Monday 29 April 2002

Pic of the day: Burning with the power of the sun. (Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot, as purely spiritual effects tend to register poorly on my digicam as of yet...)

I do not regret

I was sitting on the bus as some young teenagers stepped off. The girls were already quite shapely, and the boys were clearly elated by the company, to a point near intoxication. And I asked my memory: When was I there? My memory thought for a bit, then said: Not really ever. It displayed a few episodes that were somewhat in that direction, but not so intensely.

It is ironic, is it not? I liked girls from my earliest childhood. But at the time when they could start to act as a really powerful drug on my brain, I set out on a very different quest. For a long time I increasingly grew remote from all those things and many more, seeking instead to know my Savior. "I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because your hand was on me and you had filled me with indignation." (Jeremiah 15, verse 17, New International Version of the Bible.)

So is it not ironic that now I am questing to reclaim my humanity, now that I am changed forever? You can, after all, never go back. Nor would I want to, to descend into the confusion and the swirl of raw emotion that youth so often is. No, I would have done it all over again, I believe. For if not, I think I would have been doomed to live out my life with a black hole inside me, a hunger that I would try to satisfy with attention and admiration, with material goods, with new experiences, with new loves, always thinking that I would find something that could slake my thirst, but always failing. I fear that I would have continued my childhood habit of a life colored starkly in bright hues of demand.

***

I did not become the saint that, at the outset, I believed I already was. I just wanted to polish the edges of my perfection – and I ended up changing my entire shape. I thought truth would flatter me, and I sought truth. But truth judged me, doomed me, terrified me. And in my despair, it transformed me. Not into what I had originally thought, a saint and a prophet. But into this walking contradiction. I love truth, even though it condemns me. I take pride in my humility, and am ashamed of my pride. But it cannot be denied that my polarity has been reversed. Once my goal was to make people give me as much as possible; now I love those who can honestly receive.

Once I shone with the light of the moon, reflecting a small part of the light that shone on me. Now I burn inside with the power of the sun. I do not need someone else to make me happy, to give my life meaning, to make me feel worthwhile. I know on a sheer cosmic scale how utterly unimportant I am, a value indistinguishable from zero in space as well as time. And I am undeterred. I believe it is every human's calling to come to this, a personal life, a sense of self, of being real, not just a reflection of others. Have a place in creation that is all yours. And more than this, I think, if we want. Surely I have only lifted the first veil.

I thought I was spiritual, but the spirit showed me that I was flesh. I thought I was humble, but humility showed me my vain pride. I thought I was knowledgeable, but knowledge showed me my ignorance. I thought I was wise, but wisdom proved that I was a fool. I thought I was holy, but holiness revealed me as a sinner. I thought I was pure, but purity disgusted me with the smell of my dirtiness. And by knowing all these things, I can take some measures to contain them, where before I could not.

Once I scorned and detested humans, whereas even God loved them. More than his own life, in Christian terms. In this light is my quest to reclaim my humanity. What I seek to find is a very different thing from what I turned my back on, even if it is the same.

***

Would I have given this all up, if I could go back in time, to choose instead the Quest for the Nookie? I dare say not. I would no doubt have felt a lot more pure and holy by now, if so. In a way I would have been, because innocence is in proportion to what we know. And I know enough to condemn me many times over. Yet this is my life. This is who I am. The hunger in my spirit could not be contained, it ravaged my sanity, it devoured my humanity. I have paid the price that must be paid, to become me. I did so of my own volition, or rather the harsh demand of the angry god in me. If you make such a choice from social pressure, or because it is the requirement of your church, then you are damned. Your fire will never be quenched, nor will your worm die. We are not all destined for the same path. Be warned.

(Not that there's anything wrong with nookie, properly applied. I wasn't grown in a test tube, you know, even though I may sometimes act like it. Nor do I come from the stars, though I sometimes long back home there.)

[ADDENDUM] In retrospect I see that that last statement can be read as "sex is good only for reproduction", if you know some Catholics and not me. No way. I just meant to imply that even good people do it, as well they should. But contrary to Tantric traditions as read by some New Age weirdos, the Way of the Nookie is not a good basis for spirituality.)