When the end of the path comes nearer.
I was listening recently to a summary of Peter Fenwick’s research into near-death experiences. Often these experiences bring clarity to our Life. Some of them resonated with moments walking on Pilgrimate Paths
“Being” overtakes “Doing”
I do not know when I will die.
But I do know that my body is no longer what it was.
Almost everything now requires effort. Small tasks can leave me exhausted. For years, I have wanted to live within a quiet limit: one task a day.
The world still asks me to be busy.
It is hard work to stop doing things.
However, I did escape this imprisonment in my walking years.. When I walked through the silence of fields and slept under the open sky, a different reality began to emerge. What opened up for me is an awareness of being, Being Alive. This is a shift from doing to an all-encompassing awareness of Life as a whole. It is a privilege to be part of it.
This first happened when I was walking through the Valley of the River Tera towards Sanabria in Spain. As I progressed with my sticks and my rucksack along the path above the lake and through the broom I felt that everything around me in nature was me. There was no boundary between myself and the life all around me. My body was no longer defining where my life is. We are all one with Life – with Nature..
Life itself remains a mystery for me.
Tha Camino de Santiago in the Tera Valley.
However, since that time in the Tera Valley I know that all the “Ego” I nourish within me is an empty illusion. I also have a need to escape into nature because it is there that I come back to earth.
Peter Fenwick noted that his research subjects also had similar experiences.
They say that St. Francis of Assisi used to sleep on this tree. Between Rome and Assisi
A tidal wave of Love.
On my walk from Loyola in Spain’s Basque region to Iona Abbey in Scotland I had another experience which washed right through me. I awoke in a field of sheep which I’d chosen as my lodging for the night. I was well out in the open away from the dry stone walls. After months of walking I was nearing the comfort of my sister’s house. I thought about some family issues which involved the family inheritance. That matter had disturbed my inner peace for some years. I felt that I had resolved most of my disquiet. However, I still had one tight knot of resentment deep within me. This bothered me. I had tried several therapeutic methods to release this knot.
Sleeping in a field of sheep. That night the end of the Path was with sheep.
As I awoke to the munching of grass and movement of sheep I felt rested and relaxed. Then, with the dawn, a wave of love swept through me. Everyone and everything was included.
There was nothing else but this Love. It swept away all rancor and every obstacle to love. This has stayed with me for over a decade now.
In those days I would frequently pray a prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Loyola was where I had started this pilgrimage to Scotland. The prayer ended in, “Favor me with your Love for that is all I need.”
This has echoes of John Lennon and is also recorded in Peter Fenwick’s research as a common Near Death Experience.
Acceptance of Death and openness to dying.
Another moment when I felt an important change within me was also unexpected. It was even earlier than the other two. This happened when I began to walk real distances nearly twenty years after my accident. I was walking up to the hermitage in the Sierra de Gata high above the village of Gata. I had passed the hermitage and was heading up the Roman Road to the Pass leading into the Province of Salamanca. This Pass, in many ways, marks the border between the North of Spain and the South of Spain. The Meseta begins over the Pass.
The Roman road from Gata. The end of the Path is in Salamanca Province.
I might have been saying the Rosary. I imagine this was so since each of the ten “Hail Marys” end with the words, “ and at the hour of our death. Amen.” As I climbed up to the summit I realised that I had absolutely no fear of death.
Since then I have nothing within me which reacts to the knowledge that I will die. There is a profound freedom in accepting that death is the definitive end of a life. Far from being a source of fear, this finality serves as a high-contrast background that makes the “now” vibrate with intensity. To live with the certainty of the end is to live with “wonder and amazement.”
The “quiet” that fills the later years is not a vacuum; it is a fullness. While the world around us remains busy “doing things,” the transition to “Being” offers a different kind of completion. The open fields are no longer a destination to be reached; they have moved inside.
This acceptance of death is also noted by Peter Fenwich as a common aspect of near death experiences.
My life laid out in front of me at the end of the Path.
Finally, many people near death say that they see their life laid out before them. As my own capacity to “do” diminishes I see with increasing clarity my life laid out before me. Until now I have been too busy dealing with the present to appreciate fully this life I have lived. This life: ever changing, constantly developing and about to expire. However, not until this blog for my grandchildren is finished! The end of the path.
Grand Children.