Jun 15, 2020
The One in The Room
A Truth, Companionship, and Stories We Tell Ourselves
Ever find yourself right where you want to be, yet something nags in the back of your mind, some dissatisfaction with the way things are?
There is a saying in the service, “No plan survives implementation.”
No matter the situation, many of us will, at some point, find we have committed ourselves to something without fully considering the ramifications of partnering with something or someone that is out of our actual control.
The Boy in The Room posits a Virtual Room where anything you could ever want is at your fingertips, except a friend. Join The Boy as he searches for companionship, finds a commitment he wasn’t expecting and is faced with a choice he didn’t prepare to make.
The One in The Room
There was a One, who lived in a room, but it was not like any other room you might think of.
In this room, the ceiling was the stars in the sky. All the One had to do to see any of them was to look up at the top, then spread his hands slowly apart to zoom in on anyone he wanted to examine. He could get close to and even explore any of the planets that orbited any star, traveling through the infinite galaxies available to see.
The walls in The Room were like travel channel jumbo virtual screens, where, with likewise hand and arm gestures, he could conjure up any landscape or time his imagination could construct.
In The Room, all the boy had to do was utter a word to be swept away where he could swing playfully with mighty Gorggifferens, explore subterranean depths with lithely Serpintiens as they tunneled through concocted soils of fertile imaginations, or ride gigantic, roaring Tzarias soaring among endless multicolored horizons! Indeed, one could discover stretches of fun-filled, fascinating days without end!
Yes, his creations entertained the Boy immensely. He loved all his designs! Like nothing else, he loved TO create, to experience what he made.
In the middle of The Room, there was an interactive “thing” resembling a small fruiting tree of sorts that could impart knowledge of what was needed so that he had access to whatever it was he might want to know how to do. All that was necessary was to enjoy ingesting the desired instructions as they came encoded in the form of a fruit that the boy could eat.
Anything he wished for was his to create, explore, or enliven existence. Yet, despite having all that he could imagine, on top of all the wonders that were his at any moment of every day, what he longed for the most was something he had never had.
The One had always existed in this Room, from the first moment he opened his eyes within it. What he truly desired was something like himself to share existence with. Something, no someone, that would have their own agency, being, and creative experience. Someone to communicate with, be with, and who might see the One in a way his other creations could not.
The One knew that suddenly appearing in a room without explanation, experience, or introduction might be extremely disorienting — frightening even- at least, it seemed that way to the Boy when he imagined something of the sort happening to himself.
So, he determined to make this other being with just a bit less knowledge than the One already had. In this way, he could make sure his soon-to-be companion adjusted well to the new experience of existence within The Room. When the time was right, he would tell his companion about the instructional tree fruiting thing, how to work it, and such, and then they could create some fun stuff together!
What could go awry? He had figured out The Room on his own, and this other would have the One to teach him. Indeed, to ensure it all worked out, he must be sure to be the unconditional embodiment of Love: love, with a healthy dose of the curiosity that was the marrow of his own being, to begin with, guiding and keeping him safe while he Was. He would be what brought him a joy to this new one so that what difference of knowledge in the other there would be could be eventually leveled with his own, through careful instruction in Truth.
That is if he were to show this one correctly, what a full-on equal companion he hoped for could be!
“Alright, here goes!” I must BE Love!” as he swallowed.
Closing his eyes, he began by concentrating on what an image of himself reflected, then bit by bit, meticulously, he willed each part from the idea to be. In a sense, he became the image, then released his thoughts from The Other, and in being, The Other now had his own mind, heart, and humor.
Before the One registered the passage of time again, another was already regarding him curiously.
“Hi!” he said.
The Other stared at him, eyes wide.
“Um, hello?”
“HELLOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!!” The Other shouted, then leaped to his feet and started to joyfully explore every single nook, corner, and cranny of the room!
The One, surprised, rushed after The Other, talking animatedly, offering proper welcome and what-nots, barely keeping up so that he didn’t register that The Other had stopped right in front of the One, who bumped into him with a startled “Oh!”
“I-, “The Other arrested what the One was about to say with a long, deep searching through the portal of his eyes. Standing as still as a fawluer, a bird of prey on some distant planet, listening on the edge of a cliff, the One gazed, unashamed, back into The Other’s questing gaze.
“You know what I see in your eyes?” The Other asked with his voice rising slightly at the end.
“Tell me!” said the One.
The Other’s face slowly lifted at the edges of his mouth, mischievously, satisfied, it would seem. “Me!”
Then, without a moment’s hesitation, gathered the One up in an all-encompassing hug, actually lifting the One from his footing and squeezing significantly, but not painfully, before setting him back down and continuing to hug the One for a long minute, waiting for the One to return Other’s embrace. Then, slowly, haltingly, he did, all fell silent in existence except for the immediacy of their shared discovery of companionship.
Other ducked suddenly out of the One’s hold, twisting away back to the walls and calling up his own views of many, many things as he continued his exploration of the room.
