Consequential Stewards

It is so beautiful and vast out here in the Southwest. Back East, everyone knows your name, knows your face, you've seen it all before. And each hill and valley is the same as the others, ages old and beckoning all to live among them and die as they die. Out here, everything is dead, the hills are barren, the trees and plants barely survive. And in that, the greatest sense of life becomes awakened within, because in the absence of things living, you realize that you possess a thousand worlds of life within. That all your ancestors toiled and brought you to this present moment at the cost of their life and livelihood. The point of realizing that you are very much alive, with will and intelligence, conscience and soul. You feel and you sense, perceive, and question and verify things whether truth or untruth.

The truth does not need you to agree with it. Our existence gives no validation to things that are true or untrue.

My life, my thoughts gravitate towards those things and yet it still remains that I am limited in my experience and knowledge of this life, with all of its mysteries, doubts, uncertainties, even the euphoria's of joy and happiness, peace and stillness, the orgasmic clenches of love. I want to know more, see more, experience and feel more. Some have said that great sorrow comes with such knowledge. I cannot imagine the sorrow Adam and Eve felt when they were made aware of their disobedience. The steady realization of all the damage that they had just created themselves. Was the first act of creation by the hand of a fallen human really a system of chaos? Interesting the promises they were given of what they could know. To have the wisdom held by angels and by God.. To shed the childish innocence that was their prize possession. But is that not human nature? To aspire to ascend states of being and awareness? To keep going forward, higher, left, right, under, backwards, only that we may know and accomplish more. It is only natural that they would be tempted in such ways. The knowledge of Good and Evil.

Yet if I were offered some incredible wisdom, some sight of the future, understanding of the heart, of the ages, I know i could not resist. I am a son of Adam, and just as vulnerable. I imagine that such great knowledge would drive me infinitely mad. as it has undoubtedly others. Incredible that we are still trying to figure out this knowledge of Good and Evil. That some would live their whole lives in fear of it. Center their religion around it. Suddenly I wonder "Is it our task to know and own such knowledge? Are we consequential stewards of that great disobedience? That great leap into the unknown that has given us such an insurmountable task. I speak as if we are all in search of it. It would seem ideal that the whole of the human race would labor, as a collective union, towards a deeper understanding of what we have unleashed within and without us. Unfortunately it is not so. Amazing to take such a hint from something so overlooked.

For far too long humanity has lived only in survival and not in pursuit of awakening the soul, to understanding what it really knows. Some societies have lifted the burden of the fall, have been afforded such luxury during their existence and birthed us the poets, the theologians, the psychologists, the great thinkers, play-writes and dedicated musicians necessary to spurn us onward and to build on their work. The act of creation is given room at such times and all the years and generations prior usher forth their quieted voices.

It seems in circles of society, certain people only seek for the knowledge of evil, the knowledge of fallen angels of spirits, wickedness, perversions and malice. Other circles are only in pursuit of peace and harmony, equality, perfection. Yet there is no balance. We live in the world of the knowledge of good and evil. We cannot exist with just one side, just as a car does not have two wheels to run on, it has four for balance. We are never whole with only the possession of one side of life. Without the understanding of good and evil, we cannot exist in a balanced harmony. Without understand the depth and destruction of evil, and the disillusionment of excessive tranquility.

And yet where does that leave salvation? Salvation to save us from our sins, yes. but to save us from what is already in motion, in existence, perhaps no. Granted, we are new creatures, but even in this new state, we are still victims to our own nature. It cannot be escaped, except through death. Salvation's fullest and final manifestation is on judgement day.that calls into question matters of eternal security and matters of our knowledge and responsibility after the day of restoration. Is it possible that we are saved from the knowledge of good and evil? I have long called into question the possibility of a second fall. I mean, why not? When it comes down to it, any human does not need the devil to sin. This concept of the "the devil's got me down" is complete poppycock. It's like believing that Santa comes down out of the north pole and visits the children of the world, in one night, with all the prior knowledge to bless them with presents. In no case has it ever been shown that the great satan is an omnipresent being. Our nature is such that we need know one to make us evil, it only comes naturally. These are the sins of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. Yet as evil as some can be, the great artists of ages past have shown the divine through all these countless and lost years. Those moments of divine interpretation of life is the hope that drives it seems.

Do we suddenly lose our knowledge of this good and evil upon Judgement day? We would have to be completely innocent again, what else would stop anyone of us from starting a whole cycle of sin over again? Yet, why would that happen then, why did not it happen in the garden, why cause the suffering of the trillions of humans over many millennia, when the vanquish of the enemy was readily at hand? Really, it does not make sense. Yes, grace is sufficient, but many have suffered, and suffer now because they never heard or could believe it. These are not doubts, these are legitimate questions that pass through my head, and I am sure, have passed in yours as well in some manner.

