Via Regia

Unable to find a suitable beginning place for the Journey Toward Deep Fatherhood, my inaugural blog is ushered in with images of roads. Historically, the Persian Royal Road was an ancient highway reorganized and rebuilt by the Persian King Darius of the Achaemenid Empire in the 5th century BC. Interestingly, the road did not follow the shortest or the easiest route between the important cities it connected. In the last century, Freud and Jung both called dreams a via regia (royal road) to the unconscious. Jung would later include active imagination as another via regia.

“All roads lead to Rome” is a simplification of the early roman phrase, Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam (A thousand roads lead men forever to Rome.). At my 10-yr old daughter’s class presentation last night on ancient South American civilizations, I learned that the Incans built over 14,000 miles of roads that were only allowed to be used by messengers and royalty. There is a temple at an ashram in central Virginia, perhaps the only one of its kind, that houses an altar for every major faith and also faiths less well-known and those not yet known in which it is believed that all paths lead to God. And of course, there is Robert Frost’s road less travelled (which has indeed made all the difference).

It is with images of all these different kinds of roads and paths in mind that I begin this blog. I am getting up off the side of the road, and starting to walk, write, and imagine the way.  Not knowing where I’m bound, I embark with a knowing that any road upon which we travel is indeed via regia, and that all roads lead forever home. This road, on this day, is as good as any to begin the Journey Toward Deep Fatherhood, and so here we go…