A Golden Path (part 2)

A Golden Path is a Dune reference. Leto II sees "A Golden Path" to humanity's ultimate salvation. My goal is considerably less grand in scale: to become fully awake in life.

This might seem very odd. At times, I seem "odd", even to myself. For a number of years (my early teens through early thirties,) I didn't feel really awake. These times were usually uninteresting.

More interesting are the moments I woke up. Here is one such moment:


Joy and Rage

The day is nice and cool for Texas weather. Surrounded by trees and meadows, I was spending the afternoon with a group of close and trusted friends. I was there to work on myself.

I put on the helmet and safety harness as the safety expert put on safety harness. With friends in attendance, I position at the base of a twenty five foot telephone pole, hands on the climbing pegs.

As I started the climb, I knew I wasn't concerned about climbing distance, even with my fear of heights and fairly strong vertigo with looking into the sky without terrestrial reference points. I was tethered to a safety line so the climb was meaningless as long as I don't look up the pole into the clear blue sky above for too long.

Hand over hand, I left the ground. The safety harness was tight, the tether slaps against the pole as I rose. At the top, I took a moment. There were no hand holds at the very top and my immediate goal was stand at the top of this pole. I climbed and slide over the top, tucked my feet below me and pulled legs beneath. I slowly stood, with small satisfaction, and looked out from above the trees.

I heard my friends far below shouting encouragement but I dismissed it. I was tethered so the climb was without risk, just physical effort without mistakes.

Then came the moment of truth. Three to five feet from the top of the pole dangled a trapeze bar. The next goal was to jump from the top of the twenty five foot pole to trapeze bar hanging thirty feet above the ground.

I contemplated the bar while my legs shook. Fear and doubt was mounting. I knew if I was up there too long, I wouldn't be able to trust my legs. Time was running out for my jump.

I adjust my helmet, blink away a blurry vision, close my eyes and jumped.

As happens in moments of very high stress, flash tunnel vision and cognitive blackout engulfed me. The darkness and silence was timeless, a place where thoughts echo softly.

As I blinked my eyes open as my friends yelled from below, I realize I was 'm swinging from the trapeze bar, legs dangling in open air. I was profoundly and unexplainable overjoyed. My heart pounds and I feel fully awake. I swung a bit before instructed to release the bar for a slow descent on the tether.

As I descend, it happened. From feeling of overjoy at the trapeze bar changes to borderline rage as I touch ground. I could see it so clearly and my body shook in anger.

All my life, I had been waiting for someone else to bring me my life. I had been waiting for permission for everything in my life from someone else. Paradoxically, I resented anyone that told me what to do or attempted to control me. And I had let fear keep me from living and doing anything worth while. An finally, I was angry at the more than ten years of lost living.

Afterwards, I've spent many years trying to recover the missing experiences in life. But, as enjoyable, risking, educationally and painful as that was, that behavior was not really living. It was just experiencing. That was scarcely more than a reflex action which proceeded for too long unchecked. It wasn't the same as being a fully conscious, thinking human being.


Sleeping in Dulled Dreams

In a very active way, I was still "asleep" in my own life, only briefly awake on occasion. I was still bound to some phantom of permissions that will never come, by a need to break free of these imaginary restraints and trapped by the fear of consequences of freedom. As large as I had made my world of experiences, I had become trapped inside again.

I dared not utter truth least I have to explain myself. So I kept silence when I should have boldly declared "I don't like that." I withdrew instead of saying "I'm sorry you have chosen to feel that way but I'm not responsible for you your feel. You are." I moved away from conflict rather than stating "That was ugly of you and I won't accept it." I hide in the shallow life rather than declare "I want to be substantial. I need to matter."

Worse of all, though I had learn to put people in my life, I could still manage to "feel like an outsider" in the middle of this crowd, unable to understand things that seemed simple for everyone else and their a blind obedience to the slogan "this is how it is" rather than asking "why is it this way?" and "Can't we do or be better than this?"

I let this inner silence wash me into sleep again, keep me tranquilized from speaking freely. Though sometimes I speak as if I were awake again, episodes of lucidity are brief.