I See It Differently

I see it differently.

I know, I know. You’re thinking that we all see it differently. And you’re right. Up to a point. After that? You’re wrong diddly-wrong-wrong. And we don’t like being wrong, do we? That makes life so much fun! The focus upon individuality when all that really works for us is our commonality. Oh, there is gold in the difference, but mostly there is conflict. Mostly, this is where it all goes wrong.

Let me explain.

Once, I was like you. Blind to the full extent of the human experience. Literally blind to it. Then someone killed me and everything changed.

You’d expect that, wouldn’t you. You die and life is never the same again. That’s something we can all agree on.

Thing is, I’m still here and I’m talking to you. So, somewhere along the way, something has been lost in translation. So much is lost in translation. Most of life is lost in the place beyond. The rest is never sought and therefore never found.

Since the unfortunate incident that changed my life forever, or for a period of time that I cannot define as I have yet to be there at the conclusion of that period, I can see the place beyond. I can see it all. And do you know what I see? Human experience. It speaks to me. Makes itself known. It has a life all of its own. You are vehicles for it. Transitory receptacles for a life that endures.

That’s fascinating.

At times it hurts my head with the enormity of it all.

I try not to question my transformation. If pressed to explain what I am now, I suppose I would say I am a beautiful accident. Somehow, I have partially crossed the divide between the experiential world and that of what we laughingly call the living. I am neither one thing or the other. Everything and nothing. I stand at the divide and I see it all.

There is a saying. There are many sayings and they are all there for good reason. So much of that reason is lost in the mists of time. Waiting to be rediscovered, over and over again. The saying I am considering right now is life is about experiences.

Experience sits at the very centre of life. That is obvious, and yet few ever really think about it and what it may mean. To do is to be. It begins with thought. That thought may bubble up from who knows where. Then there is active thinking. Some of this translates to spoken words. A tiny fraction becomes acts and deeds. So much is filtered out. And by what? Fear centred around one false belief…

That you’re not worthy.

Self-worth fascinates me. You’re all born with the worth of life. This is irrefutable. You are a bundle of possibilities. Your potential is wonderful. Every birth is a unique miracle.

Then you have self-doubt inflicted upon you. This is so frustrating to observe! Especially as you go through life actively self-inflicting painful limits to everything you do and everything that you are.

The attribution of meaning to experience should set you free. Sometimes it does and that is a wonder to behold. More often than not, you smother experience in negative meaning and this stifles the life ahead of you.

Good and bad are arbitrary values that you fling about like a chimp chucking his shit around. A ridiculous and harmful performance that distracts everyone from the very point of living. Few things are good or bad. They just are.

Do you even know why you do that?

Blame is the reason for this madness. You point your finger and blame what is not within your control so that you can stagnate and suffer, instead of addressing that which lies before you and must be addressed. You make a detrimental choice in doing nothing and tell yourself there is no choice to be made.

You do the same with emotions. Emotions are signals. They are sign posts to be read. Valuable information. What do you do? You either ignore them until they are screaming their message at you, or you bathe in them and make them your reason for being. Another excuse. A cop out. Avoidance of the meaning contained within the message. Avoidance of what you should be attending to and how you should be living.

You lot spend the vast majority of your time avoiding the business of living. You tell yourselves that it’s too difficult and that it will hurt too much, whilst all the while you are hurting yourselves with this wilful avoidance.

And why do you do this?

Because you don’t believe you’re good enough.

Well guess what? This is a rigid and destructive belief system. You’ve created a self-fulfilling prophesy that you learnt from the very outset of your life. The answer to this basic puzzle is to live. The point to it all was always to live.

You are born to live.

Let me tell you about experience. I see experience everywhere. The world teems with it. What you people do with it is so limited. You do so little. Then you reside within that set of limited experiences. That is your prison. You fear going beyond the confines of your experience. And you relate to others from within that framework. No wonder you know so little about each other. And less still about yourselves.

You attribute this experience framework of yours to others. This is the Great Assumption. A glib and blind judgement you use again and again regardless of the messes it gets you in. That is how you choose to see the world. Mostly you’re lucky with this strange way of being because a lot of you have shared experiences. But your relationships reside within the perceived comfort and safety of that overlap in experience and seldom go beyond that straight jacket of existence.

Sometimes you get it wrong.

Turns out you never knew a certain person.

The truth is you barely know your self let alone anyone in your sphere of limited experience.

Imagine this, that there are people with a completely different set of experiences. You may call them broken. You likely would, if you could see them for what they were. But you and everyone else sees them only through the prism of how you have experienced life. These people hide in plain sight as a result. That stands to reason as you are all hiding to one extent or another. Thinking you are protecting that vulnerable sense of self-worth when all you’re doing is failing to launch. Pretending to be something you’re not. You all do it. But there are those who do it in an incredibly damaging way. You call them toxic if you fall foul of this mismatch in experience. You blame them when you discover that their sets of experiences have led them to hate the world and blame it for everything else they ever experience.

But then, it’s not just experience. An experience only comes into play when you attribute meaning to it. Think on that for a moment. The control and power you have over yourself as you choose the meaning you bestow upon an experience. I am sure you are now thinking of a joyous moment in your life. Soaring over the world like an eagle. Smiling as you examine a highlight in your life. But what of all the experiences in that prison of yours? The negative meaning you drag around with you like so many chains attached to a weight that you believe keeps you from the flight of joy.

