It‘s Hard to escape the gravity of the Earth It’s Hard to outgrow the culture of your birth It’s Hard for the tide to exceed its continental shelf It’s Hard to see beyond the boundary of yourself. The more you see, the more you see you The farther you go, the farther YOU go The more you do, the more you do you You reap You because that’s what you sow It’s Impossible to get from a thing more than it’s worth It’s Impossible to go further north than the north It’s Impossible for the earthly eye to see an Elf It’s Impossible to grasp beyond the boundary of yourself The more you overcome you the more you become you Until in the end you are all you know The more you wander, the more you understand you Because in the end you are all you really can ever know. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
blindness
BIG AND SMALL
In this world
You have to be small
To be big.
Big people
Are made small
By the world’s smallness.
If you are too big
You are too big
To be seen.
If you are small
You are big enough
For the small.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
WHEN THE PATH FEELS WRONG, YOU SEARCH HARDER
You might sometimes find yourself, for long periods of your earthlife, striving after the wrong things; even worse, striving via the wrong principles and means; unaware of how you got there, sometimes unaware perhaps even of whatever it was you once really wanted, and not knowing how to change back onto the right track.
This is a trick that life plays on every Seeker – to force you to light up the inner Lantern within your consciousness; for the aim of the cocoon is to turn the caterpillar into a butterfly. So too does life make you blind in order to awaken your Insight – and then, nothing can blind you anymore apart from you yourself. Sometimes the wrong path is the right path, as long as you keep on honestly and tirelessly seeking. You will find yourself.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
FRIENDS FOREVER
SOI AND TEMI were friends right from the very beginning, friends forever, friends for life. They explored the ancient forbidden caves together which none may enter who wish to remain unchanged. But whoever enters and emerges alive will never ever be the same again. The thirst for adventure, the hunger for something new, bid them enter these caves, and together they did, like they had, united, entered every adventure before, brother with brother, friend for friend.
No-one ever came to know what they experienced within the caves, no-one, but indeed when they emerged a wondrous change had been wrought upon Soi and Temi. For upon the face of the quiet, philosophic Soi where peace and calm had been wont to rest, there now raged flashing thunder and restlessness beyond compare! But whereas Temi had entered the caves impetuous, carefree and wild, a rested sage with weathered eyes came walking out instead.
It did not take them both long to understand that they no longer got on with each other like they had once done. And all who met them now, who once had known them before they visited the ancient, forbidden caves, could not but marvel at this uncanny development: For save for their faces and save for their names, Soi had become Temi and Temi had turned to Soi. Indeed they might as well have switched identities. But – and here’s the wonder – whereas quiet Soi had interwoven well with carefree Temi, the new Soi, the restless, was a stranger to the new Temi, the silent, and vice versa.
The mystery of opposites, parallels and poles began to dawn on the people; for characters which had once so perfectly blended were now as distant as the poles. And clucking and clacking and clicking-a-clack the elders and superstitioners verily nodded and wisely declared that the knowledge of the ancients can never but never ever prove wrong: None may enter the ancient forbidden caves who wants to re-emerge the same! But neither Soi nor Temi heard them speak, for they were already a-separated and a-gone, the formerly peace-loving Soi to now be a warrior fighting on distant battlefields in the cause of unknown folk; the one-time aggressive Temi to traverse faraway lands, teaching strangers how to love and about peace.
Moments, as they are wont to do, passed by quick in time, hurrying through the modules of mortality; and before the stars had fully registered the change, the warrior Soi, at the head of a battalion of fiery foreign legions, came a-thundering into a land which for long had provoked their warring skills.
Burning and a-looting and a-screaming and a-hacking, they emerged victorious one phase after the other of battle, until they entered the capital where a mysterious sage preached calm and love and gently enjoined peace on all, attackers and defenders alike.
A brief din in the battle… Soi and Temi stood one before the other and neither recognised his brother, for if times change a man, his profession will change him even more.
The softly spoken words of the strange, gentle preacher finely pricked the conscience of the fiery, impatient warrior, for he too well remembered once long ago when he had known them true. But rather than yield to their truth and risk appearing a fool – which he never would have appeared, for it is the fool who resists truth and the great man who bows down – he drew his sword and struck at this disturbing preacher with very mortal mien!
