The Naked Philosopher...

For those that know me my life is literally an open book. For those that don’t me, I am an explorer of the human mind and soul in relation to this existential reality we find ourselves in. I seek answers, which are not always easy to find and comprehend, with the simplicity of a fool. Possessing no super powers, I am a common person with limited ability, a naked philosopher who harbors an intense compulsion to push onward. I am fearless in the fact that I have traveled some treacherous roadway in my quest. I sometimes have pushed the boundaries a bit too far with dire results. But I keep picking myself up and dusting myself off. My mission is to make sense of the human predicament. Like most people in this post nihilistic world I had been playing a game of tag with God all my life. Even though professed to be looking for him, I actually was doing the hiding He the seeking. It wasn’t until I came face to face with my own mortality some years ago that I began to realize that the God I was running after, did actually exist, but that He existed deep within me and in the hearts and minds of those good people who had come to know Him, and as a result share their knowledge. I kept looking for Him somewhere out there in the Church, the statues, the clergy and the sky. It wasn’t until reality slapped me hard that I finally began to get the picture. The image I received was real, the message loud and clear - the result life transforming.

...The operation lasted an hour and a half. There was another hour in the recovery room and by 2.30 I was back in my room on the sixth floor. I opened my eyes to find my wife by my side. I wasn’t sure if I was alive at this point and closed my eyes once more only to awaken much later in considerable pain. To my bewilderment tubes sprang from me in every direction. I had a tube through my nose down my throat, two springing from the punctures in my abdomen, and a rather unpleasant catheter in my bladder. I finally realized what the term “a little discomfort”, really meant. I had been cut vertically from the breastbone all the way down just past the navel. Large bandages secured the drain tubes that emptied in plastic reservoirs taped to my chest. The nurses were constantly injecting morphine into my backside to deaden the pain. The thing that really bothered me more then the feeling that my stomach was filled with broken glass, was the fact that I realized that I had been sown on the inside but stapled along the outside of this huge incision incision. When I viewed the staples I was afraid to move or sneeze, because I felt my stomach might easily pop open and my guts spill right out onto my hospital sheets.
The nurses made me move the very first day, and I was up tubes and all, walking around the room. I had to learn how to cope with movement and intense pain. I was helped in and out of bed. Each day I got a bit stronger. On the third day Dr. Cohen and a nurse walked up to me and removed all the tubes in one action. I felt like a machine shutting down. I found it difficult to talk because of the pain in my throat.
“I can’t believe it. I’m alive!”
At this point I had asked to be switched to oral medication, which I preferred to the injections. A nurse brought by a plastic cylinder which required blowing into, in order to force the lung down onto the incision area and to prevent pneumonia. The crucial part was over however and I forced myself to get out of bed and to walk twice as far as required each day, in order to recover. As I slowly shuffled down the hallway of the hospital those next few days, I had plenty of time to reflect on things. I soon realized how blest I had become, how much my wife loved me, and I her. I thought further about my children and my future. Then I began to cry profuse tears of Joy as I looked out upon a glorious sunny morning, and felt the total impact of what I had been through. I sat up and reached for a pen in order to write my therapist Joe a letter:
2/29/87
Dear Joe, I will never look upon life in quite the same way again. Today I gazed out upon a brilliant sunny morning. It was as if Grace showered down upon me. I cried profuse tears of joy. For the very first time I experienced totally letting go, and the sweet taste of helplessness. I took a leap of faith that up until this time had been impossible. My surgery had placed me naked and unshielded before Him. All my defense mechanisms had been peeled away. The immensity of all that surrounds me had reduced my existence to the littlest bleep on the screen of life. I had become an insignificant spec that could be flicked away. The realization of how truly blest I am floods my consciousness this morning. I had taken all those around me for granted. The very genuineness of that love now bathes my soul. I feel as if a tremendous weight has been lifted from my spirit. The binding restrictions of self-righteousness have been cut loose. Self imposed guilt and hate have been washed away. Intensity and compulsion have given way to clear simple understanding. I will walk forward into the light of gentle awareness and new beginnings, wearing this new garment of grace. I have stood at the very edge of Creation. A heartbeat was all that separated me from life and death. I have been humbled by the awesomeness of His majesty. For the very first time I have tasted true joy. My search has ended. My new life begins. Your Friend, Christopher Cole

