Remember your growing time? The sting of bacon, cooked on an old
wood stove, smoke filling the air, making pleasant promise to
your wet and waiting lips? Wasn't the aroma stronger, more
potent, more biting then? And the crisp chill of dawn upon your
flesh, the bursting brightness of the day upon your sight, the
cheery sounds of waking birds and all of life ... were these not
etched deeply on the fabric of your memory?
Remember your growing time? The sound of racing music stirring
strange sensations. Hot blood picking up the tempo, coursing
through your body, filling and confusing the processes of your
mind. And the feel of a touch, a kiss, a warm embrace ... will
ever such move you quite as much again?
Remember your growing time? When all you knew of life was new,
and it seemed a divine call bade you spread your wondrous
epiphanies to one and all. Oh yes, for surely you and only you in
all the world, in all of history, had ever felt these feelings,
thought these thoughts, discovered these delights.
Remember your growing time? Fantasies of power, love, and life.
Visions of yourself high on a windy hill, rippling swan-white
gown falling in folds to touch the tops of toes, a golden
girdle round the paps, hair flowing and blowing, reaching
out behind ... and you, arms outstretched, fingers turned
toward the sky, could feel the power breathing in and out,
filling every pore, strong counter to the emptiness and
isolation, stanching blood from wounds of loneliness. Visions
came, perhaps, to obscure temerity, or uncertainty ... but
then, perhaps, harbingers of some essential puissance within.
"Who, then, am I?" your spirit cried. "What are these images,
passions, cravings, melancholies, threatening to drive me mad? Am
I myself, or made from pieces of my past and from the world
wherein I live? Who am I? My Father's son? My Mother's daughter?
Apprentice to heroes past and present, ancestors renown, simple
clay molded by forces other than my own? Who, indeed, am I?"
And when the revelation comes, the answer "I am I! I am I, and
nothing more," is an angry roar echoing through your soul, an
echo reverberating in every mortal heart. "I am I! Is that all
there is? Where then, my vaunted potency? Where then, my dreams?
What of my majesty, my promised prominence? Have I been
cheated? Is life a fraud?" Then arrives enlightenment, slow
process, blending callow illusion with reality. Accepting
what must be accepted, shaping what can be shaped,
and awareness of "What is" becomes foundation for "What can
be."
And when enlightenment comes ... the answer "I am I, and nothing
more," confers a growing power to unleash. Heady power,
tangible power, the power you had once dared believe was
yours alone. Now, even gods come courting, contest against each other
to do your bidding, and all is yours to rule. You are invincible, an elemental fact
of nature, a consequence of surpassing magnitude.
Certainly, you can be wounded ... but never broken. Absolutely,
you can be killed ... but not destroyed. Undeniably, you can be
assaulted by the world ... but never once prevailed against.
Captured ... you are never conquered. Imprisoned ... you are
never bound. Weakness, fear, palpable in beating heart, is set
aside. Integrity, truth, and knowledge seize meaning, take form
and substance, become your passion, provide a magic cloak, a
shield, forever molded to your mind.
And when you cease to be, eyes shut in black forever, there is
one result rests with you: the truth that you have been, and no
one, not man, nor god, nor force of nature, can ever take that
away.
