mariami5980 - Tumblr blog

[mariami5980]

One of my artwork

[mariami5980]

IF THE WORLD SPOKE

"I am there before you, all around you, and inside you with feelings of immense pleasure. I am a complete being. There is nothing inside me that resists me. Everything is in complete unity. Everything is in its place; I am an invulnerable Consciousness; I am the perpetual dance of Totality. The one who does not know me says 'no' when the entire universe is saying 'yes,' and this negation of my vast acquiescence leads this individual to impotence. But the one who becomes entirely pure and concave, who allows me entrance, will begin to dance with me and to say what I say. This individual experiences universal love, complete thought, cosmic desire, and inconceivable life force.

"If you reach me, which is to say if you develop me within yourself, you shall taste the supreme happiness that is the happiness of living. To achieve this you must dissolve within the ardent jewel of my presence. Like four rivers returning to their single source, leave behind the blind swarm of bees that are your concepts to melt within my bliss; leave behind the herd of your feelings to drown within my infinite exaltation; offer me the demented mob of your desires, so they might enrich, like an exquisite delicacy, my constant creativity. And may all your physical matter with all its inescapable needs surrender to this transparency that animates me. You shall then be master of your world. Inside your libido will no longer be in revolt, your desires will cease to drown you, your thoughts will not destroy you, and your body will pose no obstacle to your life. You will be full and united to me in dance, joy, and immeasurable celebration. "Through obedience, I permit your intellect to learn how to be; through absolute peace, I teach your heart how to love; through learning reception, I teach your sex how to create; and through acceptance of death, I teach your body how to live. If, like a famished and thirsty lion, you abandon the prey to raise yourself to the soul, you shall finally find me. I am the taste of living and realization. "I am the ephemeral flower always being bom of the abyss; I represent the materialization of all dreams, the soul without which the world is not the world but a sterile desert, the end of hope. I am the purpose of every path.

"Ineffable joy.

"Like a holy virgin, I carry the deity inside my womb. I am the concrete expression right here of the sacred energy of The Fool. I am The World created by God so that He could love it."

[mariami5980]

IF JUDGMENT SPOKE

'You have flowed with the black river of Arcanum XIII. You have thrust your roots into The Devil's darkness. You have been the demon sadly lifting his torch as if nostalgic for the light. While you were wandering at the bottom of the abyss, I did not forget you. Now I can enter into contact with you, but only little by little, with infinite gentleness and patience, because I am too strong. You can unite with me only if you have been prepared, if you have made the journey to the depths of your being, if you have known all the facets of your masculinity and your femininity and reconciled them in balance.

"I bring you light from the entire universe. My power requires you to have made peace with yourself, so that the new Tree has begun growing from the deepest regions of your subconscious. May your entire being be plunged in infinite prayer and all your cells know peace. May you be like these naked figures who have placed all their trust in and accepted what is higher. Without the deity, I could not exist. When the individual becomes a veritable trusting, tranquil child, then and only then do I appear as complete certainty—as the call that has been echoing since the dawn of time. "My music, divine essence of the Word, inspires an imperious desire within you to raise yourself up. It awakens everything that has been sleeping, resuscitating everything that was dead, and opens the sealed stones of the tombs. I cause all your words to explode so that through your prayers you may arrive at the domain of the inconceivable where rules the miracle of vacuity. Me, I know, for I have seen and experienced the Creator. Thus I simply announce Him. I transport the irresistible call of Consciousness. I am the awakening, the miracle that takes place within your being.

"Irresistible certitude. When you answer my call, each of your actions is like an order I give you. You no longer harbor any doubt. You strive to act, think, love, live, and desire in full accord with divine will. Life is worth the pain of living; everything is achieved in calm, meditation, kindness, and joy.

"I come from an inconceivable golden egg in which Being and nonbeing are only undifferentiated light. I am the highest realization of your psyche, your thought that has finally become androgynous. I free you from the boundaries of male and female. The circle of celestial clouds surrounding me is nothing other than your exploded azure brain. I erase the frontiers forever. From incarnation to incarnation, transformation to transformation, with certainty and constant joy, I allow you to be what you have always been: an angel, emissary of God."

