Rooty Home   Home/Premise The Questions Ships of Self Treasure Hunting Finding North   Anywhere You Are You are me and I am you We are one, we are two I am desert, you are rain With a touch, I'm born again Carry on, restless waters Travel on, gather my heart Know my thoughts Will be with you Anywhere you are You are sea and I am sand We're children of the wind When we dance Around the moon It breezes all afternoon Sail on, restless waters Travel on, carry my heart Know by love You're surrounded Anywhere you are And, my friend, I do love you We're really never apart 'Cause you are me And I am you Anywhere we are Words and Music by Rooty Van Overen The Inner Journey Life is a journey - an adventure that presents us with an unlimited combination of paths. Most of the journey is spent maintaining resources to sustain it - food, shelter, clothing - for without the basic necessities, there would be no life and hence no journey. But once we have built a reliable web of resources, where do we go? Which paths do we follow? What is presented here in the words and music of The Inner Journey is an attempt to make sense of the journey once we get to where the most treacherous canyons have been safely navigated and are mostly behind us. The Inner Journey explores where we go after we've met the basic requirements of a sustained existence. It pursues the meaning of life and what it means to become fulfilled. Premise When exploring notions such as these, a leap of faith is generally required, so it's important to define the boundaries and state the assumptions from which the ideas spring forth. It's necessary to define a reference point. My reference point reaches down to the fundamental level of existence and begins with this premise: Each of us is comprised of a body and a spirit - a duality which both separates us from one another and joins us together. Our bodies separate us and our spirits connect us. It's easy to see how we are separate from each other because we can never absolutely know what is in each other's minds and hearts. We are individual people following our own paths along the journey. I believe there is evidence, though, that we are connected in spirit. There are common threads which band us together into the fabric of humanity. We create and tell stories which connect us through our common nature - meaningful narrative and poems that arouse the deep emotions of love, passion, joy and sorrow. And we use the natural laws of physics to combine color and texture, or pitch and rhythm to create art that evokes emotions less tangible than those summoned through stories, yet nonetheless very real. Our meaningful stories, poems and artistic creations reach in and pluck the strings which comprise our spiritual connection. So our journeys have two constituents - our physical selves and our spiritual selves. And it's our mind that bridges the chasm between the two, creating one conscious traveler. Go on to the Questions   "In each of us there is a little of all of us." - Lichtenberg "I am seeking, I am striving. I am in it with all my heart." - Vincent van Gogh