parole

You know what is funny? Medical advances which allow us to live longer. When you intuit who you are and see the imprisonment in your mortal coil, the prospect of living forever becomes absurd. You become the jailer as well as the jailed. How bizarre! Not content with your prison sentence, you tell the parole hearing, "Please, more."

The wealthy seek to live longer because they have tipped the balance in their favour. The understanding of duality and how all is reconciled shows you that the accumulation of resources and wealth leads to the haves and have nots. The economically advantaged wish to perpetuate suffering as this is the route towards getting what they desire. How noble, as suffering is the master teacher of transformation which will lead you back to the heart. A grand endeavour indeed. In their selfishness, the wealthy unwittingly are the catalyst for the seeker to understand what the game is all about.

I'm not advocating purposely seeking out death. When my time comes, I will follow the flow of the universe towards my eternal destiny. Wei wu wei, as Lao Tzu counsels.  The divine ebb and waning flow of the desire cycle will let you know when you have had your fill. It is easy to understand this through the lens of childhood. What lit me up in my youth faded away as I entered adulthood. The chasing of biological needs and accumulating wealth to fulfill my desires defined my existence when I was in peak physical form. As I have aged, I have witnessed those desires falling away. I walk hand in hand with the great Ganapati and watch his demons of desire, the Ganas, burn in the hellfire, and fall away like dross. It's quite a spectacle to witness, as I notice what once lit me up, falls away, just like the childish things which waned when I became an adult.

I have kept some memories of my childhood in boxes, slowly discarding the attachments as the years go by. I sometimes lament the passing of innocence, looking back fondly at my youth. Comic books and baseball cards. Baseball board games and a replay of a whole season of baseball. I was taught the importance of play; play being an important check upon the seriousness of adulthood.

These pursuits of my coming of age have all passed. But the lessons of my youth have not been in vain, nor have they been forgotten. Life comes full circle, and as I start the descent into the inexorable decline of my physical body, I notice with a startling clarity the desires of life fade away, just as my childhood desires mysteriously became a curiosity. I often would fret over the desires that would plague me, watching as they came and went, and demanded fulfillment. I tried the renunciate path. I wished them away. I wondered why I could not defeat my adversaries? I proved I could deny them, but they still waited at the door for me to open just a crack so they could get in again. I didn't understand that in due time they would fall away, just as my childhood experience revealed to me. Why did I think I would never change?

The blinders of the moment, and the thinking my incarnation is unchanging, led me to believe I'd never escape the hold of the Ganas. Clinging to what is works to deceive you into thinking you'll always have what you have acquired, and that you'll never transcend what it is that beguiles you.

So, I see my desires being washed away. It's getting late in the evening and the amusement park is going to have a fireworks show before closing. It will open again tomorrow morning; however, not all will return for the thrills and the rides. There's a natural rhythm to life and one is the wiser if you can quiet the mind and just observe what is happening. There's no need for renunciation. If you follow the path laid out for you, curiously the one you personally designed, the flow will never let you down. You may struggle, but all this is what you wanted. The Hindus call it Karma. The reason for this particular trip to the funhouse called earth was to fulfill desires. Once fulfilled, you become way more tolerable.

Ultimately, I don't know; however, I intuit the cycle of the waxing and waning of desire is an eternal process which ensures eternal life. With free will, you are given the opportunity to make of the flow of desire what you will.

What will you choose?