The Inner Fires [Short Story]

I remember walking in an unknown land. I encountered the stunning sight of the glimmering summer ocean. My whole being stopped to take it all in. Beauty is too weak a word, we use it for too many things. All I can tell you is that when primordial poets first observed the earth, this is what they meant when they said Beauty. The more I stared at it the more details I noticed:
How the clouds gently strolled across the sky. How the sun generously bathed everything in golden light.

But the thing that strikes the most, perhaps, was the scope. I could feel my own mind being stretched out to infinity as I tried to take it in. It didn't make me feel insignificant, it made me feel ecstatic, because I knew I was a part of that infinity. I don't know how long I stood there, staring. It would have felt blasphemous to think in terms of time at this place, this altar of Beauty not made by the hands of Man.

After I was done honoring the view , I walked a little bit farther. I noticed there was another forest to the right of me. I walked right in like it was the house of an old friend who had told you that you could stop by anytime.

"Sssssshhhhhhh..... SsssshhhSSSshshhhhhh"... My ears caught the inviting tune of a stream nearby. I felt blessed; Life has provided a feast for me today! I followed the sound. I admired the water for a little while and then I placed my right foot on a rock in the stream, and when I felt that my footing was firm enough, I placed my left foot on it as well. I looked ahead. There was a rock within a step's distance of me for as far as I could see, like a little trail. My curious mind exclaimed: Maybe I could follow it to the source of the stream?

I walked on each rock, sometimes slipping a little bit into the water. I got to a certain point and there were no more rocks to step on, and the stream got too deep for it to be worth following to the end.

The last rock was big enough to sit on, and so I did, cross-legged like a meditating Buddha. I stared at the stream, my eyes darting along trying to follow the constant arising and dissolving of the water. As hard as my eyes and mind tried to discern where the waves began or ended, they just couldn't. The water was totally and utterly formless and wouldn't yield to my mind’s attempts to draw lines that would conceptualize it and make it easier to fathom.

Because of that, something in me snapped. My conceptual mind gave up trying to rationalize the world and saw the pure, raw elemental life constantly before it. Everything came alive and every second of me seeing this stream became the first time I had seen it over and over again.Pure novelty. It was the only true to way to see it; to see it in any other way would be a lie. There was nothing the same in the stream from moment to moment. It was an illusion that my mind had superimposed on it, making me see the concept of water instead of the water itself, making something solid out of something so fundamentally fluid.

I gazed at the stream,  enraptured at the sight of this simple awe.

But, tragically, that sense of separateness and sense of "I've seen this before"-ness came over me again, like a veil.

That whole sequence of events is immortal to me.

"Danny!" my mother cried from inside the house, interrupting my train of thought and snapping me out of my daze. I tried to bring the thoughts I was having about my summer vacation to some kind of conclusion, but then she cried again and the urgency in that second cry got me going inside the house from our yard, which I realized I had been laying in for the last twenty minutes at least.

I walked in and saw that she was serving breakfast. Dad was already at the table, eating. Bacon and eggs. "What were you doing out there, anyway? You were up pretty early.". "I was just thinking" I responded, trying to brush her question off so she wouldn't pin me down. She understood that and didn't press me any further. Sometimes her 18-year old son doesn’t want to make light of the shadows of his thoughts.

"Son, hurry up and finish, you’re going to be late for school". My Dad said in an authoritative tone. I ate as fast I could. The food was okay. I was too busy being in my head for me to enjoy the sensations of the food passing through my mouth. All three of us ate speedily. Mom and Dad had to go to work at roughly the same time that I had to go to school, and at this rate it looked like I would be late because they had to get to work first.

We all hopped in the car, driving. We had some standard chit-chat to fill the car with noise. Usual stuff, "What do you have for school today?" "What are you doing after school today?" "Me and your mother will be home at...". Blah blah blah. It was different from the vacation that we recently returned from and which I was remembering in the yard, where we were all lively and laughing with each other.

We drove by the dull grey sidewalks, grey streets and grey buildings that have covered the whole world. Everything was so gray. All the concrete - that is, mostly everything - was gray. The sky was gray today. Our car was gray. Even the school I was being sent to was gray.

Gray is by far the most boring and least aesthetic color. There is nothing in it that captivates the senses, or that expresses any feelings in our souls, like how red invokes passion, gold invokes glory, or green invokes nature… the only thing I can imagine gray invoking is boredom.

