ADoDC (Interlude: The Crypts of Cairo)

"I use [Heraclitus' discovery of] Enantiodromia. Literally, "running counter to," referring to the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time. This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counterposition is built up, which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control."
-Carl Jung ("Definitions," ibid., par. 709)

***

I gazed in wonder at the Wonders of Giza,
a memory,
a man's myth.
Once a shrine
A temple of the mind,
and now tourist stint.
Dusk showed me the error of my ways.
Prayer chants arose like the moans of the damned
carrying their cries to the sands,
then the laser light show began.
When the prayers ended,
and the echoes began to fade,
it was like the dead were speaking
'even this amount of sacrilege is almost too much to handle.'
For there stood the monuments to the God within,
surrounded by humanity's filth and rubble.
Here we once sought the greater mysteries of mankind,
and today you can buy it's likeness for some coin.
Oh, I pray to the Sun above,
for you have been consistent with your Love,
please let us remember nature's cycle,
and yea, the harvest not yet,
grow from these Crypts of Cairo,
a flower beyond reproach,
a remembrance for what was once lost.
I hope that we can become that once more.

***

I wanted to weep in shame when I went to the pyramids. As somebody who mysticized the land of Egypt growing up, I had always wanted to tread where the Pharaohs walked, where so many mysteries of human kind were explored in a way that we could only imagine, and where much of our history spreads from.

But the travesty that I saw while I was there. The garbage, the poverty, the disdain for both. I cannot understand a people who have such beautiful architecture and wonderful devotion to spiritual activities could stand to represent such sorrow.

Where once the fertile Nile fed the life of the people, it is now encrusted with concrete and clogged with trash. The drive between Cairo and Alexandria showed the skeletal ruins of palaces and half villages, smattered with industrial complexes spewing their poison into the air.  The entirety of Egypt is a tomb, where the shadow of the colossus that was once it's devotion to exploring all of Creation and knowledge covers the land and Cairo is the Crypt of Kings.

I had come here on a pilgrimage of my own choosing because I had lost faith in humanity. I had wanted to find that magic somewhere, to believe again in humanity's greater destiny rather than watch as we tear ourselves apart. It has broken my heart at how unreasonably terrible we are to one another in such petty instances. Where at first it ignited a tremendous righteous rage at the injustices that we suffer one giving one another, it had burnt out the life that I had once felt within me.

On the winter solstice of 2017 I prayed for the first time in years. It was more like a plea for help to anyone that could hear. I had felt lost, like I never had before.  I had really just started to recover from the dreadful poison of a relationship that now seems to be a Malice in Wonderland scenario rather than the blissful romance that I had once dreamt it could be. I think we all have strange delusions when we cross into love's territory. It can fill one with such excitement and joy that they disregard all other delusions that they had once held. So I prayed for guidance towards peace in my heart, and when I first left for my pilgrimage to assert my right to be in my son's life and to find why true love failed me, I left with faith in the unknown and hope that somebody had listened.

***

I can tell you that the greatest moment in my life was when I held my son in my arms for the first time after almost a year of separation. I had felt so many dead things inside of me burst into flame by his tiny spark of life. The Buddha rumouredly said that “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the single candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” Well the flame from my son gave me a roaring star inside my Heart.

I think somebody did listen to my prayers long before I had even uttered them from my heart. I can find no greater reason to live than for my son, and no greater reason to fight so that he will never have to.

The dead kings of Egypt have given me their blessing with the thought that though society has woven it's illusion around the hearts of men, the evidence to our greatness is still to be found, and that it is not found in the wailing of dead religions bemoaning their god to come rescue them from perdition's grasp, it is found within our searching and striving to be all that it is that we can be. To sprout the seeds of god that lay within all mankind. To utilize science to explore further into who we are and who we are meant to be...

The Crypts of Cairo should be an honored city, not the filthy trash heap it has become. Woe, to us and our fall from grace. My hope is that life once again flourish there, just like it does within me. I have only glimpsed the Tomb of Kings, they live in it's shadow. Someday it will be sacred again.