Longing...

As far as I can remember, I’ve seeking the beloved. As far as I can remember, I’ve been striving to enter into that flawless connection which romantics tend to entertain in their hearts. And no matter, how often, the heart is disappointed, let down, and the relationship, along with the passion that sustains it, turn out to be nothing more than threads of illusion leading to delusion, I continue to intentionally allow myself to fall into the same hopelessly hopeful patterns, as only a true die-hard romantic can.

What is it we’re looking for in others? What is it we’re seeking in our attempts at building deep connections with someone we think, believe is a quintessential element in the making of our happiness? Don’t we know that all we’re seeking is already ours? Questions coming at me, by the shovel-full. Questions swirling about in my mind, like a soup of questionable quality, and not so kosher ingredients.

Questions go round and round, like a finely tuned and oiled Freudian-cum-Jungian Ferris wheel, reminding me of some metaphor, or other curved parable of deep, hidden, and therefore priceless wisdom my wise-cracker of a teacher of far-fetched spiritual matters, once told me about, while building a strange sand castle on some deserted beach, situated who knows where.

“Life is Maya, illusion playfully deceptive,” says the teacher, smirking at my foolishness.

I shrug off the comment, “Life is a journey; I wrote it on my business card, and so it must be true.”

Dismissive laughter; the teacher, illuminated, immune to my ways, wipes of a teary eye, “You’ll never learn, will you?”

A wave breaks and foam flattens the castle. The teacher waves a finger at the ocean, continuing for my benefit, “What you desire is a bit like your shadow, no matter how far you try to run after it, it will continue to run ahead of you, refusing to heed to your blindness. Sooner or later, you need to come to your senses and see that your shadow is totally yours, it is with you always, and if it could speak it would say, ‘Hey, you! Stop running, I am here already. There is nothing to grasp, nothing to gain.’”

“Listen! There is no happiness, no love, no peace, but that which is within. The trick is to realize that it is all already yours; you cannot own it, more than you already do. So you can keep on chasing after whatever it is you think you really can’t live without, whatever you believe you’re missing, or you can let go, and truly realize that you don’t need anything. You are complete. No one, nothing, can add to your happiness. You are what you’re looking for, you thick headed-dunce!”
Hearing these last words, I grin with pride, for this is how my venerated teacher addresses me when satisfied with my progress.

Another wave breaks behind me, I turn around and run into the water to meet it.

Be joyfully well.

They ask the seeker...

They ask, “Why are you wandering in the desert?”
“The desert is on the path of seeking.”
They question, “Why all this suffering?”
“Suffering comes and goes, a transient companion.”
They inquire, “Why not come back to the righteous path.”
And I ask, “How could I when I am so close to being lost?”
“Come back.”
“I am a seeker, on the path of a thousand and one wonders.”
“Come back.”
“I am a seeker, and I’ll share the road with whomever wishes to share it.”
“The sun will burn you.”
“Purify me to better reflect Her light.”
“The heat will scorch you.”
“My longing for Her is a hundred folds that and more.”
“Come back. Don’t you see we’re trying to save you?”
“She is a mighty river, and I, nothing but a drop.”
“Come back. You deserve better that this agony.”
“The drop like the river seeks its shore: what better prospect might there be?”
“You are gifted and the world will reward you.”
“Nothing but a seeker’s life will I seek; what reward could compare to Her company?”
“The good things of life are yours, if only you recant.”
“I am hers, and how could I wish more than that?”
“Surely, you have desires?”
“All hers to fulfill.”
Surely, you have needs?”
“She is all I need.”
“Come back, will you not?”
“I am too far already. I am too close already. I am and remain a seeker. Nothing but a seeker.”
“And how about us?”
“To each his and her path; and anyway, your time shall come.”
“You are lost!”
“I go in peace.”
“Fool!”
“Yes.”

A spider's web...

At times, I wondered what I was after in this strange place, surrounded by sand, nothing but sand. As far as the eye can see, it was a world of dunes, subtly rippling through. They were like waves, and if you knew how to read them, you could ride them. One could either travel with the grain, or against it. One could journey in ease, or struggle in ignorance. It was just a matter of paying attention, being continuously aware, and willing to adjust one’s course as needed.

For the first time since I had begun walking with Aslam, we had climbed a dune, a large one. Rather, the dune had slipped under our feet, so that we found ourselves standing at its tip, without having exerted ourselves to get there. Beyond us, and wherever I turned, was just the desert, teeming with travelers, walking in every direction, some alone, but mostly, they were moving in groups of varied sizes and collective behaviors.

