“Here’s what you need to know before you travel into the path of totality.” I didn’t invent that title. I popped onto my main page on the inter-web this morning and it was a title of an article about the problems people can face while trying to get to a location to see the total solar eclipse that’s happening on Monday.
 
My thought was, “Wow, that sounds like a title I may have created.” So, I borrowed it.
 
The fact is, that title had nothing to do with the article. It, or anything like it, was never mentioned again. But, good title, don’t you think?
 
Me, I was never that drawn to solar eclipses. No more than the fact that I knew you should never look at them directly. So, even as a child, I would never even go outside when they were happening. Some people dig them though. Good for them.
 
I always wondered what pilots do if they’re flying towards the sun during an eclipse. But, I guess they have that all figured out.
 
More to the point, “The Path of Totality,” and what you need to know?
 
There are some of us who walk that road. …That pathway towards the promised greater knowledge provided to us by the great teachings and the great masters. Few and far between, yet there are those of us who want to know, understand, and interact with cosmic enlightenment and god consciousness, by however you define that understanding.
 
Everyone knows about that kind of stuff. Everyone has heard about it. Many/most simply dismiss it as mumbo-jumbo. Others maybe poke their nose into the concept(s), but soon fade away when all isn’t reveled immediately.
 
How about you? How much time, how much of your life have you devoted to seeking that deeper knowledge and understanding?
 
Probably the biggest point to make, “Before you travel into the path of totality,” is that the deepest truth of the truth is that all of this everything is so cloaked in illusion that few people can ever navigate the pathway. Yes, there are some/many who truly believe. There are those who spend their entire life seeking. But, as by this path’s very nature, it is so elusive that very few find their own Buddhahood.  
 
So, what does this tell us? Does this proclaim that one should not even try? No. I don’t believe so. I believe that enlightenment is as easy as anything else in life. It is as easy as you make it. As long as you do not believe that you cannot find enlightenment, that you are not pure or holy enough to ever encounter cosmic consciousness, or that you have to spend your life living in austerity. If you believe in this manner, yes, it will be impossible to achieve. If, on the other hand, you follow the path, defined by schools like Zen, that everyone already is enlightened, all one has to do is to reembrace this fact, than all of the illusion falls away.
 
Life is your choice. You can live a life never seeking to understand the deeper knowledge that is out there, or you can choose to find that deeper understanding. There are a million ways to follow this path, none is necessarily better than the other. But, “Here’s what you need to know before you travel into the path of totality,” if you’re not willing to let go of illusion, further forms of illusion is all you will ever find.