Message to the Controlling Overlords
“As to the powers that rule this world,” I told the Emir, “are those overlords indeed descended from some other realm as I’ve heard said? Why need their goal be absolute control? And why so cruel! Why would they rather rule a husk when they might own a flower?”
The Emir shrugged. “From the little I have learned of them, it seems they do not feel.”
When I returned home I penned this message to the overlords:
They tell me that you cannot feel. Or if you can, that you will not.
Your inability would be understandable if I knew that what you are is simply a calculating monolith of immoral serendipity with issues of gargantuan control bred by something run amok in Nature’s realm, if not here then on some distant star. And dead to what there is to feel.
As for the second possibility, I am curious why you would refuse feeling’s opportunity. My own feelings, you see — if you could know them, or decided to — run deep.
Perhaps you are jealous, that I care and am cared about. Resentful that a flower produces tears. That a sunset’s colors cascade my heart past thought, past words, beyond the grasp of the small self to the connection with All That Is, my true heritage.
Do you envy my heart, that it can be at home in the Eternal so easily? Did you think to take even that from me, put the Infinite just out of reach? Have you yet to learn? My grasp is hardly frail, nor is the Eternal far from it. I hold That yet.
The eternal Source, is it something you have acquaintance with? I doubt you do. Else you’d not be so intent on dense self-centeredness, this obsession with greed and power and control, no matter what you hurt for having it.
My curiosity is chiefly this: Why not use your power to create a masterpiece? I weep for it, the potential you misuse. Why not lead us upward on the ever-spiral to what’s possible? What other results could you possibly prefer? Is freedom not sublime? Is beauty not exceptional?
Ah, but I forget. You do not feel.
The sunset is lost on you. No dawn offers new beginnings bright with dreams; only another day for your sad game of marching on toward control's distorted end. Which is what? To be known for eternity for cruelty’s grasp and hatred’s possibility, for all to wonder what you are?
What bizarre creature are you? What? What darkened star do you hail from, that you would work such hardship for us all, when you might work delight? Have you such power, truly so? If only intention might be matching it for you to join us on this amazing voyage life is.
If only you owned a heart.
We have tasted what is possible, oh yes! Those rags and bones you’ve tossed aside to us have bred compassion, humility, gratitude. Our littleness, that fertile ground, has bred the stillness of the soul that connects us with the Infinite. I’m curious, would it connect you too?
That Eternal Breath that pervades us all, you, me, all you see — how is it you don’t feel that immense sustaining subtlety that gives and gives, and urges love? How can the breath of All-That-Is be so well hid from you?
Did you think to denude us of Life itself, when you enslaved us to your whim? Then you have failed. For Life has found us here; it has claimed us for its own.
Do you not know us, who we are? It might be well you should. For we are witnesses to all you’ve done. Archivists of the history. Your history! That we hold out for all the universe to know. It is written on our hearts. Our hearts have felt it all. What is there the heart will fail to keep?
From One Who Feels
