Conflict
My energy is spent.
I have been worn down to the point of exhaustion and silent suffering. It is not only my body that is yearning for relief, but my mind and soul too have been depleted; and they now plead with me for a respite.
What can I tell them? This depletion is nothing but an inevitability; it is a function of the world that we inhabit. Functioning within the confines of a system that seeks to control and restrict, is tiring; to not be affected would indicate an ignorance of the realities of life, or perhaps it would prove such an ascendance beyond my current means - of which seems unfathomable to me.
This situation is programmed into our world: creativity, freedom, individuality, passion, expression; on the surface these are ideals that modern societies spout as founding principles and yet they are mere forms of entrapment; mere illusions designed to keep us shackled and bound to those with the means to exploit our efforts and attention.
This disease of visceral and damning tiredness is not a personal failing, but of systemic design. The system needs exhaustion, it needs compliance and passiveness. It relies on those with the means to shine a light on the failings of the world to be too tired to fight; too tired to embrace the fire within. These people have the power and means to start a chain reaction of passion and empathy that would cause a cataclysmic breaking of chains and awakening of colour and beauty to an otherwise bleak and damning world.
I have felt the duality within me tearing apart my mind; thoughts and questions echo at all times, and yet the weaving frequencies vibrate with such vigour and menace that I am unable to ascertain the questions being asked, let alone the answers to those deep quandaries which my mind have decided to push to my consciousness. It is perhaps with these torrent of consciousness whereby I have become aware of something previously hidden from me.
The supernova in my soul is yearning for a release - the spark is ready to ignite the fires of change and chaos and revolution and passion. It is primed by the injustice that we see all around us; and yet society is designed in such a way that we feel chained to the walls, unable to unleash that cosmic flow into the world. This drive and passion that we wish to share with the world, the colours and beauty and creativity, is stuck and bottled up within us as are belittled or talked down due to our unwillingness to comply and to obey. What little fire we are able to direct is hijacked and stolen, forced to be used for corporate greed or simple survival. We are allowed to live if only to taste the potential of freedom; we are given just enough to keep us in perpetual hope and everlasting yearning.
Rather being allowed to burn as cosmic revelations we are forced to operate as mere cinders, and we are given just enough warmth to keep yearning for more.
With this manipulation of our desires, there is a part of our souls that almost always get ignored. It is a part of myself that I neglect and which comes at great cost to me.
My childhood wonder, my peace, my innocence, my pure-being, has been kept hidden from myself and the world - and it is a world that has been left to wither and die. This is the part of me that truly feels like me. It is part of my soul that is a melodic piano song, each key note is a joy and to behold; it is my essence, the pureness that the outside world has yet to touch and corrupt. It is love, and acceptance, and it is light; it is pure.
It is the rarest sensation and feeling that I have ever had the privilege of experiencing, and one that is very rarely ever felt.
It is seeing someone in their totality and seeing them as a ray of perfection and pure bliss. It is being seen back and feeling understood. It’s the truest feeling of being home in someone’s presence. This comfort is enlightening; all the cares in the world drift away and all the worries and fears fade to unyielding contentment and stillness.
Such is the rarity of this feeling, that often when the fire in the soul diminishes, I am left with the feeling of numbness. As part of my desire to transform the chaos in me I invariably forget to care for that which is the foundation of everything.
And this is what the world, the grey machine, does so well to kill us so slowly. It tell us we either have to use our driving emotions or to sit in our peace and leave the world alone.
If we choose our fire, we are hijacked; our cosmic life force is stolen into hijacked productivity or contributions to economies. Our creativity and imaginations are used to fuel greed.
If we choose our peace, our zen like calm, our childlike innocence and pure being; we are mocked. We are called lazy, unproductive, naive. We are left feeling detached; the wheels of industry continue to spin and to plunder in our absence. We see society’s grasp on this to the full extent with self-help gurus and experts; the result of their wisdom is to lock yourself away and to ignore the world.
We are forced to be either productive, but soulless workers, or a peaceful but powerless dreamer. We are never allowed to do both - and the only winners are those with vested interest in keeping society locked into manipulation, greed, and control.
I have too often felt myself fighting myself at this apparent conflict. My desire to effect greater change runs on limited fuel when my energy is needed to survive. I am left with a taste of this freedom and the dream of bringing about change, and passion, and true emotional awakening. And yet, when my driving emotions are depleted, my peace is hidden from me. The rare times that I find myself back seeing my true-self, I feel guilty; I feel that my peace is selfish and insignificant. This feeling of home seems so far away; the fleeting appearances of this innocence often feel more like far away dreams.
And so this fight, this conflict in my mind, so often results in an internal battle whereby both sides lose and I end paying the price; and society sits back from afar as I tear myself apart and it laughs.
The truth must be that I need to reframe both the fire and the peace in me, not as opposite sides of a blade, but two parts of my soul that together can bring about greater change and contentment both in myself and the world. The true act of rebellion, the true ascendance, is to reject the choice of fire and peace; it is harness both. For our peace is not the absence of fire; it is the home and foundation on which it makes everything worth fighting for. The real beautiful curse is the struggle to reclaim both - to yield both the power of driving force and zen.
What the system truly fears is a soul united by its pure love and acceptance and it’s limitless cosmic power to effect change and to colour this world in ways that we can currently only dream of.
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