THE DANCE OF LIFE By Y.B. Masdal
In one of those nights of enchantment, while the wind remained fragile and ethereal, a collection of thin clouds gathered in the middle of the sky and formed the image of an angel. As the vision fortified, I could see the angel clearly. This angel was different from the rest that I have seen before for this angel had hair so long that it reaches the area of its feet, and wearing a long white robe.
The angel must have been a woman or a man with all too lengthy hairs---I just could not tell at that time because the distance from the ground to the sky is of course immense even if the image of the vision was larger than their actual size. Then the angel spread its wings of the widest span and I stared diligently. For some moment, the angel kept on motioning its wings to spread so wide until I felt like imitating it and the angel nodded. So I spread my two arms as wide as the wings of the angel. Then the angel showed its arms and its hands making some varied movements with it, the hands in an open palm position. After some moment, the angel placed its hands in the middle of its body, somewhere near its chest, both open palms facing its other. After a moment, the hands made a movement that brought the hands and arms towards the left side, with the hands remaining in an open palm position. The hands came back to the middle-of-chest position. After a moment, the hands went into a looping motion towards the right side. After that, the hands went back to the middle-of-chest position. The angel kept repeating the basic routines and I kept following and imitating the hand movements until the angel made complicated movements with its hands and arms, a circling motion towards all directions, towards above and towards down low, towards the east side and west side of its body, towards north-west and towards north-east, until the hand and arm movements became so intricate that I failed to catch up further with the angel. The Angel ended the hands movement and crossed its arms in front of its chest, as if saying, “so long” and slowly faded away.
I pondered upon the significance of the vision of the dancing angel. Was it another message? If it were, what would the message be when by all means of analogy, the graceful movement of the angel’s hands does not bring to mind any symbols or signs that declare some fact or issue. It was merely a combination of movements, some sort of calisthenics.
I went to bed that night heavy with thoughts. I had felt so strongly that somewhere in my memory, the sight of the dance had already occurred to me. It was a familiar display of movements that it was not that strange to me anymore to witness such spectacle. I was pretty sure of that, as if everything was a memory, a sort of a déjà vu. There was wonderment that spawned a glee in my heart. A giddiness resulting from a discovery of something that I never thought could happen before. The divinity was starting to reach out to the mortals, and this reality finally kicked in.
The following morning, while the air was still pregnant with heavy mist and early dawn enveloped the still hushed streets of Manila---while many eyes were still shut in deep slumber---I stood up and recreated the dance of the angel that I have witnessed in the sky the night before. I made the movements to the left of my body and then towards the right and then towards the middle, while my palms were open and my arms were extended. I repeated and repeated the movements of the angel. It was sort of surprising that I was recreating the dance all too easily as if I have been dancing it a number of times before, as if it was my own dance, except that the more complicated movements were harder to recreate at first that I tried and tried before I finally got them in the manner that I have seen them, with the help of a force that moves within and without me. Altogether, the dance was like putting on a very familiar cloth, merely feeling a second skin.
As I made the movements again and again, I could feel a palpable surge in my spirit, an embalming feeling of lightness that I could not stop moving my hands. After some moments, I could feel a certain force in my hands, a kind of a magnetic field to be more particular, that I just left my hands to move on its own. And my hands would indeed move independently by themselves! I merely let them sway to the will of the force that controlled it and then my hands were finally able to recreate the complicated movements of the angel, the ones that I found difficult to remake. It was purely magical, an out-of-this-world experience. My hands were floating and my spirit rising.
It was indeed an awakening for me, a sudden realization that the new reality set forth before me was something I did not expect even in my wildest dreams. How do you expect anyone to really believe in angels, anyway? There are mythical things that I had easily disregarded before, to be merely staple of fantasy movies, of fairy tales, and one of such beings are the angels. And then these things happened and I had no other choice but to accept it. For how was I still to deny that phenomenal occurrence when there was already a palpable force in my hands, a force that was already controlling to a certain extent the very movements of my body? Tears flowed from my eyes like a river for I felt an overwhelming feeling of enchantment and of gratitude for having been given the privileged to feel this very unusual but all too beautiful experience. As a result, I was already conversing to a one that I call “My Lord”, in whispers and through my mind.
