Satisfied

The night after my thorough exploration of my old “neighborhood,” as I was lying in my little one-person tent (easy mosquito netting) on the floor, unable to sleep for the thumping bass blasting through my earplugs, I found myself suddenly saying aloud, “Koro, I’m here.  Where are you?”  I had always had this sense, though much more strongly early on in the first few years after he passed, that Koro wanted me to come back to Africa, to somewhere in Africa.  But now that I was finally here… it was striking how I really had not been feeling Koro here.  And now that this question had been aired – not even as words on the page or a thought in my head but audibly – the sound of my voice coming as a shock, the immediate response that surfaced in my mind was… Koro has moved on.  
 
Well, as there was no sleep in sight (and by now this was really becoming an irritating issue for me – all the late-night, loud recorded music preventing me from being able to sleep), I switched on my handy solar reading lamp, returned the pen beside it to my hand, and, as I so often did, I took my journal from its night-time spot right above my head and set it back to use…  
 
Koro has moved on.  Yes, now that I was back, now that I had answered his call to return, I could feel how… freed he was.  But also… he was me, and I was him – we were One.  Koro had always been a reflection of myself – and at the best of times, my Self – that much was always clear.  We were there together, first and foremost, to allow the other to come to know the Divine more – more “up close and personal,” to come closer to the Divine One than either of us had ever been before, or become closer with the Divine One; and serving as a reflection for each other had been one piece of our magic puzzle, one aspect of this revelation of the One that was unfolding in so many ways.  …I had long been aware that the idea, the feeling, of him calling me back to Africa – that was the Divine calling me back, my Inner Voice calling – guiding me along my own, divinely-inspired Path.  It was Koro, it was the Divine, and it was me – all the same.  ...And feeling now how Koro has moved on, how freed he was… I felt how freed I was. 
 
Koro has moved on.  I put it down on the page, where all things solidified for me.  And now it is officially time for me to move on as well, I continued.
 
Koro is satisfied.  I am satisfied.  And that divine element that is both beyond our individual selves as well as living within us as our true Self… that One is satisfied, too.  
 
…Africa is a big place, I went on.  And there is so much to explore.  Ghana felt like just the beginning, “the tip of ice,” as Koro would put it – and not only because I was on my way to Guinea, but also because lately I had so strongly been feeling Mali coming in my distant future (very distant future), and I was beginning to have an interest in exploring some other parts of Africa where opportunities were arising as well – Egypt, Morocco, etc.  Go deeper, my hand was now scrawling on the page…