navigating emptiness-the beginning

A stairway is not such a difficult thing to navigate, at least on the way up. There may be many steps to take, but if one is young, healthy, and vigorous, he has a good chance of climbing to the highest precipices. The stairway of life begins with birth; but from here, there is an infinite prismatic galaxy of different stairways leading in the multitude of directions, this labyrinth, with trap doors and passageways, diseases, addictions, abuses, madness, loves, family, dissolution, and certain death. Which way do we go? Our parents are generally quite important in this passage. One poor family keeps their offspring in their native land, in the face of adversity and struggle, and one gives up their child in adoption to a rich couple up north, who can’t conceive. These stairways lead in different directions, but what with all the unknown factors, there is no telling with any certainty that the child adopted into wealth will fair better than the one who is raised in physical poverty.
We climb these steps blind, as a rule, which is seldom rewarding, though every once in awhile we trip into an upward spiral by the turns of Fortuna’s wheel. We beat the game many times as we expand and disintegrate. We climb these stairs in the dark, in passion, in drunkenness, or we see just before us, but the stairs begin to curve, and we can’t see around the corner. Up and up we go, before we turn and look behind us, at what we have left in our wake. What passageways have we followed, and which have we passed by? Have we reached a cliff, with nowhere left behind us to go back to, must we step into the abyss, with all its mysteries?
How does one find the emptiness in this world of illusion, which begins the journey toward self-discovery, the emptiness which is preceded by the dissolution of the aggregate I’s we are to disintegrate in order to find our center in the wholeness of the universe, when we are aware of the hallucinations of our reality, created in our perceiving minds, and find One? Heavy question, loud walkman. Got my ear-pierced when I was 12, wore a gold playboy bunny in there, and felt pretty damn good about it, with my crystal pendant necklace and a burgeoning taste for smoking grass.
Before that, I threw grandmas cigarettes away, trying to get her to quit, then I just started stealing them and enjoying the mint fresh smokiness of the long black Moore’s in the green soft pack. Early lesson: if you can’t beat them, join them. We take lessons all the time, yet few of them, it seems, are setting us up for deep serenity, a peaceful mind, and a compassionate love of our fellow man. So we follow the steps laid before us by our circumstances and our decisions, conscious or unconscious. Even for the Atheist, this is a step of faith, but it’s alternative is often suicide, so it is a faith many take blindly.

TBC
ACS