Being born as a man was only the introduction; life has not yet begun for you. So far you have only been involved in the preparation; you have not yet begun the pilgrimage – you have only been preparing for the journey. Your luggage is ready – you have arranged all your things very carefully; the trunk, the bedding, the provisions are ready for the journey – but you have not yet set out. Man is at this point, at this stage.

If you want to understand clearly what man is and where he is going, then look at him as a man who has made all the preparations necessary for a journey but is sitting beside his luggage because he has forgotten where he has to go, because he has forgotten why he has made all these preparations. Your condition is the same. All your preparations are complete; you are now a completely evolved human being. Now you can jump into your pilgrimage; now there is nothing lacking in you. The instruments are properly tuned; you only have to start playing your music.

Kabir looks on this as the wedding procession – this is how he sees the preparation that has been going on up to now. But the procession is not the be-all and the end-all, it is simply the introduction to the wedding.

O blessed woman, sing the wedding songs!
I’ve come home with Lord Ram, my beloved.

If things continue as they have up to now then the whole preparation will be useless, in vain. You will wonder what the point of all this preparation was. You are ready, but you are completely unaware of where you have been preparing to go, of why you have prepared yourself, of who has called you, of what invitation has come to you from the unknown. You have been preparing for so long you are afraid to embark on your journey. You are the kind of person who will unpack his luggage just so he can repack it again. You want to keep busy with your packing. You crave the activity, so the packing continues.

You have prepared for this journey so often. How many times have you done this? And you still have not become a man! You have been in this situation so many times but, each and every time your preparations are complete, you again start to wonder what more there is to be done. Again you unpack your luggage, again you put things away so you can easily find them…then next time you begin to pack. When is the meeting ever going to take place?

The journey will not begin until you become a seeker. And when the journey has been started you are already halfway towards its completion! The beginning is halfway to the end. Once the beginning has been made, the end is not far off.

There is not as much difference between a seeker and an enlightened man as there is between a seeker and one who is not seeking at all. If you can just step out of your house, just once, you will surely reach your goal – no matter how far the place of pilgrimage may be. The real difficulty is getting out of the house – the first step is always the hardest.