Imagine yourself marooned on a vast deserted island. You have been there for years, struggling just to survive, living within the most basic surroundings, gathering food, using only your hands and makeshift tools to scratch out an existence. Most of your days are fully taken up with satisfying the basic needs of life. You find some comfort in talking to some of the local creatures and birds that you have befriended. Having proved to yourself that you can survive with just the bare essentials you resign yourself to the fact that you will never be rescued. Anger turns to quiet desperation, then to acceptance as you carry on with your life.

Several years have passed and you have become accustomed to your lifestyle and feel comfortable enough to start expanding and exploring your island. You have settled in, and your attention lately has been directed towards the mountains and what is beyond.

As you begin to move further inland and away from your comfort zone, you develop a sense of strength and purpose for having survived the years on your own. Along the way you are making many discoveries that will enhance your life and make things easier. You are gathering an abundance of awareness and knowledge about the environment that you live in. By this time you have convinced yourself that there is nothing you can not do, and that there is nothing you really have to do to survive. Everything has been provided for you. You simply reach out and take it as you need it.

After 40 years of wandering the island, you finally reach the top of the mountain and turn away from the direction in which you came.

In the distance and time that separates you, you discover a huge modern city with all the amenities that such a place could hold. You discover that your island was not an island and that the city has always been there. As your mind races over the circumstances of the last 40 years, you fall to your knees weeping. You begin to ponder the ramifications of this discover and what could have been.

I should think that the discovery of your soul is very much the same overwhelming experience. It