Chaos is best served with…

^{Din haos, Doamne,-am apărut și m-aș întoarce-n haos… Și din repaos m-am născut. Mi-e sete de repaos.}

^{Mihai Eminescu – Luceafărul}

I was walking on the hills near my home, while looking down at the village in the valley. The sky was clear, with no clouds on it, the atmosphere was peaceful, and I could almost touch the air. It was serene. I felt peace, clarity, and control.

I kept walking on the path, leaving the village behind.  My legs were firm, my steps left no sound, everything around me was just peace and quiet. As I kept on walking, the hills turned into a mountain, into an almost vertical rocky slope, and my path turned into a mountain one, on the side of the slope. It still seemed wide enough for me to carry on, so I kept on going. At one point, there was a dent in the path, like a wider space in which you could stop and enjoy the view, and a thought came to my mind, to go and sit there for a while, take a break, and rest. As I approached that spot, I realized the path became very narrow, to be more precise a foot-wide narrow, and I realized I was very far from the valley, high on the rocky mountain. I lost all my serene feelings on the spot, I stuck my back against the rock wall, and looked down. I could feel a sensation of spikes in my knees, my heart was rushing, and I was thinking that the road in the valley was way too far away for someone to hear me. I looked left and right, but I was stuck there, there was no way I could proceed on the same path, and no possibility of going back. I was stranded on a rocky mountain wall, too up to be able to climb down, and too low to be able to cross the mountain’s top. It was frightening, and all sorts of thoughts went through my mind, from calculating for how long I could make it there, to what would happen if I jumped? Could I land in the valley below somehow?

The phone rings, it is 7:00 AM. I wake up with the same spikey feeling in my knees, with my heart pounding out of my chest, but I am relieved: it was just a dream! Still, one that felt so real! I was stuck in one of the most frightening situations that I could ever imagine for myself, and my mind was spinning thoughts, like broken records, as in how to proceed. It’s too little to say it took me the whole day to get over that feeling and the physical sensations from the dream. My mind was looking for solutions, even though it realized by now that it was a hypothetical situation, no action needed to be taken. But the mind didn’t mind, it kept on spinning, solving, controlling that which was just a dream.

This is the power of the mind, the only power it has: to spin thoughts, to spin ideas, and it is very good at getting caught up in them. But the world around us is based on Chaos. We came from Chaos, and we shall go back to it, and so on and so forth, until the end of time. And then, repeat!

I met Chaos so many times, that I almost consider it a close friend. It taught me a lot, much more than clarity and precision, more than any plan or preparation. If I tried to manage Chaos with my mind, it all went down the drain. Chaos doesn’t like logic, and logic is the only thing a mind can bring to the table. Chaos feeds on fear, and grows even stronger, so I had to make sure I don’t feed it some more. Both fear and logic belong to the mind, the mind doesn’t know much else besides these too. Or, maybe just a little bit of faith. But mental faith is not something that can stand the power of Chaos.

I took Chaos by the hand, and I said to myself: let’s flow! Let’s see where this takes us and where we could go. After lots of attempts of dealing with it from my mind, I closed my eyes and surrendered: let it be! I got tired of fighting with it, I realized there is no way to conquer it or win against it. After all, Chaos is our source, is where we come from, of course we have no power over it. But we have the power within ourselves. As I closed my eyes and took a deep breathe, I felt my body relax, and my heart beat in peace. I surrendered to Chaos.

And then, miracles happened! Everything is possible in chaos, and miracles are to be found in the midst of it. A different kind of faith and hope arises when I flow on Chaos’s waves, a deep faith in life and everything around me. It is something that one must feel, not argue or explain. I looked Chaos in the eyes, and for the first time I felt peace. The peace of knowing that out of it, everything arises, everything is possible, and the only thing I have to do is give into it. So, I did. Chaos can take each of us on a journey never seen before, will restructure and reform us from the core, but only if we don’t let the mind get in the way. We can have wonderful experiences and literally feel like flying, as long as we don’t try to control or understand with our Earthly minds, the one that is the source and ending of it all, life itself together with all our world.

Just like in my dream, I tried to find solutions many times to whatever situations came to me. I changed jobs, friends, towns and countries, to find a better place and life, to take over control and change my exterior to fit my interior. I got to the point where I would have changed the Solar System, the Universe, if possible, to fit my requests. But this can’t be done, because the Universe and life are not something we change, but something that changes us. The only way there is to go, is within, change whatever we think, believe or hold as a limit, so that we can fully live.

Chaos is best served with faith. But not the logical faith that we all know about, but with the one that comes from deep within, knowing that we are a part of it, together with it, and it will never turn against us, never attack, never do harm, but take us further and further in our becoming. Chaos is like a gentle friend, that wants to show us amazing things, doesn’t want any fight or opposition, just comes in, sits for a while, shows us its gems, and then lets us be, while we go back to our logically ordered lives.

P.S. It’s better handled with our eyes closed 😉