When you can no longer discern up from down, good from bad, precious from paltry; when there is no well in sight and you have forgotten even to search for one; when, beholding an empty horizon, you are left to wander witlessly over the broken dunes - then you know you are in the desert. A dark unease envelops you…but, deep within your breast, you feel a stirring - the revelation! It is imminent.
You are deep in the desert now. Retracing your steps will do nothing for you. No - you must go deeper.
Your weary feet carry you across a desolate landscape. It is getting hotter, much hotter - but even that means little to you now. The sun’s oppressive rays, your sachet run-dry…there is no succor from the desert.
You are ready to die.
If only you would let yourself want what you truly need! If only…if only you would look up towards the horizon, up towards the desert well which now graces it. If only the sweet waters of that well would bless your parched lips. If only, drinking that elixir, you would be permitted to continue your pilgrimage.
But your head hangs low. Your legs, the linchpin of your pilgrim-life, which once so deftly obeyed you, have now lost their capacity for easy motion. A terrible laxity steals over your every muscle. And still you do not see it.