There was a little girl there before the dawn of time. She knew nothing because she knew everything. Everything was there, not because there was something, but because everything could be and, therefore, was, because everything that was possible, was possible and so it was there, in a strange sort of way.
We who came later, called this time, the Possible. The little girl’s name was Desire. So, before it all began, in the nothingness of everything, Desire did what she could, she desired a universe.
And there it was; it burst into time and space and eventually there was a little planet; the 4th one of a star in the outer arms of a fairly inconspicuous galaxy about 5 billion years out from the centre of the universe, and on that planet there was a little girl, who, being born, fell into love. She didn’t fall in love with something, she fell into love itself.
To her the world was radiant; all things glowing with love, each thing, when looked at, was breathlessly beautiful. She could feel all things in herself and feel herself in all things.
Yet, as time strengthened its presence, things separated; they attained their own status, manifested their own place in time; developed a history and a future. The world entered space and became separate. Objects became interesting.
Love for all subsided and objects became valued; love became attached; it became portioned and qualified. She learn’t this by experiencing pain and discomfort, pleasure and comfort; she slowly forgot the wholeness of all and learn’t the particulateness of things. Things became individual and received different values. She slowly forgot that she was Desire and desired all; she now felt different desire for different things. She was born into her own creation.
She learn’t the levels of love; that which she first experienced, that which first gave pleasure and succour, she loved the most – her mother and her father, then her greater family, then her group (her friends, colleagues, neighbours, town, country and all the other people to whom she affiliated herself), also her animals, other animals, her property and the whole of nature. She loved them all to a greater or lesser degree.
To those to whom she did not apportion some love, they became the unloved. They had no assigned value but could very easily become assigned different degrees of being unloved. They could become the disliked even the hated.
She had become almost completely disconnected from the love she fell into at her birth; she was almost completely disconnected from her sense of being at one with all. The merest flickers remained – she heard people saying God is Love and that seemed to have some meaning to her, but it was a vague concept with no felt reality.
So, she grew up loving her parents, loving her partner and her children, liking her friends, and feeling good about so many other things of life – her work, her property, her country, her beliefs, her goals. She did good things in life, she was a good person, she helped others selflessly, she cared for the downtrodden; she tried to make the world a better place.
Her life seemed full and rich to her. She was happy; she had completely forgotten her first experience of life, well, almost completely. There were times when she felt longings to go somewhere quiet. She loved to walk in the forest, along the beach, or to sit at the edge of the lake at sunrise or sunset. It created a deep feeling of peace in her; it touched some deep longing in her and seemed to remind her of something forgotten. It was not easy to stay there for long; she would eventually become uncomfortable and return to her world.
Her children grew up, her worked matured, her relationships deepened, her body aged, and she became unsatisfied with life and living. She took to writing her thoughts down, a book she kept well hidden from others; she started listening more to music, and she started watching life more and more as if it contained some secret that she had missed all along.
She was still there in life, living with others, doing her work, but inside, she was moving away. Her sense of ownership became vague, she had little attachment to her things, she could easily give anything away to someone who wanted or needed it. She became aware of people all over the world living lives just as she was here living a life. She felt more part of nature, more a living thing than a human being; she began to be concerned about things and people she never gave a moments thought to before. In some way, she felt lost and, in some way, she felt she was coming home.
On day, she was walking by the lakeside with her family at sunset. She was quiet, very quiet. Her children and husband were talking. As the sun touched the horizon, its golden rays painted the clouds, at first with a golden glow, which changed to pink, then red as the sun sank. The air fell silent, no bird calls marking their return to their nests, no wind whispering through the trees, just a deep silence. The family stopped talking hushed by beauty. ……………… She was there as the sun started to sink below earth’s edge …………….. and then she was gone. She fell back into love and then she was Desire and she was pleased. She knew everything; everything was possible and yet everything was there. She hugged her children and holding her husband’s hand she walked off into a radiant world that she again could see was glowing with love.
John B. Carlile 