The Dharma Bum

It was somewhere around 4 when something made me stop and gaze up into the stars.

It was a clear, breezy summers evening and I was cold and tired. A shiver ran from the top of my spine right down to the tips of my feet. I should head inside I thought, but after a marathon evening of debauched hedonism, this was my time………this time belonged to me; this was my window of space & time to pause and reflect.

It was one of those evenings where you could see every single star in the night sky.
It was an inter-stellular visual feast; you could make out everything…

The Milky Way was as clear as I’ve ever seen it. Cutting through the darkness like someone had splattered a neon glow stick across the night sky. I could even spot the odd planet. (Planets being the only points of light in the sky that don’t shimmer as they don’t emit their own light but reflect it).

I could pick out everyone’s favorite, Orion’s belt, with its 3 clear points standing in line exactly like the monoliths of the Giza plateau. I can usually pick out the big dipper, and on this unusually clear night I could even make out my own favorite, the ‘Seven Sisters’.

My Grandfather was a navigator in the war and used the stars like we use our GPRS systems today. He used to tell me that he could tell wherever he was in the world just by looking at the stars; and I believed it! It was him that taught me about the Seven sisters, a small cluster of seven stars (which I later found to be also known as the ‘Pleiades’) that are faint on the clearest of nights.

As I stood there alone in the darkness, there were no eerie sensations, even though I knew I was the only person around this place for miles. Instead I had more a feeling of peace, calm and oneness with my surroundings. I could hear the soft rumble of the stream near by and the occasional gust of wind rustling the trees and bushes.

I had the feeling it was going to be one of those nights where it would be clear enough to see shooting stars, but there was no such luck.

Then something struck me.

It was far too cold to be standing there outside without a jacket, but the lack of cloud cover was the least of my worries compared to the glimpse of infinity that my mind had just attempted to process.

I had a deep realization of the infiniteness of this universe.

As I stood there gazing up at the stars, all thoughts, emotions and even time gradually fell silent, then dissolved into nothing. My being opened up, I was becoming hyper sensitive to my surroundings.

I had to stop, snap out of it. I couldn’t get the damn questions out of my head…

What is all this?........ Why are all these things here?.........What’s beyond all this?.......... Where the FU*K am I!...........What am I?

A thousand and one questions tormented my consciousness, which in its current state, gazing into the abyss was almost pure pristine awareness. All the mundane daily messiness of the every day mind was gone. Any grasping of emotion, ego, future or past was not even irrelevant, but non existent. I was truly in the moment.

The awe of my situation suddenly overwhelmed me; I got scared and had to stop. Snap out of it. Come back to the reality that I was familiar with and felt safe in. My mind simply couldn’t comprehend the situation my consciousness had just found its self in.

I was chilled to the bone. It was the early hours of Sunday morning. The drink & drugs had long worn off and the peak of my bodily and emotional indulgence from that evening had passed. But I just couldn’t grasp the situation.

I continued to plague myself…The answers or lack of them just didn’t cut it…

What am I really?........Why is everything here?...... There must be more to everything!............Am I part of this Universe, part of a grand master plan?....Or am I here by pure chance?.....Chance interaction of a bunch of atoms 3 billion years ago…A bunch of atoms to which no one has any answers to their origins!

These are the questions to which I’m plagued with on a daily basis. These are the questions to which I will spend many a lifetime trying but failing to answer. These are the questions to which humanity strives but fails to understand.

Yet these are also the questions to which the answers undoubtedly will never be revealed.

Time to snap out of it I thought. Time to come back to reality (whatever that was or meant). Time to head inside and lay my head down. Close my eyes for 8 hours. My body will be rested. Time to let my mind conjure up an alternative reality for my consciousness to dwell, only to wake, having completely wiped any memory of my travels.

Until tomorrow it is then...

When these cursed questions I knew would arise again……..and remind me that in this lifetime…..I know NOTHING.