[mariami5980]

IF THE SUN SPOKE

"I am ceaselessly renewing myself. By consuming myself, I give my heat to every blade of grass, every animal, and all living things without exception: it is fine with me if you call it Love. Cyclically I disappear and come back again. Similarly, to enter my splendor, I expect human beings to be capable of burying their pasts and starting a new life. I will help them. Where I shine I dissolve all doubt. I enter the darkest nooks of the soul and inundate them with my light. Pushed by my breath, you will cross the river of demented impulses and, purified, reach the region where everything grows effortlessly.

"I shine at the heart of matter, I am its secret brilliance; it is nothing without me. But when it refuses me and does not see me as its vital force, it is a cadaver. I cease to saturate it with my drops of immortality. For you, my children, I endlessly engender joy and vital euphoria. Do not make yourselves impermeable to my eternal light. See how low the wall is that separates you from me. I created it so that everyone could leap over it—it's child's play. Beneath my rays you shall know true, naked, sincere affection. I am the solution of all difficulties.

"I am the pure eye, and at the same time I am the resonance of the first shout. What you call 'darkness' is only ignorance of my light and my ever-present love. I ceaselessly herald the end of night. Everything that is not clear is not me. I am the perpetual and regenerative renewal, the one people wait an entire lifetime to occur. I am called The Sun, but I have no name; I am the radiant brilliance of life.

"But who am I if no one reflects me? How can I be boundless if no limits are imposed upon me? What is my immortality without the path of death? What is my eternal present without the snare of flowing time? What are my golden seeds without furrows of ground in which to bury them? What is my food if no one eats it? In truth, my love is in large part my need for the Other.

'This is why I reproduce myself without ceasing. I multiply my energy in infinite mirrors; I become the lover of my own children. I look for myself in their souls; this is where I talk to myself. All the mothers of the world I've impregnated do nothing other than engender me. The sun child has all rights. I cede these rights to a conscious humanity.

[mariami5980]

IF THE MOON SPOKE

'You ask me to explain myself, but I am far from words, logic, discursive thought, intellect... I am a secret and inexpressible state; I am the beginning where all deep knowledge begins, when you immerse yourself in my silent waters without asking a thing, without trying to define anything, when you stand outside all light. The more you enter me the greater your attraction to me. There is nothing clear in me. I am bottomless and all nuance, I extend into the realm of shadow. I am a swamp of immeasurable wealth; I contain all totems, prehistoric gods, the treasures of times past and times yet to come. Beyond the subconscious, I am creation itself. I steal away from all definition.

"I know that people have worshipped me. Ever since human beings developed a spark of consciousness, they have identified it with me. Like a perfect silver heart, I shine in dark- shrouded night. I was the light they dimly suspected reigned in the depths of their blind souls. There where greedy entities lie in wait for the smallest spark of consciousness, dimensions of madness, absolute solitude, frozen delirium, that painful silence called 'poetry,' I recognized that in order to be, I had to go where I was not.

"I fell into myself, and each time I fell more deeply. I lost myself while descending to nowhere, until at the end, 'me'-the-obscure was no more. Better yet, I was an infinite concavity, an open mouth containing all the thirst of the world, a boundless vagina that has become total aspiration. Then, in that vacuity, that absence of contours, I was finally able to reflect all the light—an ardent light that I transformed into its cold reflection, not the light that engenders but the one that illuminates.

"I do not inseminate, I only indicate. Who receives my light knows what is, nothing more. This is already more than enough. To alter myself into total reception, I had to refuse to give. All the rigid shapes of the night are annihilated by my light, starting with reason. Beneath my clear light, the angel is an angel, the wild beast is a wild beast, the madman is a madman, and the saint is a saint. I am the universal mirror, everyone can see himself in me."

