The Benefits of Being Lost

Leaving the Beaten Path

“Leaving it, you agree to make your own choices for a spell. You agree to become aware of each step you take, turning all your senses to exactly where you are and exactly what you are doing.”

Barbara Brown Taylor (An Altar in the World; The Practice of Getting Lost)

I got lost the other day. I was trying to locate a house some friends of mine are buying. It's somewhere not far from my home, and I thought I knew every square inch of this neighborhood. I was wrong. I discovered, not far away, an area that clearly was once “in the country.” There were wooden farm houses with land around them, rather than brick and glass from a more modern era. Then I remembered that when I first moved here twenty-five years ago, I could hear a rooster crowing in the early morning. It's surprising what you find when you get off the beaten path.

Barbara Brown Taylor recommends getting lost as a spiritual practice. We humans do like our regular routes; rather like the cows she cites in her book. We like to put our bodies on auto-pilot and let our heads wander where they will, detached. I confess, I sometimes get to wherever I'm going, and wonder who's been driving the car, since my mind was somewhere else entirely. Especially nowadays, when we multitask routinely, we are rarely all in one place and focused on one thing.

It is a bit disorienting to get lost, to disconnect from one's usual moorings; a little frightening, in fact. That's what makes it a good practice. We are forced to bring our full attention to where we are, to pull all our various parts into one whole, and be fully present. When we do that, even for a little while, we realize how fractured we typically operate. Did you know that, in the U.S., almost half a million people were injured by distracted drivers in 2012, the last year of complete statistics. Nearly 5,000 were killed.

The point is that being here now, whether we are behind the wheel or walking on the street, is not only safer for everybody, it is also great practice in being conscious—because you cannot be conscious if all your parts are not in the same place at the same time. But we don't have to get lost to practice consciousness. We could simply make the decision to be fully present in each moment. After all, we're not lost if, in the process, we find ourselves.

                                                                In the Spirit,

                                                                      Jane