Shot Out of a Cannon

First Steps

"If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It is lethal." Paulo Coelho

"Once you stop learning, you start dying." Albert Einstein

"The road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began...How far ahead the road has gone, and I must follow, if I can." J.R.R. Tolkien

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." Carl Jung

I have spent years sitting at this computer, my books, my musings, my assignments. I have taken the greatest journey one can envision, into themselves, and am about to come out the other side of that long, solitary road. At this stage of life, I know no other way to express what it is that I have completed other than the words of those sages whom I have been studying for the last few years. In my way, it feels like I've come home after a very long adventure. As Fitzgerald wrote:

"It's a funny thing about comin' home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You'll realize what's changed is you."

Yeah, that is exactly the way things have panned out. 

I would like to start this narrative, this exploration of the inner and outer worlds, with those who are interested in the struggle through all those things they thought they were fighting, only to to come to themselves in the end. I reflect back to the moment that I snapped that image; and now that I look back on it I realize that taking this picture was synonymous to being shot out of a cannon through its center. What experiences brought me to this point, what happened in this room, and where did I go from here? 

On reflection, I suppose it makes perfect sense that one of the first places I landed after leaving that window was into the fire. From fire, all is destroyed and born anew. Ironic, isn't it?