The Uncleansed Soul

Long have I had a difficult time comprehending that aspect of the human psyche that compels us to view our lives as somehow cursed. We labor frantically to invent distinctions between ourselves and the "other," "lesser," creatures of this Earth. Just as it is with our freshly shaved skin, or disinfected hands; we struggle to view our spirits as something clean. Through the millenia this self-loathing has left us susceptible to ideas of metaphysical consequence and reward. As if this life were not enough, we pursue immortality, as if some divine god-like status was a state to be achieved through sacrifice and struggle.

The youngest of children, when properly endowed with the faculty of reason, will begin to question the nature of opposites. Just as the child will recognize the difference between day and night, so too will they understand that the concepts of eternal love and eternal torture are diametrically opposed. Like bloodhounds, children are capable of sniffing out contradiction from miles away. How blessed is the imagination that in youthful abandon allows us to delight in the fanciful flight of the Pegasus, while simultaneously cultivating an awareness that Unicorns do not exist.

And yet, during our journey towards maturity this awareness dies within many of us. Fear, loss, pain, all seek to lay claim to the once beautiful spirit. Life's wonderment grows fleeting as innocence is abandoned, and we seek to fill our hollow shells with answers to our nagging worries, those most plaguing of issues that gnaw on the flesh of our fears, like a cancer designed to increase our already insatiable need for security. We lay there, blanketed in the darkness of the unknown, yearning for redemption from the karmactic torrent washing over us, resultant of our accumulated choices.

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