The human experience, not escapism

Most people around me seem to have an almost identical dream these days. To leave and settle down somewhere in a simple quiet place, perhaps in Asia or South-America, but any place usually which is away from the manic rut-race we know and completely sheltered by nature. To run either a tiny business like a cafe or a little farm growing their own veggies. Some feature a commune, but generally the theme is- nature, peace, self-sufficiency, separation.

I used to dream of joining a nunnery of an eastern religion but neither my inner hedonist nor my inner individualist would allow it. So I adopted this dream also. Added a little river and a boat, reminiscent of the life of the boat-man from "Siddharta" :) - life seems peachy creamy indeed, paradise manifest, or so we may think.

Somehow most of my friends and myself have refrained from running away to buy their farms, and I do believe that its something more than the lack of resources, cause if there is a will there is a way and all of us keep fulfilling our other dreams. Yes we are totally overloaded in our lives of endless information and stress and separation from nature and it feels inherently wrong to live this way. I have experienced in my times away from the society that I am in constant peace, but for me there is a nagging thought- if peace would be constant, what would happen to the one thing that matters to me above all else- growth? If humans were meant to simply stay in bliss- would they still be human? Constant bliss does not seem to be a human state.

To be human for me means to learn and to know both the heavens and hells fully, totally, to be in-between, to feel the schism of our animal and spirit natures, to overcome duality, to overcome duality, to overcome duality- till, after time, we have become saturated with the state of human being and have reached the state of total non-duality, the heaven is always the same as hell and the lessons have all been learned. The human state for me is not a horrendous state of suffering either, it is what it is, and when we let it be that- we simply grow.

With this in mind, I prefer to be in the whirlwind of the modern society and the mad world. Some periods of time I might lose myself. I might get wrapped up and overwhelmed by the mundane, by tiredness, I might forget what I have remembered, but this is the hell for me now and as far as hells go- not too bad at all compared to what I remember hell can be and compared to the joys of coming back to the unity and peace and myself once more. Each time the remembering is just a tiny bit more stable and persistent.

With this in mind, I prefer to rise and fall in the winds like the birds, at times one with the wind, playfully sliding down a gust while sometimes shaken and stirred.
I gladly suffer the pains of yoga cause I know the pain means a deeper relaxation into the unity.

I prefer to be where I am even if its chaos at times. To live in the times I have chosen to live in. Fully. Regardless of what we all suffer with. I prefer to learn fast and to play out all my karma. And I am guessing that many of the people around me, even if its not conscious, feel the same.
I also do believe that we chose to be born now, and namely now, when the evolution of consciousness is happening more rapidly than ever. The dissatisfaction is part of that, the shadows calling forth the light.


I have no doubt in my mind that our human energy will eventually come to a state like in this scene, from one of my favourite movies "Waking Life".
I felt glimpses of that total readiness of moving on when I had my labour pains of the rapture of awareness, yet soon I saw that all of our human souls have many many stories to tell.
 


Some quotes from the master of telling the human story honestly- Hermann Hesse. "Gertrude" 1910

"That life is difficult, I have often bitterly realized. I now had further cause for serious reflection. Right up to the present I have never lost the feeling of contradiction that lies behind all knowledge. My life has been miserable and difficult, and yet to others, and sometimes to myself, it has seemed rich and wonderful. Man's life seems to me like a long, weary night that would be intolerable if there were not occasionally flashes of light, the sudden brightness of which is so comforting and wonderful, that the moments of their appearance cancel out and justify the years of darkness.

But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours. And we can draw close to one another in times of need, understand and love one another, and live to comfort each other. And sometimes, when the black depths are silent, we can do even more. We can then be gods for moments, stretch out a commanding hand and create things which were not there before and which, when they are created, continue to live without us.

We cannot evade life's course, but we can school ourselves to be superior to fortune and also to look unflinchingly upon the most painful things."