Every choice made is a choice to turn one’s back to a fate never to be
lived.
There doesn’t go a day where I’m not asking myself what I should do with
my life. I’m living my dream and I’m grateful for everything that I have got
the chance to experience. But I’m also conscious that I’m only living one
narrow little path in this reality.
Standing one the top of a mountain alone or with a good friend is one of
many ways to feel the greatness of this world. It has given me small glimpses
of the freedom I’m searching for and at times time have come to slow down and the
building blocks of that which is creating my inner world have started to hump,
to shake and then vibrate, showing it’s own true nature of illusion and then,
in a second, go back to normal like nothing had happened. I’m left with the
sensation that something great just occurred, but I’m not sure if it’s just in
my imagination. And then the next though arrives: would it be less real if it´s
just in my mind? Letting oneself go crazy could be well worth the jolly good ride!
So in short, what I find up there is as close to my concept of freedom
that I can come. I´m not only talking about the moment at a peak, but also of
the repetitious pushing of ice-axes in to snow and kicking steps thousands and
thousands of times, hour after hour most days a week every month on the part of
the year where we have snow covered mountains. And if the snow is not there it
will be a similar repetition on rock, gravel, moss, grass or any other surface
that lies on the ground letting me rise closer to heaven.
When the business of getting up is over with, we have the different ways
of getting down, all leading to the same kind of freedom. Keeping one´s center
of gravity over the outside ski under the arch of the foot is one of the
greatest ways to attain heightened awareness that I know of. Snow washing over
my face like water from waves in the ocean is washing over a boat and the
falling sensation deep down in my gut - the rollercoaster ride of the mountain
but more pure than any amusement park can ever be.
The mountains are very well this earths stairways to heaven. Like
lighthouses of darkness they stand in the way of the sun casting their shadows
over the valleys. They create fear to be overcome and myths to be revealed and
when you submerge up and down their faces you make of yourself something more
and better than before. Up there you learn something magic that cannot be put
in to words by any other means than negation. In other words, you can only
really say what you learn up there by what you learn not. Most traditions of
wisdom keep this as one of the highest of truths.
But what then is this life about?
Imagine yourself living in the greatest of castles with 11 great rooms
all of them leading to heaven or hell. The question would be if you have a life
to live in this castle, would you like to live your whole life examining and
reexamining, searching and researching only one of these rooms? Or would you
like to open yourself and learn something from all of them; room after room,
reality after reality. Lessons of life are to be learnt everywhere and not only
in one closed-up world. The mountain world of this planet is for sure one of
these rooms leading to somewhere magic.
But we also have a world of the dessert, ocean, jungle, forest, city,
countryside and so on as well as a world of living with your own family, with
friends and by yourself.
These are some of the reasons why I keep on keeping the dialogue with
myself open every single day to see where my next step is headed. One of the
greatest men of the mountains, Walter Bonatti, turned his back to the mountains
in his early thirties to open himself to the rest of this world while he was
still young. Although I’m not saying that his way is mine or anyone else´s, I
think it´s wise to learn from his example and be open to the flow of life and
not try to force that which will be because of yesterday’s concepts.
Every time we choose to-do or not-to-do in this world we are turning our
back to the future, the benefits and retributions that path would have hold in its hands and we are opening ourselves
to what we have chosen to receive.
For me, living in the mountains is a way of living and learning on the
edge. It’s very well to learn in the neighborhood of the outskirts of reality
because there you will learn something that can’t be learnt anywhere else. But,
life in the middle is also teaching something magic and profound. Without
knowing up, down, left, right and center, how can we truly say that we know this
world?
