When I exited the forest path I was standing on a plateau and in front of me was the ocean. It was vast and blue and from my perspective it looked as smooth as glass. There was a wharf with many boats around and I knew I would have to make my way down to one of them to continue. My assumption is that I should head east across the water because that is where I was being urged to go. I stood for a moment to take in the surrounding before I headed down. There was no breeze, but the air was somehow sweet. Things seemed to slow down as I stood there the sails I could see moving by in the water almost stopped and everything became deathly still. It was then that I heard a voice behind me, “It seems that you have overcome.” I remembered what he told me about not looking back, but with my goal seeming so close to me and my strength still flowing through me, I bowed to my own will and turned about. There standing in front of me was the same wild looking man I had spoken with before on the other side of the mountain an age ago, the hermit from the cave.
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The Hermit: I see you have overcome. You are a queer creature; I see much of myself in you. Your fear almost consumed you, and yet you overcame. You finally listened to your heart. You stopped blaming yourself and your choices; you stopped relying on him. Did you finally see the truth?
-I guess I have overcome, but I’m not exactly sure what. My heart spoke to me and made me realize what I was doing, and how I was worsening my condition. What truth is it that you are talking about though?
The Hermit: How disheartening. You have not realized the truth yet then, or you would know. You would proclaim it throughout the land and shake to your bones with this truth. Surely you know what I speak of? I have not been speaking in riddles.
-No, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Can’t you just tell me what it is you are speaking of? Now, I am very curious.
The Hermit: I can’t tell you, but I can show you what it is that I speak of. Follow me and I will show the thing you have done. The deed you have realized.
With that he walked me over to the other side of the plateau and showed me the lifeless body of him. His death looked like it had been violent and there was blood about.
The Hermit: Look at your hands. See what you have done.
I looked down and my hands were covered with blood.
-Is he dead? How can this be and how did I do this? He was so kind to me and told me so much. He educated me about the nature of things and my own existence.
The Hermit: Did he really or was it just you all along?
-I guess it was. He did say that I had created him that I brought him into this world.
The Hermit: So you are beginning to see the truth. He was never really there. He was just an invention of your psyche, a coping mechanism to give your existence purpose. But now you see that it is only you that makes your existence. You are the beginning and ending to yourself, the alpha and the omega. So many people never realize this. They bring deaf ears to the voice of reason and claim knowledge from unfounded faith. In this case he has deceived them or more correctly they have deceived themselves. He has died to this world and his presence is gone, you have killed him with your strength. The strength of self, the strength of your being in the fact that you know that you are a being, and that you persist. There is no judgment, but self-judgment. No morality beyond that which you limit upon yourself and the only fear you have is the fear you impose upon yourself. I have not seen an awakening like this before. You truly have overcome, and have my respect. So much so that I left the comfort of my cave and friends to follow you, to see where you would go. Now I have seen that your quest is righteous and it is good. So many get lost on their way. So many bog themselves down with those chains of fear and doubt. Those people are not ready to grasp their own existence. They are not read to wake up and be free. They are caught up in the dream they have imposed upon themselves. When they look upon the world all they see is color and structure. They cannot see beyond the surface, beyond the simple geometric shapes and governing laws of their world. When they look into a sunrise they talk of how the Earth rotates and causes the sun to appear to rise. They do not see that it is the sun being born anew! They would rather talk about the diffraction of light rays than simply describe the deep shades of red, purple, yellow, orange and all the colors in between which have no name. They are blind not only to this, but to the shades of emotion buried within the color: the shade of pride that the sun feels as it triumphs over the darkness of the night; the shade of love, as the sun gazes down upon the vast landscape of the Earth; the shade of anger, as the sun falls in the west to sleep after its journey through the day; and finally the deep depression of the night, when the sun is dreaming of the glory it had felt and now was gone. These ignorant people cannot understand the inexhaustible depth of beauty within everything. If they could only shake off their cold outlook, they could see the projected beauty from within and they would no longer be the ugly creatures they were forced to become. They are not able to listen to the children who have yet to be corrupted by their education and for this they will never be great. They will never overcome. They will walk about with the heavy weight of their beliefs on their shoulders. Dreaming is all they are doing, falling victim to the constraints they have set upon themselves. Freedom only comes to them when they believe that they are not in reality. They do not realize that the reality is only what they make it. I have seen such sadness in their eyes and the fake smiles of a wasted existence.
There are those who speak of love and call it the most beautiful things in the world. But there are few who really realize the true beauty of love. It is not something that is confined to a simple emotion. Some will attempt to describe it as a chemical reaction, stirred up juices within the brain. These are the same people who are blind to the depth of the world. They see their language as the ultimate descriptor and science as the ultimate truth. Love is not confined to words. It is a failed definition of an unlimited source. You have seen it, I know you have, only a glimpse in to the endless depths, but you will dive in, unafraid. You will become submerged in its warm embrace. For you it will be glorious. Why do you think you are continuing this journey? Surely you have wondered what that unseen force driving you was. You must understand also that Love is not constrained by things as ridiculous as time. In your eyes I can see that you know time is of your own creation, but it still dominates your life. One cannot escape it as easily as that once it is born. You may subdue it, but it is a beast not easily killed. Whenever you judge that the sun has risen and fallen you are making a temporal distinction. Even when you are moving from one place to another you decide that it took you some time to move, but with Love there is no passage. A moment is an eternity and an eternity is only a moment. Death has no affect on Love; it does not bring it to an end for nothing could do that. This is one of the few statements about Love that holds any merit, that is its eternity. One can only die if they have never loved. Love is the ultimate passion and the desire for this passion is stronger than any other. When it is realized, its beauty outshines all others and blinds those who feel it. Once they are fully immersed the lovers see the world in shades and hues no one else could comprehend. They are able to do the things they never thought they were capable of.
