Trust the Path: When the Journey Chooses the Detour

Okay, I have to tell you what has happened to me over the last few days because the whole experience has been incredibly strange, beautiful, and peaceful.

I’m basically “stranded” in Chattanooga after the collision on I-24. I was already planning to stop in Chattanooga because I wanted to check out Mad Priest Coffee Roasters. I went there and met the manager, Chevanne. She and I ended up sitting and talking about spirituality for quite a while. During our conversation, she strongly recommended that I visit the Isha Yoga Center for Inner Sciences nearby.

So the next day, I went.

I had an incredible experience there.

Before I even get into that, there’s something else that happened at the shop. I purchased a few things, and my total contained 11 & 3.

The clerk, Maddison, immediately noticed the numbers. She kept commenting to another woman there about me “receiving” 11 and 3.

Naturally, I wanted to know what the hell they were talking about. 😂

Maddison initially kept dismissing my questions because she said if she explained it she might sound like she belonged to a cult. I kept insisting that she tell me.

She wasn’t completely certain of the interpretation, but she believed the numbers had something to do with courage, freedom, being brave enough to be who I am, and not being controlled by what other people think of me.

What makes this particularly interesting is that when I later searched about the traditional numerological significance of 11 and 3, without giving any of this background, this was the interpretation:

11 is considered a Master Number. It is associated with intuition, heightened perception, spiritual seeking, inspiration, visionary thinking, sensitivity, seeing connections that others overlook, and bridging the practical and philosophical. Because 11 reduces to 2, it also carries themes of partnership, diplomacy, mediation, and bringing opposites together.

The shadow side of 11 can be nervous intensity, excessive idealism, feeling misunderstood, or becoming overwhelmed by what one perceives.

3 is considered the Communicator. It represents storytelling, writing, speaking, creativity, humor, social connection, teaching through narrative, and turning experiences into something other people can understand.

Its shadow side can be scattered energy, unfinished projects, talking rather than acting, or using humor and expression to avoid deeper emotions.

But what really caught my attention was the interpretation of 11 and 3 together:

11 receives and sees. 3 expresses.

In other words:

Perceive something beneath the surface → understand its larger meaning → communicate it to other people.

Then 11 + 3 = 14, which reduces to 5.

And 5 is traditionally associated with freedom, travel, exploration, change, experience, and learning through direct encounters with the world.

That obviously hit me hard because this isn’t just about what happened in Chattanooga. It correlates with the path my entire life has taken. Travel, storytelling, writing, speaking, meeting people across cultures, learning through lived experience, crossing religious and cultural boundaries, and then communicating those experiences to other people have basically become the architecture of my life.

And there’s another connection. My birth date, February 6, 1975, reduces to Life Path 3 in Pythagorean numerology.

Then there was the experience inside Isha itself.

In the lower room, I watched people making what I understood to be eleven offerings to the feminine deity. The temple-like space was dark, illuminated primarily by fire and very dim lighting. There was a shrine-like altar where someone was conducting the ceremony.

What really struck me was that the offerings seemed to represent elements of the Earth and human existence: fire, water, food, flowers, chanting or song, clapping.

I noticed this pattern entirely on my own. At that point, I knew absolutely nothing about the significance of the five elements or what I was later going to read in the book about the mural of soon see upstairs. I simply found myself watching the ceremony and noticing how much of what was being offered seemed elemental and connected to the Earth.

It was completely unfamiliar to me, but I never felt afraid. I found it to be beautiful, intimate, and very much in line with how I feel close to the Divine interacting while nature.

I felt curious.

And strangely peaceful.

Then I went upstairs into the “energy” room.

There was an enormous iron or copper statue there, basically the shoulders and head. I initially perceived the figure as feminine. It had long, thick, wavy locks of hair, a crescent moon above the upper-left side of the head, a necklace containing 108 beads, and a serpent around the neck.

Again, nothing about it frightened me.

I was intensely curious, but incredibly peaceful.

In the center was an altar-like circular elevated structure where anyone can make an offering of water over the hands to the deity. 

There was also a full wall mural in the Abode (much like the 12 stations of the cross) that completely captured my attention. A guide noticed my interest and gave me a book to read while I was there that explained the mural and some of the philosophy behind it.

