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."

"Siddharta" online, quotes and film

"Now, he thought, that all transitory things have slipped away from me again, I stand once more beneath the sun, as I once stood as a small child. Nothing is mine, I know nothing, I possess nothing, I have learned nothing...when I am no longer young, when my hair is fast growing gray...now I am beginning again like a child."

"The river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth...in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the future...Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man and Siddhartha the old man [are] only separated by shadows, not through reality...Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence."

"[Siddhartha learns that] a true seeker could not accept any teachings, not if he sincerely wished to find something. But he who found, could give his approval to every path, every goal; nothing separated him from all the other thousands who lived in eternity, who breathed the Divine."

"[A]ll the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life...then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om - perfection."

"From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of things."

"When someone is seeking...it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything...because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal."

"Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good - death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me...I needed lust [and] to strive for property...to learn not to resist them."

"He saw the face of a newly born child, red and full of wrinkles, ready to cry. He saw the face of a murderer, saw him plunge a knife into the body of a man; at the same moment he saw this criminal kneeling down, bound, and his head cut off by an executioner. He saw the naked bodies of men and women in postures and transports of passionate love. He saw corpses stretched out, still, cold, empty. He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships to each other, all helping each other, loving, hating, destroying each other and become newly born. Each one of them was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that was transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another."

Hermann Hesse's "Siddharta" online

Here's the movie as well, though I have to say that all the movies that have been inspired by my favourite books have always disappointed me immensely. No film can give justice to the talent of the author themselves, it can give a poor duplication at best (that's if they don't change the plot like Hollywood disastrously often does).