I kept saying, “Thank you my Lord for letting me have these enchanting experience and if it goes away tomorrow, or disappears from me altogether, I would still be forever grateful to you for now something has been fortified in me; that is, my faith in God, the Creator of all things great and small.”
Day after day, at dawn and at near midnight, I kept recreating the dance and continue to feel the enlightenment that it had afforded my inner self. Addictive is a word I shall use if I have to describe it. It is also habit forming that at times when my guards were down, I made the movements even if I was in the law library of San Beda, the school where I was reviewing for the bar examination, reading law books after law books endlessly. It was very useful to me that whenever I felt the stress of lengthy and continuous reading, the movements had helped refreshed my mind and body. There were some passersby and some acquaintances that were able to observe me doing the hand movements and they showed immediate curiosity with some hidden smirk on their faces thinking perhaps that I might be having a serious emotional breakdown. But still many of them showed genuine interest and inquired about it and I just tell them that it was a meditation which I use to manage my stress and that I have learned it from a book I’ve read about ancient Chinese meditation. The “meditation lie” was a comfortable white lie, allowing me to easily stave away many concerned and insistent inquiries. I just could not tell anyone at that time that I was seeing angelic visions in the night. I was too wary that the people around me at that time might label me as an insane person just as easily, knowing that these kind of occurrences does not happen everyday and they are harder to believe than the existence of life in Mars.
Upon its enriching qualities, I have upon myself inquired on the very nature of the dance. As a student of laws and as an avid reader of many established philosophies, I always had the inquiring mind ready whenever I am faced with questions that have no ready and immediate answers. I have always approached every premise upon the careful method of uncovering a hypothesis, attacking every unknown idea with scientific processes, a mode that I have learned through years of education and training in the classroom. I have exhausted all possible explanation and yet I could not find any established fact or notion that would explain the nature of the dance, in relation to the vision of the angels. The only explanation I had then was that divinity is establishing itself as an undeniable reality and that it is now setting forth its presence at this particular point in time, reasserting its existence and dominion in the world where for many years and centuries, it had gotten lost in the great advancement that man had achieve in so short a period of time. Reasserting its existence in a time when humans can already be cloned and computers are nearly reaching the point of independent thought---a time of extraordinary progress for humankind.
I looked further into myself for rationalizations that would justify these visions while quelling any hope of explaining it scientifically, for no scientific processes could dissect it properly. As I danced the dance of the angel, I studied the beautiful movements I was making, what they evoke and what their purposes are. I started to take faith in my own notions (where there seem to be no other recourse left for me) and my head kept nodding independently as if someone invincible was saying: “Go ahead, your notions are true”. So I looked deeper into myself and interpreted the dance as the manner of creating Heaven and Earth, as the Divine One had done it in a time before us.
The hands evoked earth, wind, water and fire. I had called the dance, “The Dance of Life” since.
The dance on another view connotes the harmony of our existence. An earth there, but not too much earth. Water thereat, but not too much water. Fire in this part of existence, but not too much fire. Wind that blows from all directions, but not too much wind.
Everything that is lacking has desperation written on it but on the other hand, whatever in excess is scoffing by its nature. There must be balance in life. When this balance ceases, everything falls apart.
Indeed, the dance speaks of the balance and harmony of our existence, of how the world and the universe should behave. Every man would do himself or herself the greatest good if he or she treats his or her own person as a universe of its own, putting a balance to it, therefore attaining a harmonious existence within and without him.
In every action, the man should have a ready instinct of inquiring upon every act he make, whether this act would harm the body and soul or would it harm that of others. How does my action affect the harmony of my own existence as well as that of others? If I harm others, would it be possible that they would also harm me? If I speak against this person, would he or she not speak of me also in a bad light?