I wondered what people would ask me when I got to school, and how I would respond to them. "Where were you?" "On vacation" I'd say, and then they'd mechanically go on what a good time I’d had. While they were doing that I'd be desperately trying to reconstruct those scenes of beauty and wonder. Remembering them is the only way to save me from this modern banality that absorbs me whenever I get back home and which seeps into every crevice of my soul.
It's like while out and exploring the natural world I was awake, but back here the world lulled me into a sleep, so that I sleepwalked through life.

Why do people want to live like this? More importantly, why do I even want to live like this? I think the speed and banality of our lifestyle takes on a mind of its own and we mistake that for what's really real. I think one day I'll abandon all of my possessions, or sell them, and just walk as far I can go.

I'll sleep on the streets, hitchhike, find all of Nature's secret spots, see the world... anything for an adventure. "Oh yeah” I can imagine my Mom or Dad saying, "And then what?" and they’'ll bring up a list of things to worry about like food, shelter, and security. I’d say back, “An adventure is not a pleasure cruise, an adventure has its ups and downs. An adventure has uncertainty. If that's not what you want, don't go on an adventure. You don't have to spit on my inspiration just because the fiery blood of your own youthful enthusiasm was put out ages ago!!”.

Well you know what? My own inner fires are blazing too hard to be put out. Sometimes they are like a raging inferno that will consume everything in sight! Or maybe my own fiery blood will become too much to contain and will kill me from the inside if I don't appease it by offering it what it wants: more achievements, more bliss, more adventures, more beauty, more, more more!!

I finally arrived at school and walked inside like a zombie. While I was entering I saw a pebble. It reminded me of the stream. Just being able to imagine that “Sssshhhhh...Sssshhssshhhh…” soothed me. I looked out a window. The sun looks glorious today. I love the way it shines on the people passing by. Sometimes when they smile their faces are as bright and as warm as the sun itself. In fact, as much as I loved my summer vacation, I am awfully happy to see so many of these people again. Any radical thoughts about abandoning my possessions and adventuring get put aside as I join my friends and we make plans for the rest of the day.

The Great People [Poem]

Ah, how I desire so desperately to be like The Great People!
You all know who I mean.
They’re the leaders, poets and teachers people are inspired by in life,
or maybe have even met and remembered in your own life.
Each of them is like a projection of who I want - no - who I know I can be!

With the wise words of so many Great People passing through my mind,
how could I ever not reach The Goal?
Yeah, How could I ever go wrong?
I’m armed with a quote for every battle and a saying for every situation.
Yeah, bring it on world!

……

…………………..

Why oh why, after all this striving, am I not like them?
After all that I still fail and my willpower still falters! My mind still wavers and my heart still quivers!
Could it be I've collected more motivational sayings than actual motivation?
Or is The Goal only for people made of stronger stuff than I?

Frustration fills my every pore!!
The Great People make walking The Path and reaching The Goal seem so easy!
What is it that makes them so Great, and me so Small?
Why oh why can’t I do it?!

The Goal always remains perpetually out of reach, like a dog chasing a car!
Whatever tower I build to reach that mythic goal collapses under its own weight,
sending me back down to this dreary Earth.
But in my mind's eye, I can still see The Great People there,
frozen in time and towering over the rest of us, the Small People, like a shadow.

But still, I will not surrender! Never, never, never!
Not to the overwhelming forces of distraction, laziness, and despair!!
Not to the apparent might of my weaknesses!
In fact, bring it on!
I will strive on  until I am absolutely intoxicated with ambition and motivation!!

.……

…………………..

After having exerted every last bit of effort I had left!
I looked back at my progress on The Path and was delighted.
Then I looked ahead and saw that the Goal was still on the horizon, and was yet more delighted.
I had finally realized that I would never reach The Goal. It was never the point.
Walking The Path was the point. The Path was the real goal.
The Great People knew this too. What is the point of completing an objective, and then stopping?
Truly, staying still is falling behind.
I laughed at myself, then took a deep breath… and strove on again!

Ethics Versus Law [Article]

ethics
moral principles, as of an individual: His ethics forbade betrayal of a confidence.

law  (lô)
n.
1. A rule of conduct or procedure established by custom, agreement, or authority.

Among many people, you find the idea that Man is divided in (more or less) three different parts: A uniquely human rational part,another part that is derived directly from the animal world with all the things that entails: elemental lusts, the desire to kill, etc., and another part that is supposed to decide which one wins.

Think Freud’s Superego, Ego, and Id. Or Plato’s conception of a tripartite human soul: Logical, Spirited (willpower) and Appetite.

Truly, without that Ego and Super-ego, without that Logos, we are all wild beasts. We become an unstoppable force of destruction, an unrivaled and untamable hedonist, a beast so savage that lions, wolves, and tigers seem like puppies and kittens in comparison.

