Meditation, a pathway

Every day when I take the dogs out on a walk, we go on different size pathways; the first is just a barely discernible overgrown pathway from our garden to the field outside.  We then join the big pathway along the river everyone goes on to walk their dogs.  It is a regular social outing for people and dogs and a great leveller, you might meet the Lord Lieutenant or the newspaper man, all are intent on walking their dogs.  From there, the dogs go on a lead to walk along the formal pathway, the road back towards home.  At the end, they jump over a gate into the field outside the garden and start chasing rabbits.
Being in a meditative mood, the mind gets a chance to really examine the small lie I told you about yesterday and to dissect its horrid little phenomenology. We all know that one small lie will lead to others and lies are a pathway to increasing self deception never mind about deceiving the person to who the lie is told.  So, what was the little white lie about?  It was really about how I would look to the hopefully new friend if I told her I had just messed up.  It wasn't really about making her feel better, which at least would have had an element of compassion to it.
As I got back to the field this morning with my thoughts in order, the idea of pathways forming through people walking particular ways struck a chord.  If we meditate regularly, really discipline ourselves to our practice, it creates a pathway and a good habit.  To begin with, the pathway is small and individual but if you become part of a community which meditates, the pathway is wider and easier and you don't have to duck under the branches, miraculously they have receded.  Your pathway may have been created by a Saint or a Holy Man, by the leader of one of the great religions and all that will ease the way to meditation, they will somehow take you by the hand and help.  Then, when you get to the big field and are in sight of home, you will be carried as lightly and easily as you wished when you started the journey.  Of course the pathway of lying starts off broad and easy and the little white lies just trip off the end of the tongue and you almost believe them, but when you get to the end and you try to go home through that little cut back into the garden, there are nettles and brambles and the branches stick you in the eye.
Off now to meditate with my morning meditator who is on night duty and calls in on her way home trying to make a meditation pathway again.