wandering_raven

Lost and confused, the Seeker stopped to collect his thoughts and find his bearing. The dark place around him seemed to seep in to his skin, probing beneath the surface of his flesh, as though it sought nothing less than his very soul. His soul was ill, and the darkness sensed his weakness, like a predator stalking maimed prey.

The Seeker had been searching in the darkness for so long he had forgotten what he was looking for. The darkness infected his mind and feasted upon his memories. He lost himself in this place, but his pride would not let him break.

Just as the last ember of his soul began to fade, he pleaded for help. His voice echoed in the vast hollowness. He closed his eyes and waited for emptiness to consume him as it seemed to consume everyone else. In that moment he let himself break, that's when his prayer was heard, because that was the first time it was sincere.

A lone beacon of light pierced the sky above him, blinding his weak eyes. The voice he heard was unlike any voice familiar to him. He did not hear with his ears, but with his mind and his soul, in the form of waves of feelings and thoughts. The thought waves were neither male nor female, young nor old. The source was beyond any perceptible definition. When it communicated to him, it said, “you have given so much love, and put your heart in to so much, but my child you have sought me out in all the wrong places. You have placed too much focus on the external and not the internal. I have been with you all along, but you were so focused on your own flaws that you couldn’t see me within yourself. I have seen the way you love people, and causes, and institutions, only to watch them crumble in the end. Each time someone or something you loved fell apart, a small piece of you died along with the fall. But why have you not turned to me? You loved people and causes selflessly, with all you had within yourself. Why, my child, can you not love me like that?”

The Seeker was overcome by the thoughts flowing through his mind, and the feelings projected in to his soul, projected from somewhere else. It wasn't a voice that he heard, but something that defied conventional communication. It spoke to him in pure thought and pure emotion. It came from no nameable or definable source.

It projected to him, "what is it that you have sought for so long? Can you name it?"

"No", the Seeker responded. "I have never been able to put it in to words. I just know that something is missing within me. There is a hollowness where a soul should be. Everything I see disgusts me. I search for meaning and purpose, but the world around me is shallow and infected with a plague of superficiality."

"You feel incomplete dear lost child. So, I ask you again, what is it that you seek?"

The Seeker had a moment of clarity, the first in quite a long time. "Completion", he said, as tears welled up in his eyes. For the first time in his life, the Seeker knew what it was he sought. For once, he could name that which he felt was lacking within him.

"The completion you seek will not come from other human beings, nor from any institution they construct. You have sought this completion everywhere but where it actually resides. The completion you want can be found first within yourself, which is where you will find me. You never looked there because you felt you where an unworthy vessel for me and the completion I bring. You sold yourself short because all you saw where your flaws and shortcomings, and you never let yourself see any of the strengths I gave you. You never allowed yourself to see you the way I see you, and that is where you fell under the delusion that you and I were separate."

"Who are you?"

"I am the Good, the Infinite, the All within All, the All which contains All. I am the unnameable, the unknowable, yet ever present in everything. I am The Eternal. Your quest has been to find me, and I am all around you, but most importantly, within you. To deny the Divinity within you is to deny me. See me within, know me within, let me heal you."

"All this time I have looked for you everywhere but within, I couldn't stand to see past my own imperfections to the core of me, which is where you reside. I'm sorry I denied you. You are all I have ever wanted and needed. Man's institutions did nothing to guide me to you, and I came to hate them for that."

"I have always been here, and always will be. You have always had my forgiveness, thus is the love from a creator to its creation. My only desire is for you to forgive yourself first of your own shortcomings, and then forgive your fellow human beings for theirs. Hate them not, nor the institutions they create. Hatred only poisons the soul. Rise now, for your Light and Purpose, and radiate it unto the world."