Sometime later I began to reflect on the desperation which had lead up to this experience, and realized how sharply it had brought everything back into focus. Pain and suffering had become necessary for me to refocus, and to snap me out of the creeping numbness of complacency. The sharpened priorities from my surgery had already begun to fade somewhat. The importance of confronting the self almost on a daily basis became immediately clear to me. The next several days were wrought with a certain level of anxiety as I pondered this revelation. My lifelong struggle with the problem of meaning intensified as people from my past began to converge quite accidentally upon me. It was this physical as well as psychological pain, which had forced me to focus. Like a man who had realized how very sick he had become, I had stuck my finger down my throat and in a sense, thrown up my very guts. It had a purpose, I was sure. I knew I was close to understanding. I decided not to force it. It would come.
The next day I arose from bed, the remnant of my obsession still in my subconscious. I entered his bathroom. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes I found myself standing naked before a full-length mirror. I noticed my reflection; my attention was immediately brought to the surgical scar that ran down from below my breastbone. A strange feeling came over me as a premonition entered my head. As I focused on the mirror I saw the figure of God the Father superimposed over my own reflection. The apparition was as real and immediate as the 6 o’clock News! The image of God proceeded to slowly run the finger of His outstretched hand down the length of my scar as reflected in the mirror and spoke:

“ Here then is your sign. Remember man that you are dust and to dust you shall return!”

Awestruck and after recovering from the intensity of this revelation I immediately began to comprehend the message as the figure faded before me. The ultimate reality is indeed, death. My pain and suffering was only a reminder of my mortality. Faith would give me the opportunity to give meaning to the very little time I had left in his life. Only in this way would I find Truth and transcend this existence.
I would embrace a faith at this time that would be a simple and unencumbered by the trappings of orthodoxy. This coincided with my belief that it is in the simple things that the mysteries of life are revealed. My belief would assert the duality of man, his potential for good or evil, and the conflict at the center of his very being between intellect and imagination, faith and reason. God to me would be likened to a Force, from which emanates the means by which man can find his hope. Man could be filled with His being to the point that he literally transcends his human predicament. Christ was so filled with this Spirit that He came to the realization of His own divinity. A divinity to which everyman can attain for himself. God became man so that men could become gods. Every man has within himself the means to draw ever closer to this Truth. As we come out of the cave of ignorance and stand in the light, we all will be filled, each to his own capacity. It is through Truth that man is born again. It is as long as he stands in this Light, he will live. It is in these moments that he must find his strength to combat the negative void at the center of his very being. Man lives for the moment. His immortality is what he leaves behind, in the form of good works, his love for his brothers and sisters and his physical accomplishments. He lives in the memory of those he touched or in the gifts he leaves behind. The artist finds his immortality through his works, which endure; the common man through the fruits of his labor.
Most of my adult life up to this point had been spent in the acquisition of monetary gain. My obsession had literally cut me off from my own Self. Although you cannot discount the value of a certain degree of monetary freedom, it is when that pursuit becomes an end in itself that one gets caught up in the never-ending spiral of empty plateaus. Since my pursuit was in the retail business, it consisted mainly of trading items built in factories by robots, for money. I had become relatively successful at it, but all I had to show for it was a limited amount of material possessions, hardly worth the amount of long hours, hard work, and stress. When I die I might even be lucky enough to receive a kind word from the owner I helped enrich. That would probably be the extent of it. MY wife and kids would be left with mere possessions, and the memory of how meaningful their lives might have been if I had spent more time with them. Prior to my professional career, as a young man I set out to understand the meaning of life. I drank deeply and intently of life for a brief time. Integrating with society took it toll. I grew callous. Fortunately through pain and suffering I had been given another chance. ...
The Closer's Song by Christopher Cole