The Ultimate Illusive Reality Nomemver 18 2011

 The Ultimate Illusive Reality 

I was a little over six or seven – cannot remember which. I recall sitting beside my mother in front of a jacaranda tree on the cement verandah of the small zinc-roofed house waiting for my father to arrive from work. I normally could spy him walking at a distance near the river bend where the boats took him to work on the other side of the river where he worked then at a sugar cane plantation processing plant. The heat of the afternoon snaked up in gaily-abandoned waves from below the veranda slab.

I lay my head on her lap and found myself looking at the sky up above. It was as blue as a domed lapis lazuli speckled with candy fluffs heading towards the river estuary. I asked her,

“If God is merciful and compassionate then how come there is hell.” Somehow that

moment defined my journey in search of meaning and in search of inner peace and inner reality for a lifetime of living. That journey of course took me first towards the Jesuits and then the Sufi Tekkes of Central Asia. The shaved head followed and without the mane, my ears popped-out, erect outwards as if antenna ready for that ever-elusive search. When I saw the image you posted, a flood of memories bathed my soul in a whoosh of tingling memories. There you have it!

It does however appear that the search for Logos, for me at least, was a structured rather than a free-spirited affair; not that it matters, as I am sure searches are by definition an intensely personal affair. I do think though that the process in search of meaning, governed as is within the rubrics of order, is perhaps more important than the arrival at Truth itself. Imitatio Cristi is itself far critical for Christian mystics than the revelation of a lived-in and experienced truth of transubstantiation in Christianity. I am sure similar operative dynamics apply to other paths and other searches and faiths.

Of course, the ultimate challenge once the process gets underway is not the journey of discovery or discoveries of Truths or discoveries of partial Truths or discoveries of segments thereof, but their systematic and sustained distillation to form a template for one’s righteous living. To achieve that template entails gargantuan discipline, effort, and ordered existence; and does ultimately lead one to achieve at greater glimpses of The Ultimate Reality.