I have a friend who speaks of knowledge as an island in a sea of mystery. . . . We dredge up soil from the bed of mystery and build ourselves room to grow. And still the mystery surrounds us. It laps at our shores. It permeates the land. Scratch the surface of knowledge and mystery bubbles up like a spring.
As they talked together of The Way, the obstacles, the people, the signs ... you felt the great importance of the physicality of the quest. All of them stressed the power of silence: the need to be alone and find oneself in the silence. Moving alone, with silence as the single companion, seems a most profound means to register the natural balance of the world without, and world within.