CLARITY

A lot of our time is taken up by the attempt to make ourselves comprehensible to others and to understand them in return. If you listen to any conversation between any two people, you will notice just how much TIME is used up by the effort to transfer information from one to the other. They try multiple words and many different phrases. They repeat the same thing over and over again, with the same and different words.

They ask many questions, sometimes the same question several times, and explain themselves multiple times. All in the attempt to make themselves understood to one another, to transfer the exact and correct piece of information that each carries within to and into the other person’s inside and into the other person’s comprehension capacity. Most of our interactions are a long arduous twisting marathonic endeavour at communication, often ending in only partial success or really no real success at all.

But imagine if there was a way to instantly and accurately transfer exact information between ourselves and into one another. Exact, and above all comprehensible, information. Directly – from mind to mind, from heart to heart, from intuition to intuition. How much time would be saved? And how much misunderstanding would be avoided. So much. This is probably why the best communicators do so with pictures or use words that awaken images within the recipient’s mind. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, they say. But a picture can also be misinterpreted, if the context is not properly explained. It all depends. And that’s the whole point.

And yet… is the effort to communicate not an intrinsic part of the very purpose of existence? Is is not the one side of the coin of consciousness with which we pay and earn our development? And the other side of the coin is the effort to bring clarity within one’s own inner life. Because the more you try to make something comprehensible to another, the clearer it becomes to you too. And the clearer it becomes to you, the easier it is to communicate it to someone else, sometimes with just one mental picture awakened within them that brings intuitive comprehension and intellectual clarity.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

YOUR OWN

Don’t go after what you don’t desire,
And don’t go after what does not desire you.

Connect with your own and you will go higher -
Chasing the wrong one will drain and tire you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

AN EARLY RECOGNITION ON RESISTANCE

When I was a little boy – 6 or 7 – I watched a film on the Holocaust, in the sitting room with my parents. One question nagged at me then: why did they follow so quietly and obediently to their own deaths? Why did they not resist?

That question has since then detached itself from that film and that story and has followed me everywhere in life to this day, in many forms and contexts. In truth it was not a question – it was a Resolution.

Always resist.

Never give up, unjustly, what belongs to you, and is valuable to you, without a fight. It’s either you win, or you lose with pride.

All that’s left is for you to decide what your valuable possessions are.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

IN THE MORNING

The things we know in the morning
The moment we awaken
And from somewhere else are returning
But not yet quite retaken
By the world of thoughts that ever crowd around us
During the hours while we are fully day-conscious
Those things we know as sleep departs
Are as true as true can be
The Hour of Awakening to us imparts
The starkest clarity

It may be painful, may be pleasant
It may be quite surprising
But it is always true and doesn’t
Require verifying
Because if you did awake aright into this certainty
Events themselves will prove to you their authenticity
My thoughts are clear as sleep departs
And I see without guile
Displayed before me all those hearts
With whom I frown or smile.

————–
che chidi chukwumerije
————–

INTO THE SECOND CALM

A period of difficulty, well endured with reflection and honesty, will awaken calm within the soul. Calm brings clarity.

If you continue to rise higher while calm, you will one day break into a second world of utter confusion which jumps upon you just when your calm reaches its peak. This second confusion is the most difficult path, because it confounds your new knowledge and laughs at your newfound calm. At its height, you will lose all hope.

If, however, you remain calm, even in the heart of your confused hopelessness and hopeless confusion, something New will awaken within and overtake you, and set you free, reborn. Because from the valley the next step is upwards, provided you have not first buried yourself in dejection in the valley.

Even when there is no hope, yet continue to hope. Even when you are broken, and rebroken, yet trust in life. – And you shall enter into the Second Calm. And, come what may, nothing and nobody can take away this Calm from you, because it is the other side of pain, where spirit dies no more.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

SOMETHING TO HOLD ON TO

If a true friend is gold, are they poor that have no friends? Or rich by default, for peace of mind is also the lot of the lonely who is spared the irony of the laughter and companionship of false friends? How often have we met with a friend and parted from a stranger a short while later? In these days of sad revolutions and mixed allegations, of spying and cyber double lives, of migration without integration, of religious justice without religious love, of racial reawakening and regrouping, gender re-evaluation, of social re-engineering and hardening, there are some you will meet who will tell you that what they need is not a friend, what they need is honesty and clarity.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

WEB OF TOO MANY WORDS

Left Simpli City
Travelled to Dupli City
Influenced by someone from Compli city.
So what’s the name of the whole country?

The Queen of Compli City
Was bored. She disguised as a lost maiden
And went to the King of Simpli City
Who fell in love with her.

She sweet-talked and brainwashed him
And he rode into Dupli City
To challenge the King of Dupli City
To a conflict of interests.

So, looks like Compli city
Was trying to use Simpli City
To defeat Dupli City
After having first compromised Simpli City.

How smart.
But of course the King of Dupli City
Saw through all this
And decided to play along.

Pretending to ride into battle
Against the army of Simpli City
In the full view of Compli City
Secretly he sends messages to Simpli City

Poor Simpli City, as it falls
Lost in the web of too many words
Not knowing whom to believe now
Compli City or Dupli City.

But underneath the ruins of Simpli city
Lies the ancient foundation of Tena City
Where a Child is born who says my name
Is different, my name is Clarity.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

WRITE AND WRONG

Writing for the Readership
Instead of for yourself
Following the Leadership
Ignoring yourself

Where will it lead you to?
When you get there
Vice in the Guise of Virtue
And Loneliness austere
And Amnesia won’t still your Longing
Still searching for a Sense of Belonging.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.