Why Choose the Road Less Traveled?

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

Driving along recently, I was taken by the shimmering leaves of fall.  Instead of turning on the usual road to my destination, I chose to continue ahead.  What a wondrous display of gold, cranberry, and sienna as I drove through a wooded area.  As is often my experience, when I decide to veer from the familiar or prescribed course, wonder awaits.

I remember Richard Burton’s character in The Night of the Iguana, commenting on the fact that we live in two worlds: the realistic and the fantastic.  That has stuck with me for a very long time.  At 33 I heard Jim Weatherly’s song, The Need to Be, and knew it was my calling and changed my life direction. Over my lifetime since, I’ve often selected the fantastic.  Though there may have been real prices to pay for such choices, and there were; I would not have chosen to miss this different road. 

In Toltec shamanism we speak to the Nagual and the Tonal worlds.  The Tonal is the familiar, realistic as it were, with its metronome of time beating out what and where and with whom, we might live a more ordinary life.  It’s the 9 to 5, 7 days a week, 365 days in a year living that can be very comfortable for many.

The Nagual world leads to the path of magic and the extraordinary.  That is my favorite path as it holds the keys to what I like to call the phantasmagorical. It has always directed me to highest good even when it challenged all my assumptions and the ‘shoulds’ I was raised with. 

This path of now 44 years has given me amazing experiences.  I’ve been at 14,000 ft in Peru participating in a Quechua Despacho; conducted ceremonies in the Far East; addressed an assembly of 22,000 people; authored books; initiated apprentices with fire; promoted earth-based teaching nationally and internationally; communicated with spirits in ruins across the Southeast and Southwest; produced and hosted a radio show; started a women’s center at a university; birthed a sex information hotline in the PNW; co-hosted and produced a women’s talk show pilot before The View; co-conceived of an international women’s organization; eased people through the tunnel at death; stepped through portals of time and space near Bolivia; been hosted by political dissidents in Tito-ruled Yugoslavia and Basque ‘terrorists’ in Spain; climbed to the top of a mountain crawling through cactus to the top; lived in amazing places and met wonderfully awesome people along the way.

Not an easy path, I would say for some.  One needs to be willing to let go of the safe shore and let the rapid current move you along a sometimes raging river. Some people in your lives will move away or judge your choices. You may encounter a lot of naysayers when you choose the fantastic.  Your family may be less than enthralled with your choices. There are times of being alone for extended periods.  Longevity of relationships will most likely elude you. Yet, what you sacrifice in the ordinary will be much outweighed by the phenomenal.

Whatever is your path of choice, I would encourage to break up your routines from time to time and turn down a street you’re not familiar with.  Get a little lost on occasion.  Keep driving past your designated turn or exit.  Get off the highway.  Disconnect from the electronics.  Invite a little wonder in your experience and receive the rich rewards of moving, just a tad, outside your comfort zone.

I believe that we have within us a dormant dancer awaiting the call to magnificence and fluidity.  Our spirits are larger than the enclosures we may find ourselves trapped in. If we’ve but one life to live, wouldn’t you want to taste the fantastic even for short bursts?

Perhaps you find the routine and ordered life more to your liking.  I totally understand; it has its own rewards of normalcy and constancy.  Yet, I encourage you to every now and again, lift that veil of illusion and allow yourself a glimpse of magic.  It will add a dimension of wonder to your lives much like the glorious fall colors at this time of year do.  And, perhaps, it will give you a window into the true Light at the end of our life tunnels.  That light is brilliant, commanding and comforting.  There is nothing to fear at the end of life when you have lived your days to the fullest.  I have, and I would wish for you a taste of it even in small morsels. 

Start tomorrow.  Take that side street, stop at a little town off the highway with the mystery spot, rejoice at detours, walk in an ancient forest, sit on a beach from sunrise to sunset, find a place to see the milky way. Do that thing you were always going to do and haven’t yet.  At the end of your life, should you choose this path, you will know you are not disappointed to find you lived it for someone else. You were true to yourself and your purpose.  So invite magic and it will come!

“We’ve just to listen and know when and where we are destined to step onto the dance floor of our life purpose and trust the movement.”  We Dance to a Whispered Voice