(note: this entry is the final installment of an ongoing series starting with the post “Plato’s Seven Caves”)
…And so, having escaped from the suffocating ideologies of early mankind, and perhaps even the fear of death itself, our human finds himself exploding innovative ideas and visions for improving a world out of balance. The economy, health care, the political system, the environment — he sees that all are related, and that the only way to fix one is to fix them all. A daunting challenge, maybe, but so what? What else is life for? Besides, no one can do it alone. This human sees how life works towards a solution naturally, if we only let it…and so undoing faulty assumption of the old dying paradigms (aka caves) becomes one of the most constructive ways of unearthing the new.
Fun, fun, fun.
Like the fable of the emperor’s new clothes, this person is now able to see how so much of the stuff we humans take as valuable and neccesary are but illusory wants based on cultural brainwashing. Common sense brings better ideas, which occur to the older generations as somehow ’edgy’ and ’radical.’ The irony of it all cannot be denied.
And yes, still, begs the question…’Why?”
An expert problem solver in the world of form, yes. But our human has not finished his long escape. It seems that socially and environmentally responsible affluence with form is STILL not enough to keep him satisfied. That yearning — that deep longing for something beyond this world– eventually starts to beckon again. And it grows louder as the years move on. Why? Why live this life in the first place? What is the purpose for this tragic, ironic mind-game we call life? Is it just some sort of existential trick that we play on ourselves to pass eons of space and time? Will it ever make sense?
Having tasted and dismissed the tribal, religious and humanistic dogmas of earlier caves, this human is not about to fall into that trap again. And yet, there it is, the mystery — a riddle that may just never be solved. And that yearning — that longing for an experience more profound than the problem solving left-brain can muster.
“Perhaps I’ve asked the wrong question” our human thinks. “What new questions are my answers asking me?” he muses.
It’s a riddle.
The mind melts. Reality dissolves. And yet life goes on.
The world shifts from a problem to poem. Beauty — once seen as a pragmatic mystery reserved for museums and love affairs — becomes seen as the central truth from which all life springs.
Surrender, humility, beauty.
Through this lense this grateful human escapes even the cave of systemic thinking and arrives into a fresh new world of experience in which the infinity of everything screams from behind the mask of matter and form. Problems are still there. Rent is still due….yet an indescribable joy perfumes his experience at the odd realization that none of this truly matters, in the end.
There IS no end. No beggining. Only now.
The mystery of life, seen at every stage of life from a new angle, has not shifted even once since the first cave-dweller pondered the death of her hairy cavemate.
The mystery is beyond description, fiercely present and joyfully calling to anyone willing to embrace it. The difference between gratitude and terror is fear of the unknown. Embrace it, and dissolve into the timeless abyss from which all life must ultimately arise.
The poets were right, after all, weren’t they? Those odd little effiminately artistic fellows. They were in love with this mystery all along. And they wouldn’t shut up, would they?
Imagine that…
“We shall never cease exploring. And at the end of all our exploring we shall arrive at the place from which we started and know it for the first time.”
~TS Elliot
Life without caves is a neverending encounter with the mystery of being alive.
And what a long strange, trip it has been.
The End
