When you are ready to ask the 'biggest questions', you are already prepared
for the answers. 

Here is a true story of something that happened in 1993,  a question and an 
answer that was to become the source of my life's work.  

A medicine bottle mysteriously appeared late one afternoon 
in the rolling surf of Race Point Beach, Massachusetts. 
Within this bottle was a note. It was as if that note was the 
direct response to a frantic request I had just made,

"If there is anything else out there, please send me a sign!"     

As that final word left my lips, I felt the bottle touching my toes. 
The note read as follows:

"To find the world's greatest treasure, walk on the beach in the 
sunset, look towards the west and see The Greatest Treasure."

This photo is of the actual bottle (click to enlarge)

This coincidence confirmed that the most profound and unfathomable 
aspect of life was not immediately visible to the eye. The simplicity of the 
message also revealed that letting go of all unnecessary suffering was
entirely possible. But the question was: How?

My subsequent search for answers took me on 'the spiritual path' through 
three continents and to many different teachers, Siddha masters and spiritual 
groups. The search yielded much knowledge, but little relief from the burden 
of my questions - until 2001, when my last teacher Andrew Cohen revealed 
during a summer retreat in France:  Enlightenment is the relationship you have 
to the experience you are already having.

Following an awakening to the true force of conditioning, I realized that not 
every road leads to home. This book emerged as a way to identify the part of 
ourselves that does not know how lost it is in conditioned concepts and beliefs.

The discovery and expression of our full potential for the sake of humanity is 
the greatest challenge we can offer ourselves. Many who genuinely seek to 
awaken are oblivious to the extent that false impressions occupy the tenets 
of their spiritual searching.

The Uncommon Path is one path to the expression of your full potential for the 
sake of humanity. It is not for the faint-hearted. The sincere aspirant will find 
that the admission of freedom is merely the beginning of that path.

Should you be willing to face millennia of conditioning with the intention to 
awaken, that outcome is already guaranteed.

Mick Quinn
Vila Nova de Cerveira
Portugal
September 11th, 2006