Mariette’s Walk of Wisdom, ‘becoming one’.
Text: Mariëtte
While walking, I started looking for myself to overcome things. The Walk Of Wisdom fitted in well. I walked the trek in two parts, first 41/2 days and then after a two-week break in between 4 days. I didn’t know if I would be able to walk the whole trip in a row.
A path of wisdom, a way inward, into your own heart. Taking time to reflect on your experiences and space for reflection. Having to find my own way – literally and figuratively – and that from my own desire.
Finding my own way
I found out that I can literally find my way around on my own (with the necessary tools such as the WOW signs, my phone and GPS), but I can also walk so far that I can also walk on my own. I love being outside, walking, being amazed by everything around me. I have to get used to the sounds around me, outside but also at the overnight addresses. The sensitivity to stimuli that I have due to Acquired Brain Injury, NAH, then comes into play. But my earplugs are now one of best friends, just like my transfer buttock by the way, which filters the light extra, because my brain can no longer filter/process that bright sunlight properly.
A Way In
According to Jos Alferink, in a book I read in one of the overnight addresses – at hotel Oortjeshekken in the Ooijpolder – along the WOW, there is “a natural order in the way inwards. Just as the water has to twist and turn to flow to the sea, so we humans have to go through the forces of our inhibitions and obstacles to get to our essence“.
The WOW helped me to find this way inside and to get to my essence.
During my pilgrimage I was introduced to meditation in the Emmaus monastery in Velp, near Grave. By chanting, a kind of singing, you can get into a kind of trance. Also great to do when you have just woken up or just before you go to sleep or are in the bath, countless possibilities. Nam MYO Renge KYO (‘I dedicate myself to the mystical law of cause and effect’), that’s it, reciting this tune to yourself out loud or to yourself and then for a few minutes at a time. Not that difficult you would think, but I do experience peace because of it. This is hard to comprehend, it’s something you can really only experience by doing it.
Becoming One
To be, tobe one, and to be with what is, was, and is to come. Being one with the other, together and alone. Being one with nature, the forest, the sea, the beach. Being one with the situation you have ended up in…
Rise to the physical and mental challenge. Finding your way, literally and figuratively, with or without aids. Passing kilometers, through a beautiful landscape, in nature, over the bridges at the Nijmegen pumping station, Heumen and at Grave and Nijmegen, to bridge something in myself. Let yourself be amazed by what you encounter on your path.
Treat yourself to a short retreat by entering the monastery, i.e. spending the night there and continuing your way with the help of a volunteer, who picked me up on the route.
What do I do with the pain, the sadness, but also how do I embrace myself when I find myself again? Not only physically but also mentally with yourself, being one with yourself. This resulted in My Walk of Wisdom.
PS: Mariette has had her rainbow poem, experience, engraved in a stained glass window, she recently donated it to the Emmaus Monastery