But, lo and behold, the preacher was neither surprised nor unprepared for the attack, for he too could well remember how hard it is for an unrestrained heart to accept that it is wrong, since he himself once upon a time one such brash heart had been. But neither too had he forgotten the ways to fend off a blow, for once a fighter, always a fighter indeed.
He dodged the lethal blow and fled. But the inflamed warrior pursued hard, accompanied by seven of his soldiers.
Hills, plains, woods were met and left behind as the warrior and his horde slowly closed the gap between them and the preacher. Finally, mounting a plateau, they surrounded the fleeing preacher.
However, among the warrior’s seven soldiers, there was one whose heart had been secretly but deeply touched by the words of the preacher. And as he saw the preacher about to be knifed down by their daggers, he suddenly turned on his own men and slew two with a double-dealt blow. In the confusion that ensued, the preacher, seeing his chance, picked up a fallen dagger and turned on the warrior.
Their fight was brief for, wonders oh, the preacher was a warrior too and an even abler one than his once dear friend, the one time philosopher; and now that his death seemed a-near he’d quickly shed his gentle ways and a reckless fighter lay unveiled!
It was only as the warrior crashed down and lay upon the ground, dying, dagger incisions in him, his red blood a-pooling, that the senselessness of his legacy and the futility of his quest, thus ending, arrested and animated his insight. His original self, as from a deep slumber, re-awakened – and he spoke… spoke on futility, stupidity, humanity. The battle ceased and in wonder all parties gazed at the expiring warrior for, in his hour of death, he had re-turned into a philosopher, gentle, wise and convincing.
With dimming eyes he gazed up at the eyes and into the soul of his shocked and startled killer and, in a clear flash, suddenly recognised in this reckless fighter-of-a-priest but his own old gregarious friend, Temi.
“Oh Temi, my friend, oh Temi, my friend.” he whispered with a tender smile, “What Nemesis is it that has decreed that I die in your hands…?”
With hands still a-poised for the final blow, for indeed his old self had true awakened, Temi paused…
A thunderbolt come down from the skies would surely not have shocked him as still as Soi’s still whisper did…
“Soi?” he whispered.
“Temi…” came Soi’s replied.
And then he died.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije (There Is Always Something More).
LOOK DEEPER
We are so strongly influenced
By the form of what we see
That we lose sight of a sense
Of what its true content could be
Who would ever guess
That in a cocoon sleeps a butterfly
Or that the greatest devil of all
Looks like an angel in the sky?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE WAY
I WAS wondering in the dark, searching for my hands, for my feet, my voice, my mind. I sought all these things, but knew not that I was searching in the dark. In a strange valley that wipes away memory. Truly I was wandering too in the dark.
There are friends that stand around us in the dark, more in number than we know, nearer than we sense, they see us but we do not see them. For, self-centered us, we see only ourselves.
There was a self-centered man, and he never saw anything but himself. His own wants, his own needs, his own hopes, his own fears, his own hunger and thirst, his own pain, joy, views, his own creed.
There he was, wandering in the dark, lonely and alone, thinking he is all alone in the world. Not once does the thought of another cross his mind, for he has long lost the ability to see any other person but himself. A hundred questions trouble his mind, to which he finds no answers. It is dark. Some helpers stand around him, trying to draw his attention for once away from his own ego, for these helpers have the answers he craves. But he sees them not; he has long lost the ability to see any other but himself.
What are these rocks that strike and bleed his feet? He knows not, he sees them not. The light with which to see them is not visible to him. He sees only himself, nothing else. His inner eyes are closed, where is the insight with which to see the inner light? A misty lake has become his insight; therein, trapped, his egotistical love for himself.
So did we wander side by side for decades, centuries, blind to one another, unconscious of each another, for each of us was self-centered. Slowly I started to long for an end to this grey solitude, this heavy empty aloneness. Then did a thought, dimly, strike me, in the depths of my lonely suffering. The thought that this lonely life I led was so sad, so depressing that I would never wish it for anybody else….
– stop. What was that?
Anybody else? … What strange thought is this that strikes me? Is there anything like somebody else? Am I not alone in the world? Could there be any other person here? Struggling in this dark blindness too? A strange new thought that nagged at, and grew in, my heart. If there were anybody else, then would that I could find him, maybe even help him, halve his frustration. – Like a miracle, this thought became a light within me, slowly did my inner eye open.
