Always falling down a well. And every time we seem about to lift our heads above the rim and find a little order, a little peace, something unexpected happens and shatters every dream, every hope. And down we fall once more. Back to the beginning: the eternal punishment of Sisyphus.
We live in an incredibly chaotic, incredibly contradictory, and incredibly hateful world. Everywhere you look, people hate other people for defending ideas that threaten their livelihood, their current way of life—a way of life they cling to tooth and nail because their lives and what they believe to be their happiness depend on it.
“Us or them”: the eternal slogan of conflict. “Only one of us can remain if we want order and peace.” Isn’t this precisely the thought that ensures conflict and death will never end? Us or them.
The funny thing is that this “us or them” serves to defend a tiny patch of a miserable existence. Of empty, corrupt lives. Of lives devoid of Love. Of lives of hatred. Those who want so little from life do nothing but defend their own graves.
A mind that can conceive only of division can conceive only of “us or them,” keeping the dagger lodged in its heart and the pain alive.
There is something no one believes, something they would find almost impossible to accept: that the world they see truly originates only in their own mind. And it is their mind alone that sustains and recycles it.
No one would believe that the way out lies solely in ceasing to believe in it: in everything they see in it and deeply loathe. In ceasing to devote their lives and energy to defending themselves against that threatening world.
I, a madman and a psychotic, who fight shadows and defend myself against them, turn them into giants that hold me in their grip. I flee my own mind, my own thoughts, and build deep bunkers within it to protect myself from it and from myself.
Oh, my God! There is no way out!
What a curious fate awaits the fearful, who cage themselves ever more tightly. They may possess the greatest fortunes in the world, yet they remain prisoners of immense fears and immense torments. Who could find a way out while still digging such a deep well inside their own mind?
Fear, which is madness, leads only to greater madness. That is why this world is a world of idiots fleeing themselves.
It is a coop full of headless chickens that, imagining themselves orangutans, run the moment they feel fear’s edge. Peace is impossible if there is even a trace of fear, hatred, or condemnation in your mind.
Those who are not at peace with themselves have only flight left.
Keep running, and make sure you never find the way out.