Clones

Am I unique?

Am I not repeating the pattern of so many human beings before me? Haven’t I been ‘me’ before, in another one? Am I the first of my kind? Don’t I make the same mistakes as that who was like me? Won’t another come later who will be like ‘me’, with my same fears, my failures and my few moments of light? He will be me… ‘again’. Are we really unique, a being that has not yet existed?

I wonder if a previous ‘me’ discovered what I have discovered. If he climbed out of the well. If he listened to his soul or if he looked somewhere else, too busy to see his own death in the mirror. Maybe he did listen and decided to share it. To leave a message for the next ‘me’ to come.

It is not my actions; it is my ideas that define me. My ideas, however, have been thought by others before me.

In that case, have ‘I’ lived before? What has been my role? Just to repeat, to perpetuate the ideas that others have had before? A continuum of individuals along time who perpetuate these ideas, these obsessions, who believe to have discovered something, a glimpse of Truth, of the Matrix. We write about it. Another one comes years later who reads it and feels, suddenly, that he is not alone in the Universe. He writes about it. Dies. Another one comes and reads it. And he is not alone. And he feels he must communicate it, to let it be known. And he writes about it too. A sequence of repetitions. We do nothing but to repeat ourselves. Or don’t we? Can we get further, deeper with each cycle?

And what is the purpose of so much repetition? Cause and effect… the human obsession. Is it my purpose to perpetuate these ideas I have stumbled upon and felt to be ‘mine’?

By finding these ideas and developing them, I am reaching a certain degree of plenitude as an individual human being. This fulfils me. I guess it also fulfilled others before me and they, too, felt the need to share it. Jung, Meister Eckhart, Plato, Hesse, Rilke and so many others. To read, to understand a little, to learn a little. To repeat. Like Sisyphus, pushing the stone back up the hill every day. Like Prometheus, having his liver devoured by an eagle every day, then regenerated during the night.

By thinking these ideas that others have thought before me, I keep them alive. These ideas are alive. In me.

Is that my purpose in life? To tender the sacred fire so that it is never extinguished? To ensure that these ideas I find so compelling are always alive? Now in me. After in others, perpetuated through my writings and the writings of others like me. I serve these ideas like a faithful priest. Maybe I didn’t just find these ideas and fell in love with them… maybe I was summoned to tend the fire, to keep them alive. Fire… Prometheus’ gift to humans, the myth symbolising how a titan enlightened humans, and was punished for it by the Gods. I always felt like I had discovered a small part of the truth but maybe I was just being lured into the mystic temple. I look at myself in the mirror for the first time and find myself dressed in this gown. Blind? Chosen? Fool? Puppet? Enlightened? Slave? The only thing I can say is that I did feel I was drawn towards these ideas, that they wanted to be found, like The Ring. That they were some kind of plug to my void.

We discover, we ‘find’, we write about it for our future others, so that they can find it and write about it. We repeat. It is a cycle. A wheel.

Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors and do I embody these lives again? Have I lived before in the past as a specific personality, and did I progress so far in that life that I am now able to seek a solution? I do not know. Buddha left the question open, and I like to assume that he himself did not know with certainty. In the meantime, it is important to ensure that I do not stand at the end with empty hands.

Carl G. Jung, Memories, dreams and reflections

There. That is why I write. Something inside me, my inner god, compels me to write, to keep my ideas, the ideas of those others before me, alive. For those future ‘me’ to come. Wondering if we will break the cycle…

It is the music that writes. I don’t do anything. I just watch.

It has been one year since I started my blog. I just want to thank you all for reading, for sharing your thoughts, for walking with me.