Our Need To Reinvent The Wheel

"What I have discovered by following the call to consciously discover and live the meaning in my life is not something unique or new. It echoes the experiences and insights of seekers and students and teachers on many different spiritual paths. Sometimes, when I write in my journal of some insight I have had into my own experience, I realize that it is familiar, similar or identical to something I have read or heard from a spiritual teacher. And I laugh at my own sense of discovery. One morning, shaking my head at the length of my journey to discover the truth in something I had been told years before, I think to myself, 'Does each of us have to reinvent the wheel?' Even as the question comes I know the answer is yes. Yes, each of us needs to experience the truth for ourselves, each of us needs to follow our own path to self-realization even though the self we realize is in essence identical to and not truly separate from all others. There is simply no way to get there except by going through the process yourself."

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer, "The Call: Discovering Why You Are Here"