Realizing he was still standing where they had embraced, the One looked around The Room quickly, then returned his attention to Other, still in the afterglow of their earlier moment, not quite registering that Other was already on top of the Tree of Knowledge, taking bites out of the fruit “willy nilly”!
The One gasped in surprise.
Other stopped midway through his second fruit, having devoured the first fruit already. The Other looked appalled, joy drained from Others’ face like sand swiftly flowing from a broken glass ball.
Knowledge surpasses understanding…
Other’s eyes glazed over in pained confusion. Looking directly at the One, a horrifying, unreadable pleading twist on his face, he said, “I am too mean, dirty, and ugly to be in a place like this.” He looked down, then cried, “And I am BARE!”
In a sort of desperation, Other began to look at the ceiling, then the walls, except differently than before, and gesturing like the One often did.
Had he-, the One’s thought was interrupted.
Other conjured up a dark and dismal cave. In that cave, the mirror image of Other appeared, which wasn’t unusual, but- but Other’s image looked confused, skittish, and covered in something, a,…leaves! The Other’s image was covered in leaves and branches torn from plants.
They were jammed together by twisting, interwoven limbs, which had gouged Other’s skin, the er-the image of Other’s skin, and there was, “..oh, why?”
There were several deep scratches, bleeding, and oozing. Other looked hungry, ravenous. What could not be missed was how wrong this was. With Other’s emotions shifting rapidly through him but registering on the avatar’s face, Other looked, well, more than “out of sorts,”
Other “sat” in a collapse, then stopped speaking. More precisely, he stopped talking, here, in The Room. Instead, this imagined self-image was the only speaking, moving part of Other since piling himself in situ.
Soon the One understood that the Other would not respond here in any way whatsoever, yet spoke in the created existence as if he were IN the images he was making. As if Other was somehow, now, the story he seemed to be telling himself.
The One was beside himself with concern! Seeming ages creaked by, with Other immobile here, while living all kinds of frightful, violent, and scared lives through the mirror image projected into this created existence outside of The Room they were both actually in.
The One didn’t know what else to do. So he continued to BE LOVE to Other. An unjustified hope was all that the Boy could cling to. That, eventually, Other might remember The Room, where he first was. Perhaps remember where he is now and comes back to the One, and,, in doing so, releases his new, uncomfortable, anxiety-ridden reality. It was as though Other had severed himself from where he rightly was, permanently.
What had Other experienced in his mind? What made him choose to project himself somewhere so bleak and uncertain? Would he return? What would Other come back to? What would he come back for? How would he come back? How could he?
The One sat in frustrated thoughts for many long moments. At times nervously glanced over to where Other was in his imagination, then often turning away from what he could not “unsee.” Tears began to well in his own eyes.
He recalled for another time, there must be, how, when the — ;
The One suddenly froze.
Like the sun dawning across a barren arctic landscape, a thought rolled into place, connecting all the lines! His understanding shivered The One into this newborn path of potential.
“THAT’S IT!” the One cried out; standing, he began to pace back and forth, never far from slumped Other, relief clear in The One’s voice.
All Other should have to do, is to get to the point of accepting himself so that his focus relaxed into a more broad, less “engaged” state where every imagined detail crisscrossed before him, blinding his sight. A jolt might help Other noticed that he didn’t have to know if a cup was half full or empty, simply that he had to release the glass; in fact, there never was one, to begin with! One can embrace the necessity of the unknown with what can possibly be known. Comfortability is irrelevant; trying to erase all uncertainty altogether that’s the sand trap!
Other might sense that there was something he knew instinctively. However, he needn’t understand it all objectively; subjective acceptance of absolute terms is all that should be needed in his mind since he had a little less knowledge than The One. He might be able, instead of the things he believed he experienced through the shadows of his understanding, to accept everything simply IS.
Other would need an anchor: he would need to sense The One’s unconditional love at this time for it to have any hope of success. The Boy’s presence would feel familiar; the Other would only is able to find the path needed through the One’s Love for him. That familiar intention is enough.
“Alright then! I will be Unconditional Love for you until you begin to accept your existence, can begin to accept the truth of it, and Love is unmistakable to sense, so that is what I will do!”
Then the One sat next to Other, wrapping his arm around him, and said, “As long as it takes, I will be here with you. Waiting. Encouraging. Cheering you on! I will anchor you here, and once you accept the Truth, you will begin to see again. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
The One squeezed Other, then settled in to watch the mirror image of Other as he struggled to figure his existence out, shying always away from and around the crossing of what, most likely, seemed a vast, dark, and final unknowing between the Others’ shadow life and the reality of The Room where the Other sat next to the One, enveloped and enveloping him in Love.
To be continued in The Other Truth.
Next, “Bovine Bob Finally Finds His Voice” will be released soon with audio narration. In this story, we explore the challenges of Bovine Bob knowing something essential and trying to share it with others only to discover that no one believes him. What will he do with the knowledge?
Feel free to leave comments or feedback. Thank you!
Respectfully,
Adrian ‘Yobi’ Blumberg
Pilgrim | Trail Finder | Avid Listener
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