Sunday Sermon [Cosmic Accident]

Hola mi Gente…

So, I’m telling on myself: I secretly made a promise to myself that I would post something every day. Most of my content is original, but I also sometimes post and comment on other people’s content. I’ve gotten very lazy with my writing and blogging helps to prime the creative pump. Loads of stuff on criminal justice and some new stories coming up. Stay tuned… 

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Cosmic Accident

They lied to you, sold you ideas of good and evil, gave you distrust of your body and shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization. 

 -- Hakim Bey

I once read a very interesting short story called “Pedestrian Accident.” It was part of an anthology of experimental fiction, Anti-Story, a girlfriend gave me and which quickly changed the way I read and wrote. The story is told solely from the perspective of a victim who has been struck by a truck and can’t move. His body is on the ground, halfway under the truck and he’s unable to move or talk. He can’t even move his head. All he can do is observe the happenings and there’s this whole inner dialog going on inside his head. As the reader, this is your perspective also. The story, apart from being hilarious at times, is also very profound. In my opinion, the story is also a very apt metaphor for life.

As with the unfortunate protagonist in the story, it seems that we too have awakened to an accident. Our birth and lives surely seem this way. We don’t remember asking to be born or enter this plane of existence and yet here we are, innocent observers and victims alike, at the scene of a grand cosmic accident. Numb and in shock, we weave and wander our way through the traffic of our lives, trying to recall the details. Furthermore, we seem to have suffered brain damage, having no memory of how we got here and even less about where we’re going.

Many of us live our lives traumatized, as if by accident, accepting the circumstances of our “fate.” As with the protagonist in our story, we’re powerless and at the whims of everybody around the scene of our accident pretending to be officials and authorities. While we may seem to make choices, we are really just treating our life as an accident and bemoaning our bad luck, or trying to act cynical and witty and shrugging it off and settling for less. It could be worse, right? we rationalize. Or we attempt to adopt a cynical or been-there-done-that posture that we think makes us look cool. At least that’s what we begin to believe.

Numb and adrift we never become fully healed, never fully alive, never setting out to see what would happen if we didn’t live our lives by accident. However, the fact remains that this is our life and in the end we can’t say, “Ooops, it was an accident.” Then again, maybe we can. To a certain degree, that particular choice is ours.

Ultimately, you must become who you are. A life lived chaotically at the whims of fashionable beliefs is not a life really lived at all. That kind of life is like a role inhabited by a stranger. It’s a head-on collision with anger, regret, resentment, and self-delusion. By treating our lives as an accident, and therefore worthless, we cheat ourselves. Only when you understand this will you experience the rage and anger at the forces within you and outside of you that keep you from your true self -- your true potential. It’s not only your birthright but also your responsibility to reclaim your true self from the scene of the accident and to live your life fully, no matter the cost. We all have the potential to recover from the discovery that we are alive. After all, life itself is not going to last indefinitely.

Too many of us rely on belief systems that appeal to our deepest fears and longings as answers to our questions. Most belief systems are nothing more than the fossilized and rotted remains of what one person did for themselves. To examine our lives and make them worth living is the first step to acting deliberately and not accidentally. The word “deliberately” comes from the word “deliberation” which basically means to think. If we think our lives are accidents, they will be.

On the other hand, belief systems all contain very important truths, questions, and sometimes even some answers. However, at a very deep level they are not our truths, our questions, or our answers. By accepting the second-hand truths of others, we cheat ourselves of our true fulfillment. The hunger for fulfillment can only be satiated by our own efforts, by the planting of our own questions, the harvesting our own answers, and the cultivation of our own truths.

Some of us have awakened to find ourselves in the midst of a Grand Cosmic Accident. Some have never awakened at all and contentedly watch “reality” as if flickers from a screen. Those of us who have awakened, or are committed to an awakened life, have an opportunity to realize our boundless potential, to get up from the scene of the accident and explore the territory; to live consciously and intentionally. 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Labels: awakening, awareness, life, meaning