I have been searching for something.  It took me thirty-five years to actually figure out what I have been looking for, quietness.  I still have not found it.  This quietness is not the normal quietness; I do not want to sit alone in a room, the ascetic life is not something for my reality.  I want to quiet my body and its physicalness.  The senses connect us to this world.  So to disconnect from our disordered modernity, the senses must be conquered, if but only for minutes.  Detached from the senses one has a chance to feel the internal quietness that we all should be seeking. 

Even though I have not found it yet, identifying what one is looking for is essential to progress on a journey.  But it was not until my thirty-fifth year that I realized to find what I am looking for, I must turn inward.  For decades I was looking outward in vain.  This idea of an inward turn is what is most difficult.  The outside world, with all of its distractions energizes your senses at a rate that would be unfathomable to our predecessors. 

Today the world is interconnected.  At any moment in time we are able to look to our small mobile phones, and know what is happening in the farthest corner of the globe.  We are able to communicate instantaneously with anyone we choose.  The interconnectedness of our age is something that constantly draws us outside of ourselves.  The orientation outward away from ourselves distracts us from the interiority that calms the soul.  An external positioning is not in and of itself in error, because much good comes from the interconnectedness allowed through our innovations.  They connect us to our loved ones, they allow us to work from almost anywhere, unchaining us from our desks.  A person needs one of these if they wish to thrive in our new global market.  To use these devices well though we need to be able to discriminate.    

This type of temporal instantness, is what takes us out of ourselves, it makes us feel as if to be truly people in our so much championed digital age, we must be engaged always with the outside world.  There can be nothing more false than that belief.  To truly be engaged with the world around us, we must first turn our gaze inward and prepare our souls for engagement with the outside world.  How this is done I do not know.  But the most important part of a journey is to know your destination.  I know my destination and my journey has been commenced.