Our Lost Native Land (The Room Difficult to Enter)

We, the living example of our own words, drift along in front of others, learn from others: we learn from each other, as well as my myriad evanescent selves—none being static, but all essentially being.  We create a community in the stars, for us each and All to pass through, vivid imaginings plaguing as well as compelling.

This masterpiece takes place at night, in the nearby empty park, where the scowls of more-infested civilisation cannot reach; for the heavens, we know, are a sacred place, and there cannot be overtness of freedom in a subterranean land. 

Only here, within an established society, is such implicit ostracism so readily accepted—even encouraged.  The Kingdom is, apparently, elsewhere.

What is spoken of is not of my own making; nothing is, because there is no “my”; no ownership.  This, right now, right here, is the world—happening.  You are presently it, too.  The world happening (the World Happening) has brought it all to right now; but this does not dismiss human freedom.  Human freedom is the world happening.  The two are One in the same.  I am you, and now that I know this, we can soar together.  If you like.

My friend utters, solemnly: “This…is God.”

Our words create fun games to play and extend only so far.  This does not deem them useless, nor the world a pointless place; there is much to be done, and much will be done.  What follows is creation, a symbiotic force between two mutual intentions.  The result is what happens, both chosen and determined; and in a strange way, neither.

Paradox flows gently, as the leaves of a notepad are turned by a midnight sea breeze.

Stories flow freely in this place.  There are no limitations: if this is possible, surely anything is.  But it is difficult to accept, after all this time; and yet it is perhaps time which has disappeared, left us wanting, craving what we’ve always had and leaving us unable to drift back into the Old World from the New World with any sense of ease.  What would out parents think? Could they handle this place, or should the generations take hold of what was not meant for dissimilar minds?  This question is akin to great sadness, for the thoughts of the ageing and the thoughts of the young can rarely be more than even partially reconciled; this trip, it seems, with all its intensity and consequence for existence, seems an idea so counterintuitive to the modern person’s elders that most of them, surely, will simply never even consider buying the ticket, let alone taking the ride.

This ecstatic theme park, it seems, is too far out of town.  There are no established amenities here.

Some re-discovered the stream, a while back; but most of them fell back down, or were perhaps defeated.  Even further back, many did—but they were destroyed, reconfigured or raped of their way of life.  Few elder minds provide wise counsel in the present day, for we are no longer tribes, but now form societies.  There is little magic here, as it is.  The witches have all been burned and the wizards are all professional actors.  Mystery is largely confined to screens and pages and to a lesser extent within the relatively few minds that dare run their fingertips along its steel gates.  Or it is deemed fiction by the monotonous voices assigned to rigorous scientific truth—the ones whose research is often read about in small rectangular articles in daily newspapers and accept as unequivocal by the drooling herd.

All we seem to want to know now is how the magic trick is done.

Stepping into the clouds is the only way to share these feelings and streams of being with other people.  The attempt that is sober discourse on the topic tends to baffle, provoke incredulity and leave listeners or readers curious but critical—the curiosity, however, is perhaps what draws one in.  How could such a lack of verbal evidence—or outrageously abstract, presumably unintelligible evidence—really mean anything?  But it all makes sense, somehow; the experiencer’s word, despite its reputation, is final here.  Perhaps it never stopped being this way.

Some streams flow underground and only the few natives extant know how to get to the water beneath.  Some say these people are a dying breed, which is strange seeing as they’re the only ones who drink straight from the earth.  It is surely not hydration they are dying of…

The world, happening, brought us here.  But it is not forgotten that we are in control, as manifestations of God-that-is-Earth, of God-that-is-all-things-occurring.  Our compass is broken; there are too many knots in the rope and our hands are blistering more than they need to.  We cannot climb into the sky this way.  There is too much emphasis on where we are climbing to, what is “at the top”, and why we climb.  We are anywhere but climbing into the sky.  Minds are elsewhere and the sky is seen as vacant, empty and impenetrable.  Forgive generalisations; they are too frequently, now, evidence of what is.  The latter is to be avoided at all costs.

