Follow your heart, get in, and pay attention to what is on the inside. Don't seek the adulation of others for it is your own perception that ultimately matters, we so rarely get the opportunity to go back and do any of it over.

In the still of the dark night, it descends. Invisible, inevitable, seen and unseen, there but not, life, though not as we would know it at any other time. I sense it, I feel it, it is as old as the universe itself but also brand new. Alone and all encompassing. It is present, it is past, it is future with a connection of sorts most odd. A voice, disembodied yet focused, speaks but one unspoken word.

Follow.

I hear it as if I hear a thought, one which is mine and not mine, a directive I feel willing to follow. No, more than that, I feel compelled by it. I need to comply. So, I do what is instructed of me. I follow.

It rises up to from whence it came with ease and great speed the likes of which I have never before encountered even if it does seem familiar. Following is the right thing to do, right? Oh, how doubt can come, so often at the wrong time. Can't always tell what is right and what is wrong. And if we can ... well.

Released, free, no longer under the constraint of my body, I follow, floating with control which again is both mine and not mine, new and not so new. I understand it as if I always have. As quickly as it moves, I move, yet it is as if I am not moving at all. It is everything else that moves.

I feel what this entity must feel, most likely without the same intensity, if it feels anything at all. Unrestrained, yet I am locked in. A singular focus. It wants me to follow, and I am drawn. There is no choice, yet I have chosen ... though I am intrigued.

Yeah, I follow.

Upwards, ten feet, twenty. Up with ease and continuing to ascend. Fifty feet, just like that, and I continue to follow. A hundred feet in an instant, I continue to rise, unaware, aware, fearless. Higher and higher, through the spheres, beyond the confines of this world, into the vastness of space. I have been here before; I am sure of this and also not so sure. It is all so wonderous.

Confined within a clear sphere of my own yet unrestricted, I see as far as the eye can see, and with a full three sixty degree. Our place of departure becomes but a dot in the distance, going further away until it is no longer there. I see it all and none of it too. It moves so fast, the speed of light perhaps. Every star, every world, every moon. Life and lifelessness. Then it stops and there is nothing, no light, no stars, no foreign worlds, no moons, nothing,

Darkness surrounds me yet I shine. My fingers and hands, my arms, torso, and legs all fully clothed and illuminated, though hadn't I shed my shell and left behind my body? I must be eons away from where I physically exist. Now alone, the presence I had felt is no longer close, how long must I remain here? Perhaps I have always been here for if nothing surrounds me then maybe time does not exist either.

The voice returns, after how long? I cannot tell. An eternity, briefly unending. Once again, it simply says ... follow. Now unseen only, a location unsure, Follow what? To where? When even? I would follow but I don't know how. I don't understand. A thought then comes. Am I dead? Why haven't I considered this already? Too consumed with what has already occurred, I guess. Guessing is not good enough. But there is no need to guess, is there?

I understand now. I need to back it up and make a return. I do this. And there it is, rather there I am, laying still. Distant, so far away. I have come all this way, travelled throughout space and time itself just to see myself, lying motionless. I was on the outside when they pulled the four walls down. Yeah, I see it now; it was me all along. I have returned but I need to go further still. I was on the inside; I was blind, I could not see.

My life had taken a turn, a wrong turn, will take a wrong turn, and I knew it was a wrong turn, yet I took it all the same. Some part of me has questioned it and refuses to let it happen. Still, it is my choice to make, or is it? Haven't I already made it? I have already made both choices, the bad and the good, and will continue to do so in my brief eternity. The bad leads to my demise. The bad left me alone, vulnerable, with absolutely nothing, anywhere.

The right turn ... it leads to all things good, it leads to family and friendship, to comfort and fulfilment, to life worthwhile. Yeah, that good turn has twists and turns of its own, but this is what makes life interesting, makes the journey worth taking. Family and friends are there for the bad too with the exception that I refuse to see or hear.

The voice I heard telling me to follow indeed had been that of my own, its urgings, its desire. it can get dark, we might feel alone sometimes, though such is not forever, even when it is. So, when the right path lights itself up, showing me where to go, when my own will to survive sucker punches me in the gut and tells me to listen, I will listen ...

I will follow.