This is a mode inculcated to us by nature, this questioning mind---the very spirit of our conscience for that matter. However, through years of conditioning, we dispel this questioning mind as easily, in order to look out merely for the greatest benefit to the self no matter how they harm us or other persons. As we commit these unkindly actions, our world becomes limited because we are always hiding from someone we harmed before. We deviate from going to places where others whom we have harmed or injured before may pass along. And the ones we harmed would limit their universes as well, trying so earnestly to evade us. And the self becomes a limited universe, a disharmonious existence, and an existence of disarray. Nobody wants to live in this kind of universe. And ultimately God would not want to grant a boundless existence to those who by their own mischief and indiscretion had limited their own universe because the Universe of God is boundless and infinite, and no one who is full of mischief would be allowed to enter this Universe that God had promised us from the beginning of time, for they are a threat to the harmony of a limitless, boundless, and unending Universe of God.
For it was often said before that in order not to fall into the doldrums of life’s misery, a man must know how to balance his life in order that he may be able to live contently. Even the physical act of walking, a balance must concur as he strolls along or else the man walking would surely stumble. It is undeniable that the existence of man today (in his temporary sojourn in this material world) is a perpetual traipsing between good and evil, between the excessive and the wanting, between love and hate. He had to maneuver carefully to retain the balance---a condition that is desirable---for the road ahead is always fraught with temptations, those excessive pleasures of the devil, that form the manholes of our morality.
The balance of man that I speak of however is not too analogical to the bodily balance a man must attain in the very physical act of walking. This balance of man has an unusual fulcrum because the more you go to one side (that is, towards the side of goodliness) the better balance you would have. It is the balance of man between the good and the evil. The balance of a man is an idea that propels us to believe in our selves, of our being human, the most beautiful and glorified creation of God, for it has been said at one time or another that “man was created in the image of God Himself”, and hence man’s purpose of being is to become the exemplification of the ideal creation, closer to the perfection of God.
The material world is a training ground for us, a milling factory of the soul, a litmus test for every man that whomsoever attained the qualities that our Creator had dictated to us as the ideal human being, as often relayed to us by our old folks and as instructed to us by many holy books, and through many examples and stories of wisdom, like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the life of the Enlightened One known to many of us as Buddha, the adventures of those knights in shining armor, the travails of Robin Hood, the diligent boy scout that assist the old in crossing the street, the courage and valor of the revolutionary hero fighting the cause of an oppressed people, the causes Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for, the sacrifices made by Indira Ghandi, the gallantry of Joan of Arc, the charity of Mother Teresa, the genius of Jose Rizal, and the liberty and freedom of Abraham Lincoln. They are the goodliness of man that had been attained before by mortals like us and there is no reason that every man could not attain this level of humanity even while toiling in his or her daily existence.
The balance that the man has to attain is a shield against the mischief of evil, for evil is ever present and ever threatening in this present world that we live in, in order to sway us to the dark side and pull us down towards everlasting suffering and pain in what was termed in the Bible as “the vengeance of an eternal fire”.
Evil will permeate in us if we lose the self---the ideal self--that there are times that we feel the urges to commit things we instinctively feel as abominable. And because these urges are at most times irrepressible, we would indeed commit these abominations. For as angels are supernatural in form (material at one time and spirit at other times), and so are demons. Whenever these demons find an imbalanced man (due to his lack of faith in the Creator and in the ideal self), they come in and conquer the fragile self, to dictate the will in order to lead the person to commit acts and deeds that defile the self. They feast upon man’s primordial feeling of envy and prejudice and upon other human instincts and imperfections, and propagate their culture of madness, a culture of irresponsible pleasures and of impatience. Often we feel so discontented and frustrated that we often come to the point of intending and committing defiant acts such as gossiping, stealing and fornicating in order to satiate our impatient urges, desires and pleasures. And there are those who would even kill or harm another man’s life just to satisfy their frustrations---such is the nature of evil.