“Man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.” - Albert Camus

Truly, without that Ego and Super-ego, without that Logos, we are all wild beasts. Indeed, we become an unstoppable force of destruction, an untameable hedonist, a beast so savage that lions, wolves, and tigers seem like puppies and kittens in comparison.

What I find interesting about the usage of the word “Ethics” is my belief that Ethics is something different from Laws.

A Law is something external decided upon by either tradition, agreement, or authority. It is backed up by systems of justice like the police, jails, etc.

Ethics, though, is something internal. It’s that inner policeman that always watches you and gets you to stop and say: “Hang on, is this right? Am I being true?”. It is your own natural ability to deduce an action that is morally right versus an action that is morally wrong. In short, it is conscience in action.

I believe that every human being has the ability of Ethics: to naturally discern a right action from a wrong action, because we all desire goodness. However, I also think that, much like a muscle, if this ability is never used it is virtually useless and because of that you would be forgiven for thinking that it didn't exist at all. Because of the fact that not all of us have exercised this faculty equally (in much the same way not all of us are equally muscular), we invent Laws to ensure that everyone acts in a way that is determined to be ethical, and that people are rewarded or punished justly based on them.

However, there is an intrinsic push-pull with Ethics and Laws. There is a huge danger in Laws becoming draconian, overly bureaucratic, and, very banal. Lao tzu says it better than I can:

"The more laws there are, the more criminals there will be" - Lao Tzu 

The harder we try to control everything, the more out of control everything seems to get.  Worse of all, in outright contradicting the ideals of our ethical minds such as Justice, Equality, etc.

And He said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. - Jesus Christ (Mark 2:27).

Jesus illustrates what I mean very well: The pharisees are demanding that Jesus not help a sick man, because the law says he is working on the Sabbath. But helping the sick man is the right thing to do. Sometimes, doing the right thing is against the law. Sometimes the law is doing the wrong thing.

However, we can't deny the necessity of having laws, because everyone relying on there own natural sense of ethics is too ideal of a situation, and of course without laws we would live in an anarchistic society where there would be nothing to prevent someone from killing and raping everyone in sight.

Right now, I believe that Laws are currently winning the tug-of-war with Ethics. This is bad, because more Laws actually result in less Ethics and, in the end, more suffering for us all.

Why? When we rely on regulated procedures rather than our feelings to determine what is right, we start to lose track of rather or not those procedures are even effective and people become more immoral because they don't try to be good people in there day-to-day lives. When we rely on systems of surveillance 1984-style to ensure that everyone is acting in order we all have to put up with the burden of being watched 24/7: No one can be trusted because we've put too much trust in Laws to ensure people will be doing the right thing as opposed to putting that trust in ourselves.

The best way to solve this problem is to ensure that you are ethical in your day to day life. It's impossible, I think, to 100% fulfill any ethical ideal, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try - trying is the whole point!

A Slice of Dreaming Life [Short Story]

I crept into my bed and began to perform my nightly ritual. It was a peculiar habit of mine. The highlight of my day was what I did at night. It has been this way for a long time.

Lying in my bed with my face straight up, like a corpse, I started to feel myself falling asleep, never letting my mind drift off as all mundane people do in these moments, never giving my body a chance to roll over or budge. Doing this took saintly patience. Gradually I could feel my body metamorphose into a subtle statue, then my limbs and torso were overcome with a feeling of hollowness, like they had vanished into thin air.

My body finished “turning off”,  then I gently arose out of my bed, like a sleepwalking child. I turned around to see my body still in the bed. That body with all its throbbing's, aches, solidness, and heaviness. Now I was in a different body - one that was translucent and light.

Excited that my transition from flesh to energy had turned out successful again, I focused and took a few deep breaths to adjust myself to this new awareness. There was a danger, I discovered, after many attempts of doing astral projections, in being overwhelmed by the often inexplicable sensations of this state. So I took it all in first.

We use words to describe things that we are or can be familiar with. Imagine for a moment that there are things out there for which there are no words. There can be the experience of it - but no words for it. You will find I use the word “like” or similar descriptive a lot in astral sojourns. This is because I can only vaguely elaborate on what I am feeling, experiencing, sensing, etcetera.

Everything felt very light. I tilted my transient head upward and floated out of my apartment like a ghostly bird.

I mentally concentrated more on my direction (up), becoming less like a bird and more like a rocket shooting off into the night sky.

I dove into the cloud ocean, until I halted when I saw my surroundings fade into a canyon-like crevice. I was only surprised for an instant. I am used to a lack of consistency in the dream world.

