Something my mentor/double stressed repeatedly to me over the years: "This is a solitary path, and you will eventually lose everything and everyone." At the time these words were communicated, I altered between thinking they were meant literally as opposed to metaphorically. Over the years, I've come to realize it's a bit of both. I've watched others who started out on this path slowly but inevitably fall back into the allure of the consensus for one reason or another. Oh, some of them still give lip service to the path, but actions speak louder than words. So while these people aren't "lost" to me, they are, in effect, phantoms on the road to Nowhere, even when they might appear to be walking at my side. And lest someone hop in to say that is me being judgmental, let me assure you I have no judgment whatsoever. I am simply an observer, a scribe of random events, a being who long ago lost sight of "the world" when my assemblage point shifted permanently to the Infinite. Such is life. It can perhaps be argued in the form of semantics, but at the end of the day, it cannot be denied by anyone who truly *sees*.
As for losing every *thing*, that has turned out to be interesting as well. What's been lost isn't necessarily physical things, but absolutely ANY importance or value attached to physical things. Clearly, that's a good thing, right? No debate there. But it makes for an interesting journey through what Madonna called "the material world." Particularly here in the West, so much value is placed on status symbols and material gain - cars, houses, jewelry, clothes. And yet, to the warrior, these things are only tools, or even less than that. They are objects in an inventory. An inventory in a warehouse of Chaos.
As a result, part of a "warrior's sadness" comes from the Knowledge that s/he is essentially an island of awareness in a sea of madness. Looking at old friends, we see the shell of abandoned potential, the husk that has been drained of all Spirit, and now has reattached itself to the teat of that material world. And in the material world, the warrior sees the play in full swing, and realizes it is a paradoxically circular script written by madmen and madwomen, acted out by zombies who were once vibrant, beautiful children. And in many ways, it is that "sadness" which gives a warrior her strength - the long-term observations and unshakable Knowledge that she, too, runs the high risk of returning to phantom status if she doesn't remain awake and simply continue to put one foot in front of the other while the world and all its lost souls and meaningless trinkets lie in ruins in the rear-view mirror of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment