MEMORIES OF AN EARLIER BIRTH The human race has perhaps always been a bit schizophrenic. Perhaps it was the horrors of the jungle: the blind struggle for survival; the anguish of seeing loved ones torn limb from limb and the curse of memory which haunted the mind with the nightmares and enabled us to pass the trauma on from one generation to another. Perhaps it was the nascent soul, whispering doubt on our self-centred survival instinct, or the whim of ego, sitting somewhere uncomfortably between the two. And so, throughout our history, we have been capable of the most unspeakable savagery, whilst simultaneously creating artefacts of immense beauty. The Bayeux Tapestry was woven in the aftermath of battle, reputedly by the artisans of the defeated, even as the conquering Norman overlords who commissioned it raped and pillaged the land and its peoples; the statues of Easter Island were hewn with immense skill and endeavour by a tribe which, by all accounts, later descended into barbaric acts of brutality as the land grew sterile and the people starved; human sacrifice was practiced amidst the magnificent splendour of the Aztec temples. And so on, throughout history. The 20th century saw the remorseless continuation of the trend. Magnificent works of visual and aural art were conceived, and a man was landed on the Moon, amidst the backdrop of genocide, and war on an unprecedented scale. We can carry on in similar fashion. We can devise new devious ways to inflict suffering on others with the cold heart of the circuit board and the blind breath of the test tube. Or we can choose instead to refine the alter-ego: the spirit that soars beyond the clinging roots of the forest floor, to rejoice in the play of light upon the leaves and the mysterious new horizons beyond; we can celebrate our time on this mortal coil by refining both soul and body to greater levels of synthesis with the world that nurtured us and the five elements that have governed our existence from the beginning. We can become Rambo, and rampage across the planet, wreaking the madness of our troubled past upon all that we encounter, or we can become the Cirque Du Soleil, and aspire to the grace, the artistry, the perfect synergy of body and mind, the wizardry even, of the amazing beings that we are, beneath the veneer of hate and rage.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 00:50:56 +0000
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