In the “real world”, everything is linear, a straight line,  one place always leads to another place and you can trace your steps knowing you live in a rational and solid environment. Orderly. But the “dream world” is not like that. You could find yourself in the middle of one moment that has a past that you are not altogether sure of, or you could walk into a forest and wind up in the middle of the ocean as if you always had been and there never was a forest. Chaotic.

I needed to observe. To my left & right: a wall of rock. In front: a dark and narrow passageway. Up: A night sky. Down: More rock.

I floated motionless, wondering what to do. Why did this happen? I don’t know. I stopped asking questions like this. Go with the flow. If you think about it too hard your brain will get tied in a knot, and then you would forget what you were ever thinking about because you would be in a different random place, doing a different random thing.

I decided to start floating again, and again in the general direction of “up”, though very cautiously. The night sky above me was always the same distance away regardless of how much I moved. I finally realized that I was going nowhere and gave up.

So I thought, “try something different”. I tilted my whole body and swam “forward” into the passageway instead of “up” into the night sky. To move I Imitated the strokes of an Olympic swimmer. I intuited that I was making progress. To confirm this I turned around, and noticed that I was further along in the passage and not in my original spot. Encouraged, I continued this action.

My attention was stolen from me by a liquid-like light emerging in front of me. As I felt it approaching I had this unshakeable feeling of “other-ness”. Like seeing a strange animal for the first time, but magnified a thousandfold. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see that I was no longer in a passageway, but that I inexplicably in a wide-open space with grass beneath me and a blue sky above.

I noticed that the shape of this liquid-like light was tall and thin, like a skyscraper, and that the way it was moving towards me suggested that it was alive. I must resort to using the word “suggested” because it did not move in anyway resembling anything I think exists in the “real world”. But if you saw it you would have to agree that this huge, radiant, watery column was cognizant.

I cannot recall if I was in terror, or in awe, or perhaps just really confused. Maybe a mixture of all three. But what happened next I had no doubt about, it is still very vivid in my memory. Like your first kiss, or the first time you see a really big mountain, it remains as one of those moments where, if I closed my eyes and imagined it, I could still be right there.

From this luminous pillar, a meteor-shaped, vividly green and purple rock spat out and landed perfectly in my hand which I did not even know was open, like I was already prepared to receive it. I clutched on to it so hard, it was as if my life depended on that little rock. I placed it gently in my pocket.

Then I began to feel myself wake up. Everything faded, and then my consciousness returned to my body, in the same position it had before I had fallen asleep and started my dreaming adventure.

I lied still, and a couple of minutes after that the memories of what just happened came rushing back to me. I then began my morning routine, which was just as instinctive and well-rehearsed as the night routine which triggers my out-of-the-body state.

I never budged until I was 100% certain that I could recall all that had happened in full detail and in the right order. Then I reached for the bright blue journal that I use to record my dreams in so that I do not forget them, can research them, etc.

I was angry that I found my dream journal was not where I had left it. I was certain that I had placed the journal in its usual spot, underneath the pillow. It is usually the last thing I did before bed... maybe I misplaced it somewhere else in my apartment?

I got out of my red king-sized feather bed , still in my blue pyjamas, and walked into my unbelievably messy living room. You name it and there it was, and probably on top of something else, too.

How could I find my precious dream journal in this mess? I thought to myself, you know, I did definitely go to the bathroom before going to bed. Had I left it in there by mistake? Wouldn’t be the first time.

I scanned the whole bathroom. It wasn’t here, either, for god sakes! I hope its not in the living room... by the time I find it I’d have forgotten my entire dream! No, it must be in my bedroom. There is no other place where I would put it. Its not like ever take it OUT of my bedroom.

Oh no! It must have fallen out of the bed, and onto the floor next to it.

Then, as soon as I stepped into my bedroom, an epiphanic moment. That rock I was given by that thing is still in my pocket!!

I am still dreaming.

And with that last thought, everything around me vanished and I felt myself being submerged back into my REAL physical body.

I reached for my dream journal and was delighted to find it really was underneath my pillow. I took out the pencil I kept inside the journal and wrote everything up until now.

Looking back, it was obvious I had awakened falsely. The subtle elements of dreaming where present: the blurry “pixels” in my vision, the feeling of lightness, etc. But now I was 100% certain that I was in the real world. Things felt solid, consistent, stable.

I started to dress in my work clothes, and to mentally map out the rest of my day. I shut out all thoughts about what the dreams I had to avoid slipping into ideas so profound I could drown in them.

But, I couldn’t help but notice something heavy was in my pocket...

 

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I wrote this a long time ago. You can also read this story here: http://bookweek.ca/contest_winners2013. Just scroll down to the runner ups,

I'm a runner up for Grade 11.