There are many who would covet their neighbor’s wife or daughter in order to satiate the irresponsible dictates of the flesh, to use authority to gain ungodly favors from some innocent victim. Lust is an instinct of man that is often used by demons to sway the soul towards the fold of darkness for it is in lust that men have the greatest weakness.
Many would kill for no other reason but prejudice and envy. Many would steal to present themselves falsely as more worthy of wealth than others do or to falsely present themselves as more privileged. Such is the nature of evil.
The demons are very invasive that they come into our persons like water into a vessel and urge us to commit abominations. As the man possessed takes pleasures from these evil acts, the demons, which have conquered him, take the more pleasure from it. After we committed these misdeeds, we often feel a feeling of resentment (as we somehow regain our human self after the demons flee our body), realizing the very nature of the acts we have committed, and to realize so belatedly, when the harm done could not be undone anymore.
If we have the strength of faith, the fortitude of God’s teachings and dictates, and the belief in the ideal self, the demons would never succeed in pushing us to fall on the wayside, to make us lose our balance, and the Kingdom of God is for us to dwell after we leave this temporary world.
There are many among us however, who do not anymore feel the usual feeling of remorse after the commission of a misdeed, no matter how grave these misdeeds are. It is a condition attained where the conscience of man have already been numbed and stunted due to the repetition of misdeeds, committing the evil act over and over again, like a habit.
The thief would certainly feel the pangs of remorse the first time he commits the evil act of stealing. On the second commission of theft, there would still be some remorse but not as heavy as the first time. After committing the act of stealing over and over again, the thief would lose his conscience altogether and starts to feel that thieving is but common and ordinary and stealing becomes a beneficial and rewarding act instead of being such a scourge to the society as a whole.
The murderer would also feel in the same manner. His conscience would be numbed with the repeated act of taking another man’s life. The first time he killed, the face of his victim would hound him until he toss and turn in his bed, but after many more commissions, he would feel no such qualms anymore, and there would come a point where he would take life as if he was just eating peanuts in a moonlit park.
The fornicator who commits abomination over and over again would also have his or her conscience numbed and stunted. The first time that the adulterer ravished the flesh, he must have felt so burdened by such act of abomination. But after repeated commission of the irresponsible sexual conduct, he would have no more conscience to bear. The doers of fornication would surely feel the heaviness of his or conscience the moment the commission of such abomination takes place and to commit this confusion of man, they would have to take in alcohol and drugs in order to numb this heavy conscience. And with repeated commission of such confusion of the mind and heart, the fornicator would entirely lose the checking mechanism of the heavy conscience. Such is the nature of evil.
There would be no more conscience to speak of in a highly imbalanced man for he had already allowed himself to be a follower of the devil, where as a result he and the demon who had perturbed him becomes already of the same breed and of the same kind. And both shall indeed be cast into the “vengeance of an eternal fire”. It is the evil that haunts us that we should always be on the look out against.
But to the man who takes great faith in the Creator, and believe in the very purpose and nature of man---as he was created, in order to do good and avoid evil---demons could not conquer and deceit him. Every attempt to disturb him with deceit would be futile and fruitless when he has the strongest faith in his human self and in the Creator who had born him. And he shall be allowed to persist in an everlasting life of peace and harmony in the life hereafter---a life full of joy---sliding over into another world of existence just moments after he perishes from this material world. He shall reap the rewards of God and he shall have wings of the greatest span where Heaven is an infinite universe for him to spread his wings. There would be many mansions to choose from, castles in the clouds, a Paradise reborn, and many worlds of different kind to visit, for indeed it is an entire universe of existence in which for us to dwell---this Kingdom of God.
