Anyone with any degree of nautical navigation experience could tell of a waypoint and its importance to charting ones course from one distinct point or position on a chart or a map to the next as ones journey progresses. Waypoints are points on a journey that provide for a detailed and set number of separate courses in order to reach ones inevitable destination. Interestingly enough, the same can be said for that ever onward path that life takes on whether one acknowledges this as in a single moment leading to greater moments of life or as a more global perspective of ones existence. The waypoints along the path are self-defined and set by each one of us and regardless of how much power one seems to hand over to any other person along the way, these “others” inevitably have no true control over one’s own course, except that decided upon by the individual. Always in the end this rests with the action of the individual choice.
This is placed into certain philosophical terms only to exhibit the manner of ones own moment of creation and the power of ones self-creation
Richard Le Gallienne said:
“Stay the course, light a star. Change the world, where’er you are.”
The fascinating thing that stands for everyone is that even if by existing and acting in accordance to the moments of your own life, you are still effecting change and influencing a varied course for whomever you encounter throughout the passage of your path of life sometimes in the most abject of ways. Now that is a profound bit of revelation when one thinks on it for awhile and better yet still, when one meditates on it for what it truly is. Of course then one might recall the words of General Omar Bradley that spoke on the same general theme. He said:
”Set your course on the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship!”
The differences begin to show through as one thinks of how one both affects ones own courses in and through this life and how one does affect the paths of others that pass close to each of us.
Have you ever considered the axiom of the nexus of life? It’s said that as history meets its own passage in the times and the events of civilization, every so often someone comes along that appears as a magnet to the very actions of being and the courses of others. It’s almost as though this being’s very movement both acts to attract and repel various aspects of existence that are somehow tied to and interacting within this persons sphere. When this person takes a left, it seems that everything and everyone within this persons influence also tends to take a left as well. Not as the proverbial Lemming might, but the decisiveness of others just seem to be moved right along the same course.
The difference to all of this is the soul who doesn’t cast their sails to the same common wind based simply upon the actions of others. There exists the ones who make their path based on the inclinations of their soulfully spiritual self that stands determined based not on the meekness of commonality and of convenience, but rather based upon the nature of what exists at the core of their spiritual self. Many of the faces in history’s vision have been this type of soul and hardly need naming for we all can come to draw up their names simply based on their own affections.
What’s more important is the decision to draw ones own waypoints along the path one chooses in this life and to remember and yes, re-call what is really at the core of ones own being of existence. In this manner of thought, the questions that start to rise to the forefront of the mind as this course is laid out might include:
What sets you in and apart from everyone else?
Who are you and what “IS” important to you in your life?
Where did you begin this journey, where are you now and where are you going in the ages to come? For each and every moment of life and of existence can easily mark out another age. A calendar page or another’s definition of what they state life to be doesn’t necessarily have to define ones own age of life!
How do you affect your own path by your actions and how do your actions affect the life and the path of another?
It’s questions and considerations such as these that only begin to mark out the affections of ones own path and where the stars are along the waypoints of ones own existence in this age and in the ages to come.
It might be said that to blindly set one’s own waypoints in the course of life based upon another’s definition of experience and the definitions they accept, might be to set ones course not to the stars in the universe of ones own existence, but to the passing lights of another’s. This is the basis and some of the finest of arguments in support of those moments of quiet and inward meditation where one can begin to pick out what defines ones own waypoints and where and how the paths of another might either be more or less beneficial.
Self contemplation is wonderful, isn’t it?
As Always,
WD
© 2009 WD Allan, spiritualitymoment.com
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