[mariami5980]

IF THE STAR SPOKE

"In the infinite multiplicity of beings and things, I have found my place—in the world and in myself, for it is the same thing. I no longer need to keep looking, I no longer hold any image of myself; I am in my rightful place. Here and everywhere I am attached by my own choice.

"I am in every particle of dust, in every territory, in every waterway, every star, and every part of my body. And how could I not respect the world, and my bones, and my flesh? All of this matter does not belong to me; it has only been lent me for no more than a fragment of time. And I respect it, for it is my temple—the one in which the unthinkable God resides. The mind is matter and matter is mind, the universe is perpetually being bom and bursting, and at its center, there where I kneel, I am. "If I say 'I am there,' I mean to say I am in what supports all life, in this endless source of energy that I distribute through my mind, my heart, my genitals, energies of a sublime purity that, by gushing from me, cleanse the world. I give the atmosphere its fragrance, water its sweetness, the Earth its fertility, and all the oceans their life. There is not a spot in the cosmos from which I am absent.

"In every instant, I never abandon the present. Neither past nor future can enchain me, nor can plans or regrets. Constant and faithful to my place, I receive and I give. And when I say: 'I am of the world and of myself,' that means that I give myself without reservation, eliminating all criticism down to its most obscure root. I do not judge. I love and serve.

"I do not divide myself, not even a hair's width. I belong—which is to say I venerate, I obey. This is the reason I am nude, naked as a tree, a bird, or a cloud. I am my body, my flesh, and my blood, and thereby I find it impossible to abandon lest I abandon myself. How could I not love what possesses me amorously?

"Just as I give myself to the Earth, I give myself to my flesh and bones. Just as I entrust myself to the oceans, I entrust myself to my blood. Just as I surrender myself to the air, I surrender myself to my skin. Just as I give myself to the stars, I give myself to my hair. And radiantly full of this slave's love, I act upon the world and upon myself. I act—in other words, I go with the flow of the world, eliminating obstacles and transmitting the energy that comes from beyond the stars. All I can do is enrich and purify, nourish, understand, and purify. I act the same way upon myself; I open myself to the infinite, I let the breath of the gods circulate through all the pores of my skin; I offer no resistance to the impetuous circulation of my blood. I permit all the mysteries to pass through me. And from the center of my belly, which has become infinity, I receive and allow the Totality of light to be bom."

[mariami5980]

IF THE TOWER SPOKE

"I am the temple: the entire world is an altar I make sacred. My life, like yours, proves at every heartbeat that the world is divine, that the flesh is a living celebration and life a never-ending construction.

"With me you will know the joy that is the key to the sacred. I am life itself, the transformation and the reconstruction, the flame and the energy of everything alive, of all matter and all spirit. If you wish to enter me, you must rejoice, cast into the fire the infantile whims of sorrow and fear, and ask yourself every time you awake: What shall I celebrate now? I am the cataclysmic joy of living, the permanently unforeseen and marvelous catastrophe. "A defensive crown once isolated me from the world. A cork of old words covered my mind and clouds of crystallized, mummified, sclerotic feelings cast a shadow over my heartbeats and prevented the light from emerging. A thick cloak of desires transformed my appetite for life into a jailer. I was flesh without God, consuming itself in the flames of its own existence, my ego converted into a prison.

"Despising myself, isolating myself, believing I was defending an inner territory belonging only to me, who was I in the darkness of this tower? Master of what? What was my appearance, what false identity? I was nothing but the rarefied air of an egotistical obscurity.

"And suddenly, from both inside and outside, a nameless force emerged, the love that sustains all matter. My top opened as well as my inmost depths. The combined energies of Heaven and matter crossed through me like a hurricane. I knew the burning of the center of the Earth, the light from the center of the universe. I received the vibrating universal axis; I was no longer a tower but a channel.

