Update

Last week I retired the website for ‘The Art of Navigation’, mostly for technical reasons, and traffic has been redirected to this blog, prompting an update.

It’s been 7 years since my last entry, and I feel like sharing what happened or un-happened here as concisely as possible.

The case I was trying to make with ‘The Art of Navigation’ was that we cannot find happiness by attempting to manipulate Life, but rather by aligning with Life. In this context, Life is seen as the active side of the infinite, supreme reality that underlies all existence and experience.

Once we have embarked on this journey of aligning with Life, or as Castaneda put it, aligning our Intent with Universal Intent, it becomes increasingly clear that in ultimate and complete alignment with Life we are essentially merged with Life. With this, any sense of separateness from Life - any sense of separation in general - dissolves.

In my initial understanding, exploring and honing the Five Elements of Navigation, (Intent, Enthusiasm, Perseverance, Impeccability, and Presence) presented the best strategy to reach this Union with Life. Following the momentum that writing the book had created, I was, however, presented with a very complementary, even more direct, and near effortless way - a shortcut of sorts.

The art of navigation, my association with Carlos Castaneda, or my lifelong spiritual pursuits for that matter, were never just about living a more enchanting life, or experiencing more freedom and happiness. There was always a deep seated intuition that there is an ultimate attainment in life, that there is an actual reality underlying the concepts of Total Freedom, Self-Realization, Enlightenment, Awakening, Nirvana, and Heaven.

Freedom had always been my mantra. Total Freedom! But what had eluded me for the longest time was the fact that there can be no Total Freedom for a separate, personal, individual self. In other words, Total Freedom can never be freedom FOR myself, but only freedom FROM myself.

Obviously, complete Union with Life and the disappearance of any sense of separation from Life amounts to freedom from the idea of being a separate self.

So, it appears, that in order to reach the very goal of navigation, the navigator has to disappear.

To be continued.