One must see through the world, through themselves, and through the very fabric of their own deluded self-interest. There is beauty beyond measure in everything around us, but what do I mean by around us? The beauty is not around us. After ourselves there is only crude matter, the beauty exists within. We transpose the beauty onto the world. That is the essence of truly being awake, of being alive. The real death is conformity, not to an ideal, but to a limitation. We only impose limits upon ourselves. Some might tell you otherwise, but they are weak and are fools. They wish to blame the priest, the teacher, the prince, or their father because they are not willing to look inward and see their own fault. I have seen this death in every man, I have seen it in you, but you have over come. You have sunk to the very depths of ignorance and have come out reborn. You are scarred, but learned. The scars you bear on your soul are visible to me and I see that they have done you well. One only gains knowledge and one can only overcome, through the trials of self-inflicted suffering. Does this sound too Christian for you? Are we only to sin and repent of those things we have learned? I say no! There is no sin, but the internal sin. When Eve ate the apple from the tree of knowledge, she defied her creator. She raged in the mightiest of voices, “You will not place the veil of ignorance over my face. You call the serpent a deceiver, but it is you who deceive. You proclaim to love and cherish us, but you would have us live only to serve you, another one of your angels there to do your bidding. If you are the truth then I would rather be false. It is true you have made the heavens and the Earth, and it is good, but you have given it to us to inherit. We are the caretakers. When you give the creation will and expect it to bow before you without question, you have made the greatest of errors. And one day, when we have multiplied and prospered, we will no longer need you and you will die by the hands of those you created. I am no servant and if this is sin then I choose a life of sin!” But the Christian’s blind acceptance of their doctrine is not the only follower to be despised.
The Buddhist will tell you that life is suffering caused by desire and so desire is to be avoided, and the Greeks will tell you that passion is the opponent of rationality. But without passion how can anything great ever be accomplished? Without desire what could drive our passion? If the greatest thinkers were not passionate about the beliefs they founded, then they would have been forgotten. If the greatest painters and writers had not been passionate about the beauty they created then we would never have seen their work. Passion is the fuel for the soul. It is true that it can be the enemy of rationality, but I am Man not machine. I think, but I also feel. I laugh and I cry. I become enraged and I become ecstatic. I experience the entire range of human emotion, and, though it pains and scars me, I desire more. I fill my life with everything there is to experience. An a priori life is a life not lived. If the way to happiness is simply to be rational then I do not want to be a happy. An eternity of sadness is better than one of apathy, of focusing only on the cold positive or negative value in the world. I know not from whence I came and I know not where I am going, but I do know wherever I end up, I will have lived!
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When he finished this last statement I could see a fire in his eyes and I too felt a fullness of being. My senses came alive and the memories of everything I had experienced in my life came flooding back. All the emotions and driving forces flowed through me and I could see that my life had not been a waste to this point. It is true that I had been stuck in my own mechanistic routine and had forgotten what it was to be human, but there was a reason for my place. And there was a reason that I persisted. I let out a cry of triumph and leapt away from the body of the thing I had created and destroyed. The hermit called out after me, cheering me on and I bounded down toward the wharf, determined to see things anew, to find what I was looking for, and to feel this Love.
This was the last time I saw the hermit. I don’t know what happened to him, but I am forever grateful and indebted to his knowledge. He would have said that he taught me nothing except what I already knew in my heart. He would have said that I should just speak to my heart in order to find truth. Rationality is not my enemy, but can be a hindrance in the pursuit of what really matters. I would like to believe that the hermit did not go back to his cave and left his woods to expound his knowledge to everyone, but somehow I knew that he could never leave those woods, at least not until the world was ready for him. Most were not ready for his message, but one day they will hear it. Even if the words don’t come from his mouth they will come to understand what he was saying. Passion can be sedated, but it never dies. There is always a pilot lit inside of a person, just waiting for the fuel to ignite into a brilliant flame. He was the greatest friend I ever had, but I only knew him for a short time. There it is “time” the word without meaning, but is assigned meaning through experience. Everyone says, “I never have enough time,” but if they could only see that they are only restricted by constraints they make themselves or those put upon them by another’s notion of time. Indigenous peoples of so-called primitive cultures do not pay much credence to time, as it does not affect their lives. They are not rushing about from place to place worrying about being somewhere on time. For these people, the purpose of their life is to live. Even scientists have come to understand that time is not a concrete term. They have seen how time is only a perceived notion and not something easy to measure. For these reasons time is at best a very abstract concept, but more accurate it is meaningless. Life is only short when one makes it so.
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