Most days during the week, I walk downhill to the lake from my home and then uphill to my home from the lake. I walk this half-mile path day and night, and it’s often the route I take when I run because it’s the shortest path to the lake, which I run around.

Day or night, I find myself lost in my thoughts, eyes wide open. And sometimes, the spell is broken, and I realize I am in a prime of my life. My eyes are in the same position, and they are in the same sockets, and they are still gazing at the trees, houses, birds, electric wires, and dust in the streets, but it’s like I’m seeing it from a different perspective but from the same point of view.

Whenever I come back to this awareness, I feel empowered and awe-struck. I feel young. I feel like a spiritual entrepreneur. I can do anything, and I can take risks, such as the risk of fulfilling my dreams through my gifts. I like this perspective. I come here often.

But I also leave it often, and my eyes are open, but it’s like they are clouded with the noise of the day. It’s like my cognitive enterprises blind me—these mental busses that I board and exit—and become perpetually lost in spiritual transit—that is, until I break the cycle and open my open eyes.

Where is my mind when I can’t see the world with open eyes? It’s hiding behind a veil of some sort. Perhaps my fears evaporate into stormy clouds, and perhaps the clouds condense until the rain washes away my fears, and my fears become puddles in the world in which I walk, in which I see, with fresh eyes.

Wherever my mind is, it’s neither here nor there, and it seems there is something inside of me that precipitates clarity when my sight clouds my vision.