TEODORA TANASE

THE ORANGE ROBE AND THE SMILE
(Natural limitations)
 

     Is this a silver bullet to my chest?
     Am I anticipating salvation? Am I carrying a cross?
     Should I let it go?
    Instead perhaps I should seek refuge in silence, and consider listening; find a road of contemplation and silence that could bring forth peace?

     I find myself turning in this whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, and struggling to free myself from what has plagued me in the past: my insecurity, my rage and misfortune, my discomfort in others and in my own self. I am released and afraid that what I have come across might change my very existence and turn it into something strange and distant. What have I seen within an orange robe and a smile?
Orange is the color of leaves just before they let go from the branch that holds them, the color of self sufficient solitude. Would I change to orange? Could I?
     I see there is no need for sacrifice, no need for suffering and mortification. There is only need for attention.
     Divinity does not request pain; it does not come forth after anguish. I do not need to starve myself to see God. At best I could benefit from some hallucinations!
     I could come across God at the end of a twisted and tumultuous road, after I have suffered and cried, after I’ve starved and nearly died of thirst. I could find God when I ask for Him. Does that make sense? Is it not more likely that I would be creating an image of salvation only because my own mind is too weak or confused to free itself consciously from the ordeal that I have brought upon myself?

Why would God promise a life without pain but request that I suffer greatly to achieve it? Is that not my own response to pain, my own reaction that generates a promise of salvation beyond myself to justify that which apparently I cannot change?

     In ancient times, humans would create gods to make up for the blanks in their knowledge and understanding. If there is lightning, it must mean anger, if there is rain it must be discontent, if there is sunshine there must be happiness. What we do not understand we make up for in imagination and the sheer determination to put ourselves through pain. Hence we create gods, beings to bring on lightning and rain and sunshine, which pass on our judgments for us, which punish us so that we don’t have to. And then, the supreme act of justification for our own insufficiency, we create FREE WILL.
     Such a controversial concept!
     Free will is a strict father teaching his sons moral values and the truth about life by threatening them with punishment, whose idea of right is restriction.
     There is Free Will! But it is the un-given right to choose from a million paths and suffer and rejoice equally for each one, by choice for each one. It is the un-given right to discover what pains us really and what makes us happy and pursue that by our own instinctual nature. It is the frontal view of the infinite crossroad.

     It is by choice that I follow a path of self discovery.
     There is no fear, no ailment. There is just continuous search and revelation.
     Divinity is peace of the heart. It is not happiness or pain, ritual or cult, it is not tradition. It is communion with our inner self; complete understanding of what it is that ails us and what we strive for, of what it is that brings peace and a smile to our faces. It is to comprehend what would seem overwhelming, if we allow it to overwhelm, and attaining the knowledge that grasping brings forth pain. Grasping our desires, when they are nothing more that our senses acting up, grasping our solitude because it is a social statement of alienation, grasping - and not letting go - of love because it gives us a sense of belonging, when in fact our place is there, and would be nowhere else. Grasping our past because it gives us identity, grasping our happiness because it means we are not unhappy; grasping instead of living. Longing instead of rejoicing in what is there. Needing what is not necessity, but will.
     I am weary of when my senses make my decisions for me. There is a soul within me, and a mind, and they can see the senses for what they are – my own natural limitations.