Several things jumped out at me.

One idea described intimacy as something not born of sexuality, but of a profound state of openness.

Another passage discussed knowing the self not merely as a creature, but as part of creation itself. The idea was essentially that if you open yourself only as a creature, you see body parts. If you open yourself as creation, you encounter the cosmos.

The Tantra discussion described using external or material things, including the body and the Earth itself, as means toward spiritual growth.

Another part fascinated me because it moved between dance and meditation. Complete movement, followed by complete stillness, then movement again.

Yoga was described as union, experiencing the oneness of existence.

Then I read about the five elements:

Earth

Water

Fire

Air

Space

And that stopped me because I had already noticed something remarkably similar downstairs during the offerings, before I knew anything about the five elements or their significance within what I was experiencing. Also, the intimacy I’ve always felt  interacting with the elements.

Then there was Kala-Time, described as an extraordinarily powerful dimension of creation that doesn’t exist in any form we ordinarily recognize as existence.

But one idea probably resonated with me more than anything:

It is important to develop an inner awareness of life in which we experience every other being as part of ourselves, because otherwise our pursuit of our own wellbeing will eventually destroy everything around us. Very much in line with the Sacred Earth Journey vision I’ve created.,

After my experience inside, I went back to the shop and bought several books.

I honestly don’t completely know why other than I felt deeply drawn to.

And then, while reading one of those books before going to sleep, something jumped off the page at me.

It was a story about a philosopher fish.

The fish is miserable because everywhere he goes, everyone talks about this thing called the ocean. So he searches everywhere for it. He travels in every possible direction trying to find the ocean.

But he can’t.

And the irony is that the fish is already in the ocean. He’s part of it. In some sense, he is it.

The passage I highlighted says essentially:

If you were outside it, you could point to it and say, “This is the ocean.” But when you’re inside it, you don’t know.

The larger discussion then connects that idea to the Divine.

And that hit me.

Because there were also passages about freedom from the boxes we put ourselves into, including philosophical and religious boxes. One section basically argues that once someone puts “God’s stamp” on their philosophy, they can stop questioning it. They can keep doing the same things forever because they’ve convinced themselves that God has already authenticated their worldview.

Given my own journey through religion, spirituality, cultures, people, and the constant questioning of the boxes we’re taught to live inside, you can imagine why I stopped when I read that.

But there’s another layer to all of this.

A couple of weeks before the accident, I had a very vivid dream.

I was driving on an extremely high, curving overpass. What captivated me was the sky. It was almost surreal. The blue was incredibly deep and vibrant. The clouds were shimmering, almost illuminated white, and there was an intensely bright sun.

While looking at the sky, I began losing control of my car.

My two right wheels started moving slightly off the edge of the overpass.

It was extremely high.

I began regaining control, but even while this was happening, I remained intensely drawn toward the sky and toward whatever seemed to exist beyond it. It felt other-real. I was almost disappointed that I didn’t get to explore the dimension of what would be. 

And here’s the strange part.

I knew I was dreaming.

I remember thinking that because I was dreaming, I could safely explore whatever this was without actually dying in real life.

But then something woke me up.

And I was actually disappointed because I wanted to continue.

I looked at the clock afterward, and it was somewhere around 3:00 AM.

I told several people about this dream before the accident happened, and I may even have posted about it on Facebook. I specifically remember not knowing where I was in the dream, but wherever it was didn’t feel like Dallas.

Then came I-24 westbound in Chattanooga, TN.

When I saw the large metal object in the highway, I didn’t panic. There was traffic around me, and I couldn’t safely swerve. I handled myself very calmly, exactly as I’ve been trained to do. Pumped the breaks and braced for impact.

After impact, I felt the tire blow, the axle separate, and I wuicjlt lost all braking ability.

For a moment, I also began losing control of the car.

But I regained control and maneuvered the vehicle to safety.

And what I remember most clearly is that I wasn’t afraid.

The similarities between that and the dream have stayed with me.

Then tonight, I woke up again at around 3:00 AM, which I actually do fairly often. I looked outside and saw the moon surrounded by these extraordinary clouds. Something about it felt intensely significant and personal to me. Looking into the clouds and light, I could almost perceive the image of human or god-like being with its hands stretched outward in front of it. Its sex was unknown.

