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2022, the Year invoking the harsh lessons of awakening to sobriety.
A year in which Life has been grinding down all the habitual gears to which I was & am still chained. Throwing all sorts of wrenches into the sophisticated machinery of my delusions and distractions.
Ideals blown to smithereens, fantasy ripped apart, hope rendered into a desert of scorching infernal magnitude. My eyes burning from the smoke of my own self being consumed by a raging fire. The Heat at times Divine and regenerating, only in the next instance to turn into a burning pyre, a stake at which I am immolated alive.
My past but Ashes that I hold onto in my fingers, if I stare at it long enough, I can discern the Past I see is just a projected delusion that I am seeing instead of the ashes of their remains.
The Future veiled by the smoke of my own burning and immolation. The Fire reminding me that what I am is also the Wood of its consumption. All you have is the wood that is still burning, who is to say it will not reduce to nothing but ashes any moment now, I can discern Fire, but I know not how much of myself is there left to burn.
A whole year reminding me that truly there is just this instance, this present moment that is all that is truly available. The light of my fire illuminates merely what is immediately present, nothing more. I can only see by the light of the immediacy that is shining forth from my garment of flames.
An entire cycle waking me up to the dim light that illuminates the mystery of every single moment. Asking me to stop dreaming, inviting me/nudging me to wake up, lest only Ashes remain, and all become shrouded in Darkness.
Burning away at the stagnant logs of my limitations. A return to listening, a return to becoming one with the Fire instead of the Burning Wood.
You must burn yourself, it whispers. You must dare to reduce yourself such that you feel only ashes surely would remain, voluntarily. Only so may you verify if truly you are not just a lost wandering bird in the skies of punishment but perhaps the glorious phoenix who revives itself to exaltation from the embers of its own immolation.
Lose Yourself, so that you may finally relate to your SELF, so that you may see your Self reflected in the very dust that hovers around your home, in the water that you pour in your cup every day, so that you may speak to the Trees that you are, in the midst of your own known garden & deep unknown forests. So that you may see your Self in every living particle of life.
Paradise is not absent, but shrouded in darkness, for our fires have grown dim, we hold on to the logs that we think to be. We fight against the Fire and collect the ashes of that which we could not save and pretend it to be still alive, yet it is only dead dust which we carry in heavy pouches upon the shoulders of our soul. The weight casting our eyes down to contemplate the shadows that dance on the ground before us, no longer seeing the divinities whose form and embodiment is casting them before us.
No longer cognizant of the Fire that we truly are, but having just become a Wooden Victim & Sad Effigy tortured by our own dispossessed Divine Fire & Radiance, fighting to survive as wood a fire that we were meant to nourish.
A new Chapter at the Horizon. I sincerely hope that I might integrate these lessons sensibly into everyday life. How do I move from only this Moment? How do I cultivate true patience, how do I prioritize what I give my attention to, what truly matters day in and day out? What are just dreams or ways or paths I follow that I have convinced myself of but which bear no value, meaning or truth to me & Life?
-Shahanshah A.
