When You Can't Go Forward And You Can't Go Back

The Monkey-Boy Of The Great Sky Programmer

I had the little house to myself and sunshine almost every day. And when it wasn't sunny there were momentous thunderclaps and pouring rain.

"Here it comes," I said to the old lady who lives across the street, the one with the antlers in her garage. She didn't understand English but she knew what I meant; get ready for a downpour.

Afterwards, people asked me what I did all the time. I had two books which I'd finished quite early on in my time there. One was called the 10th Commandment and was a well written but fairly obscure detective novel about a conspicuously short man and a philandering priest. The other book was the New Testament, a little red Gideons Bible. From the scrawlings on the inside cover I surmised I'd had it since primary school.

In answer to society's question of 'how can one possibly survive without television, books, conversation, coffee, rich food and computers without going stir crazy? I mean what do you do all day?' I answer; 'I read the Bible a Christian, I meditate as a Buddhist, I practice yoga a Hindu, as a Muslim I submit entirely to God, as a Zennist I do a million things and as a Taoist I do them all without doing anything.'

And I did not avoid going 'stir crazy' but embraced it. When the weight of thoughts became heavy as I wandered down a country road in the sun I told myself 'never grow up', 'be always like a child' and went skipping down the hillside laughing and shouting. And if anyone had seen me over the next four hours they would have said, 'there goes a madman.'

I dredged up the filthiest sexual desires and shouted them down the concrete aqueduct that crossed under the road. I gave the women in love with me what they want and more, fell writhing on the earth.

And as I came to the electrical substation, a large and deserted building nestled in its spider web of iron strands, I realised something profound: "It's all True."

There is nothing untrue under the sun, or in the mind, or on the lips.

Its all True in all the towering contradiction, the clash of ideas and war of beliefs being nothing but the clash of Truth on Truth. No one True thing cancelling out another. And as I wandered down the riverbank I saw how even the assertion, the belief, that nothing is real, that everything illusion, even that is the most profound and actual Truth, standing uncompromisable with no need for argument or justification.

And so ended Doubt. Never after that moment was there any need to wallow in confusion, to ask 'am I doing the right thing?', 'do I believe right?', 'will I be painted as a fool?' And I realised how Jesus and Buddha, Krishna, Meister Eckhart, Gandhi and Martin Luther King had all ended Doubt, and had experienced non-stop attempts on their life. Because the one thing that society, from the lowliest tenement dweller to the highest magnate, is terrified of is pure unadulterated Truth.

And as I came further and further down the river where the trees opened up to reveal glistening and receptive water reflecting lovingly the sky, I realised the absurdities that afflicted even my closest friends. That even the protest movement that I am a part of, for all our claims to connection on a higher moral or spiritual plane, to all our assertions that we have Awoken and have the answers, are still the victims of the most profound self-deception.

'Let us sit around in circles trying to agree on everything under the sun, and on the rare occasion that we might do so, completely fail to do anything about it. Let us spend all our time bickering and opposing each other, and treat our power struggles as more important than the state of the world, even while preaching the opposite. Let us demand our world leaders broker peace and yet turn a blind eye to violence and aggression amongst ourselves, to accept as unavoidable what we decry as immoral and corrupt amongst those we oppose. Let's accept drug addicts and alcoholics and the deeply damaged into our movement and then act surprised when things fall apart.'