You are all gifted this damaged way of being. And you all have the ability to change everything. You are bright, intelligent and readily adaptable. You are built to endure, but only so that you can figure out the best way through the challenges presented to you. Your resilience is a shield. Not the be all and end all. You have a sword of truth and the energy of love and yet you so seldom use any of them. You use your shield to prevent your progress through life. You wilfully stunt your growth whilst telling yourself it’s not your fault.

Not your fault that you do nothing…

Beyond the limitations of your experience there is darkness and danger. Dragons do lurk in the place beyond. The further out you go, the more danger there is. What astounds me is The Broken go further than most. They venture further and further in the search of something like retribution. And in their quest to destroy the world they attribute darker and darker meaning to their experience and they hurt those around them on this dark quest of theirs. They very nearly have it right. It is their own world that they need to tear down though. They need to clear the way so they can start again. They seldom do though.

Meaning can be shared. It is shared. Even in your limited state, you are not as disconnected as you believe yourself to be. In your wrongful pursuit of isolated protection you remain a product of your environment.

So imagine being hit with the full force of the weaponised experience of one of the Broken Ones. You have no choice. You are in the blast radius, and you take on that experience. It changes you. There’s no taking it back. You can only ever go forward. This is another thing that fascinates me. Weaponised experience is always experience that has been imbued with negative meaning, and it is delivered with a hateful fury. You seem made to receive this come what may.

This is only one side of things though. Beyond your self-imposed isolation is the gold you know you are supposed to be searching for. You yearn for this gold. You feel an emptiness that can only be filled with the pursuit of what lies beyond. This is where true meaning lies and the depths of love that is meant for you all. You have to work at this though. You have to want it and you have to go out there and obtain it. You have to brave the dark and dangerous land beyond your experience and you must conquer your dragon. This is the way of things. This is your intended path.

Being hurt is easy. Often, it happens whether you like it or not. Oh, you do a good job of wilfully adding to that hurt. And that is yet another distraction from that which you must do in order to live a good life. You’d rather hurt yourself than work. You’d rather wallow in the mud of your pain than go forth and dare to live and in doing so experience the full rainbow of emotions. Feel joy. Love with every fibre of your being. Grow towards the universal light of love.

You fear love itself. The truth that it brings. You fear stepping out into the light of love and being exposed for what you really are, when what you are is splendid and beautiful. A foolish and awkward miracle. Unsteady on your legs. Needing to move and leap and gallop through the forests of being in order to build your strength and become.

You are not fully formed and never will you be if you shun the trembling of your fledgling legs and make of yourself a dark, slug of a thing. Cloaking yourself in fear, resentment, anger and hate whilst smiling sweetly and pretending all is well. Relating to people via your limitations. Hating those who shine more brightly than you think you do.

I see it all and I weep for humanity. I lament that which is so easily in your grasp and yet is lost to you. The most delicious morsels. A banquet of life that you choose not to feed yourself with. Starving yourself into a twisted form of denial.

Do you get it now?

I don’t think you do.

I will show you. I will show you what I see and then you will understand. I will reveal everything before we are done here.

What is that you say?

Me? Who am I? Have you not worked that one out yet? I thought it would be obvious by now. I died and yet here I am.

No, I am not Him! He rose again. He lived again. Good guess though. I will credit you with that. I knew Him once and I would know Him again if He would one day allow it. If only you’d listened to Him. He laid it all out for you and He made His point powerfully. He gave everything to show you the way. He came to you and provided you an easier way. Took the fear from you so you could all live. He shone and lit the path. The message was simple. Be true to yourselves and to each other. Love one another. Want the best for others and for yourself. Lift each other up. Instead you tear each other down, climbing upon the bodies of the fallen, and suffering, in order to make yourselves feel high and mighty. Hollow victories with no one to share them with. Not even the reflection in the mirror.

Forgive my cynicism. I have seen too much loss. But then I am Loss. I am The End. But before I could become The Inevitable Conclusion, I had to experience life in order to understand it. In order to understand you.

I had to die in order to become Death.

Who was I before this?

I will indulge you in this question, but it will be your last. There will be no more delays.

Before I became, I was The Betrayer. I was the someone who killed me. I sold a life for thirty pieces of silver and the life was my own. The timing doesn’t work does it? Death existed before that betrayal of mine. Time is not ours though. Time is His to do with as He pleases. I am Death and I have always been Death. I needed to learn the lesson of life and what better way than to walk the path with Him and then bring an end to the most perfect human ever to have walked this Earth? That was my apprenticeship and this is my cursed punishment. If you would see it like that. I think I once did.

Now it all just is and I see perfection in the design of life. I see you fail again and again, but you never give up even as you live giving up. And what I see clearly is every win. Every moment that someone takes that leap of faith and lights up this world of yours.

I see the light.

And there are those who glimpse the wonder of it all, as you are about to. To see how things really are and how they could be. You will not despair. I am about to dispel the delusion that blinded you to the beauty of it all. As I open the curtains and let the light in, you will be filled with that joyous light. Love will strip you of all the darkness of pain and anguish you have accumulated during your existence, as it was always meant to do, and you will at last understand what you were and always will be.

The eternal part of you has always lived in the light. It is untouched by pain. It sees everything with a sense of wonder. It is free. As you are now free.

Go now.

Join them all.

They have been waiting for you.