The Awakening

The first time he cried at a movie was when he watched The Champ, when he was seven years old. 

It wasn’t until he was fifteen that he cried again, watching The Love Story. 

A cry was good for the soul they said, but he did not feel that way. It felt like someone was pulling his heart out through his tears. It was a terrible feeling to not be in control of your emotions he felt. 

The last time he cried, he cried so hard that it lasted for six months. He lost 24kgs in that time. No good came from crying he felt. It was better to understand that life was indeed what your mind gave consent to and to watch what you were giving consent to. 

This wisdom came to him when he realised that we all had selective emotions. It came to him when he saw that he reacted to some dumb movie and cried like the world was ending and totally ignored the agony of a man starving in pain from his hunger. 

This would not do. 

He felt he had to sensitise himself to the pain of others. His own pain was just drama with a dab of self-loathing. 

He did not like himself very much on days that took the shape of Roman orgies; decadent and indulgent. 

On the other hand, he liked himself much when he took the time to help someone out of his misery. 

He liked the compassion that was coming into his life and knew he could not claim credit for it. This was truly a natural step in his evolution as a human being. 

We do evolve from cavemen to gentlemen to gods. This much was clear to him now. 

He needed to know pain to know life. Maybe that was it’s purpose, to wake us up, to sensitise us, to lead us to the truth. 

All that we knowingly or unknowingly attached ourselves to gave us pain. But what if we steered clear of the drama and helped others without the crutch of emotion? 

What would that be like? It would be like having a wand of sympathy and compassion, ready to help without being drawn into another person’s drama. 

You had to be a believer in the justice of existence, and then you would see that nobody was given a life on arbitrary principles. Karma was the only law of the universe and it governed everything. But to see it as such, needed faith and surrender. 

The mind (ego) would have to be sublimated till not a shadow of it was left, to truly see the love and justice that ran this world, sometimes making it look like an ugly punishment. It was as a mother would reprimand a truant child for his own good. 

Appearances were deceptive he thought. He would have to be aware at every moment to see through this charade of life. The truth was hidden right behind our thoughts of good and bad and he knew it instinctively to be so.

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