Читать книгу Reflections on Life - Colin E Knowles - Страница 3

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Hell

In the midway of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray

Gone from the path direct: and eén to tell

It were no easy task, how savage wild

That forest, how robust and rough its growth,

Which to remember only, my dismay

Renews, in bitterness not far from death. ……

We all search

In our many ways

For reason and meaning in our lives

And

For you, life has been like wandering

Lost in a gloomy wood

Unable to find the path direct.

So turning your back

On this earlier life

You leave your home

Behind you and

Begin your search.

You have found a car park

And you walk with the crowds of shoppers through the department store

Packed with things you don’t really need

To the mall.

Past the sharp, tight, painted ladies grimacing with charm

Selling the latest personal self-decoration fads

At ridiculous prices.

In the mall, you pause,

Where do you look in this place for meaning?

The cinema complex (or dream factory)?

The food court?

The fashion clothing shops?

The key cutter, the phone case vendor, the person sweeping the floors?

The supermarket, the bookshop (a possibility), the handbag shop?

Surrounded by the noisy, bustling, intent throng

In the muzaked space

You see that the whole place is about creating expectations

And offering the dream of satisfaction.

The only meaning here is unrestrained desire

For the next and the new.

You turn

Walk through the department store

Past the painted ladies

To the crowded, desperate car park

And away.

In the church,

Under the high arched ceiling,

The coloured light

Streaming through the stained glass

Of saints images

Lights up in chiaroscuro

The man nailed to the timber cross.

The practicing organ music fills the space.

Subtle impressions of your youth

Surround you

With rote dogma and the possibility of hope.

Space shivers and blurs.

The nailed man is looking at you.

So you ask him

I am on a quest to know, so

Who are you?

I am a Jewish man from a Jewish world

Who lived a long time ago

Adopting an inner attitude of surrender and openness

To address the chaos of man and his world

Teaching respect and compassion

Killed by men

And then made God by man

And, mysteriously,

God’s son also

You then ask

If we made you God,

What or who is God?

God is one of man’s greatest creations.

God is the ultimate being.

God is all powerful and all knowing.

God created all things

Visible and invisible.

God is active.

God is love.

God is whatever you don’t know or don’t understand.

You pause,

Contemplating your next question.

How do we come to know this God and his love?

And the nailed man replies

There are many paths to God

And the best path is through me.

Why is that so when there are many paths?

Well, I am instructed to say,

With our path we promise the good man

Eternal life, with life after death in heaven

A wonderful place of goodness and light

And whatever you enjoy most

Along with all the other good, believing people.

Whereas unbelieving, bad people face eternal

damnation and pain

In hell

Along with all the other bad people

Suffering in the worst way they can possibly imagine.

You are sure you are a good man so you ask

But how can I be certain?

You will need faith

Blind faith and trust

In this, our message.

The music stops

The light streams down

You are stunned.

You see

The stark, archaic unreality

Of this doctrine

In the world around you

You turn to go

The voice whispers behind you

Remember

Blind faith and trust.

You walk into the marble foyer of the office tower

To the lifts and up forty floors

To the observation level.

Perhaps there will be meaning when you can see

The city all around you

Like a god?

The doors open and you move to the glass wall.

You see the city spread before you

Huge and complex

Patterns of humanity

Energy and movement

Cars creeping like ants

Through the box buildings.

You know there is order in this apparent chaos,

Somehow it works.

Man is restless and boundlessly creative

But do the blue sky, the distant green rolling hills

And the still sea of the bay beyond

Beckon you to a greater reality?

The cold, black, starry night sky

Spreads from horizon to horizon.

You look up.

You know that there are billions of people

Feeling, touching, living

On this airy, wet, rocky speck

In this one galaxy

In time and space

In infinity

So you ask this universe where is meaning?

The dark void whispers to you

You live in

An expanding cosmology

Of fields and forces

Matter and energy

Everywhere

Popping in and out of existence

Uncertainty and probability

Everywhere.

The classical absolute

Clockwork universe

Of touch and feel

Common sense

And blind religious faith

In an all powerful God.

Gone.

You live in

A universe of

Rubbery space/time

Mass energy equivalence

Light speed constancy

And a hoped for unity of all

But still one arrow of time

Flying into the future.

A universe created from a point of nothing.

A big bang.

Space expanding

Relentlessly

Curved

In and out

Cooling

But all hanging on to glorious

Symmetry

The stars probe your consciousness

And in the stillness

You are overawed by the immensity and potential simplicity,

The huge energies

Of it all.

Gradually,

Drifting away,

As the eastern horizon lightens.

The black sky and stars

Fade and vanish

And the sun rises.

Leaving the quarter celestial moon

Hanging in the sky.

You are on top of a steep wooded hill

Contemplating all before you,

The bush, the sky, the distant ocean.

The dark wood opens

And you step off the hill

Through the thick bush and scrub

Down to the river bank

Cluttered with broken trees.

Air vibrating with the sound

Of cicadas in the shimmering heat.

The river sluggish

Searching its way

Through the giant red gums.

You clamber and climb

Through the river edge chaos

Hints of the sea on the fitful breeze.

Opening and easier

You see the blue sky ahead

Through ti tree scrub.

Break out to the sea wind

Down the sandy bar

To the noise of waves and water.

You run to the sea and in.

The mass of boulders on the shore

Speaks to you

Touched by the waves

Of storms and still seas

Like the faintest murmur

A distant echo

In its time of eons

I was born from the magma below.

Cascading down

Until still and cool.

Worn away

Changed to sand

Scattered

Moved, buried and squeezed

Folded and lifted.

Transformed.

A new state

Reborn.

I age, wear

And change again and again

In a constantly repeating

Cycle of being.

The darkness rolls back

And light flows in

Assaulting you with meaning

Flooding over you

Warming you

Steadying you

And making you grow.

As the sky, the sea and the earth tell you

All things live in constantly repeating

Cycles of being,

Birth, existence and decay, death, transformation

Rebirth.

Forever

And within these repeating cycles

All thoughts and things belong

To the unity of existence

Through simply being.

Good and evil

Night and day

Yes and no

All opposite aspects

Within this unity

Creating the pure theoretical

Thought bounds of the duality

With which you think.

These things and thoughts are all connected,

Some obviously,

But mainly with delicate, hidden threads

Hiding under your senses

So the reality of your life

Is that you are an evolved, conscious being

Living in the myriad cycles

Of undefinable

Unity

With no beginning and no end

But with a universal connectedness

With everything.

You are standing

In front of your home.

You feel the light and energy around you

Within the immensity of the universe,

You are still.

You let go.

(2019)