It is all too often easy to be hung on such questions as most likely cannot be answered, yet again, the truth is not contingent upon our belief, and if it is, there is something truly amiss

And now, here we are in this present time, awaiting the final acts of salvation, yet still burdened with this great knowledge that has long enslaved us. But shall we decry it? Hate it, call it human nature and then forsake it utterly? It cannot and should not be, especially with this age. We are the living genius of a thousand ages coming forth, the access to knowledge, the wealth of opportunity to just "be." And yet there is a sense of vapidness among the American people. Indeed the creative spirit is around and I have met many who see and sense a world outside of everything we can see. But what is causing such decline? Of any time, this should be the time of great creative force within the arts, and yet all too often great minds are forged into computers and out come more technological creations that only further to alienate the person from his soul.

All too often it easy to decry the greed and the selfishness that consumes the populace, but for generations now, that anthem has been played louder and louder, as the audience grows more and more deaf. No it is not merely a matter of greed and selfishness, but an abandonment of the true self. The hushing of the childhood wonder that is choked out at such an early time in life, the faith of a child is stolen away and in the vapid desolation surrounding its orphaning, the person forgets what it is to feel and to be. To forget what it is like to find a summer day as fresh and new a hundred times over, day after day.

This can only lead to the sins that consume us daily, that victimize us no matter how much we wince and wonder what we did to deserve calamity. It is the pursuit of everything else than the truth that is written on our hearts that has become our illness. It has silenced our voices, clouded our minds intoxicated our veins and pounds through our hearts. We talk and we talk, play the music constantly, say whatever comes to mind. We find our addictions and let them own us, we down the medications until our eyes glass over, because somewhere inside, we know that a true and long moment of silence will show us everything that we are not. It is a terrifying moment, to realize that nothing is really going on in your head and in your soul. but as much as it is destructive, It is the most liberating, allowing new life to form within, a life you could never have known existed. This is the soul, the very epicenter of human existence, the human experience.

But perhaps there are sins of complacency. Sins of settling for less than we are capable of. Yet it is almost instinctive to remain "safe." In accordance with the natural tendency to avoid unnecessary risk, we become content to live without any risk at all. Leading us to a troth of idle dullness. Our existence becomes meaningless, and so in a futile effort to drink of something deep we are apt to fill our lives with unnatural things, material things that have their place in the realm of our existence, but never to be our trophy, our "precious." How often must this be decried, how long must the poets and theologians announce this same truth again again and again. Even I, a simple student, see the stupidity in all these things.

I know the feeling of stubbornness, of a self created ignorance that at once dismisses any wisdom that could crack the glass dome that we suspect protects from all the unnamed evils that surround us daily. I guess it is the splitting of that sphere of ignorant protection that begins to rescue the soul from meaningless corruption. I write as if i have found salvation, maybe not so much salvation, but rescuing. The rescue of silence. Rescuing Silence. That moment of realization, when your soul finally comes to life and says to you "my God in heaven, there is nothing running through your mind." followed by the lament of all the years that this terrible thing has happening. or rather, the "not" happening is what is most dreadful. maybe i have exaggerated these feelings. But i know at least for myself that it is true. That without the silence i would never have heard the whispers that turned to screams and turmoil and eventually, a beautiful surrender to the true image of God that exists within. These things are what have become the most true. As blasphemous as this may seem, these life experiences speak to me with more power than the scriptures, at least in most cases. Such a feeling does not seek to diminish the work of the Spirit through the ages, but rather to expand upon it. That the Holy Spirit works among us individually, at His will and discretion.

I see it as wrong to ignore this awakening of the heart, of the mind, the soul, what ever you may call it. They are one and the same, many parts to make up a single existence. But having been given such a task as to adequately respond to this gift is what I wish others to have. We could all be so much more should we have a moment with this "rescuing silence."

What action must be taken to bring about some change? is it something that truly must be written and enacted by each person individually? It seems all to situational, subjective, disjointed. The factor of humanity remains too strong, as beautiful as it can be, we eventually corrupt in some manner. Some in horrible ways, others in more subtle ways, that over the years does far more damage to far more people. It is truly then, the work of something outside of ourselves. But then are we elected to such awakening. Is salvation more than only one action. Or is it merely learning the appropriate response and philosophy of the knowledge of good and evil? A curious thought indeed. I wonder if this essay will be brought up in the Heavenly Court as I am judged for all that has happened. Is this blasphemy? is it preposterous? lunacy? truth? The birth of a thousand new ignorant presupposition. Well, i suppose, let it be none of these before all witnesses, that I do not seek to sin through all that is written, but to further understand the happenings of this life as I have experienced them so far.

At almost 22 I am unlearning much of what has been taught to me. Honestly, I never thought I would be the one to go the completely different route than what was expected, to veer from what I was told that was right. I know that this has been a long read, and perhaps in some ways, enraging, maybe sacrilegious. But, believe it or not, some of us live outside the sterile christian bubble, and things are not so well cut out here. I hope that no responses are formed immediately, but that the ideas are thought over and given time to form. I hope that you the reader can understand. This is not desperation, "new crispy realization." but many months of thought and observation. Of earnest prayer and seeing through years of learned misperception.

"look up through the trees to feel as small as you can."

This or Greater, for the Highest Good of All Concerned.