Those who cultivate their hearts, their sympathy for others, and their faith in the Creator, to follow His edicts and judgments shall have wings of the greatest span. The balance of man is rooted in the sympathetic heart, a pure and loving heart, and a rational and understanding heart. When we cultivate our sympathy for others with love, faith, hope and charity, we create a footing on the ground beneath our feet, where no storm could shake it and no evil could transgress such valiant stand. “Though I may walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.”[1]
The angel must have been a woman or a man with all too lengthy hairs---I just could not tell at that time because the distance from the ground to the sky is of course immense even if the image of the vision was larger than their actual size. Then the angel spread its wings of the widest span and I stared diligently. For some moment, the angel kept on motioning its wings to spread so wide until I felt like imitating it and the angel nodded. So I spread my two arms as wide as the wings of the angel. Then the angel showed its arms and its hands making some varied movements with it, the hands in an open palm position. After some moment, the angel placed its hands in the middle of its body, somewhere near its chest, both open palms facing its other. After a moment, the hands made a movement that brought the hands and arms towards the left side, with the hands remaining in an open palm position. The hands came back to the middle-of-chest position. After a moment, the hands went into a looping motion towards the right side. After that, the hands went back to the middle-of-chest position. The angel kept repeating the basic routines and I kept following and imitating the hand movements until the angel made complicated movements with its hands and arms, a circling motion towards all directions, towards above and towards down low, towards the east side and west side of its body, towards north-west and towards north-east, until the hand and arm movements became so intricate that I failed to catch up further with the angel. The Angel ended the hands movement and crossed its arms in front of its chest, as if saying, “so long” and slowly faded away.
I pondered upon the significance of the vision of the dancing angel. Was it another message? If it were, what would the message be when by all means of analogy, the graceful movement of the angel’s hands does not bring to mind any symbols or signs that declare some fact or issue. It was merely a combination of movements, some sort of calisthenics.
I went to bed that night heavy with thoughts. I had felt so strongly that somewhere in my memory, the sight of the dance had already occurred to me. It was a familiar display of movements that it was not that strange to me anymore to witness such spectacle. I was pretty sure of that, as if everything was a memory, a sort of a déjà vu. There was wonderment that spawned a glee in my heart. A giddiness resulting from a discovery of something that I never thought could happen before. The divinity was starting to reach out to the mortals, and this reality finally kicked in.
The following morning, while the air was still pregnant with heavy mist and early dawn enveloped the still hushed streets of Manila---while many eyes were still shut in deep slumber---I stood up and recreated the dance of the angel that I have witnessed in the sky the night before. I made the movements to the left of my body and then towards the right and then towards the middle, while my palms were open and my arms were extended. I repeated and repeated the movements of the angel. It was sort of surprising that I was recreating the dance all too easily as if I have been dancing it a number of times before, as if it was my own dance, except that the more complicated movements were harder to recreate at first that I tried and tried before I finally got them in the manner that I have seen them, with the help of a force that moves within and without me. Altogether, the dance was like putting on a very familiar cloth, merely feeling a second skin.
As I made the movements again and again, I could feel a palpable surge in my spirit, an embalming feeling of lightness that I could not stop moving my hands. After some moments, I could feel a certain force in my hands, a kind of a magnetic field to be more particular, that I just left my hands to move on its own. And my hands would indeed move independently by themselves! I merely let them sway to the will of the force that controlled it and then my hands were finally able to recreate the complicated movements of the angel, the ones that I found difficult to remake. It was purely magical, an out-of-this-world experience. My hands were floating and my spirit rising.
It was indeed an awakening for me, a sudden realization that the new reality set forth before me was something I did not expect even in my wildest dreams. How do you expect anyone to really believe in angels, anyway? There are mythical things that I had easily disregarded before, to be merely staple of fantasy movies, of fairy tales, and one of such beings are the angels. And then these things happened and I had no other choice but to accept it. For how was I still to deny that phenomenal occurrence when there was already a palpable force in my hands, a force that was already controlling to a certain extent the very movements of my body? Tears flowed from my eyes like a river for I felt an overwhelming feeling of enchantment and of gratitude for having been given the privileged to feel this very unusual but all too beautiful experience. As a result, I was already conversing to a one that I call “My Lord”, in whispers and through my mind.
