Life doesn’t have a singular purpose, and yet we try to pigeonhole this infinite gift by searching for a single meaning behind our existence. We hunger for meaning the way a starving man does food—convinced we will waste away without it. As though to experience what it is to be alive weren’t enough to justify drawing breath. Life is a multi-layered practice in exploration, self-definition, connection, and realization. The greatest challenge presented to us as human beings is to allow the infinite to be infinite; to accept that we will always be the student never the teacher, and allow the truths we’ve gathered to evolve because what we seek to understand is a living thing and is in a perpetual state of change. Humanity’s progression of understanding is open-ended. Anyone who professes mastery only shows their ignorance of the infinite procession of enlightenment of which they are a part. Each of us get to add a line into the coverless tome of understanding, which has no beginning and no end.

— L.M. Browning

Question everything—no matter how beloved, or how long-held, or how exalted—without apology. Only those who build their world upon lies need fear an inquisitive mind. The truth will remain, even after a storm of doubt and revolution has washed over it. Only illusions need be protected. The truth need not be defended; it existed before us and will continue to exist after us.

— L.M. Browning

Take all those things that would propose to be important, and weigh them upon the scale of your soul. Asking how much each thing actually impacts, not just the moment, but the years ahead. Discard all that is trivial masquerading as significant, and reserve your days for those things that truly matter.

— L.M. Browning

The cure for our modern maladies is dirt under the fingernails and the feel of thick grass between the toes. The cure for our listlessness is to be out within the invigorating wind. The cure for our uselessness is to take back up our stewardship; for it is not that there has been no work to be done, we simply have not been attending to it.

— L.M. Browning

The divine is in the present, and you must be present to experience it. When you vacate the present and recede into your mind, allowing worries or work to remove you from the moment, you leave the plain upon which the divine dwells. When you are constantly under the anesthetic of digital distraction, you withdraw; you are no longer conscious, and therefore are in no fit state to commune with the sacred. If you wish to hear the answers you seek, you must be present to hear them. If you wish to partake in the insights there to be known, you must be present to receive them. If you wish to know the divine, you must be present to meet it. …you must be present.

— L.M. Browning

The moments of silence are gone. We run from them into the rush of unimportant things, so filled is the quiet with the painful whispers of all that goes unspoken. Busyness is our drug of choice, numbing our minds just enough to keep us from dwelling on all that we fear we can’t change. A compilation of coping mechanisms, we have become our fatigue. Unwilling or unable to cut ourselves free of this modern machine we have built, we’re dragged in its wake all too quickly toward our end. The virtue of a society’s culture is reflected in the physical, mental, and emotional health of its people. The time has come to part ways with all that is toxic, and preserve our quality of life.

— L.M. Browning

The pace of this modern age is not conducive to maintaining one’s consciousness. Glued to our electronics, we are blind and deaf to the world around us. Run down by our long work days, we are too exhausted to think and too hurried to feel. The day ends in a haze of strained thoughts, numbness, and fatigue. And we rise the next morning only to start the cycle again. In this age of distraction, if you desire to fritter away your life with empty diversions, there is an abundance of gadgets available to aid you. Quietness is a characteristic of ages gone by. Our generation is the one it died with. Connected to the virtual world, we ignore the presence of those in our home. One can only hope we will awaken to the need for balance before we look up from the screen to find our loved ones have gone, and our life has passed us by.

— L.M. Browning

The purpose of a pilgrimage is about setting aside a long period of time in which the only focus is to be the matters of the soul. Many believe a pilgrimage is about going away, but it isn’t; it is about coming home. Those who choose to go on pilgrimage have already ventured away from themselves; and now set out in a longing to journey back to who they are. Many a time we believe we must go away from all that is familiar if we are to focus on our inner well-being because we feel it is the only way to escape all that drains and distracts us, allowing us to turn inward and tend to what ails us. Yet we do not need to go to the edges of the earth to learn who we are, only the edges of ourselves.

— L.M. Browning

We all have those things that help us carry on through life. It is important that these things upon which we depend for daily strength are healthy for our character rather than harmful. We must ask ourselves whether the comforts we reach for each day are vices or virtues? Do they feed the best parts of us or do they rob us of them? Even when we are at our most fatigued and are tempted to reach for self-destructive things, we must try to seek out and take solace in those things that will lead to our eventual renewal; rather than those things that will only serve to bring us lower.

— L.M. Browning

We must seek out that which invigorates us, and engage it at all fronts. Art, music, literature, conversation, travel, nature—whatever it is that keeps the fire of our spirit bright—we must build our life around it; for, without our passions, the years ahead become a burden rather than a gift.

— L.M. Browning