The Garden of Ever-Changing Forking Paths

Dear Searcher,

My counsel to you is in a story that taught me about the nature of destiny: The Garden of Forking Paths.

This tragic Jorge Luis Borges story is about the nature of destiny, as shown to the main character, a spy, via an elaborate Chine ivory labyrinth minutes before he is to execute a murder he has been assigned to carry out.

The beauty of the story astounded me at first, but you will understand the delicacy of it too.

You see the premise is simple: fate is like a labyrinth, a garden of forking paths. What path you choose determines where you end up in the intricacy of this maze. Should you want to free yourself from this entrapment, there is only path you choose.

Everything else is just a parallel Universe that ends in a dead end. Where it leads you, you know not.

The lead character in the story only wished he ended up in a world where he was apprehended before he murdered the man who taught him about destiny.

But like all wishes, it is a wish: a mere golden cage for the heart, futile and still captivating.

The mathematics of non-being are irrelevant. It is being that matters. For being, my dear, we follow only a single path. When that path reveals itself clearly, it is a rare moment, and it does not last forever. Should you choose then to turn back or aside, you know not where you will be in a few moments. Whether from there will you see the path; will it reveal to you again?

I rather think it's a bit more complicated than that. I sense that this Garden is ever-evolving, ever shape-shifting. It's not an ivory structure... it's a fluid, ethereal illusion.

This makes it all the more interesting, and this requires all the more that you master the art of going from moment to moment.

When you enter the Room of Now, do close the Door of Past behind you. If not, you will be consumed, and the Corridors of Future will be annihilated with you.

Open your eyes!
See the great dance this illusion is in!
See Creation at its being!
See how every moment shapes itself, and nothing is the same forever!
Sense who you are be-ing!

Be fascinated! Yet know that a human heart's flight is even beyond, beyond this illusion! You have no moment to lose in the illusion, for you are to transcend it!

Do not fear loss, there is no such thing. Do not be afraid: the distractions are just to tease you to realize the significance of the Path; they are part of the entrapment of this maze.

You transcend,
you transcend.

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