Climbing Mountains Of Mist

We create mountains for ourselves to climb. We trust that over the next peak will be our final salvation, our complete happiness, that for which we have been searching. But as we climb our mountains of mist, we find only more mountains, more mist.

Our mountains are made of mist because we make them up in our minds. Our dreams, our goals; these are our mountains of mist. If our mountains weren't made of mist, then when we achieved our dreams, our goals, they would remain with us and satisfy us endlessly. Instead, they evaporate like morning fog, and there is never a lasting satisfaction.

A relationship can be a misty mountain, covered in a mysterious shroud that we can't quite seem to touch and penetrate as fully as we wish that we could. It remains aloof in many ways, and the fullness we wish it to be is only a vapor; too ephemeral to embrace. We count on it to be our mountain, but when it evaporates during the heat of the day, we cannot understand. We forget that it was only made of mist.

Mists are not only what we perceive as truth, but mists are what we, ourselves, are made of. Our endless thoughts, emotions, none lasting longer than a moment in time, create our mists, create ourselves. Two people in relationship; two mists intermingling for only a moment in time before their very being wafts this way and that, and go their own way. Thoughts and emotions, the mists of being, the fairy fabric of relationship, and none of them real.

We so much want them to be real, but can't hold them at all, not even for a moment. They fly away, like birds in a windstorm sailing with the gusts and drifting toward the sea. Endlessly flying, endlessly changing, endlessly searching - these thoughts and emotions - just two bundles of feelings and passion working through each other, ever changing, never real.

We touch the earth with our feet and the earth seems solid, real, not at all like our mountains of mist, but even the earth deceives, for the earth can never fulfill our dreams, if we look too closely. Only heaven can do that, though we can't seem to touch heaven, except in our dreams, and that must be good enough for now. And our spiritual life becomes a mountain of mist that we look to and hope.

Emotions, thoughts, dreams, heaven - all of our minds - the haze of our minds. Beyond mind, what can there be? Without the thought, the emotion, the dreams, the imaginations, what can there be? Surely nothing, but what other than nothing are our dreams, our emotions, our thoughts? They change and can't be substantial. We change, because we are our thoughts and emotions, so can we be substantial?

And as the mist of our mountains settle into the valleys of reality, suddenly . . . the sun appears. n