Metaphysical Outlaw

By: Erik Rittenberry

Photo: Erik Rittenberry

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.

--Matsuo Basho

I awake to the ethereal wind singing in
the trees. The morning sky, the color
of ashe overhead as I roll my aching body
out of the tent. The grass is damp 
on my bare feet. My body worn
and ragged from yesterday's 
18 mile trek through the forest. I 
strip naked and gently wade
into the cold lake. The ripples of the
still water disperse as the sun emerges
from the night. 
I let the golden rays blast my face as I
dry off and sip black coffee in silence 
thinking about the great poets, mystics,  
and wanderers of the past. The ancients, 
the romantics, the transcendentalists, 
the beats. The words of Gary Snyder 
crop up from the depths, “Nature is 
not a place to visit. It is home.”

It was said that the English poet
William Wordsworth
sauntered close to two hundred
thousand miles during his lifetime.
The unrivaled romantic poet would
venture off on foot to landscapes
unknown, sometimes with his sister
Dorothy, sometimes alone,
with a rucksack of writing utensils
and notepads, drunk on the nectar
of nature, his senses heightened,
capturing the poetry
of existence.  

I wandered as lonely as the cloud
That floats on high o’er valleys and hills.

Just two years after the American Civil
War, John Muir embarked on a thousand
mile impromptu walk from Indianapolis
to the Gulf of Mexico. It was this wild, 
transformative journey that fueled 
his devotion to nature, entirely 
changing the course of his life. 

The clearest way into the Universe 
is through a forest wilderness.

In 1878, the Scottish novelist 
Robert Louis Stevenson, 
took up a 12 day 120 mile trek alone 
with his stubborn donkey through 
the vast, diverse landscape of the 
Cévennes mountains in south-central 
France. With no marked trails for guidance, 
he journeyed through rocky terrain and 
pine forests and grassy meadows with 
little more than a sheepskin-lined 
sleeping bag stuffed with bottles of wine, 
chocolate, books, and coffee. 

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, 
but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great 
affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches 
of our life more clearly; to come down off 
this feather-bed of civilization, and find 
the globe granite underfoot and strewn 
with cutting flints.

Ah yes, we still have it in us, don’t we?
The metaphysical grit it takes to reawaken
the primitive within? 

To emancipate ourselves from the
unbreathable world of modernity,
to finally say YES to the neglected
murmurs of the blood.

To let the ancient wind relinquish
the useless urge to know, and to 
keep the poetic fire forever raging 
in the chest.

To depart from the steel and asphalt 
of the status quo, the futility
of busyness and the cozy cage 
of so-called success.

To live out the secret life
of the imagination, to live
in the NOW in full celebration
of the flesh and spirit, to break 
from the lower domains of rational 
and discursive knowledge in 
search of the higher realms
of unitive experience.

It was Nicolas Berdyaev who
reminded us: 

Freedom from "the world" is union 
with the true world, the cosmos. Thus 
to go out of oneself is to find 
oneself, one's true centre...

Ah, yes…
to be enriched with little,
to need almost nothing,
to triumph in solitude,
to evade, at all costs,
the desperate, fear-ridden
state of the contemporary flesh,
those rancorous children
of the profane, glutted to bone
with benign comforts and bloodless
conveniences, their minds riddled
with dogmatic theories and concepts,
their spirits completely severed
from the soil it came out of.

We still have it in us, don’t we?
You and I? 
 
Deep down we all harbor a wayward
inclination to take on that rugged 
journey to the sublime, to revel 
in the immortal awareness that
lies beyond space and time. 

The earth yearns for a radical elevation
of our stifled consciousness,
the courage, once again, to live
dangerously, to move into the
unknown, to become a transcendental
drifter like Wordsworth or Jesus
or Matsuo Basho.

To live in the purity of your own light, to live
beyond all understanding, a treasonous life 
bound to no creed or convention,
to live as a renunciation of the
well-worn path. 

To be a metaphysical outlaw
who treads lightly upon this 
war-torn planet, to shun the
mask of social pretenses and untangle
the mind from all ideals and ideologies.

To do the “heart-work on the images
imprisoned within.”

To be a spiritual lunatic forever in exile
in search of a new dawn, roaming
and roaring like a wild-eyed vagabond
beneath the unconcerned skies, to sit and
sip jugs of red wine like the ancient Chinese
poet Li Po, carefree in a wildflower meadow
beneath the elm trees on blue sky afternoons,
to “drown away the woes of ten thousand
generation!”, to bathe ourselves in the wild
mysteries of the earth, away from
masquerade of the political world,
away from society’s lies
of what it means
to BE
to BE
to BE…

Ah, yes, to BE, to Be like Thoreau
and Whitman, to commune with 
nothing but the universal soul
of the here and now,
the OVERSOUL,
“the wise silence”
that slithers throughout
the ether, and come to discover,
once again, the hidden source
of the stream of who we are.

Oh, wandering One, if you are 
in search of the greatest treasure, 
don't look outside. Look within, 
and seek That.

Thank you so much for reading. You can find me around the internet at the following:

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