That Which Sleeps in the Soul of Man.
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” — Søren Kierkegaard.
I look out upon the overcast sky beyond, I see myself alone, an individual in the search for purpose. I watch myself, as a narrator to his own great novel — I see this journey unfold before me, I ask myself:
Who may I become? Through the infinitude of possibility that prevails upon man, what path shall I walk? What action shall I take?
The questions as such, the man continuously asks himself, unconsciously or consciously — and as in the philosophers case, so consciously, so intensely, infact — that his life becomes a mad journey undertaken in the bid to answer such questions, but he cannot.
Atleast, he cannot if he values only his rational mind as his ordinance. For if he limits himself in this way, he is a half man — as most men are half men, of less, perhaps.
And it becomes clear, after much suffering in the vain desire to untangle the paradoxes of his life threaded throughout thought, and thought alone, that the voice inside his head is so majorly inadequate for fulfillment in the art of living; that therefore he must turn to that part of himself that knows no language, that part of himself, that is beyond the self as he knows fundamentally, but that nevertheless sleeps within — that jewel that is his own freedom, that is pure awareness.
The true philosopher, that lays dormant in the souls of the mass of men, the artist.
This is the part of himself whom he neglects unknowingly, that part of him that needs not the word, or logic, or other such religion — that part of him that is soul and purely soul.
Well, it is only in faith then, that man may uncover the answer to such questions, for he finds that, when he merely thinks about such existential curiosities, such spiritual burdens, that he finds only more questions of such nature — he finds that, only when he lets go of his need for philosophy, that paradoxically, his own philosophy becomes clear.
Man is prisoner of mind, and, ever if he does think he knows his own destiny, he quite gets in his own way of ever living that to its fullness, if he does not accept his own madness, and in doing that, awaken from it, and taste — even if for a moment only, that wonderful clarity of one who chooses consciously to act in spite of his own mind, to become who he already knows himself to be in the depths of his restless soul.
And so, the question, and the answer to the question, becomes unnecessary; for a man who lives from that part of him that is youthful, and curious, and real, well — that part of him needs no question at all, for the whole of his existence is unknown, and he knows it — and he knows also, that any attempt to ask of the gods places himself below them, and so he who thinks to plee for the gods, loses that which is godly within him.
It is really a question then, not of finding answers, but of being the answer.
Man must become one with that which is godly within him.
After all, how can man know of that which is beyond himself?
Well, he cannot.
If he seeks truth, if he wishes to live as a philosopher, as a student of nature, then he must discard all that within him seeks to know that which he does not know, for all he knows now is, in a sense, all he will ever know.
For, in essence, he asks unknowing that which he knows already.
If he wishes to master the art of living, he requires then, a leap of faith, an act of courage that is eternal and does not fade with the setting of the sun — the kind of courage that echoes through the void of time.
Such is the paradox of man and mind.
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” — Seneca.
Axle.