I kept saying, “Thank you my Lord for letting me have these enchanting experience and if it goes away tomorrow, or disappears from me altogether, I would still be forever grateful to you for now something has been fortified in me; that is, my faith in God, the Creator of all things great and small.”
Day after day, at dawn and at near midnight, I kept recreating the dance and continue to feel the enlightenment that it had afforded my inner self. Addictive is a word I shall use if I have to describe it. It is also habit forming that at times when my guards were down, I made the movements even if I was in the law library of San Beda, the school where I was reviewing for the bar examination, reading law books after law books endlessly. It was very useful to me that whenever I felt the stress of lengthy and continuous reading, the movements had helped refreshed my mind and body. There were some passersby and some acquaintances that were able to observe me doing the hand movements and they showed immediate curiosity with some hidden smirk on their faces thinking perhaps that I might be having a serious emotional breakdown. But still many of them showed genuine interest and inquired about it and I just tell them that it was a meditation which I use to manage my stress and that I have learned it from a book I’ve read about ancient Chinese meditation. The “meditation lie” was a comfortable white lie, allowing me to easily stave away many concerned and insistent inquiries. I just could not tell anyone at that time that I was seeing angelic visions in the night. I was too wary that the people around me at that time might label me as an insane person just as easily, knowing that these kind of occurrences does not happen everyday and they are harder to believe than the existence of life in Mars.
Upon its enriching qualities, I have upon myself inquired on the very nature of the dance. As a student of laws and as an avid reader of many established philosophies, I always had the inquiring mind ready whenever I am faced with questions that have no ready and immediate answers. I have always approached every premise upon the careful method of uncovering a hypothesis, attacking every unknown idea with scientific processes, a mode that I have learned through years of education and training in the classroom. I have exhausted all possible explanation and yet I could not find any established fact or notion that would explain the nature of the dance, in relation to the vision of the angels. The only explanation I had then was that divinity is establishing itself as an undeniable reality and that it is now setting forth its presence at this particular point in time, reasserting its existence and dominion in the world where for many years and centuries, it had gotten lost in the great advancement that man had achieve in so short a period of time. Reasserting its existence in a time when humans can already be cloned and computers are nearly reaching the point of independent thought---a time of extraordinary progress for humankind.
I looked further into myself for rationalizations that would justify these visions while quelling any hope of explaining it scientifically, for no scientific processes could dissect it properly. As I danced the dance of the angel, I studied the beautiful movements I was making, what they evoke and what their purposes are. I started to take faith in my own notions (where there seem to be no other recourse left for me) and my head kept nodding independently as if someone invincible was saying: “Go ahead, your notions are true”. So I looked deeper into myself and interpreted the dance as the manner of creating Heaven and Earth, as the Divine One had done it in a time before us.
The hands evoked earth, wind, water and fire. I had called the dance, “The Dance of Life” since.
The dance on another view connotes the harmony of our existence. An earth there, but not too much earth. Water thereat, but not too much water. Fire in this part of existence, but not too much fire. Wind that blows from all directions, but not too much wind.
Everything that is lacking has desperation written on it but on the other hand, whatever in excess is scoffing by its nature. There must be balance in life. When this balance ceases, everything falls apart.
Indeed, the dance speaks of the balance and harmony of our existence, of how the world and the universe should behave. Every man would do himself or herself the greatest good if he or she treats his or her own person as a universe of its own, putting a balance to it, therefore attaining a harmonious existence within and without him.
In every action, the man should have a ready instinct of inquiring upon every act he make, whether this act would harm the body and soul or would it harm that of others. How does my action affect the harmony of my own existence as well as that of others? If I harm others, would it be possible that they would also harm me? If I speak against this person, would he or she not speak of me also in a bad light?
