| By Brian Elroy McKinley |
|
What is the nature of my haunting? What is this oppression that
follows me
through street and alley, through day and night and day? What is the light
not visible but piercing which finds its source in the cobblestone roads of
Geneva, the falling walls of Budapest, the statues of Brussels, and the
faded wood of so many American frontier ghost towns? Could it be some
ghost, some spirit locked in a cage of history or only twisted pulses of
nervous energy locked deep inside my brain?
Though it could be ghost or spirit, or some mental trickery, I believe no in these answer, but point, instead, to a different conclusion, that being the power of life. Life, so complicated, so pervasive, is not locked as tightly as we might think into the physical world. No, life is not limited but expansive. It carries a density of existence more powerful that the limits of up and down, of forward and back. It carries a distortion of dimension more powerful the time's ability to restrain us. Like the powerful vortex of a black hole that distorts the time and space around it, the passing stranger distorts my world as have all passing strangers who have walked this earth before me. I can hear the objections. So say those who study the earth and who study what's beyond, the scientist and the priest, that I speak not for them. So be it. For their objections are based not in answering my questions but in finding solutions that fit their designs. They seek and only give answers that fit the narrow confines of their paradigms and doctrines. They seek and give only confirmation that furthers their positions as bearers of truth. But they do not offer answers capable of lifting my soul out of its quest for the root of what forces haunt my own life's walk. My walk is through the streets that speak of the millions of lives which have before walked them. My walk is amongst the stones of the thousands who died while piling them. My walk is through the worn-wood doorways of buildings crumbling and fallen. My walk is also through modern streets of concrete, modern buildings of steel, modern shopping centers of plastic and glass. It is in cars, new and clean, in trains, shiny and polished, in planes, refurbished and computerized. When I walk among the new steel and plastic, through the new concrete and glass, my soul is alone, my spirit is lost. But when I walk through the streets ancient and worn, through the wood, broken and falling, through the stone, piled by the old ones, my soul is not alone, my spirit is never lost, though I may be. Instead, I am haunted by a presence of life powerful and strong. So shout all you want, those who so easily cast my experiences aside and who ask me to capitulate to the demands of your paradigms. Your failure to take seriously my expressions have left you without a voice in answering my questions. For life in my experience is not just the exchange of chemicals over billions of years. Life for me is not just the doctrines of modern, western Christianity or for that part of the older and just as rigid view from the old, eastern philosophies. No, life is the most powerful force in our universe, being created out of nothing and sustained by forces beyond our comprehension. Call me a mystic if you like, but life simply cannot fit into the definitions we have given it. Life cannot fit into our definitions, and it cannot fit into the boundaries we assume are impenetrable. Life flows past the three dimensions of the body like radio waves escaping from an electrical wire. Life flows past the limits of time like those same waves as they pierce the walls of my home to be collect by the antenna of my radio. And like the antenna, the flow of life can be gathered in the surrounding dimensions and can even collect in the place beyond time and space. Is it not possible then, that they very nature of the human soul is that part of each person's life that flows past time and space and collects in the dimensionless and endless expanse of eternity? Is it not possible that every aspect of my walk through this world is added to that portion of me that flows past physical barriers and collects in a place where it can never be altered or changed again. My body may thus die, but who I am, a collection of all I have been, remains in the dimensionless expanse of God and angel. If the nature of souls is the endless collection of my walk through this world, then my haunting is the stains of that outflow of life on the physical world through which it passes. The vortex I create as I pass through this life, feel pain and fear, hope and love, have pleasure and purpose or despair and hopelessness is recorded in the distortion of the space and time nearby. And the hauntings that blind me as I pass through the world are the distortions and stains of so many others who have carried their own life's vortex through the same space but at a different time. Their physical bodies gone, their souls set free to continue in the domain of the eternal, the distortions of their passage continue to broadcast their existence into my receptors. What is the nature of my haunting? It is life, powerful, emotive and ultimately eternal. It is life unable to be contained by physical walls, just as it is unable to be confined within the narrow understanding of those who claim to have all the answers. It is life that refuses to fit into our limited understanding and our temporal limitations. It is life upon life, walking with me as I add to its ability to haunt those who walk this path after me. |
Email: el@elroy.com