And… I saw myself in a Valley… walking beside a man who seemed faintly familiar, with the soft sun shinning far away, dimly but visibly. But though I called and called to him, this strangely familiar man, yet he heard me not, felt not my touch. And lo and behold, not he alone, but hundreds, thousands, millions like us were wandering blind in the Valley of Self-centeredness. Unreachable. Alone. I had been simply one of many all this time and I had not known. So deep was my shock that it loosened my heart and set my tears free. Only half the tears were for me. The rest were for my fellow wanderers, as blinded by self-centeredness as I had until recently been. And yet all they need in order to awaken is just once to think of another… spare a thought for another. Focus again on the thought that there are also other people in this world, think of their needs, feel the desire to understand and to help someone else.
After the tears had started to flow from my eyes, I heard a voice. There was a woman walking behind me.
“Did you say something to me?”, I asked, surprised, as I turned to her. She had a voice like a bird singing. She too I seemed to almost remember.
“Osahon, my friend”, she said, “I have been calling your name now for many many decades, patiently trying to awaken you to the way that leads out of this Valley wherein you have been groping…”
“You?… Calling me for decades? Has it been that long? Yet I heard nothing…”
“It is because you have stepped off the way.”
“And where lies the way?” I asked, still dazed, still grappling this new awakening.
And she pointed to my neighbour, he who had been by my side all this time, unnoticed by me, unconscious of me.
“Walk with him a couple of miles. Find out what he needs, and try to give it to him. Therein lies the way.”
“But who is he?” I asked.
“That is Erobo. You were his friend, to whom he once looked up, once upon a time…, like I too once was your star, before we both went blind. Before the bird came to wake me up again. Long long ago. Do you remember?” –
Like a mist slowly parting did I gently recall distant friendships, selfless love, ancient, bright sunlight once upon a time. And as I did, so did the Valley become ever brighter, for this faint Sun had always been there. Only I had gone blind.
“This is what happens,” my ancient lover continued, “when self-centeredness takes over within the soul. So do memory, connection and awareness fade… This is what happens when self-centeredness takes over within our souls.”
I gazed at Efe, my one true love. How could I have forgotten her all this time? … Then I turned and beheld once more my very best friend, Erobo, he who had once been to me even as a brother. Softly I called his name, then louder, until I was shouting it. And yet he heard not.
“He hears you not,” Efe sorrowfully said. “He hears only his own thoughts, and knows not that any other thing exists. And all this he once learned from you,” she said softly to me, “For he has always followed you.
Yet wipe your eyes, stand by his side and keep on calling his name… Weary not, but love him even as you love yourself.”
At first I felt a sense of guilt. I reflected upon this mystery: You can lead a man in, but not out. The thought of an unending, unrewarding sojourn beside an unresponsive soul suddenly brought a hesitation upon me. I looked at the multitude of sleepwalkers around me in the valley, and saw behind so many of them a Helper, bound to each as by an invisible thread, trying to reach them. Tenacious thoughts. They arose again in me. What of my own goals? What of my own wants? A frown, a dark cloud came over my brow, I slowly sunk into brooding –
“Osahon… my friend – “
Startled I looked up. My gaze, as from far away, settled again upon Efe. Her hand was upon my shoulder. A smile was her face. A sad smile, it pierced my core. And then did drop the last chain. I turned again to Erobo, my best friend, placed a hand on his shoulder and began to talk to him, calling his name, telling him of the sun and of friendship and of helpfulness and of the way out of the Valley. Out of my words I made a song, which I am still singing…
“And should he one day awaken and his blind eyes open before Time bids you stop,” my Lover continued, her last words to me, before she left to go there where she must await me, “ … and should he then weary too of selfishness, and desire a way out of this half-lit Valley, then show him also this Way which I have just shown to you, teach it to him gently, and remind him of it should he quickly forget too… – for there is no other way that leads out of this Valley, but the way of selfless love.”
Then I saw her walking away, following a distant bird. When I weary I think of her and of her selfless love; and thus, I too am still talking to my friend.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
From my collection of thoughts and short stories: THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING MORE.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 