This is a mode inculcated to us by nature, this questioning mind---the very spirit of our conscience for that matter. However, through years of conditioning, we dispel this questioning mind as easily, in order to look out merely for the greatest benefit to the self no matter how they harm us or other persons. As we commit these unkindly actions, our world becomes limited because we are always hiding from someone we harmed before. We deviate from going to places where others whom we have harmed or injured before may pass along. And the ones we harmed would limit their universes as well, trying so earnestly to evade us. And the self becomes a limited universe, a disharmonious existence, and an existence of disarray. Nobody wants to live in this kind of universe. And ultimately God would not want to grant a boundless existence to those who by their own mischief and indiscretion had limited their own universe because the Universe of God is boundless and infinite, and no one who is full of mischief would be allowed to enter this Universe that God had promised us from the beginning of time, for they are a threat to the harmony of a limitless, boundless, and unending Universe of God.
For it was often said before that in order not to fall into the doldrums of life’s misery, a man must know how to balance his life in order that he may be able to live contently. Even the physical act of walking, a balance must concur as he strolls along or else the man walking would surely stumble. It is undeniable that the existence of man today (in his temporary sojourn in this material world) is a perpetual traipsing between good and evil, between the excessive and the wanting, between love and hate. He had to maneuver carefully to retain the balance---a condition that is desirable---for the road ahead is always fraught with temptations, those excessive pleasures of the devil, that form the manholes of our morality.
The balance of man that I speak of however is not too analogical to the bodily balance a man must attain in the very physical act of walking. This balance of man has an unusual fulcrum because the more you go to one side (that is, towards the side of goodliness) the better balance you would have. It is the balance of man between the good and the evil. The balance of a man is an idea that propels us to believe in our selves, of our being human, the most beautiful and glorified creation of God, for it has been said at one time or another that “man was created in the image of God Himself”, and hence man’s purpose of being is to become the exemplification of the ideal creation, closer to the perfection of God.
The material world is a training ground for us, a milling factory of the soul, a litmus test for every man that whomsoever attained the qualities that our Creator had dictated to us as the ideal human being, as often relayed to us by our old folks and as instructed to us by many holy books, and through many examples and stories of wisdom, like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the life of the Enlightened One known to many of us as Buddha, the adventures of those knights in shining armor, the travails of Robin Hood, the diligent boy scout that assist the old in crossing the street, the courage and valor of the revolutionary hero fighting the cause of an oppressed people, the causes Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for, the sacrifices made by Indira Ghandi, the gallantry of Joan of Arc, the charity of Mother Teresa, the genius of Jose Rizal, and the liberty and freedom of Abraham Lincoln. They are the goodliness of man that had been attained before by mortals like us and there is no reason that every man could not attain this level of humanity even while toiling in his or her daily existence.
The balance that the man has to attain is a shield against the mischief of evil, for evil is ever present and ever threatening in this present world that we live in, in order to sway us to the dark side and pull us down towards everlasting suffering and pain in what was termed in the Bible as “the vengeance of an eternal fire”.
Evil will permeate in us if we lose the self---the ideal self--that there are times that we feel the urges to commit things we instinctively feel as abominable. And because these urges are at most times irrepressible, we would indeed commit these abominations. For as angels are supernatural in form (material at one time and spirit at other times), and so are demons. Whenever these demons find an imbalanced man (due to his lack of faith in the Creator and in the ideal self), they come in and conquer the fragile self, to dictate the will in order to lead the person to commit acts and deeds that defile the self. They feast upon man’s primordial feeling of envy and prejudice and upon other human instincts and imperfections, and propagate their culture of madness, a culture of irresponsible pleasures and of impatience. Often we feel so discontented and frustrated that we often come to the point of intending and committing defiant acts such as gossiping, stealing and fornicating in order to satiate our impatient urges, desires and pleasures. And there are those who would even kill or harm another man’s life just to satisfy their frustrations---such is the nature of evil.
There are many who would covet their neighbor’s wife or daughter in order to satiate the irresponsible dictates of the flesh, to use authority to gain ungodly favors from some innocent victim. Lust is an instinct of man that is often used by demons to sway the soul towards the fold of darkness for it is in lust that men have the greatest weakness.
