Many times in my metaphysical journey I have been reminded of the Robert Frost poem THE ROAD NOT TAKEN. I will not represent the entire poem here but it begins with the well known,
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both…. Ending with I shall be telling this with a sign somwhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
English majors and scholars may debate exactly what Frost was trying to say but to me my switch from a Religious Study undergraduate major into pre-medical and then a medical profession was a decision that profoundly impacted the rest of my life. I took the road that led to a more financially secure and more highly accepted position within society.
The road not taken for me would have been to continue with Relgious Studies and eventually acquire a Ph.D and teach college.
My decision to study Kabbalah in 1998 followed by my initiation into the personal spiritual and paranormal experiences of ordinary individuals led me back along the road that I had previously NOT taken. I saw that venture as a complete diversion, a retracing of steps, a return to a totally different intellectual and spiritual approach to life that have been abandoned when I became a physician.
What is so fascinating to me now, with minimal hindsight, is that this diversion which, at the time, felt like a right angle turn away from my life as a physician– was anything but that. The ‘road not taken’ became the road of return. This small, barely visible path slowly and unmistakably led me to a greater understanding of healing than I could possibly have imagined.
I now understand what is meant by the phrase, nothing occurs by accident. What may appear as a diversion, a nuisance, a ‘waste of time’ is nothing of the kind. What appears as an event or circumstance that takes you away from your goal will later be understood as necessary for you to reach that goal. What you learn, what you overcome by virtue of that ‘diversion’ allows you to grow into the final version of yourself that you were seeking in the first place.
So have respect for the ‘road not taken’. Do not reject it because it appears to delay your ego’s presumptions–what it desires to accomplish within some fictious, arbitrary time frame. You may need to meander a bit down that untrodden trail. It may be the path towards enlightenment.