On the Philosophy of the Search

Half past one in the afternoon. I’m on a break, riding south today from Plaska, in Poland. I’m a couple hundred kilometers south now, right up against the Belarusian border.

My phone just buzzed. A text from my phone carrier: Welcome to Belarus. Calls here cost a fortune. Of course, the networks always think they know exactly where I am. What kind of risk does that tracking create, with some algorithm thinking I’m in a “forbidden” country? I don’t know. I hope I’m not actually in Belarus. I’m probably not. I think I would have noticed the crossing. There are serious borders out there with patrols, police, soldiers, the works.

I’m in a forest, among humming pines and birches, on a small forestry road.

And I feel strange. Genuinely deep in a category I call That Indescribable Feeling. It feels unreal, in a good way. I’m on some kind of border myself, too — mentally. Between this so-called reality and something more real than this human experience.

I let myself sink into this strange state. I’m not afraid of it anymore these days, and I don’t refuse it or push it away. I don’t feel fear or anxiety while I’m experiencing it, not like I did just a few years back. Somehow I’ve learned to embrace it.

Very strong feelings come to me, the kind that bring a tear to the corner of my eye. I feel close to the truth. Close to God. That feeling is calling me deeper. Or maybe it’s not so much the feeling itself. It’s the knowing that comes from something — something that is present, right now. And what better place to feel that than here, in the forest.

There’s a longing in it too. A calling. Something is calling me toward itself. And I want to move. I want to go closer to it, toward it.

The only problem is, I don’t really know how, because I’m still so limited, so bound to this human form, with all its limitations. I know that if I walk north, south, west, or east from this point, I probably won’t get any closer to that something. Even if I could dig underground, or take flight, I still wouldn’t get closer to it.

And yet it feels like I should move, somehow, toward it. Closer to that something that feels real, true. Like home.

That’s probably why I travel far and wide on my motorcycle to begin with.