Many would kill for no other reason but prejudice and envy. Many would steal to present themselves falsely as more worthy of wealth than others do or to falsely present themselves as more privileged. Such is the nature of evil.
The demons are very invasive that they come into our persons like water into a vessel and urge us to commit abominations. As the man possessed takes pleasures from these evil acts, the demons, which have conquered him, take the more pleasure from it. After we committed these misdeeds, we often feel a feeling of resentment (as we somehow regain our human self after the demons flee our body), realizing the very nature of the acts we have committed, and to realize so belatedly, when the harm done could not be undone anymore.
If we have the strength of faith, the fortitude of God’s teachings and dictates, and the belief in the ideal self, the demons would never succeed in pushing us to fall on the wayside, to make us lose our balance, and the Kingdom of God is for us to dwell after we leave this temporary world.
There are many among us however, who do not anymore feel the usual feeling of remorse after the commission of a misdeed, no matter how grave these misdeeds are. It is a condition attained where the conscience of man have already been numbed and stunted due to the repetition of misdeeds, committing the evil act over and over again, like a habit.
The thief would certainly feel the pangs of remorse the first time he commits the evil act of stealing. On the second commission of theft, there would still be some remorse but not as heavy as the first time. After committing the act of stealing over and over again, the thief would lose his conscience altogether and starts to feel that thieving is but common and ordinary and stealing becomes a beneficial and rewarding act instead of being such a scourge to the society as a whole.
The murderer would also feel in the same manner. His conscience would be numbed with the repeated act of taking another man’s life. The first time he killed, the face of his victim would hound him until he toss and turn in his bed, but after many more commissions, he would feel no such qualms anymore, and there would come a point where he would take life as if he was just eating peanuts in a moonlit park.
The fornicator who commits abomination over and over again would also have his or her conscience numbed and stunted. The first time that the adulterer ravished the flesh, he must have felt so burdened by such act of abomination. But after repeated commission of the irresponsible sexual conduct, he would have no more conscience to bear. The doers of fornication would surely feel the heaviness of his or conscience the moment the commission of such abomination takes place and to commit this confusion of man, they would have to take in alcohol and drugs in order to numb this heavy conscience. And with repeated commission of such confusion of the mind and heart, the fornicator would entirely lose the checking mechanism of the heavy conscience. Such is the nature of evil.
There would be no more conscience to speak of in a highly imbalanced man for he had already allowed himself to be a follower of the devil, where as a result he and the demon who had perturbed him becomes already of the same breed and of the same kind. And both shall indeed be cast into the “vengeance of an eternal fire”. It is the evil that haunts us that we should always be on the look out against.
But to the man who takes great faith in the Creator, and believe in the very purpose and nature of man---as he was created, in order to do good and avoid evil---demons could not conquer and deceit him. Every attempt to disturb him with deceit would be futile and fruitless when he has the strongest faith in his human self and in the Creator who had born him. And he shall be allowed to persist in an everlasting life of peace and harmony in the life hereafter---a life full of joy---sliding over into another world of existence just moments after he perishes from this material world. He shall reap the rewards of God and he shall have wings of the greatest span where Heaven is an infinite universe for him to spread his wings. There would be many mansions to choose from, castles in the clouds, a Paradise reborn, and many worlds of different kind to visit, for indeed it is an entire universe of existence in which for us to dwell---this Kingdom of God.
Those who cultivate their hearts, their sympathy for others, and their faith in the Creator, to follow His edicts and judgments shall have wings of the greatest span. The balance of man is rooted in the sympathetic heart, a pure and loving heart, and a rational and understanding heart. When we cultivate our sympathy for others with love, faith, hope and charity, we create a footing on the ground beneath our feet, where no storm could shake it and no evil could transgress such valiant stand. “Though I may walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.”[1]
posted by yusop @ 3:11 PM
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