An article by Sha'Tara, local writer and friend.

Everything is on its way to Somewhere

[thoughts from ~burning woman~ by Sha’Tara]


“Everything is on its way to somewhere; everything.” (George Malley in the movie, Phenomenon, starring Kyra Sedgwick and John Travolta.)


In one piece, not very likely (though nothing is impossible) but certainly in billions of tiny pieces, we’re all on our way to somewhere. That’s what I call it, what I thought of as “heaven” when I was a child; what I thought of as “my home world” when I outgrew my cabbage patch heaven with its Biblical fairy tale characters called God, angels and saints. Not that they weren’t real or that they do not remain real, just that they didn’t fill the bill any longer. They were stuck in their own belief system world and I had wandered out when someone left the gate open. I didn’t get lost, I just chose not to come back, no matter how loud those inside the fence called out for me to return. Eventually, I suppose, they figured me for a goner – which I am.


I’m not saying one cannot know where their “home world” is, or what it’s called. It could even be in this universe, perhaps even this galaxy if one hasn’t traveled that much over the billions of years they’ve been kicking around, or if one can’t remember. I’ve met a whole lot of people who are still convinced they were never here before, or that they never lived any other lives than this little earth life with the lifespan of a carton of cigarettes they drag a body through. It’s sad, really, to allow oneself to remain so damnably limited, but it’s what makes gambling casinos, Wal-Marts, governments, banks and churches function and profit. No need to elaborate, everybody knows where I’m coming from, even if no one really knows where I’m going!


Today, again, I was asked about my plans now that I’m retired. “Do you have travel plans for the Summer?” I answered as honestly as I know how: “Why would I want to travel on this little world? It’s homogenized. It’s the same frantic, pointless rush and noise everywhere, with the distinct difference that if you’re doing it tourist mode it costs more and you get less for the money.” Is that honest enough and true enough? There is nothing, absolutely nothing, if one looks at the big picture, that I haven’t seen of this world. In fact I’ve seen parts of this world many people could never see because they insist on wearing those Coke bottle bottom glasses I call belief glasses, you know the ones that distort reality beyond any chance of recognition. No one needs to physically travel or watch “reality shows” on TV or scour the Internet for juicy news, they just need to take off those idiotic glasses. And get used to the light, it’s a little frightening and disorienting at first!


So, with or without our knowledge, likely piecemeal, we’re all traveling. We’re all on our way to somewhere. But is that comforting? Does it help? We’re so used to think of the trip as taking place in or with, one single body. A body distinct and separate from all other bodies. How can we realize cosmic traveling as sub-atomic particles? Or as pure mind, as spirit? We think of our reasoning apparatus as the brain. A physical computer-like organ we pack around in that odd-shaped ball on top of our shoulders and with which, so we believe, we sense most of our world, our reality. We “feel” our interactions with the world taking place “up there” and we think of it as mind. But what about those feelings that seem to grow in, and emanate from, the heart area – or even lower? What part of our brain is stuck down there? (See? I can say, “up there” and “down there” sensing the difference) But what “connects” the heart/brain functions so that one can override the other at times of emotional upheaval, or at times of great concentration? We get “emotional” and we feel it in the heart center and we get “logical” and we sense that in the brain center. But when we are tickled, or when we are hurt, we feel it as coming from the area where the actual act is taking place. So “we” are forever “traveling” all over our body according to senses. What does the traveling? Can it go beyond the body? If so, how far?


There’s a part of “me” I know is not part of, nor dependent upon, the body. It’s what I call my spirit/mind complex. You want to know where dreams come from, and who or what, orchestrates and choreographs them? Who writes the dialogue and plays the parts? Just go there. Enter into your own spirit/mind and see your world, your very own world for the very first time. It’s always for the first time because outside the cynically cyclic soap opera authorized by the Time Lords, nothing ever repeats itself. Now, I realize that the little computer-brain cannot compute this concept. It cannot deal with endlessly new information. It is limited in storage capacity and knows it. If it accepts “new” information, it must dump “old” information. That’s why the cramming of public education is such an abysmal waste of time for the child-inmates forced into it and for those who are dubbed “teachers” when all they can do is input pre-authorized information that must, of necessity, override previous information. How much of what was “learned” in grade school remains when one enters the workaday world? It’s a joke – a very costly joke. Public schools (exceptions noted but they would have been exceptional in any case!) create two basic types of people: zombies and sociopaths. Both of these become energy sucks; draining their society as they grow to dependence or to power and riches. Think about that.


I know people for whom having stuff is all important. Or having power over others. Or seeking endless thrills and having fun. Those are people who exist in deliberate denial of the reality of death. Well, at least they will experience one surprise in their pointless lives!


I know people who live lives no different at all than any others, yet claim to be God’s special people and while taking advantage of what this world offers in whatever ways, believe, and remain convinced that they have a place in some blissful heaven provided by their god, a place denied the rest, not because they are bad people (many of those live more exemplary lives than the heaven-bound) but because they fail to, or refuse to, believe, accept, worship, a particular god.


So?


If, and that’s a major if, people faced the fact that to be born means to die, they would realize themselves quite differently. If they saw this reality passing by under them like the painted center line on the highway and realized that the end of that road can only be at the end of their body’s life, they might want to pull off at the first rest stop and take in the scenery, even if it throws them off their subconsciously scheduled appointment with death. Perhaps, after a few such rest stops, they may come to another so inviting they may decide to forego the schedule entirely and wander off in the hills for a while, away from the screaming me-me’s and rushing traffic. They might become engrossed in watching ants and bees; admiring grasses and flowers bending in the winds as cumulus clouds rise majestically over purple mountains on a distant horizon. They might find a jade-green pool under a grove of poplars and go in for a swim. They might even meet a kindred spirit along the way and for a while, join experiences. Then, as the pressures of the Time Lord’s Tick-tocking talking metronomous system dies off, they may become aware of themselves, not as a solid something, as a body that is screaming for food and shelter and comforting, but as nuclear particles bouncing away and coming back with incredible information, all of it new.


And that’s what it means, to be on the way to somewhere. As Earthians, it is quite pointless to think we can know where we are going, or to image what that place can be like. Oh, we can dream and we can fantasize and romanticize it all, but in the end, which is always a new beginning, it will be all new again. And again. And again. Why? Because we are information seekers like bees seeking pollen. But for that information to be available, we too must produce new information for others. So we are the bee and the flower – at the same time. That’s the mystery of life.