s publication will go to Pacem In Terris as a little help in keeping its hope-giving light burning. Meanderings would never have come to be without Pacem and without the many writers who helped the Muses in their endeavors to lead me into an ever wider vision of that which Is and of insight into the heartfelt realization that neither we nor any other existence can be without the Communion of all Being making us each unique in all creation and yet One and inseparable! Most of all, I am eternally grateful to Martha Lewin, my beloved lifetime soul companion, without whom I would have drowned in the stagnant waters of dead religiosity. May this book help to keep hope alive in folks like myself who yearn, with all their being, to see our species return to the sanity that joins all other animals in the harmonious balance which keeps the magnificent venture of Life on our planet alive and well!