I Envy You

[thoughts of   ~a burning woman~  Sha’Tara]

Dreams and more dreams.  The mind searching for answers, formulating and giving answers.  Traveling among the stars to worlds of our own making, composites of what we have sensed and what we can imagine even when we believe we are resting from imagining or imaging.

Last night I traveled to a world, or worlds, I had not seen before.  They were a bit like earth, and that should be no surprise, but there were elements to them that definitely cast them apart from this place.

As a ‘traveler’ I travel light (literally or figuratively, as in the movie K-Pax) which means no possessions.  Of course, ‘no possessions’ means detachment, not so much having nothing at all to exist by.  After all, if one is to exist on any type of earth, one must have a body, and what a cumbersome and inconvenient appurtenance that is!  That body must be cared for, dressed, fed, washed, exercised and trained endlessly or it literally goes to pot.  So no one is without possessions. 

In these dreams I did have a body and basic needs were comfortably met.  I sensed this.  So I begin with a scene in hills that turn to mountains in the distance.  These are beautiful green hills, dotted (or should I say covered) with equally beautiful estates.  I meet one of the owners of these impeccably maintained estates and we talk.  He is an older man, simply dressed in beige cotton slacks, white cotton shirt and a short-sleeved maroon sweater over it;  his white hair is slightly curled and carefully groomed.  He has a lined face indicating his riches did not come easily and his blue eyes are piercing.

I can’t remember the gist of our conversation, but at the end, as he prepares to return to doing whatever it is he is doing, he looks at me and says, his forehead creasing, “I envy you.”  Responding to my questioning look he sweeps his arm over his estate and shakes his head.  I understand him perfectly.  While I’m free to wander at will, never having to worry about the next moment, he realizes at the end of his life that all he has accumulated, all he has built, grown, saved and stored will serve him little.  What matters when you know you are at the end of life’s rope and all you’ve done for yourself was to create a little kingdom for your body and ego?  What happens now?  You have to leave it all behind, for someone else.  If you have no heir, you leave it to the sharks to divide amongst themselves.  And where do you go?  How do you account for yourself, should someone ask? 

Worse yet, what if no one cares enough to even ask?  What if you are left, a disembodied ‘ghost’ with only the accretions of regrets from a selfishly wasted life to accompany you in a wasteland where other ghosts also wander, avoiding each other, keeping their own counsel in utter wretchedness?

According to the teachers it is possible for anyone to avoid an eternity of despair for refusing to awaken to the realities of one’s world.  But that also requires much effort and much courage.  It calls for the total annihilation of one’s personality, or identity.  It means not only to give up altogether, but the willingness to choose such an end.  It may not seem such a hard thing to do when in a physical body for the entity looks only to the physical as that which must end.  But life is much more tenacious than that.  The physical is little.  There is the ‘soul’ to contend with, if one is still encumbered with such an ID patch.  There is finally the mind, and that’s the toughest part: to kill off one’s mind. 

There is a great sickness pervading this computerized society.  It is the ‘new religion’ which states in every possible way that you should never feel guilt.  To feel guilty for whatever violation of moral and social codes of conduct is to be anti-social.  There are saviors, counseling and drugs to ensure you do not feel guilty for the knowledge of ‘wrongness’ that rides the hedonistic heart like a beast from hell.  And how much guilt does a society like this one incurs knowing it is raping the remaining resources of a small planet and knowing also that those who provide its luxuries have virtually enslaved the vast majority of the world’s human population to make, carry or provide those luxuries?  However much this society denies this reality; however much it plunges into ever deepening vortices of meaningless pleasures and acquisitions, the guilt remains – that last obstinate link to what was supposed to be a morally and spiritually evolving race of sentience.

It should be understood that the guilt I write about is not what the System, or ‘others’ would impose on me.  I have no use for collective or corporate guilt.  Those who profit from emotionally driven guilt are hypocrites, all and sundry, no exceptions.  The guilt I speak of is that which arises within the heart-mind of the individual; that comes from observation followed by a great deal of difficult logical thinking.  Such guilt is not destructive but conducive to change.  If forces me to confront myself as I play my part on the world’s stage; to admit when I’m being a bad actor and validates my belief that I can do something about it.

I don’t have a problem admitting that I feel much guilt everyday.  Even in last night’s dreams (it was a series) I felt guilt because I too had remaining attachments, fears, doubts, selfish concerns.  The ‘what if’ is always there with us if we are evolving.  The existential questions remain, questions of accountability and responsibility.  I treasure these troubling thoughts because they remind me that I am an evolving human – becoming neither a creature of basic instincts nor a god.

{{“I am just a flashing ember in a purging fire.  But I fear for the rest of you, Michael.  If they can take away your guilt, your most private means of punishing yourselves, what will be left of your humanity?  The answer lies in our future like a dark, rough beast, and I am at least thankful that I will not live to greet its spectral face.”
Pax vobiscum,
Joseph }}
(from:  Time-Swept City – by Thomas F. Monteleone – published by Trident Press, 1977)