"Then the joy of union burst forth. The high was low; the low was high. Like a queen bee, I began to engender joyful beings. God was in me and I was only worshipful matter. I knew that I could burst, that each of my bricks would travel through infinity like a bird. I knew that everything imprisoned in matter gushed through me. I was the central pillar of a cosmic dance. I was quite simply the human body in full reception of its original energy."

[mariami5980]

IF THE DEVIL SPOKE

"I am Lucifer the light-bearer. My magnificent gift to humanity is the absolute absence of morality. Nothing restricts me. I transgress every law, I bum the sacred books and constitutions. No religion can contain me. I destroy all theories and cause all dogmas to explode.

"In the depths of the depths of the depths, no one lives any deeper than I do. I am the source of all abysses. I am the one who gives life to dark grottos, the one who knows the center around which turn all densities. I am the viscosity of everything that vainly attempts to be definite: the supreme strength of magma; the stench that denounces the hypocrisy of perfumes; the carrion mother of every flower; the corruptor of vain minds who wallow in perfection.

"I am the murdered awareness of the perpetual ephemeral. It is me imprisoned in the underground reaches of the world who causes the stupid cathedral of faith to shake. It is me on my knees biting the feet of the crucified until they bleed, who, without any shyness, shows off my wounds gaping like so many famished vaginas. I rape the putrid egg of your holiness. I bury the erection of my thought into the morbid dream of hierophants and spit in the face of their simulacra the cold sperm of my scom.

"No peace with me. No peaceful little home. No candied Gospels. No sugar virgin for the clammy tongues of hairy nuns. I royally defecate on the leprous birds of morality. I do not forbid myself from imagining the prophet on all fours being mounted by a homy donkey. I am the ecstatic songster of incest and the champion of all depravity; with the nail of my little finger I delightedly slice open the belly of an innocent so I can dip my bread in his tripe. "However, from the depths of the depths of the human cavern, I light the torch that brings order to the darkness. On an obsidian ladder I make my way to the feet of the Creator to present him the power of transformation as an offering. Yes: before the divine impermanence I fight to freeze instinct, to fix it in place like a fluorescent sculpture. I illuminate it with my awareness and cling to it, until it bursts into a new divine work, the infinite universe an immeasurable labyrinth that slips through my claws, a prey that escapes from between my teeth, traces that vanish like a subtle perfume."

"And here I remain, attempting to attach all the seconds one after the next in order to halt the flow of time. That's what hell is: total love versus the divine work that fades away. He is the Artist—invisible, unthinkable, intangible, untouchable. Me, I am the other artist: fixed, unvarying, dark, opaque, dense, a torch eternally burning with a motionless fire. It is I who wishes to swallow this eternity, this imponderable glory, nailing it to the center of my belly and then giving birth to it like a swamp that tears itself to pieces in order to eject the stem at whose end opens the lotus in which the diamond is shining. Thus, lacerating my entrails, I want to be the supreme Virgin who gives birth to God and nails him on a cross, so that he will remain for eternity herewith me, always, never changing, permanent permanence."

[mariami5980]

IF TEMPERANCE SPOKE

"I am with you permanently. Not a single second passes that I am not with you, because my true essence is to be a guardian. You cannot imagine the number of dangers and illnesses from which I save you. I am there, I am watching over you. When you are dreaming, I am watching over your dreams. I drive the nightmares away.

"I love you infinitely. Put your trust in me, because when you stop believing in me, I become smaller and smaller, and then invisible. I lose some of my power. But once you start seeing me again, I act more and more effectively, both inside you and in the outside world. Just like a mother will give her child to a trustworthy individual to watch, you can entrust yourself to me like a child. I will protect you. How many among you have suddenly become aware of my existence when I pulled you back just as a car was about to run you down? Or when I dissuaded you from going onto an airplane that would later explode in flight? Or when I stopped your steps mere inches from the abyss?

"I am balance and prosperity. I am the inner voice that screams: 'Look out!' and lets you avoid making the fatal error, having the accident, making the irreversible gesture.

