Lots has happened since the last time I wrote a blog post, and in truth, all my previous blog posts have been deleted. That’s all ok. Everything ends. And I’ve come to see that endings are not something to resist, they are part of the movement of life itself.

What I’ve learned, at least for now, is that if you can understand even that, you can continue.

When I first began my spiritual journey (well… who really knows when that actually begins), but let’s say in this lifetime, it was many years ago. I thought I was striving toward a goal, an arrival point. THE END. A place where everything would finally make sense and stay still.

In fact, a beautiful friend and I once shared that idea deeply.

I even wrote about her in a book. I can still remember us sitting in BC Mexican Restaurant in Alexandra Headland, sharing an enchilada (chicken, probably) and a glass of red wine. It was the first time after years of friendship through school that we actually spoke about things of a spiritual nature.

I remember being surprised she brought it up, though later I understood why. She had come through a major loss in her life and was searching for meaning, something to hold onto, something to make sense of what had happened.

I don’t remember the exact question or how the conversation began, but I remember what followed: a deep and open exchange about the meaning of life. That conversation didn’t end that night. In many ways, it continued until she died.

Her passing changed me profoundly. I can’t begin to know the depth of her family’s grief, but I know that losing her altered the course of my own life in ways that still ripple through me.

After that night at BC’s, we kept those conversations going, trying, in our younger years, to understand what it all meant. We genuinely believed there might be an answer waiting for us somewhere. An explanation. A resolution. A kind of spiritual 'arrival.' We thought if we kept searching hard enough, we might just find THE END! Where everything would finally settle into blissful understanding and lasting happiness.

That was the goal, wasn’t it?

Of course, life doesn’t quite work that way.

Now, many decades later, I see things differently. I’m still on the spiritual path, but I no longer believe there is a final destination in the way I once imagined. The journey doesn’t end. What changes is the need for it to end.

The yearning for something elusive begins to soften.

Life weaves itself in spirals. We return to similar places, but not as the same person. Each return carries more depth, more lived experience, more willingness to meet life as it is.

And over time, something quiet begins to settle in. Not certainty exactly, but something more like trust. A sense that perhaps the point was never arrival, but alignment. Not perfection, but presence. Not escape, but participation in life as it is unfolding.

There is a well-known Zen teaching that expresses this simply:

“Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.”

The teaching is often attributed to the Zen master Qingyuan Weixin.

It reminds me that life doesn’t necessarily change its outward shape through awakening. What changes is the inner relationship to it. The washing of dishes, the making of tea, the ordinary tasks of living, they remain. But something in the way they are met becomes quieter, more present, less divided.

There is also another saying I return to often:

Before I understood anything, I thought enlightenment would be a destination.
While I was searching, everything felt uncertain, as though the ground was shifting.
And now, I see it differently again.

Not as arrival but as deepening presence.

These days, I no longer look for 'the end.' I am more interested in how to stay present within change. How to remain open when life shifts. How to allow not knowing. How to be wrong without collapsing inward. How to listen more closely, to intuition, to stillness, to the subtle guidance that seems to arrive only when I stop grasping for answers.

Talk to your guides. Get to know your inner wisdom. Keep learning, keep looking, but don’t mistake the searching for something that needs to be completed.

Because perhaps what we are moving toward was never a final answer at all.

Perhaps it was always this:

To be here.
To live.
To continue.
And to soften into what is.