Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Unending


The illusion of climbing was indeed of the most terrible kind of pain there is. On careful thought, it is only too evident. Simply having fallen would have been simpler by any logical measure. The dark depths of the abyss that always seemed only so close, probably did really end somewhere. We had the strangest visions about that place. There was this idea that it could be the worst kind of hell. Perhaps it was a cold hard limitless span of a desert littered with the broken bones of all the fallen. Or maybe there was just seething fire, the kind that simply burnt every last bit of all the souls and spit out soulless ghosts that rose up as black smoke. Armies of lifeless souls forever pervaded and probably roamed disguised as the atmosphere of the valleys with no hope of redemption or even a little peace. Or maybe the bottom was only just boundless freezing water and there were countless bodies that neither drowned nor surfaced but only eternally suffocated there with bloated lungs for an endless duration of time. But how did one know? How could it be that the floor was a hell more cruel than life itself? Was it just not nothingness? Is it not that when we let ourselves fall, it all ended there? And wasn't there only nothing? And no pain? Not even time? Was there a sleep more peaceful? There were not even dreams. Is there conceivably any better remedy?

But somehow, to the self, falling was unacceptable. The undying spirit, unknown to itself, is its own curse, a victim of an infinitely recursive design. It tried climbing, unwilling to know which was more unforgiving, the wretched walls of the unending cliff or the floor of the abyss itself. Lessons for life would tell us that there was hope above and one had to survive. There were always better places to go to, from where one was today. One has to keep climbing. But is that not contradictory by definition? These are 'lessons of life'. What do lessons of death have to say though? Could they be more illuminating? Anyone thinking out of the box would get there, for sure. That moment of enlightenment when the rational few break out of the circularity that engulfs the spirit in an ignorance that was hardly even blissful.

Standing outside my own self, I witnessed the body (that was now practically indistinguishable from a corpse) make one more step. With bleeding nails, the fingers broke painfully into the treacherous rocks once more and with every last bit of energy left, the climb continued. Just as the body lifted itself up against the walls a little bit more, the mind mulled over the potential usefulness of all this. The marathon should have been long over now, but somehow there was no end in sight. Surely a hell lot goes in to all this and so is it even greedy to hope for a little something? How do we measure the worth of all this apparent ascent? Are we moving higher? Somewhere away from the darkness? Or is it that, no matter how much you climb, the gnawing claws of the darkness always stayed close like a shadow? It would play that little trick on you, only when you deceive yourself into believing in progress. When you just thought so, it would then prey upon your soul and feed on all happiness like a blindly unsympathetic demented unforgiving force of ruthless nature. And, what if the walls themselves were falling? Then, how were you even climbing in the first place? What if the whole process was just about inevitably reaching the lowest recesses of the abyss and the system had been simply programmed to continue crawling in the opposite direction? What if it was all one big sadistic joke at the expense of limitless agony?

Another day, another climb. Go on, you wretched fool! Yes indeed. Don't let go! Make the climb! There is light and laughter at the end of the tunnel. Haha. Yes indeed, you bloody masochistic maniac. Don't fall. It hurts like horrible hell, but yea, never let go. Let it keep hurting! As the wise say, isn't that just the way of life?

But would your peabrain just pause for a moment and ponder as to why on earth you'd choose the way of 'life'?

Oh god, the fingers hurt. The muscles and bones have long worn out now. The limbs were all torn. The bruised body ached everywhere with dull pain. The blood on the skin had long since dried now in dark patches all over the place. There was no breath left. The wind had long since left the rib cage and the insides were hollow and seething like a vacuum imploding inwards, perhaps only like the abyss itself was.

The soul always kept seeking the end of all pain constantly looking upwards towards an apparent mythical source of a healing light. The light and God were one and the same. All one heard about them were tales. Myths built to fool the spirit and seal it inside the blind walls of the circular trap of life. What was real was most obvious, the blood and the searing pain and the eternity of time but the body made another climb.

The body suffered, and kept trying impossibly hard to protect the soul that was carefully enclosed within, but it was always unclear as to which was more torn in the process - the body or the soul? Which died faster? Every tiniest source of strength inside had long been exhausted and somehow the body moved one step higher. This can never be attributed to any logical phenomenon other than foolishness. The magnificence of this effort can indeed only be matched by the extent of its absurdity.

So, heed this, oh weary one! The all pervading ether of the dead souls from the abyss looms all around you like a thick layer of fog, and if only you were willing to let your tired hands go, they'd take you in with an ever lasting embrace. In death, there was no loneliness. No pain or suffering. No wrong. No need for remorse and no meaning and purpose. No goals and no endless search. No ambiguity and no waiting. Could any life experience ever surpass the sweetness of that feeling? Could there be anything more profound than that permanence of un-being? Anything more pleasant than that magical liberation of the trapped soul?

And was there anything more deserving than that unending rest of the weary spirit?