The fruit that bites back

Part 4 of Messages from the Edgeby E. J. Ward

Its true we have been clever

Weve found a way to amuse our fingers

And abuse our minds

A trip into the unknown known

Where everything exists

And people we never heard of

Tell us things we have no need to know

About a world we never knew existed

It frees us and enslaves us

This truth that lies deep down inside

That everything exists for us to find

Lies we believe because weve looked for them

They warned us about this

This fruit of the Tree of Knowledge

That bites back

Leaving us hungry always wanting more

We knew a thing or two back then

We wrote the book

Our Stone-Age minds programmed to lift the stone

And find underneath another stone

Just waiting to be lifted

A perilous descent into the void

The game was on

Nothing could stop us now

We had the taste for it

This thirst for more than data

For the knowing not the knowledge

For the seeking not the finding

For always looking further than there is

Drunk with the thirst for thirst

For the unknown thing just round the corner

Underneath the stone

Out of control

On a roll

Thrilled by the prospect of collision

That might release the one thing we are seeking

That stops us in our tracks

A definitive confrontation with ourselves

But this is only a blip isnt it

For THIRTY-TWO-THOUSAND YEARS AGO

Our genius ancestors

Were throwing us a link to the sublime

The world they knew

Our world

Filled with transcendent grace

Unimaginable beauty

Magical animals

That rambled through their lives

And gave them meaningThese people are US

And we are them

What happened to us

That we so lost the thread

Betrayed our race

Distorted our humanityHow to recapture Our birthright Our family

The creatures of our world

Who shared our pain

Astonished us with their abundant lifeAnd blessed us by their presence?

How did we so fall from Grace

And shrivel into what we have become?

If I believe what you tell meI give you power

If only for a moment

If I do not believe it

I empower myself

And take your power away

If only momentarily

If I believe you sometimes

I retain the power of judgement

And diminish your authority

But not always

If I believe nothing you tell me

I am calling you a liar

And increase my self-esteem

By judging you

If I always believe everything you tell me

You are my parent or my teacher

And I am very young

Or very stupid

If I am not very young

And still believe everything you tell me always

I have lost the capacity for rational thought

And need to give you power

By making myself stupid

If I am not very young or very stupid

And still believe everything you tell me

However improbable

UnlikelyOr impossible it seems

I have relinquished what intelligence remained to me

And have made you into a GOD

Because I need to worship someone

Or something

Irrational

That cannot be explained

Or believed

This makes me happy.

OK Ive made you into a God

So now what happens?

You have to find me a name I suppose . . .

Cant I just call you Fred?

Its not very Godlike . . .

But it is your name . . .

Yes . . .

So now I can worship you?I dont know. There may be other considerations . . .Like . . . ? Im not sure Im qualified to be a God . . .

But if I worship you isnt that enough?It depends what you want . . .

Just the usual stuff remission of sins and so forth . . .

Have you got any sins to remit?

Of course. We all have sins dont we?Such as . . . ?

Let me think. Hostility. Aggression. Impure thoughts. That sort of thing.But have you actually DONE anything? Committed a crime for example?

Of course I have! Im sure I have. I just cant think of one at the moment.

Well let me know if you do and well see what can be done.

And in the meantime I can keep worshipping you?

I suppose so.

THANKYOU! You see? You just needed to believe in yourself . . . Its not the suffering that warps us

Its the addiction The fiddling with the scar

The exploration of the wound with grubby fingers

Embedded in the hole we keep on diggingDeeper and deeper

Seeking the truth about ourselves

Groaning and sleepless into the pain we go Following the WHY

Lured on by the spectre of an answer

To dig the bullet out that caused the wound

But supposing there is no bullet

Suppose at the bottom of the hole

We find a note I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU WANT ME

How do we handle that

How do we fill the gap left by our anguishThe Holy Hole

The Sanctum Sanctorum that we venerateEmpty and aching to be filledWe fill it with the suffering of others

For now we have the skills

Forensic tools to explore known territory

To further the investigation

The game is on again

Were good at this Our hole is filled once more And we are almost happy

Weve found a meaning to our livesBut are we not free to leave?The door is open Why cant we get out?

What is it we love about the painThat we must shut the door against a radiance That cauterizes like a flame of light

Healing and cleansing

Giving and forgiving As only Nature canWhats the ferocious charm of guiltThat we so cling to it?THE ASTONISHING FLUKE WE SEE EVERY

DAY AND TAKE FOR GRANTED

The Sun happens to be 400 times largerthan the Moon

And happens to be 400 times furtheraway from the Earth

So that the Sun and the Moon appear thesame size to usCoincidence is Gods way of remaining anonymous EinsteinThe day I beat my man at chess

I never played again

My heart which should have leapt with joy

Was taut with sudden pain

I sensed a marked strategic loss

Rather than a gain

I didnt mean to do it

And it cast me into limbo

For he was a chess champion

And I was just a bimbo

So to keep my husband happy

And contented as before

I had to lose some battles

For him to win the war

But that was many years ago

And things have changed since then

I no longer have a husband

Or a need to pamper men

I feel no need to demonstrate

That I have got a brain

For the strategy of losing

Has proved a major gain

I discovered intuition

Has a potent inner core

And the boundaries of consciousness

Were greater than before

My world was now much larger

Than the world you find in books

For a formal education

Is more formal than it looks

So glowing with contentment

I played some games for fun

When much to my astonishment

I found that I had won

A unforeseen sensation

Invaded me inside

An increase in self confidence

And smug contented pride

Good Lord I thought Ive cracked it

Ive found the way to win

With just a bit of practise

Theyll never know Im dim

But then I felt the same response

As I had felt before

A shrinking of capacity

Where I had looked for more

For this new world was pitiless

Was narrow and unfeeling

No crazy sense of empathy

No shared delight in healing

The boundaries of consciousness

Had shrunk again to this

If I get it right I win it

If I get it wrong I miss

I still play silly games of course

As often as I choose

But with this subtle difference

I dont care if I lose

Our lives have hidden strategies

Not always of our choosing

And it seems I had discovered

The Strategic Art of Losing.

Silence at Noon

Nails us down senseless

Uncomprehending

Silence at Noon

A sacrament in another language

Beyond our grasp

Dense with meaning

With implications for our dwindled state

We can no longer hear

Silence at Noon

We know not who we are

Or why

Understanding has left us

The tide gone out

And we are stranded

Unfinished

Incomplete

Swamped by Eternity

Silence at Noon

Unpeopled streets and empty skies

A shred of light fidgets an oak-leaf

But nothing moves

Silence at Noon

Older than knowing or unknowing

This held breath

Tells us that we are nothing

That we are sacred

The answer to no known question

Silence at Noon

For seven hundred years the Angelus bell

Flooded the fields and woods

Lifting the labourers face to heaven

Emptying skies and putting the birds to bed

And now we live in a secular age

This elemental energy holds us still

For no-one has told the birds that God is dead.

copyright E J Ward 2015