The simplistic but convincing understandings imparted in this other (stranger) place, from each other, ourselves and the skies and horizons above and all around, betray an uncharacteristic complexity at times.  I often find myself stepping back after spewing beautiful streams of words from my mouth and retrospectively questioning it all, as I once would have done and part of me does again; for one cannot just leave it all behind.  I am convinced that these two worlds are in fact one world, because my “intoxicated” mind tells me that it could not be any other way.  I believe this mind, because I find it stronger and wiser than my practical, everyday self, the self who has been taught so very much.  The latter is more statistically stable, conventionally speaking; and the latter cannot be dismissed, because it is encompassed in the whole, which I find myself describing in necessarily poetic ramblings concerning the contrast between the Old World and the New.  They are One World, simply with many changing/changeable aspects.  Worlds within World, constituting the world and catalysing the metamorphosis of both World and worlds.  If these words seem like gibberish, or more specifically, like subterfuge, you can rest assured: I am not arguing a point.  All said is in dialogue with itself.

The transcendental place spoken of is perhaps the dark room at the top left corner of a large house.  We all live in this house, but the little room is ill-maintained.  Not many climb the stairs, let alone search for the key to the door.  Very few find it, and even then they are faced only with darkness and soft moonlight from a small window.  Too much has been covered up to make this easy; it is a challenge requiring courage, at very least detachment from all or most that one ever knew, and the acceptance of a battle that will run for all of time and existence: learning what one is and how things exist.  Ontology, epistemology, metaphysics—all rolled into a not-so-neat bundle.  The task is denied often through fear of the Unknown; but more often, I venture to assume, those who take the fatal step meet death in themselves, while smiling happily to friends because they know that God exists, somehow, some way, and that certain ultimate mysteries of this world are not for human voices, human hands—not for human discourse at all.  It is what drives some of us onwards, this not-knowing.  It is what makes us smile knowingly at one another, content that we cannot grasp these ultimate unknowns, but that regardless of this, there is still much to be done here.  And much mystery that can be experienced, too.  The awe-ful lands we reach do not inspire a lack of motivation for action.  The hero or heroine returns with the boon, bestows it upon the people in whichever way he or she can.  We are all heroes and heroines, unknowingly; and thus we all have journeys to embark upon and unique gifts to bestow.  There is no Empire, only perpetual destruction and construction, coming and going—no king was ever immortal, in human form.

But these kinds of thoughts and similar sentiments are largely frowned upon or restricted through fear.  Little is discussed of these places, these teachings and worlds and as such few are taught of their potential benefits.  I will not be heard in the marketplace; still, certain words are not to be received by the masses.  These people have been blindfolded and furthermore, they have been trained to retie their own blindfolds whenever they become loose.  This inspires even more disgust when one has realised, perhaps even sensed the tiniest taste of, a divine force merging worlds within and worlds without; macrocosmic microcosms, finding the universe within themselves.  Why should the dead be left behind?  This is not my taste, not our taste—so why should we be the only ones tasting it?  The food was placed here for all, but some-ones have thieved hunger from the masses and fed their minds with dirt.  We are all treated as lowest common denominators and many tears run from this injustice to human independence, free thought and free choice.

Do not take these words to be conclusive; it remains true that much remains, and little has been said, after this walk into the woods.  It is, after all, just a single walk among many before and many to come.  But there is much to be taught there, in that darkness.  There is pain and paranoia, fear and all things overwhelming, unfathomable, incomprehensible, wordless…but it is all our own and to run is to run from oneself and from the universe confronting, and inherent in, oneself.  This room is full of us; even when we escape to the next room, we await us.  There is nowhere, really, to run.  You’re already there.

Imbalance ensues from being frightened of the creatures within the woods; from not visiting the woods as often as one might visit a friendly, sun-lit park; from marginalising fearful aspects in place of industrially generated, now abundant, “harmless” ones.  This kind of comfort is a spear in each eye; a stitching shut of the hidden third.

We all know our own choices more intimately than any other.  When you run, you know you have run.  Do not let this pass by without knowing that, in time, you will have to face it again.  Running is merely deference.  Evading death deems one imaginatively distinct from the universe; such a one is isolated in life, and will die very lonely and in great pain, without ever knowing that they never were distinct from the rest.

Quieter words ensue.