No turning back. "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
― Søren Kierkegaard
Before we can travel towards joy, we must pass by the experience of emotional pain, loss, woundedness, guilt, shame, disappointment, betrayal, and a host of other low level vibrating evidence that we lived a life. Oh, we may have some moments of happiness, here and there, (and they are to be savored), but we cannot know ourselves fully in this life, on this plane, in this dimension without the knowledge of these emotions and experiences which give the necessary seasoning and color to our particular journey.
It amazes me, still, to witness how we are born into this world free, only to suffer over time, "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", (to quote Shakespeare), having been plunked down into our various realities, and having to fight our way back to some kind of normalcy (the idea of normal being debatable. But that is another subject).
However, these emotional experiences are the meat of this life. They make the woman or man out of us (or, they don't), if we are able to rise and recover, and grow from our experience of them.
There is a sadness when one observes that moment of transition from a free-to-be being that is our child-self, to the brutal battering into maturity, and necessary acceptance of life in this-here Matrix, with its shuffling us into conformity, into go-along-to-get-along, into an almost tyrannical beat-down and beat back of our authentic selves, in the name of fitting in, being a part of some society, and living in the so-called real world.
By the time one reaches a measure of maturity, (because many with greater years often still have little wisdom), where there is an awareness of knowledge that has been gained, knowledge that has been understood and garnered, and that ostensibly served the whole experience of our lives here, there may then be little time to apply the wisdom for further experience. For then, the reality of physical time has slowed down, robbed, or stopped the process significantly through the aging body.
"Why wait? So precious is this life-this gift-this temporary blindness. Burn and drown and embrace the false dark, then grasp the unthinkable height of resulting joy. For in the end, in the light of truth when the flesh is cast off, there is nothing but this."
― Jennifer DeLucy
The paradox of life is that you generally do not realize much of this as you are experiencing the life you came to try-on. So, in the process, you may spend days lost in sadness, or darkness, days lived seeking to acquire this or that material bauble of material life. You may get lost in obligations to others, and struggles for survival. You may endure stresses and blights as you endeavor to find your way in the hostile territory that is this Matrix world, and that is bound and determined to make it difficult for you to see your way clearly through your life.
So, whenever you have moments of awareness that lift you, (however briefly), out of the drumbeat of so-called reality, grab onto them. Make them count for something. For the portion of joy you can grow from successfully surviving the experience can build over time and bring a kind of abundance, if you are able to take the eagle-eye view of your life, if you are able to pull back from what is described as real and reality, and intuit a greater perspective.
This, then, will be your treasure.
© 2018. Egyirba High. All Rights Reserved.
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