Are these, which thou beholdest? Ere thou pass
Farther, I would thou know, that these of sin
Were blameless; and if aught they merited,
It profits not, since baptism was not theirs,
The portal to thy faith. If they before
The Gospel liv'd, they serv'd not God aright;
And among such am I. For these defects,
And for no other evil; we are lost;
Only so far afflicted, that we live
Desiring without hope.
Canto VII
"De omnibus dubitandum est."
"Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even from my youth, many false opinions for true, and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful; and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation, if I desired to establish a firm and abiding superstructure in the sciences."
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
From nothing, I have nothing and am lost. A lostness that is beyond being found or finding, for here in this nothing I know only nothing and have no hope for finding. It is an open and empty dread, a despair beyond hope of reprieve, an emptiness without hope for substance. From nothing, I know nothing and so inevitably I am a nihilist. In my most cynical moments living here, I deign to make sick jokes about my state, and about the abysmal emptiness of the void. Even so, I can never earnestly embrace the abyss I find myself within.
Encountering the abyss, my sick curiosity urges me onward, inward and down, that I may know whether my feet stand on firm ground or mere phantasms. I start from nothing and total rejection, in the hope of being sure in what somethings I might ever find; but once within the abyss, I lose the hope of reprieve and am totally consumed by emptiness.
Encountering the abyss, my sick curiosity urges me onward, inward and down, that I may know whether my feet stand on firm ground or mere phantasms. I start from nothing and total rejection, in the hope of being sure in what somethings I might ever find; but once within the abyss, I lose the hope of reprieve and am totally consumed by emptiness.
Human human that I am, I can only do nothing with nothing for so long. Despite the depth and intensity of my doubts, life compels me unto action. Human human that I am, I am compelled to fulfill my needs. But it is not long before I discover that merely satisfying my needs does not fulfill me. To where may I look for fulfillment, having shucked off all the comforts and crutches I once had? Where may I find that sustenance which shall feed this mysterious and ever elusive appetite?
For a time I fancy it is some need that I lack, like the others, and so seek to feed this unknown need in the same way I feed the others. I feast on food and drink and luxuries and still, I starve. I feast on pleasure and sex and intoxicating substances but still, I hunger inside. From nothing, I only know need, and from need, only more needs. Somehow, nowhere in nothing do I ever come close to touching the true heart of emptiness.
Despairing in depravity and searching still for substance, I turn to knowledge. It is so little help that I only feel more empty and under-full. But through the course of experience, and by way of the gluttonous devouring of knowledge, I slowly approach a creeping understanding. The less I find, the more acutely aware do I become of the emptiness itself. More and more do I suspect the presence of an absence I know not how to fill, and with this knowledge I despair. Paradoxically, it is this very despair which brings me closer to the substance of a firm ground.
Gorged on knowledge and physical pleasures, my temporal appetites are repulsed by the prospect of having any more. Food and drink, sex and drug, music and knowledge: it all sickens me. From indulging my needs and feeling ever more empty, I despair and reject all needs and become ascetic. Starving in spirit, how can I bear to gorge my flesh, mind and heart?
So close is my nausea that my friends become bitter enemies, for I can no sooner bear my own filth and depravity than I can bear witnessing the same depravity in others. Friendship, my one found consolation in this desert of the spirit, suddenly becomes no consolation at all, for we were only ever comrades in depravity, fellow pigs reveling in common filth.
Alone again in the void, I look back and realize that never did I take even a single step forward. In just the same way, I discover that what I had experienced before was no true void, for now has become real a far deeper and more penetrating abyss. With needs sick of needing and companions sick of companionship, I summon an essential courage and strive onward, lest I meet instead my end.
Ascetic of flesh, heart and mind, alone utterly and without a friend, I move forth with nothing moving me. Each step rings hollow, as does my voice. Although I have finally attained a certain grounding, I take no consolation in my new acquaintanceship with the emptiness, loneliness, and the essential absurdity of existence. But in this deepest low tremors a faint, persistent, barely audible sound. My heart broken, no emotion can overwhelm me. My mind broken, no thought can distract me. So thoroughly undone, I arrive at a deep quiet, and my spirit is freed to seek out the mysterious tremors echoing from the deep.
