I was startled today as I looked into his eyes. What do we do when everything is gray slush and we just want to be free from the uncertainty and void? What do we do with the truth that we can never return to Eden? How do we manage the reality that we cannot reverse evolution or slip back into a former mindset that seemed to shield us from a present reality that pulls us apart? Our only salvation is to go forward through the desert into deeper and ever-deeper levels of consciousness. I’m not convinced that the exchange is necessarily pain for happiness, but a degree of immobility for power. . .power to grow, to live fully, to understand the origins of our anguish, how to stop it, and the pathway that is necessary for both cessation and an emergence of a greater whole.