To Walk or not to Walk, was that a Question?

El Camino means ´the road´, but El Camino De Santiago is a concept really. Today I was forced to stop walking due to an inflammation in one leg that is not wanting to resolve with pills alone, so a forced rest of a few days. Walking or not, it is all part of El Camino. Not sure yet what this stop will bring. I choose to take the bus to a city rather than staying in a village with 2 houses and a church, specially over the weekend, as one needs to eat from time to time. I am now in Lugo a city with its entire roman(!) city walls still in place, quite amazing. Maybe I ´bussed´ myself away from solitude and basic existence and the right place to be present with the pain. Only time will tell.

The Camino Primitivo, as this leg of the Camino is called has been great. Very quiet, walking alone all day and even sleeping as the sole occupant of the very basic albergues, privideing me with the gifts of a guilt-free long hot shower and a night without poky earplugs-I don´t snore you see!

It is interesting how everyday is different, not just in scenery, but also stuff that comes up in the mind while walking and in dreams while sleeping. Issues from the past that linger in my head pop up, wanting attention. One in particular that I struggled with for years resolved with an interesting twist. It required a shift in my attitude. A shift away from ego that was possible only through a strong desire to free myself from the resentment I still carried. As ´stuff´ comes up in my mind or in dreams, I take it as a cue that the time is right to be present with it. Walking in solitude is one way of being present issues that present itself. There are many others...

Baggage, real, imagined or as a metafor gets really heavy after a while. Yet you are the one that chooses to carry it. Interesting eh! While walking for such a long time you get a chance to deside how desperately you want to hang on to it.

As a fellow pilgrim from France said, apparently told so by a three year old girl (!!!) walking the Camino with her dad; the way to Santiago is about the past, the way from Santiago is about the future. Does that mean that walking one-way is not enough? Oh boy! Not sure if you actually have to walk literally at all, although while walking El Camino can be intense. I believe my Camino started from the moment it presented itself to me as something I needed to do. It started to have an effect on me from that very moment, weather I was walking, sleeping, flying through the sky or doing something else. It had become part of my consciousness. I know for sure right now that it will not be out of my consciousness for anytime soon. So even while ´being stopped in my tracks´ I am ´walking El Camino´.

In the old days people were promised a reduction in time in purgatory by half if they walked to Santiago. Was it a get-rich-scheme invented by the leaders of the church at the time? Maybe so, maybe not. It depends how one visualises purgatory. Maybe it is a similar concept as the Bardo´s in Buddhism. Maybe pergatory represents the time spent after one´s death before recognising the tunnel of Light to Light itself (heaven, Soul, God...). Perhaps that time is prolonged when unresolved issues are present and keeps one bound to the the life that was instead of ´moving on´. Perhaps it does ´pay off´ to spend time with unresolved stuff now, while being alive and well so you can die well without struggle when time comes. Is that perhaps why we get old and left with so much time to ponder?

Hmmm I still have a few miles left to do I recon! So on that note, I better go, adios!