Random Moments | Life Becomes More Surreal

“La verdad es que mientras más enojado estoy con este país y más lejos viajo, más mexicano me siento.”
― Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Instrucciones para vivir en México
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Random Moments | Life Becomes More Surreal

Post by Christine »

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For many years I didn't read a book even though I had been an adamant reader since early childhood, books were are place to get lost in, to step into worlds that seemed so much more vibrant and real than growing up in the suburban box that I did.

There appears a flowing band of intelligence that guides many of us, it pricks our consciousness, it bears forth a light that instructs, that is, if we've thrown off enough of our falsely installed beliefs. This intelligence comes from the heart, a knowing that we are called to bear witness to the actors of the evilest of evil deeds. Being able to peer into the darkest places without flinching is an act of shining light so that the creatures hidden there have to reveal themselves for what they are.

What springs eternal in the open pulsating heart is a simple desire to answer a higher call. To step into the great unknown of outcome, to let go of the need to control, cajole, or condemn—there is a deep breath of freedom in releasing that which shrinks the soul and in turn attempts to bind another. People, things, voices, animals, birds, trees, the blessings and the challenges all arrive in our lives in a constant flow—when we receive them without complaint, without argument, we more often than not find that there is a steady guiding light that leads us. The trick, if you will, is to find yourself so situated in stillness and peace that you become the beacon for others. Most people not only don’t know what and who they are, they don’t know where they are located either. Find yourself, now that for me, is the challenge of challenges, especially in the degradation and destruction of today’s world. Or perhaps, turning the thought around, this is precisely the best opportunity we’ve ever had to locate our being.

When my mother passed I spent several months ridding her house of belongings, giving away what I could and throwing out mountains of papers into the trash. It's a stark realization that a life time spent hanging on to material things, the doings, the desires unfulfilled and the ones that were are stripped away with the final breath. Such is life, unless one knows with every acquisition, they too will pass, dust to dust as it were. I don't consider myself a collector, it's more like things collect themselves around me in an almost shocking manner. I did keep a bookshelf of old books that had belonged to her husband having passed years prior. They've been sitting on a bookshelf in my new home, faded book covers, browned pages, some heavy tomes, as decoration because they looked good. I have to laugh writing this, because it's true—I never opened one.

In the past several months and more urgently lately I felt I needed to stop listening to all the relentless horrible news, the spell casters, those who make a good living on thousands of online platforms, their voices no longer serving as a wake up call for it is a little too obvious now since the masks have come off. Today a quick look at headlines and video titles tells me all I need to know. I still listen to a few voices, those who feel like friends, a strange comfort that is fading now into the illusion of a virtual reality that isn't real at all. I went to the dusty books on my shelf and found the one pictured.

Hypatia has long been a woman I knew about, her voice echoing down through the centuries—a resonance felt with this renowned philosopher. So finding this book and opening it's pages I stepped into another world, a tumultuous world of civilizations clashing. Greece was all but gone as Hypatia clung on so valiantly to the great Greek heroes of the past—a philosophy of life that at its apex soared on the highest calling of the human body, mind, and soul.

I found myself transported to Alexandria on the Egyptian coast, the writer, an able one makes his words come alive. I could feel the hot sun, see the azure sea, the Cesareum, the amphitheaters, the temples, and the people—Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Goth, Byzantine, Jew, Christian and the Catholic Church; each proclaiming their self-righteousness right to rule. A potent dangerous mix of political intrigue, a fore shadowing of what is happening in our own day and age. The pageantry of life then—so void in our present time. The same battles rage today, with new faces, more brittle and dull—faded virtual forms speaking in idiotic utterances, or contrived pseudo-linguistics that circle back to nowhere. Most of the brightest ones are brought down, just as they were in those days, so that only a few remain shining far above the rest. There is such a great human tragedy repeating, looping back through worn out channels heavy with sludge, and the ultimate goal of merging into a mechanical technocracy once it has sucked the life blood from all that it can.

And yet, life springs eternal in the great cycles of the celestial dome moving overhead—the luminaries still speak in the language only poets, mystics, and the silent ones can comprehend. In spite of what I write above I am feeling that being present here is a great gift, if we learn how to unwrap it.

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The journey, the challenge is to step into the
projection room and stop being lost in the script.
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