Mystery Haunted

Something is going on here. I can feel it. I always have. Early on, I thought of it as magic. In adulthood I thought of my recurring sensation as a kind of childish wish fulfillment, and wouldn’t let myself indulge in awareness of it very much. But now, as I’m getting older, growing more sensitive and aware, I can feel it more. It’s like a kind of soul-tingling. I know, though I can’t prove it, at least not in any kind of conventional scientifically acceptable way. Something is going on in my life, and it appears to me, that something is going on with we humans, here in this place.

I don’t know what it is, but as I’ve aged, the tingling has grown into a kind of satisfying unknowing. There is something delicious and totally odd about having this feeling grow with uncertainty. The less I know, the more convinced I become. This must be some kind of trick that is inherent to growing older. I think this sense has to do with my declining fear of death and my sense of happiness increasing. Something is happening!

I don’t know if others are experiencing it. It’s probably too vague a sensation to talk about, but my level of intrigue is deepening. I keep finding that the surprises in my life seem to be adding up, making a sum I can’t ignore.

I’m not very enamored of the world’s religions. I’ve experienced some very pious and humble practitioners of these religions, but all of the ideologies behind them have been too rigid and certain for my taste. Some weird combination of Buddhism and twelve-step wisdom has come the closest for me, but I find myself fonder of not-knowing. There is something about mystery that just sets the winged delight of my soul free. I seem to thrive with uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox.

And it is a paradox for me, to find myself enlivened by not-knowing, and a growing sense that something is going on. I’m enamored by the crazy miraculousness of this world, and the heartbreaking horror of it. I’ve been around long enough to have seen both of these facets of existence, morph into each other. And, instead of getting cynical about it, I find my sense of wonder and awe growing.

When people come to me with the tragedies they are suffering, I now have a guilty sense of joy. I’m not a sadist. I just know that growth all too often comes through those same tragedies. I’ve lost all sense of balance. Instead, I have something else — an unexplainable reverence for Life. Mystery just seems to be pouring through all of my broken expectations.

I am constantly overtaken, surprised by my innocence. Somehow, I’m way past naiveté, and filled with expectancy. I like it here, I’m often nonsensically afraid, and at the same time whimsically sanguine. I know it’s not me, and I feel somehow implicated. I’m probably as broken as a human can be, and strangely whole despite that. Life has served me up a mystery deep enough so that I can fall in, and drown, all while being buoyed up.

I don’t deserve any of it, but I feel like I am here to experience all of it — the wrenching pain and the unexpected joy. But, most of all, the sense of wonder, I am now endowed with.

There is something going on here. I don’t know what it is. Reality seems to be some kind of amniotic sac containing and growing me, through pain, inexplicable companions, and thrills I would never have signed up for. I am all too often too overwhelmed by the dizzying pace of all this commotion, to fully grasp how fortunate I am —  to be part of the something, that is going on here.