Souls Laid Bare

3 minute read

Sitting in conversation with myself over a glass of meditation, I brought to the surface things I knew but had never made conscious. It is like knowing the story of a book you have not yet read.

I knew, for example, that I did not want the past to happen again, not even its most beautiful moments, because I dislike reliving what has already occurred. Perhaps this is why, within the self, we cannot reproduce and inhabit the past as we might in sleep. We would probably never wish to awaken.

I have often felt that I effectively ceased to exist long ago, from the moment when whatever sustained the fire within decided that it needed a parallel destiny, separate from my existence.

There was a brief return, accompanied by shocks within the brain, perhaps because with each passing day I anticipated what was inevitable. Then, at a certain moment, a deep coma began - not in the body, but in the soul.

I had endured many things in life, so this should not have affected me so profoundly. I concluded, however, that what I had experienced was not ordinary. It had not been ordinary before either, but perhaps now the two souls truly had been destined as kindred souls.

From that moment, everything happened as though in a dream, while I waited for the day when I would somehow emerge from this state. With each passing day, however, I realise that I no longer particularly want to awaken. Everything around me makes this condition appear better than any alternative.

Sometimes I see beautiful destinies and rejoice for those who live them. I also see destinies from which the soul seems entirely absent.

In the past, I always agreed that the man is an "animal" who makes his opposite suffer because he is too selfish and places too little value upon the soul. Perhaps I believed this partly because such an animal was the "kind of father" I had.

Lately, however, I have concluded that when a woman possesses freedom of thought, she can surpass the man by far in every respect. When older people spoke in the past about marriage, humility and a child as its fulfilment, they did not speak without reason, but from experience. In the end, only the fruit of that transient love may still have a chance within this mad and blind world.

I see people who say they love, yet their love is limited by how much, in what manner and under which conditions. This is not love. It is like going to school but insisting upon choosing the best and most expensive one, although that school does not always possess the finest teachers.

True love is not transient. On the contrary, it lasts forever. Love has no conditions.

Everything in this world has a cause. I believe the greatest blame lies with thought, which no longer respects or values the mystical, and technology has exerted a strong influence upon it.

If religion regarded science as an enemy, I believe this was the reason. Yet, as with religion, science is not to blame for human choices. Human beings are to blame for everything that happens.

I feel tired, drained and lifeless because I am trying to struggle against destiny and everything around me. I try to hold on to something, but immediately that thing loses its support, as though it possessed no value.

What still binds me to this world is prayer, moment by moment. It is like medicine taken by a sick person so that they may remain alive a little longer. The only thing I have managed to do is bury this coma within so that it is no longer visible outside.

I rejoice for those who live like Zorba, and I also rejoice for those who live like Buddha. I cannot rejoice for those who try to combine the two, because this is not easy and may be impossible within present society.

First published in Romanian on 13 October 2010. This English translation preserves the perspective of that period.

Original Romanian article: Suflete dezgolite.