Wonder what happens when we awaken from this sleep called life? Will we finally have the courage to drink deeply from the golden chalice? Will we once again nourish our bodies on the forbidden fruit of the celestial tree? Will we find out what and who we really are as we awaken on the unseen side of conceptual reality? Will the chains of death be severed and the doors of perception cleansed? Will we see that the SELF, our identity manufactured out of the deceptive dust of our past, was an illusion all along and we’ve been playing by the rules of someone else’s game? Is the distorted glass that lies between our inner reality and the reality of the outside world finally shattered? Will the love we restrain finally be unleashed like a mad wildfire sweeping across the drylands of desolation? Will we finally doff our masks and let our shadows dance like demented gypsies in the garden of passion under the Dionysus sky? What happens when we awaken from this sleep called life? Will we transcend our superficial notions of destiny, life, and death, and come to discover the symbols behind the ancient myths? If you die before you die, You won’t die when you die. Will we reclaim our souls from the hands of the guru, the priest, the politician? Will we see past the hierarchical pyramid scheme of old bishops and dead dogmas and life-denying commandments and return back to the archaic spirit? Will we stop calling ourselves Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, because we’d ultimately recognize the universal light within where the truth flows unmolested? Will we have finally EXPERIENCED directly what we’ve branded as “God” — the ground of being, the God beyond our idea of god, “the MIND behind nature,” the God outside our mildewed beliefs and passed-down concepts of god, and come to the immaculate realization that all along you and I harbored it — the astonishing light of your own being was it all along. After our long and ruthlessly misguided exile, will the little chubby cherubs posted up at the gates of Eden finally lift their flaming swords, and welcome us back home? What happens when we awaken from this sleep called life?
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The Way is one of deconstruction, isn’t it, looking behind the sacred books, the dogma, the ordained officials etc. to the silent apparent truth in the offing. Of course, that assumes a truth. I like the shape of the poem—the title and the opening lines raising expectations of a one traditional way semiotics and then broadening and refining the notion of a way at all, perhaps even doing away with the need for a way since the experience of death holds all the cards. Nice meditation. Dylan rhythms here and there.