Although we had encountered some of them already, I was still awed by what I was seeing from our elevated vintage point. What I had mistaken, during those encounters, for completely unrelated traveling tribes were actually all connected, now appearing as lines that crossed and merged with one another, resembling when viewed from a distance, the intricate shape of a continuously growing, shifting spider's web.

There they were, with their idiosyncratic beliefs, those who walked backwards, those who bowed down every ten steps, those who carried rocks, those who moved sideways like crabs, those who carried spears, and so many others, those who walked on their knees, or on all fours. All moving, all connected at points where separation had happened, where discord had appeared, where a belief was challenged; revolutions.

In these intersections, where divisions, often violent, had taken place, a single group would break into two, or more, factions. If the newly created group remained too close to those who had chosen to stay their course, clashes would occur, and continue to occur until the paths separated clearly, by moving each in a different direction. Until then, and as I could clearly see now, they would be loses, fatalities, corpses left to be absorbed by the sand.

Meanwhile, the spider’s web was growing, from division to division, belief to belief, from faith to faith, from fear to fear. Thus, if you followed the lines backwards, bridging the gaps filled by the passage of dunes, you would, as I did, reach the main trunk, the source, the original line, one too far to reveal its details, but an existing line nonetheless.

The spider’s web was a big family that seemed to be forgetting as it advances that it is a family. Hard divisions, foolish divisions, based on hard beliefs, based on hard fears, based on ignorance, creating suffering, creating pain. Looking at Aslam, I could understand his tears.

To be continued

Before the world as we know it...

Once again, out of Nothingness, the All, as a seed, exploded into an infinity of possibilities, fragments of itself, which in their turn exploded into an infinity of possibilities, the sequence repeating itself, infinitely; or in a reality ruled, as it is in ours, by the concept of time, as long as Time is meant to flow.

Unity, fragmented, over and over, infinitely, playing with, and experiencing, the possibilities within a bottomless cauldron of a simmering soup of possibilities, picking this one, discarding that one, with each seed germinating, becoming something, elements that make up a universe, a galaxy, a constellation, a star, a planet, life, ecosystems, fauna, flora, humans, men, women, children, cells, particles, cities, villages, institutions, machines, technology, music, noise, art, consumed goods, rubbish, ideas, thoughts, actions, reactions, possibilities, energy, nothing…

In a world measured by Time, the All Becomes. And, once it has become, it flows back toward Nothingness, toward Absolute Unity. Then, even Time itself, being nothing but a possibility, a seed, is called back into that very Nothingness. Thus, a cycle ends. Thus, a cycle begins.

Unable to grasp this truth, the human mind has tried, and that since its birthing, to explain its origin, its place in this vast phenomenon that is life. Unfortunately, the best it could do was make up stories, such as this one, myths of creation, building cosmologies out of thin air, and as it has been in our current reality, by assigning the role of creation to a single divinity.

Over and over, and within every single civilization known, or somewhat known to us, humans end up turning faulty theories into hard solid facts, creating rigid rules to defend shaky viewpoints based on the limitations of our physical nature.

However, and despite the inherent faultiness of our conscious endeavors, signs of the True nature of this All that encompasses everything that is, was, and will ever be, and therefore Us included. Clues abound, stored in our unconscious minds, within our warped myths of creation, in nature itself, and in our archetypal symbols, (i.e., the infinity symbol, the heart symbol, the Native American’s Wanka Tanka, yin yang, the alchemical circle, the Tarot’s wheel of fortune, the whirling of a Sufi dervish, the sun cross, the Celtic cross, the flower of life, a large number of Yantras...)

Such symbols have, over and over again, been intuited by, and revealed to those who were able to slip from the limitations of the mind into what could be referred to as states of unblemished clarity.

If meditated on, these symbols have the power to carry us into unexpected pathways of association, and revelation which no organized religion, no biased explanation of creation would ever be able to take us to. Allowed to do their work, they can point us, in the right direction.

Thus, having allowed, having opened our hearts, having emptied our minds, having giving up on knowing, we glimpse the path, which if followed leads us in the most intuitive and effortless of ways to the Truth of the All, and therefore to our own Truth.

What symbols speak to you? Which symbol are you most attracted to? Have you ever taken time to meditate on it? If you haven’t, I invite you to give it a try. I invite you to take time, to make time, 15 minutes of meditation on a symbol you feel resonates with you are enough -surely you can spare 15 minutes…

Then again, just have ice cream, or chocolate, or whatever tickles your tastebuds.

Be well. Be joyful.