heaven and hell coexist within me. Siddhartha is teaching me this is okay.
being given the ability to think and reflect does not spare one the experience of the follies of human passions.
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The complete and total awareness of how foolish one is acting; the complete and total separation between the wisdom one knows they should act with and the total autocratic rule that the heart holds.
the experience of having regarded “worldly people” with a certain distaste, even a feeling of mental superiority; seeing their foolishness and blunders; always looking at humanity with a critical eye
then he experiences deep love, and thus also deep folly; hopelessly rendered a fool.
the object of his affections — his son — leaves. he knows what fate wills; still, he rebels regardless. he knows he must let go; he knows how powerless he is; he knows, he knows, he knows; still, his heart rebels regardless. he knows how foolish his thoughts are; still they pervade.
then, he feels a sense of solidarity with the rest of the world. he… gets it more, now. he understands. the passions, vanities, and anxieties of worldly people no longer appear to him as being beneath him; no, instead he says that he regards them all with respect. he gets it, he loves them for it.
oh, how i have experienced this. that fundamental split between the wise mind and the foolish heart; engaging in folly myself, stripping me of the alienation i lived with my entire life. i am human…
heaven and hell coexist within me. Siddhartha is teaching me this is okay.
It’s even teaching me that there is hell in heaven, and that there is heaven in hell. if one regards hell as samsara, the wheel of worldly passions and suffering, but that it is love that keeps one attached to the wheel, then it is easy to see that there is heaven in the love found in the hell of samsara;
and yet if one regards heaven as the wise and illuminated mind, looking upon samsara with a certain distaste, to penetrate the illusion and see past it — to look at the earth from the heavens — it is also easy to see how there is hell in that alienation and separation. to look at the world in this way is to be without love, without connection — and what could be more hellish than that?
that river, that parable, that metaphorical river, it exists within me. the divine, it is all here. eternity exists in the now. i can see it, it is palpable, i get glimpses of the heavenly; then it vanishes, and my worldly sorrows come, then i see them both at the same time.
i see that i am both the destination and path; i am the spiraling labyrinth and its center.
Christ teaches us that to love at all is to let ourselves be bound to the cross. Every time we allow ourselves to love, every time our heart grows in affection, another nail is driven into a hand or a foot. To love is to allow our spirits to be bound to the cross that is corporeality, that is spacetime, that the wisemen regard as “illusion” — then we suffer, for to love is to suffer, and yet, we would do it gladly — and I find it beautiful. I’ll never pass up the opportunity to love, to suffer — it is enriching, it is meaningful, it is purposeful, it is beautiful.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 