allowance for getting lost

Even the allowance for getting lost has been institutionalized. The very grounds of wonder have been colonized by institution, which is itself a vestige of our need to control.

The answer is not one of a binary choice, not between bolstering or obliterating the institution but rather of finding the third way, of turning to the innate and natural interior realm. This territory is as expansive as our physical territory and to venture there is everything and more that it is to physically venture.

Though of course the call or invitation to turn inward doesn't ring with the excitement that the call to outward adventure does. Turning inward conjures images of meditation cushions and pithy statements of enlightenment. Serious, grueling, grinding darkness... these are words of heaviness and intensity that often color our ideas of what this internal venture is like, what this internal "work" is like. On the other side are the New-Agey aphorisms that often portray a fluffiness blind to reality. "Aw, but reality is not what you think it is," they'll say...

But the inward call is not simply a venture of solitary aloneness. It is one of deep belongingness, interconnection, and interbeing. It's also a venture of gratitudinal hilarity and wonderful absurdity. Stepping over the threshold of understanding is the entrance to the realm of this hilarity.