War Hero

He had come back from the war a hero. 

It had been said that it had been the war to end all wars. 

He felt that to be a delusion as greed and lust for power would keep man fighting man forever. 

The real war was the internal war that man must wage against his greed and lust he thought. THIS was the war that would truly end all wars. 

He had met beautiful girl in a village not far from the trenches where he had been. He pledged his love to her and went back to keep his promise and married her. 

He worked hard and made a success of himself. He had three children and kept doing what needed to be done. 

The children grew up and got married themselves. The business that he had built took care of everyone’s needs and at the opportune time he handed it over to his sons. 

All was well and then he got sick. There was no cure for it and he would have to face it as the sickness progressed. 

And then it happened, he started to wonder what that sickening feeling in his gut was. 

It was not death that he feared for he had stared it in the face during the war. 

It was not about leaving his family to starve as he had provided well for all of them. 

It was his desire to continue to exist purely for the sake of his own attachment to life. 

This was what he questioned now. To what end was he clinging to life for? 

Life was a series of experiences for the purification and greatness of man, yet to let go of it, took an even greater man than what he was. 

Money, relatives, friends, all had their place he thought, but longing to live was the only desire of a dying man. 

This was the descent of consciousness to the individual self. 

This had been the only sin of man and this was what he needed to overcome.

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