SHACK 916 PARCHED

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Sometimes the Quest which I name the path to find the Self is fraught with obstacles and analogies such a one is as the title suggests a dry and parched land.

It is like walking along a dry gulch where once the waters of Life had flowed. A steep ravine in which the bed or ground was harsh pointed rock like pebbles. There was no clear walkway so to speak and then opening up to a dry parched scrubland where no life seemed to be. I felt like a geophyte, the buds that lay beneath ground were analogous to my buried head and awaiting the waters of rain and dew to arouse my limp frail self buried head and the parched land to grow green again and flourish,

Then the desert and a journey to be undertaken with with trepidation by the searing heat of the Sun with no sign of water and everlasting sand and the barren waste of apparent lifeless relenting barrage of heat and sweaty fatigue.

I trudge on and only the pique spurred me on and the horizon does not seem to be any nearer. Yet I know and yet not how it is there somewhere.

I have felt this physically and shade with rest and water with some delicious food had restored my fleshly wants for the time being. Yet there was this nagging thirst and the dryness and discomfort in my mind, it was hot, restless it felt lonely and abandoned as if the physical body was somewhat satiated yet there was a missing something.

It was an inner and yet inner is not an adequate description or feeling, for it was not inner or outer or in any discernible location, it was a hunger for the truth of me. All definitions of me were just that; words, examples, parodies, fools gold. Something vital was missing.

Prayer would suffice for a while and it felt my brain burned, there was a zeal, an enthusiasm almost to fever pitch and awakening me from sleep, sitting in my chair at late night when all was still and quiet, just gazing into infinity with no real purpose that would abate and moderate this rampant and yet strangely controlled urge.

It would would always be the same quest; the meaning of life, how did life start, not scientifically, not religiously, who am I in this vast cornucopia, this paraphernalia, this kaleidoscope, this mural, this tapestry, this sprawling vastness of stars in space, planets and other Cosmic intrigues. My poor wretched brain teetered on the edge madness, of pushing to seek and answer, all the books, the searches all in vain. There are no descriptions or adjectives, holy scriptures or persons, in fact the more holy or spiritual the more it caused the angst.  

I had travelled to many places, left work for four years in unpaid sabbaticals interspersed in three year periods of work and somewhat miraculously taken back to employment at the same place. I met Gurus, lived in the wild, lived in a New Age Community, had relationships with beautiful women and made friends with great pals, I presented many workshops and counselled many, I had a great deal of money at one time and yet, and yet something was missing.

The more worldly my pursuits, the more the frustration and this deep nagging thirst would torment and tease me. Yet through this living parched desert, the claustrophobia of the gulches and ravines, the agoraphobia of the deserts, the paranoia of the mad world (especially now in 2020 with a strange so called Chimera Virus they name Covid-19)there were glimpses of a lush fertile land and yet the land the firm Terra Firma  was only a panacea, a rest, a respite. 

Then there was a running stream that caught me up at times and it was when I had exhausted all avenues and lay bare and naked, exposed and vulnerable and an involuntary surrender that did not work but a seemingly uninvited spontaneous synchronicity a coincidence or a just by chance occurrence, a gift, a grace would arrive. There would be the refreshing 'rain' of an inner if one could say that and it would be well nigh impossible for me to describe it adequately. This flow of something beyond description and so vital and familiar, it satisfied what I could name my soul, my vital non fleshly innards and in what I name meditation, the still mind at rest and allowing that which is beyond thought and anything worldly or physical to enter.

The gulches, ravines, deserts, frustrations and vicissitudes had subsided and the arid harsh wasteland, the grotesque and the stench of dumping grounds and used sardine tins, toilet waste, the garbage of putrid torture and the animosity, the war, the rapes and pillages seemed to vanish, melt, disappear and I realised I had met myself  and it was just that simple.

SHACK