Roberts - TOWARD A SECRET SKY: inventing your own modern pilgrimage

Praise for Toward a Secret Sky

This is a marvelous book on the outer and inner meaning of pilgrimage. Fearless and disarmingly honest, its simultaneously a pilgrimage into the heart-mind of a spiritual warrior. Kim Roberts distills a lifetime of gritty experience into an offering that is sure to illuminate your own journey. Wisdom and kindness shine through every page, and practical advice leaves you well-equipped to set out on your own path of discovery. These are footsteps worth following.

Andrew Holecek, author, Dream Yoga

In a world full of promises for spiritual growth, how does one recognize an authentic path or teacher? Where does one even begin? Roberts responds to this very question by providing a compassionate road map full of personal anecdotes, traditional wisdom, and practical advice necessary for navigating the terrain of ones own spiritual adventure! A kind and accessible book that supports the human longing for a meaningful life.

Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, author, The Logic of Faith

With simple and profound practices, Kim Roberts guides us to explore our inner landscape in the context of the external world and Toward a Secret Sky magnificently illuminates the path of the most sacred journey we will ever take. This beautiful book is a compass that I will return to again and again.

Nancy Levin, author, Jump... and Your Life Will Appear

Finally a modern book about the practice of pilgrimage, with touching personal stories, historical research, and exercises for the reader to explore. Even if you never make an outer pilgrimage, this book is a fascinating guide, and if you are contemplating one, an essential companion.

Lama Tsultrim Allione, author, Wisdom Rising

A marvelous guide to the path of the pilgrim, regardless of your starting point. Kim Roberts knows whereof she speaks, and she tells it like it is!

Sean Murphy, author, One Bird, One Stone

In the Buddhist literatures of India and Tibet, one reads of the awakening of inclinations established by meaningful and fortunate encounters in previous lifetimes and also of the awakening of an interior lineage that one had neither noticed nor suspected. Perhaps one had no hope of it. Perhaps one wishes it would go back to sleep. Good news or bad, once awake, it will not leave one alone. What to do? Having herself followed insistent, inconvenient, if also uplifting, intimations of unknown lands, both inside and outside, Kim Roberts has written lucidly and with the knowledge of a seasoned explorer of the steps one may take toward a destination somewhere beyond the horizon but also perhaps close to home, if only one knew the direction in which to head out, the quicksand to avoid, and the tricks of charlatans who will take what one has and leave one with nothing other than a sense of trespass. Shes given us a map for troubled times. Let us welcome its arrival and consider her counsel carefully.

Jules B. Levinson, translator, Essential Practice

by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche

I love this book! It is a user-friendly guidebook for all spiritual practitioners, regardless of the specific path chosen. Kim Roberts expresses the wisdom of her own years of deep practice, inner exploration, and training. As an experienced yoga teacher, counselor, writer, and mentor, she shares the ins and outs of spiritual practice that shine with compassion and humor. Her stories make the journey come alive with such grace. You cant help but want to dig in, keep reading, AND put everything into your own life.

Kate H. Feldman, MSW, LCSW, founding member,

Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, cofounder of

The Conscious Relationships Institute

We thoroughly love and support the idea of pilgrimage. Whether its the inner journey inspired by life, yoga, poetry, meditation, or travel afar, were all in!

Ganga White, author, Yoga Beyond Belief

and Tracey Rich, director, White Lotus Foundation

Toward a Secret Sky is engaging, personal, and deep. Kim Roberts brings her honesty and humor to the question of pilgrimage: how might we step into the unknown with the intention of making awareness and kindness the life-giving center of our lives. This book is both practical and inspiring. If youre ready to invite more openness and disturbance into your experiencing, read it.

Bruce Tift, author, Already Free

TOWARD A SECRET SKY

Copyright

Copyright 2019 by Kim Roberts

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

Toward a Secret Sky: Creating Your Own Modern Pilgrimage is a new work, first published by Ixia Press in 2019.

This guidebook is not intended as a substitute for studying with a qualified teacher or guru. The author assumes that if you are reading this book you already have developed a relationship to yoga or meditation. She offers examples of how pilgrimage might look so that you will be inspired to embark on your own spiritual journey. Her hope is you will develop the confidence in your own wisdom to guide your steps along the path.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Roberts, Kim, 1965 author.

Title: Toward a secret sky : creating your own modern pilgrimage / Kim Roberts.

Description: Mineola, New York : Ixia Press, [2019]

Identifiers: LCCN 2019000878| ISBN 9780486832272 | ISBN 0486832279

Subjects: LCSH: Pilgrims and pilgrimages. | WomenReligious life.

Classification: LCC BL619.P5 R55 2019 | DDC 203/.51dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019000878

Ixia Press

An imprint of Dover Publications, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

83227901 2019

www.doverpublications.com/ixiapress

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,

to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.

First to let go of life.

Finally, to take a step without feet;

to regard this world as invisible,

and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Contents

Foreword

This is the story of a practitioner who traveled to many parts of Asia on a journey that resulted in her becoming a teacher of yoga. In this book she describes the path that took her eventually to the teachings and practice of the Vajrayana. This book may be of interest to those who wish to read about how yoga and higher meditation can be combined. Kimberly Roberts, on her path of discovery, became my student.

Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche

Sarnath, India

March 2019

What an incredible relief it is to understand

that the ultimate pilgrimage

is right in the center of our own hearts.

Richard Freeman

TOWARD A SECRET SKY

Part 1

The Call

The Call

You hear the call in your own unique manner. It arrives as a whisper or a yelp, a gentle nudge or an agonizing cry. However it arrives, you hear it loud and clear, and you know. It