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.

Omega travels through the alpha beta predator world

In a far corner of space, a forlorn planet. On a good day it is a resplendent opal, an orb of goodness that spreads in every direction. But it has become somewhat bedraggled, as planets go, and has lost some of its lustre. It is sick and sad and searches for a cure to its ills.

It is trapped in solitude, even when surrounded by others. It seems cut off, isolated in space, exiled from all good sense, quarantined even. Quarantined to stop the spread of its plague. Its complement and cargo includes a population of undesirable entities. There are a great many entities there that are fine and good. They are in fact the majority by far, and yet there is a malaise that permeates the society as a whole. Struggling to awaken to the day, struggling even to remain alive. It has what would appear to be an infestation – a parasitic population that has bloomed and become toxic. A parasitic population that threatens the survival of its host.

There are many populations living within its biological realm, each having the power to do some harm, and the power to do some good. As with all populations, this power waxes and wanes with the ebb and flow of time.

Those who walk on this world often seem to have trouble seeing life in proportion and perspective. From the human view point it is sometimes not easy to see their position in historical time, much less cosmic time. It is difficult to see the scale and depth of time that makes their ventures and known history seem slight. Nor is it easy to see the timelessness in which the whole drama plays itself out. Sometimes the timelessness is seen but they forget what they have seen, as it can be difficult to remember. Difficult to remember because there is no thing that it can be related to.

There is a legend of an evolution of species - a hypothesis, a theory, a myth - of sorts. There is some evidence that seems to support such a thesis, but looking at the sad case of the human race as a collective it might seem that very little progress has been made in a very long time. Looking at the course of history of the human race in general it is sometimes difficult to see such a theory as being plausible.

The population is divided into various and tribes and cults and sects – each with their populations overlaid and mingled with the others. Quite apart from the languages of words, they all seem to speak a different language of life.

Each has their field of interest and their arena of action. Each has something in which they derive great pleasure in life. They also have their field of pain in which they feel most acutely the sharp edge of life. Some have more of the one than of the other. Some have more of the other than of the one. Bunged-together into the same matrix they bump and grind and inevitably some form of unease ensues.

A bunch of people all thrown together into the meatgrinder of life. It churns away and before long someone emerges who has decided that they shall be the leader of all of the others. None of the others had noticed any need to be led, nor agreed in any way to such an imposition being put upon them. Shortly after the emerging and proclaiming of leadership, a bunch of toadies, sycophants and followers appear. They emerge as if by some form of spontaneous generation..

As soon as this group emerges a fight breaks out. There is snarling snapping and biting as these brutes determine that they should prove their leadership potential and abilities should they be required to exercise it. They bark and bite and tear at each other – it is their way of presenting their credentials. They viciously attack a few innocent bystanders, as it might influence their place in the hierarchy. It might raise their status and place in the pack. The whole planet lurches and bleeds a little bit more. A few passengers fall off, and a few jump off in dismay.

It has been like this for a very long. It has been a long journey, this tribe on this planet, and little progress has been made. If its passengers could be coaxed to behave a bit better, and care a bit more, then conditions might be a bit different.

But we are stuck here and these are the conditions in which we must live. The time of the predatory hierarchy. Something has clearly gone wrong. The species seem to have abandoned wisdom, and wisdom has abandoned them. So it would seem. The whole tribe is left to fend for themselves. Worst of all is that the brutes who impose themselves as leaders and set the course are but a very small part of the population.

It is not just in the social sphere that these ills are seen. Whole species and genera have given up hope for life in this planet. Toxic growths of matter appears everywhere, the light is dim, and the plants that bear fruit and flowers are reluctant to appear.

For all of the millenia that have passed since humankind first appeared on this planet, the same story has prevailed. Even with the passing of aeons and the cycles of yugas the situation remains the same. It is a sad story, and it is the human condition. The planet is dulled as it bumbles through space.

Amongst its inhabitants there are many who will work to make it a better day. Among its complement there is an array of artists and adepts who will ease the burden of the journey for all who fall into their sphere of influence. Artists, anarchists, acrobats and alchemists, altruists and adepts of every type. Not merely many but perhaps even most of the population. They will forget about themselves and work for others instead. They do so, and the smell that emanates from the leader of the pack eases by degrees. The leaders, their followers and all of the sub-members. The stench of their collective imprint is diminished by gradations, and smidgens of gradations.

The planet has been on a bent course for a very long period of time, and it will be a long time before it can be returned to its true course. So it seems – one would need to be very wishful to see otherwise. But then who knows...