I photographed it.

I don’t know what any of that objectively means. I just know what I experienced when I looked at it and it somehow seemed to fit with all of this. 

And through this entire experience in Chattanooga, the most extraordinary thing has been my peace.

I haven’t been angry.

I haven’t really been worried.

I haven’t been anxious.

Even though my car may be totaled, which could be financially devastating for me because that car was also my means of earning income through Uber, I haven’t been consumed by fear about it.

And this is happening against the backdrop of something else. I’ve applied for hundreds of jobs. I have an impressive resume and a strong interview history, and yet nothing has resulted in the kind of opportunity I’ve been trying to find.

At the same time, people continually tell me that I need to keep pushing toward what I’m building because what I’m doing is important and greatly needed.

So there is this strange convergence between the numbers, what has happened on this trip, and the larger path my life has taken. The numerological themes of communication, storytelling, travel, freedom, direct experience, spiritual seeking, seeing connections and then communicating them are the very things I’ve spent my life doing and the very things I’m now trying to build my future around.

And all along, when people ask whether I’m worried, whether I’m afraid I’m doing the wrong thing, whether I’m scared about my career or what will happen with my car, I keep giving essentially the same answer:

I feel like I need to trust the path.

I don’t want to resist it or respond to uncertainty with fear or chaos.

I keep thinking about water moving through a river. When the river encounters an obstacle, the water doesn’t violently stop or crash into it forever. It responds to what is there. It moves around it, over it, through it. It changes shape according to its surroundings without ceasing to be what it is.

Maybe there is something for me in learning to do the same thing: respond and flow with what I encounter rather than abruptly stopping, resisting, or crashing against it.

Of course I hope my car is repairable. I genuinely hope that outcome is aligned for me.

But something inside me keeps saying:

Trust the path.

And everywhere I’ve gone here, people have been extraordinarily kind to me.

The hotel manager gave me his employee rate, and the staff have gone far beyond what they needed to do to help me.

People at restaurants and coffeehouses have been wonderful.

The rental-car employee actually drove me to another rental location that had a vehicle available for me.

The law-enforcement officers were kind.

And everywhere I go, I seem to be making friends and connecting with people.

Even at Isha, there was a man whom the women in the store described as extremely difficult to talk with. Yet he was incredibly kind and open with me. They actually seemed intrigued by the way he interacted with me.

And then there was my interview with Dionne the Divine back in New Orleans several days ago.

She asked me, theoretically, to choose cards from a deck.

Without seeing them, I immediately chose:

🃏 Joker

Queen of ♠️

7 of ♥️,

Then…

3 of ♣️

Jack of ♦️

(Add these up you get 30, or 3+0=3.

Her interpretation was remarkably close to everything else that has been unfolding. It was much too long to recount completely, but it landed with eerie precision. [Full episode here:]

And there was 3 again.

I don’t believe numbers caused my accident.

I don’t believe cards caused anything.

That’s not what I mean by any of this.

I believe in prophetic dreams because I’ve experienced them repeatedly throughout my life, sometimes with eerily specific details. And importantly, I’ve shared many of those dreams with other people before the corresponding events happened.

I also believe in what I can only describe as cosmic communication.

I believe the Divine has remarkable ways of communicating with us, and I can only speak for myself-with me specifically, through dreams, signs, wonders, people, experiences, timing, and things that sometimes don’t make rational sense when considered individually.

Maybe that’s what all of this has been.

Maybe not.

But I know how profoundly peaceful I’ve felt since arriving here.

I was supposed to pass through Chattanooga.

Instead, an accident stopped me here.

And since being stopped, I’ve encountered people, conversations, ideas, symbols, books, numbers, dreams, and moments of extraordinary stillness that all seem to keep circling around the same message:

You don’t have to know where the path leads.

Trust the path.

Life Path = 3

Store purchase at a significant stop container ≈ 11 & 3

Dream awakening ≈ 3 AM

Moon experience ≈ 3 AM

3♣️ explicitly selected

Entire card sequence = 30 → 3

And the original numerological interpretation of 3 was the communicator/storyteller: writing, speaking, creativity, teaching through narrative, and transforming lived experience into something others can understand.