“No matter where you go, your wandering footsteps will lead you back to God. There is no other way to go.”
- Paramahansa Yogananda

Physically speaking, I have never been a great adventurer. In fact, I choose the safe route almost every time I am given an opportunity. 
Yet, in my mind, I have been to the farthest and most mysterious corners of this world.
I have made pilgrimages through deserts, sailed the most majestic seas, climbed mountains with gurus, and slept in castles surrounded by the lushness of emerald-colored fields.
I have sought after fame and fortune and love and approval. I have saved the world with my intellect, and I have comforted suffering souls with my compassion.
In my mind, these places and the people in these places have adorned me and begged my return whenever I have moved on to new adventures. 
How sad these places of distraction make me now. The regret of knowing I actually could have experienced this or that or the other thing if I hadn’t been so married in my mind to fear of this physical world. Holding hands with that fear made me a prisoner of my own fantastic imagination. I wonder now if that’s what art and poetry are all about – an escape from the prison of self? 
Is that it - a prison break? 
Running unabashedly across the jailhouse lawn, we find freedom in  
each stroke of the artist’s brush, 
each rhythmic line of verse, 
each dancer’s leap to flight, 
the cunning story of the playwright.
Are we all just running from the captor of our minds? Hoping to land softly and peacefully in the arms of validation, but deep down knowing we’re more likely to sail right by it on Satan’s magic carpet ride called pride. 
Or has God simply provided a beautiful way out from under the horror of self? 
Perhaps my imagination, which once served as an escape from that which I could not face, has now become the place where I go to know God. 
It is there that I sit with Him in sacred conversation and comforting silence. It is there that every poem is birthed, and there that I truly experience my worth.