Monday, December 28, 2015

The last few days of the bad old ways


Trekking across the last few days. Guided by a plumb-bob, compass and the lamp of the heart. A map of the earth, the sun and stars above us, the shape of the horizon, the shrubs and trees around us and the rocks beneath our feet. With poles for support, ropes and all adventure equipment, for surely we will occasionally find ourselves in an awkward spot, and need added resources to extricate ourselves. Informed by the weather as it rolls in from every direction. Sometimes tiring and dragging our feet, sometimes marching stoutly through the thickest most tumultuous of times. Sometimes bounding and bouncing from boulder to boulder. So it is, trekking through the last few days.

It has always been the last few days. Certainly for as long as I or anyone else can remember. Since the moment of birth. Since before the moment of birth. Since the birth of the moment. It never started and never ended. It has always been the last few days and always will be. For one never knows really. One never knows and furthermore cannot accurately presume or guarantee the continuation of this dream form nor any of its constituent parts. Not another moment can be guaranteed, nor indeed can one predict when the drama will end and all of the players go home. 

Trekking through the last few days is much like traveling through an uncharted region. Always finding new scenes upon which to rest ones eyes, taste and experience. New scenes and dreams and friends and teams. The heart becomes a bit softer and the life a little fresher. The feeble and fluffy dreams fail and fade, and those built on rock and the true firmament manifest themselves. Wherever it is that we rest, roots quickly work their way into the soil and solidity of whatever it is that supports us, whatever lies below. There making our nest.

Pulling ones roots out from the earth, and for a while being like a bird or a cloud. Held back by nothing in particular. Held back by the hand of fear. Held back by the untamed black beast, but only after having refused to make its acquaintance with it. Held back by not being curious. Held back by successive generations of conditioning and programming that together define and limits of the world and all of reality. Held back by a solidified identity from which but a few will turn and walk away from. The many faces of fear, hidden in every thing that blocks our path. Impeding our flow.

Turning and walking away, the dream that holds everything together weakens and fades. The atoms forget what it was that they were to form and cease holding hands and everything becomes empty space. Everything returns to the state of the primordial broth. All of those who have tickets and invitations to the spectacle that is the last few days realise that all is not as it seems. It may as well be the first few days, or any few days from the middle. It might even be a taste of life without days. The moments moment and the scenery from either end of ones nose. Turning and walking from the dream, it is not a long time passes before realising that we cannot walk far. We cannot leave it entirely behind us, as we need it as much as it needs us.

Turning and walking from the last few days. Walking into the many and abundant days. What a fine thing they are. Days of manyness and abundance. Climbing into them to taste them as they are. To revel in their fulsome and fertile fecundity. Walking through them day after day. Looking for others to share in the endless bounty of life. Looking for those less fortunate or less well positioned than oneself so as to help them with their needs and set them free.

In the last few days there is so little need to suffer. As little need as in the first few days. Except there is somewhat more experience in the life of form and in this form of life. Really really really it is just a matter of which way one chooses to look. What one chooses to face, what one chooses to view. Whether one chooses to see what one looks at, or even to  register it at all.

The fortunate and less fortunate stand on different sides of the railway tracks, the fence or the hedgerow, or whatever else they choose to place between themselves and each other. But they face the same direction in that they are in this journey of life together. The last few days or the many abundant days, it all depends on how they choose to perceive this apparition of life. Which way they happen to look. In most ways it is indeed that they do look the same way. Seeing the same game, the same characters, with different perspectives on the roles they play. Most forgetting to look through that to see what is really happening, and who and what is doing it.

In the last few days each taking their place from which to view it. Taking on their role in which to participate in them. These last few days between birth and death. One might travel to the far end of the universe and find that the view remains approximately the same. One might travel from one edge of the seat to the other. One might travel from one end of the mind to the other. Travel from one end of the nose to the other. When all has been seen and examined, it is hard to distinguish between this and that. Hard to distinguish where one thing ends and the next one begins. From where the form stops and the idea that created it starts. A projection played outwards in all directions. The last few days between death and life.

Eventually the journey through the last few days must come to an end. We have walked in one big circle and found ourselves at the beginning once again. It is the first few days after all. The many and abundant days also. Everything that ever happen all neatly recorded in the annals of life. Each moment dripping with poignant content. At the same time appearing as but a ripple through space. A ripple in time. The moment when the sky looks at itself.