There must have been a time when humans were born on this planet with a clarity of purpose and a constant awareness of purpose for this journey we find ourselves on.
It feels that something has occurred to cause a derailment of the human story, sometime, somehow, we took a wrong turn and we find ourselves lost to purpose, oblivious to the truth and determined to go on a path towards self destruction.
Were all the attempts at religion failed wakeup calls? What is next? Will we eventually wake up to the values this incredible and sustaining planet we live on? Or is abdication responsibility the way of tomorrow too?
A journey of self discovery… that kind of sums up to me what life is about.
We arrive without recollection of why we came, where we came from, what purpose are we serving and who we really are.
Then we begin to feel the great urge to learn, discover and find out the truth.
And some are lucky enough to swim in the shallow waves of the greater knowing, the true purpose of life, whereas others may live their whole lives avoiding the quest.
Today my thoughts wander around the subject of intactness. What does it mean to be intact? How vulnerable do we allow ourselves to be with the onset of change? How does one become intact? Is it a permanent state or something we need to keep working towards in our personal development?
All these ponders take be back to the importance of reconnecting to the very basics, like the truth and meaning of life. Why are we here? What are we meant to be doing? What are we supposed to be collecting in our lives? And what do we leave behind as a legacy?
One thing is for sure: we are born alone and we die alone, so relationships matter and clean human interaction is vital during our short lives here on this unbelievably unbalanced planet.
One of the greatest fears might be to one day realize one is insignificant. To have lived a life that touched no one deeply, to not have loved passionately, to not have given for the sake of giving and not to have believed in something much greater than oneself. And scarier even than all of that is to have lived without ever meeting or knowing who we are.
River salmon has a very strange life pattern. It hatches upstream, swims downstream towards the ocean, matures downstream and then swims back upstream against all odds and strong currents, struggling and even jumping up waterfalls to make it back to the place where its life originated and eventually die there. I wonder if that’s the amount of superhuman effort needed for us to live our lives as they were meant to be lived, against all what tries to drag us downstream towards the oceans of mediocracy. To live a life aligned to human purpose would mean going against so much in order to escape being just another one amongst the lost.
The Pyramid of Khufu in Giza, the greatest and largest pyramid known to us, I had the chance to walk inside it in 1996. If you find the pyramids mysterious and impressive on the outside which everyone I know does, then the inside will leave you mystified! The pyramid of Khufu is constructed with shafts like this one in the photo above that are perfectly straight and on a large scale connecting in a strange maze that no one seemed to have figured out the purpose of despite many various efforts.
The wooden steps you see in the very old photo I took back then were added to allow tourists to walk up the shaft that leads to the king’s chamber.
It was a very strange feeling being in a such a wonder of the ancient past and thinking only how futuristic it felt.
(writing this post and the next few while away in NYC, so I will have very little to reply to comments, but hopefully will catch up soon :))
I went to Egypt looking for adventure. I got far more than what I bargained for…
A group of 25 something friends from all around the globe, all eager to find the truth, we headed into the desert on a moonless night to gaze at the stars and dwell on the mysteries of Egypt. It was magical to say the least, until a few hours later someone looked around and we had a feeling one of our friends was missing. We called her name into the pitch darkness but nothing returned other than the eerie stillness of the desert night. It was the kind of darkness where you could not see your own hand, let alone another person lost in the sand. We desperately came up with a plan to separate into groups of 2 and walk around looking and feeling for our friend. We spent about an hour of very high emotional distress and thoughts going all over the place and expectations of the worst possible. We were each running the risk of getting lost ourselves, if not for a far away light that we left as a marker and a place to meet at the end of our search. Our local friend and guide who was with us walked finally to the nearest road and managed to call the hotel in Cairo only to discover that our friend was showered and in bed after having been lost, finding the road and hitchhiking to the hotel while we were busy searching for her.
That night, people of different religions, backgrounds, nationalities and ages worked together while faced with a crisis, an Arab with a German, a christian with a jew, a European with an American, all towards one purpose, the safety of another human being. Amazing how a real life situation can cause all the ‘stuff’ that does not belong to being human, to be shed away, dropped for the sake of our shared humanity. A great lesson was learned by all that night, as the deserts of the planet can do that to us.
Ka (ancient wooden statue with out-stretched set of arms above the head at the Cairo museum)
While searching and researching inside the realms of Ancient Egypt, the unseen comes into focus as the seen gradually gets blurred…
The ancient Egyptians believed that each person hosted in themselves a double, an electrical entity that ushered and guided them towards their true destiny. They called it the Ka. Their Ka was to live beyond the death of their physical bodies and mummifications served as preparations for homes that the Ka would one day return to inhabit.
Their lives were lived in great discipline as to remain pure and adhere to purpose because any deviation from purpose was an abomination of the Ka.
What was most haunting for me standing in front of this statue was the look in its eyes. It was the kind of look that can take you on a journey, far beyond where you would normally be.
