And puff, everything is gone forever...

I am still looking for my place in the world. For my life mission, if I can call it like that. More than four decades later, I am as ignorant as on the first day. Or maybe not. Sometimes I am almost there, I can touch it, and then, puff, it disappears. Sometimes the "nothingness" is touching my soul, and I am thinking if we are just an accident happening on a global scale. Another puff and there is no humanity, then no earth, then no Solar System. As I always said, given enough time, even the Sun will die. What are we other than mere dust in the wind?

And yet, we, humans, are quite curious, we are always looking for solutions and explanations. This is how we created Gods, this is how we become gods, and this is how we will die. It seems that curiosity will not only kill the cat but the whole planet. In our journey for the truth, we may do some collateral damage. Animals, plants, bacterias even, are they beneath us? Or maybe this is another human creation, the ego? The pride that will make us fall. Common sense is just a couple of words, nothing more these days, and the new Ice Age is coming, catching us completely unprepared.

We tamed the lighting and the thunder, and we created the electricity, but in the past century we kind of lost control, and we became slaves to technology. As you can see in some war-torn countries, without electricity, it is our sheer willpower that will help us to survive. Our convictions, our biases, our prejudices, all of them are nothing but obstacles and the ideal existence can be achieved somewhere in the middle if you are looking for peace. Any kind of peace.

Happiness, that far-away dream, is not even a memory, as we want to get the courage to make the journey, and yet, we decline it. One more day, one more week, next Monday, next year, and as soon as you blink, you are old, and you cannot do it anymore. The darkness is heavy, and you cannot see the light anymore. What happened? Why is Father Time here, asking for his price to be paid?

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I am still a child, looking in wonder around me, spending 15 minutes watching a spider hunting or how the fishes move around aimlessly on the bottom of the pond. That sense of wonder, looking at the world with the eyes of a child, is something that I miss. That feeling used to nourish and make me grow, in any other way than the physical body.

And some other days, I'd like to think that this is just a school, and there are one or many paradises, hells, and everything in between. And above everything, there is perfection, the Satori, moksha, or however is this supreme condition called. There is the object, there is the one watching it, and there is the action of watching the object. And above all three, there is the empty state, the void, and the silence behind the words.

And puff, the noise is increasing in volume, we wake up, we start our "normal" day, with life, job, family, hobbies (if there is any time), the morning coffee, the evening shower, the jasmine opening in my Japanese tea. And the time, unfolding, one second at a time.

And this made me think of one of my favorite books, which I'll quote, even if it is quite a long quote. Gustav Meyrink - The Green Face, ready for you, my friends:

The key that will make us masters of our inner nature has been rusty ever since the Flood. The secret is to be awake. To be awake is everything. Man is firmly convinced that he is awake; in reality, he is caught in a net of sleep and dreams which he has unconsciously woven himself. The tighter the net, the heavier he sleeps. Those who are trapped in its meshes are the sleepers who walk through life like cattle being led to the slaughterhouse, indifferent and without a thought in their heads. Seen through the meshes, the world appears to the dreamers like a piece of latticework: they only see misleading apertures, act accordingly, and are unaware that what they see is simply the debris of an enormous whole. These dreamers are not, as you may perhaps think, dwellers in a world of fantasy and poets. They are the everyday men, the workers, the restless ones, consumed by a mad desire for restlessness. They are like those beetles which laboriously climb all the way up along a pipe, only to plunge down into it again as soon as they have reached the top. They say they are awake, but what they think life is, is really only a dream, every detail of which is fixed in advance and independent of their free will.

There have been, and still are, a few men who have known that they were dreaming.

To be awake is everything.

The first step towards this state is so simple that any child could take it. Only those who have been misled have forgotten how to walk, and stay paralyzed on their two feet because they do not want to throw away the crutches they have inherited from their predecessors.

To be awake is everything.

Keep awake whatever you are doing! Do not imagine that you are already awake. No – you are asleep and dreaming.

Gather all your strength together and fill your body for a moment with the feeling (but not the thought !!): Now I am awake!

If you can do this successfully, then you will at once perceive that the state in which you were before was merely one of somnolence. This is the first step on the long, long journey that leads from servitude to freedom.

Go on, then, advancing from one awakening to another. There are no tormenting thoughts that you cannot in this way get rid of. They will be left behind and will not be able to trouble you anymore. You will be as high above them as the crown of a tree is above the withered branches below.

Your pains will fall away from you like dead leaves from a tree when you feel your whole body, mind, and soul is awake.

The Brahman icy baths, the sleepless nights of the disciples of Buddha and the Christian ascetics, and the self-inflicted tortures of the Hindu fakirs are nothing other that the ossified rites which indicate that it was here that the temple of those who strove to stay awake originally stood.

Read the sacred writings of all the people on Earth. Through all of them runs, like a red thread, the hidden Science of attaining and maintaining wakefulness. It is the ladder of Jacob who fought all through the “night” (sleep) with the angel of the Lord until the “day” (wakefulness) broke and he was victorious.

You must climb from one step of the ladder to another if you want to conquer death.

The lowest step is called: genius.

What are we to call the higher ones? They are hidden from the mass of mankind and looked upon as legends.

The story of Troy was thought to be a legend until one day a man had the courage to start excavating by himself.

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I hope you will enjoy this, see you again tomorrow,

George