Lost Souls

5 minute read

No... I am not yet a lost soul in this small world... but I had every chance of becoming one. Or who knows, perhaps it is still not too late for me to lose myself completely and never find my way back. When I look at my existence, I think I am already lost, but I still do not want to admit it...

Someone asked me why I no longer write. To answer honestly, I have wanted to write many times. Several ideas for articles have been sitting in draft form for months. But for some time now - years, in fact - the ground has slipped from beneath my feet. I keep trying to reach it, but I cannot. Whatever once enabled me to defy the gravity of destiny, the very foundation of my existence, has vanished in a pale cloud of smoke. The ashes I keep rubbing between my hands are all that remains of the fire that once burned through my life.

Perhaps today or tomorrow I will write a few more articles drawn from the illusions of my thoughts, or from the ramblings of the black humour in my daily life.

I look around and feel that I do not belong to this world at all. I am here, yet I cannot recognise myself amid the agitation and foolishness of the people among whom I live, whether virtually or in the physical world.

Ignorance is a divine gift. Love has left me suspended between worlds, and that may prove fatal to my existence.

I am glad when I see fulfilment around me: when two lovers whisper sweet words to each other in some corner of existence - regardless of whether the future may shatter every illusion that now feels real to them - or when I see the lives of friends and relatives settling into a quiet course filled with promise.

Yet I also encounter situations that overturn my faith that everything, even evil, ultimately works towards good. That happened to me some time ago.

Last December, I was travelling home by bus. This was unusual because I prefer to walk, however great the distance, but I was probably in a hurry. I was looking quietly through the window when I sensed a filthy man approaching, begging for money for food and reeking of drink. My greatest surprise was that he addressed me as "sir" and called me by name. Although a Chris(t)ian by origin and soft-hearted, I do not usually pay much attention to such requests because I know that, for some, this way of living has become a profitable "profession".

But when I raised my eyes towards the man addressing me so humbly, I felt as though I were looking into a mirror - at a future that could easily have been, or might still become, my own, despite my existence supposedly filled with "prayer and plenty of the lived experience of divine love". Ugh.

My lips said instinctively, "I have nothing," but my heart began searching the corners of my thoughts. They brought forward only large banknotes, money I also needed. Then I remembered that I had just changed one of those "great" notes, and I had enough to give the man the price of a few loaves of bread.

At that moment, I realised where I knew him from and why he had addressed me as "sir". When he had known me, I had lived on rather different material shores. I remembered that he too had spent several months working aboard a ship, and people had said he was on the road towards a better life.

As if he were reading my thoughts while I held out a banknote far too small for the misery in which we live, he told me that troubles had overtaken him. His parents had sold the flat where he had lived, and he now had nowhere to sleep because they did not care. Worse still, even the few clothes he carried with him had been stolen on the streets.

There will always be fools whom life has chosen as examples of human advancement in the material world, ready to invent theories about how good or bad a person is, or how hard that person has or has not fought for their own wellbeing. I respect, however, those who allow for luck, destiny or divinity when explaining their success. It happened that this man was known as a gentle simpleton, reasonably well-read, humble and respectful.

To return to the purpose of this article: this is how a human soul rises, but also how it falls, regardless of its karma, intelligence or goodness. According to what life offers it, and how long it can withstand the avalanche of misfortunes descending upon it, that soul may become a terrible criminal or wrongdoer, a saint, or someone who achieves something magnificent with their life.

Today we are saved souls at the height of our glory, full of vitality, high ideals and ambitious goals. In the next instant, life strikes precisely where it hurts most - at the very foundation of our pyramid of achievements.

The question is whether you recover, whether you surrender in the meantime and abandon the struggle, or whether you are denied even the chance of a fair fight.

The Prayer of the Heart is necessary not only for lost souls, but especially for those who believe they have succeeded, so that they may remain strong when destiny strikes below the belt.

Life is beautiful, magnificent and worth living in its smallest details, from birth until the death of the body, for the soul will never die - or so they say. So there! Everything around us is divine; we are simply too foolish to see and feel it. Nothing should make us sad, unhappy, hateful or furious before existence, because everything around us is working for our evolution, for enlightenment, for our transformation into bodies of light - incandescent ones 😛 - and for the attainment of perfection.

And what does it matter that, for now, most of us are as foolish and stupid as people were several thousand years ago? We are merely better-educated fools, because everyone now has access to education, though not to enlightenment. With the help of technology, even that may soon be emulated, but it will not change the world as we know it. Change must come from within, not from outside.

First published in Romanian on 12 February 2012. This English translation preserves the perspective of that period.

Original Romanian article: Suflete pierdute.