All else silent, the low hum grows suddenly loud, clear and all-present. From some place I know not where, the truth reaches into me and I am moved. Without words to speak, I weep pained and wretched tears. But though I weep, the truth remains. Encountering the transcendent opening of being, I am finally redeemed. Only once I had lost everything could I have gained the one thing that has always mattered most.
This is not the end, but another beginning. Thrust from nothing into the nothingness beyond nothing, finally to be opened unto a wonderful everything, I nevertheless must live. Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. Human human that I am, I still must act and go out into the world and live. Returning to the everyday, I feel not dread but the altogether different nausea of fear and trembling. Naked to the world but for our newfound understanding of the truth, we are plunged into an altogether new anxiety, for although we are certain in our understanding, it is all we have.
The course of our quest has taken us into the deepest abyss and back again. Returning with the spoils of victory, we are armed now as never before, and ready to go back into battle. The truth is our sword, our shield, and our deepest solace. With the truth in our arsenal, our courage resurges with untold new strength. Grounded in the opening of being, our courage grows boundless and infinite. But though we have sought and reclaimed this strength, and though we bear it with us still, this power is not our own.
Like children in a foreign land, our eyes wide, hearts open, and gait shaky, with fear and trembling we go forth into this eerily familiar great unknown. Each step we take is more certain than the last. Grounded in understanding, we no longer walk alone, but with the truth beside us, accompanying each turn, anticipating every step, and guiding us through the murk of ambiguity.
We remain fearful, for we are still human, but as we grow to trust in this new, otherly understanding, we begin to see its confirmation. Consistently, it steers us away from danger and toward opportunity, away from wrath and toward righteousness, away from pain and toward peace. Each step we take becomes more certain than the last.
Little by sweet little, we regain the faith we had lost. Moved by this otherly power, we begin to believe in ourselves again, and our confidence swells. Little by sweet little, we bear witness to the beauty of compassion and true acts of charity, and our faith in humanity returns. And just as decisive, infinitesimal, and powerful as a bolt of lightning, so too does nature itself shake us to our very core with awe for the immensity and diversity of beauty in every place and moment of existence. I weep again, this time not to release an emptiness, but to rejoice in abundance. But the beginning is not the end.
Despite the arduous journey which we have so far walked, we cannot forget the terrible emptiness we once felt, for the despair of the abyss remains prevalent everywhere, in both ourselves and others. As we are human, at times we err on our path, traversing it backwards, sometimes by force of old habit, sometimes by the resurgence of doubt. But for ourselves, despair shall never return again with as much force as it once held, for we retain knowledge of the path and its experiences, and so remember that there is a way to certainty, and a definite ground beneath all truth.
We despair most for our fellow humans, each and all so human. Knowing the way, we wish for nothing more than to guide others toward and through it. But the lost are too far gone as to be found. Would that they may find peace! Tragic woe, that we cannot provide it! Dire futility of our deepest desiring, we wish only that we may speak the truth and have it recognized as truth by another endowed with understanding. Yet along our journey, we encounter only the confused and distressed. We seek to speak truth to them and our voices are not heard. We sing of beauty, yet there are none dancing. We glory in understanding, yet no others rejoice.
Canto VIII
"I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling one by one out of the dark cloud that hangs over men: they herald the advent of lightning..."
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
O ye all-too-human humans!
Would we could reach across the void
That truth might pass
From those who have struggled
Unto those poor and lost
O ye all-too-human leaders!
The despair of humanity
Rests upon thy meager shoulders.
Such monuments of ego
As ye have built to hold
The spirit of man are naught
And like to crumble o'er and again
Crushing in their feeble wake
The downtrodden dust
O' ye lost, human humans
O divine futility!
O terrific horror!
A storm dawns upon the horizon
A great calamity looms
But shout as we may
These many lost hear us not
And listen increasingly less
As despair amplifies our pleas
O ye destroyers who seek to build
How may we redeem the abandoned lost
Which thy idols threaten to crush?
O ye destroyers who seek to guide
How may we reveal unto you the truth
That ye might see
The world is burning
O ye multitudes of the lost
If ye shall not listen
We shall step out of thy way
And endure in silence
Waiting for the time to rebuild
The ship is sinking
Let it shatter itself
Against this worldly reef
Let it slip quiet
Into the purple deep
That we may wash
Upon a new shore
Ready, and waiting
To build
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