take the long way home

Climbing the spiritual mountain is the supreme egoic accomplishment in this game. By reaching the top you essentially become the most high. The race to the top, while dealing with your split personality, eventually satisfies both sides of the contending halves of your mind. In other human pursuits, this drive to get to the top of your game is the shiny right hand path beckoning you on with promises of fame and fortune. Once reached, the accolades come pouring in. You have made it!

There are two paths - the left and the right. One is shiny, full of your immediate desires, and leads to your cyclical death and re-birth. The other is mundane and dull; however, unlike desire which appears, peaks, and disappears, it just is; it follows the arcing and declension of the natural way. And that's the choice. In ancient Egypt, the two courses can be represented as the cyclical path of the sun god versus the stability of Osiris and the ultimate meaning is contained in their two concepts of time which are neheh and djet.

Osiris and Re merged into one

Neheh is the cyclical path that Re makes and brings time to order. Djet just is; it is not created nor governed.

The right hand path is the path of the sun. Round and round he goes, daily climbing that mountain in the north, shining in full radiance at midday, and then falling into the waters after exhausting himself. The next day he does the same thing, on and on he goes always taking that shiny bejeweled route. The left hand path is the path of the moon. She appears in a cycle out of the waters broken, but eventually reconstituting herself until she shines as well. She does not shine as brightly as the sun however she does not flame out daily like the sun. Instead, she takes her time on this journey to completeness following the natural way until she loses her power and returns to the darkness to regenerate herself over a three day period. The sun is forcing things and his brilliance is short in comparison to the moon, as she follows the great Tao. She lives one life for every twenty eight he lives. In this creation that has manifested, everything is subject to the rhythms of the natural way of things.

I see life and I see death all around me. Day breaks and then night sets upon us. I wake and then I sleep. The energy which courses through me is cyclical. It comes and goes in an undulating serpentine rhythm. To replenish the energy, I need to eat and rest. Like moths to the flame, we are all attracted to fame, fortune, and glory. Looking around I can see the natural path is to take the long way home, shine brightly in full radiance, and then return to the void.