Beginning and End

The Beginning and the End

 

Our Existence Here on Earth is Fleeting and Impermanent.

Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – August 15, 2021

We are just pilgrims here, passing by for varied reasons. The few rich and powerful think they own the world. They consider the poor a scourge and menace to society, even as an evil incarnate afflicted with a deadly leprosy or malignant tumor, whose sight and smell are unpleasant, odd, repulsive, and whose lives need to be exterminated and vanished from the face of this Earth.

Yet, the poor, like us, feel like they're permanent settlers, not passers-by. They don't realize they're imprisoned in their own respective teeny-weeny world unable to get out of their self-imposed detention cell.

The parolees and escapees are not much better off either because they live a fugitive's life and existence, hiding and always fearful of being caught by the long arm of the law.

Paradoxically, many are still able to enjoy the vim and vigor of prison life, where the only form of order is the law of the jungle. Their highest ambition is to be rich, famous, and powerful among their fellow poor and oppressed.

Their tool of existence is to annoy and enslave others as well as to be cruel and violent, just as their masters did to them. This is their primary means of survival, their only stock-in-trade.

To achieve this delusory and imaginary vision, they strategize a plan, which is, of course, an illusion, but a probable possibility. They proclaim and broadcast this deceptive vision and wild fantasy in terms of stories to attract people and increase their followers and disciples. The story, of course, is a lie.

All that had to be done is to step into the lie and illusion and bring it to life. Once alive, what was once a possibility now becomes genuinely real. And they, as well as their followers and disciples, become real living in a flawless public facade masked with peace, harmony, and compassion but in reality hiding inside a Pandora's box of deception, violence, war, and injustices.

Yet, from a more distant perspective, the perpetrators and victims of an illusory reality are also part of the lie and illusion. The newly created world is an illusion, a lie. But the lie becomes true in an illusory world. There's no more distinction between what is true and what is a lie, no more distinction between what is genuine and what is fake.

So, this is how we describe our world today. Within reality is an illusion, within an illusion, reality and so on. Within truth is untruth, within untruth, truth and so on. Within existence, non-existence, within non-existence, existence and so on.

Within the body is the shadow, within the shadow, the body and so on. Within the observed, the observer, within the observer, the observed and so on. Within the genuine is fake, within fake, genuine and so on.

A confused and muddled identity, aggravating an already chaotic and violent world. What is worse is that we do not realize we are talking of ourselves and the world we are living in. And we cannot get out of our own eggshell if we

consciously and voluntarily want to make fools of ourselves.

How can we be the voice of St John the Baptist who cries in the wilderness, but whose sounds, like thunder reverberating at light speed, continue to echo far and wide to this day and into still many generations to come?