There exist vistas on the mountain that is your life that you must stop and see. These vistas are not important, but they allow you to look around and see the path you are on:
How high have you traveled? What is the summit you seek? Are you on the right mountain? Do you really desire to reach that summit?

I do desire to reach that summit, though I do not see it myself so who knows how high my mountain is even? It has been quite misty on my mountain and I do not know if I am on the correct path.
Along the way I have met people in the wilderness. Sometimes they are fellow travelers and we discuss the challenges of our paths and were we are trying to go. I am sorry to say there are travelers who are more lost than I am, and they ask for help and I do not know how to set them back on the correct path.

Often I meet the old wise ones, they live in caves along the path or in huts overlooking a view that I cannot describe. I spend time with them, sometimes years I am with them before I continue my trek up the mountain. Usually I spend a few hours or an evening with them for a cup of tea and a conversation. As I talk to them I learn that I am not unique, that they have seen my type traveling on the same path many times. It is nice to know that maybe I can find these travelers and share my deeper thoughts and fears of this misty path.

Yet still, these wise men, these unfamiliar travelers who see something holy in me share their deepest secrets as if I am a sponge, I am not that absorbent however. I am not prepared for the knowledge or burden. I am taught a secret to making my body less of a burden on the trail, to have a greater community of travelers with whom I can relate to and I learn something but understand nothing. Sometimes still I am given a secret I must pass on to a traveler I will meet later on the path but I am only the messenger, I try to understand. While these messages feel like lighter burdens, I do not understand how I was chosen or what qualities made me worth entrusting anything with.

Years up on the trail a particular guru opens a floodgate in my mind and truth is spilled out that was stored away from an earlier wise one and while the details of that meeting remain muddled, the essence is revealed to me that allows me to continue.

And so it goes… Today my mind was shattered and this wise one was only repeating the same lesson s/he has taught countless others. How to broaden and narrow the mind. How to think. It is astounding to think that one needs to be taught how to think, but this one on one chat by the fire forced me to think for myself for the first time in some time. That so few truly care that I am walking this path. That the whole world is still down at the bottom of the mountain, in the valley where the farms are, and roads with business people and leisurely travelers wondering why it is important that they listen to what I have learned up on the mountain.

Currently I am a solo traveler. That there was only me with the wise one, no partner to take up where I could not, to force me to melt away the smallh physical details and focus only on the essence. I do not pretend that I understand now or that I will understand after I depart from this shack on the mountain. Perhaps I will find my echo point years from now to shout back down the mountain, “thank you!”

All the others will only hear the howling wind of the mountain. And they know it.