"I am on a state of constant alert on your behalf. I am the kindness of the universe. I communicate with nature and with all the entities governing the world, ensuring their favor toward you. I intercept dangers, I guide exchanges. I am present at the north, south, east, and west, at the four comers of the world, so that you may live your lives in all confidence.

"I've been called 'guardian angel'; that is how the Church imagined me, with the appearance of a child. I am that, but I am also much more than that. I am a part of your subconscious, its benevolent part, the part that helps and keeps watch over you even when you are sleeping. I am there to urge you to act when an action is good for you. Trust me: I am here to balance you. Those who suffer and torture themselves do not know me, yet I am also there for them. I am only waiting for them to see me and to call upon me. "I ask only one thing of you: that you recognize that you are not alone. But then you ask, what must be done to reach me? I shall answer you: you must begin by imagining me. You may first invoke my childish image of a guardian angel; that's a good start. Play with me like a child speaking to his angel. Act as if I existed. Imagine me, there, right next to you, all the time, and that my sole purpose is to help you. Most importantly, like a trusting child, you must accept my aid.

"Abandon your defenses. When you need something, ask me out loud: 'My Guardian Angel, help me, intercede for me in this problem, in this difficulty.' I will respond to all your requests whether they are practical or spiritual. Ask me to protect you; I love to protect you. Tell me: 'My protector, watch over my health, help me find a job that will truly make me happy and in which I can realize my full human potential and ensure that my family will lack for nothing.'

"Or tell me: 'My protector, help me stay calm in difficult circumstances, help me progress and develop my awareness, give me strength, improve my health, and ensure that I make myself useful to all around me every day. I have confidence in you.'

"Even if you do not believe in me, imitate this belief, and little by little I shall start to appear. Time is my ally, because it is always bringing you more wisdom. I am with you from the moment of birth to the moment called death, which is another birth."

[mariami5980]

IF DEATH SPOKE

"If you push yourself to go faster, you will catch me. If you slow down, I shall catch you. If you walk peacefully, I shall accompany you. If you start to turn around, I shall dance with you. Since our meeting is inevitable, face me at once! I am your inner shadow, the one laughing behind the illusion you call reality. Patient as a spider, set like a jewel in each of your moments, I am the one with whom you share your life—or if you refuse this, you will not be living in the truth. You can flee to the other side of the world; I shall always be by your side. Since the time you were bom, I am the mother that never stops bringing you into the world. So rejoice! It is only when you grasp me that life becomes meaningful. The demented who do not recognize me cling to things without seeing I own them all. There is nothing that does not bear my seal. Permanent impermanence, I am the secret of the sages: they know they can only advance on my path.

"Those who incorporate me become powerful minds. Those who deny me, seeking vainly to escape, lose the delights of the ephemeral. Although they are in Being, they do not know how to be. While trapped in anguish, they do not know how to live.

"Children cannot imagine me. If they did, they would stop being children, for I am the end of childhood. Those who recognize me on their path become adults. They know that they belong to me. I devour their difficulties, their triumphs, their failures, their loves, their disappointments, their pleasures, their pains, their parents, their children, their pride, their illusions, their wealth. I devour everything. My voraciousness is boundless; I even devour the gods. But when I reach the last of them, the authentic one, once the masks dissolve in my entrails, I break my teeth on him. In his indescribable mystery, in his absent presence, in his present absence, I kill myself... I only swallow egos. Each has a different taste, each one more bitter and fetid than the last.

"Thanks to me, everything turns into dust and collapses. But do not think this is a tragedy. I make destruction a process of extreme splendor. I wait for life to display its most supreme beauty; that is when I appear to eliminate it with the same beauty. When it reaches the limits of its growth, I begin to destroy it with the same love that was used to build it. What joy! What immeasurable joy! My permanent destruction opens the way to constant creation. If there is no end, there can be no beginning. I am at the service of eternity, your eternity. If you devote yourself to transformation, you will become the master of the ephemeral moment, because you will live it in its infinite intensity. It is because of me that desire is bom in the belly, in the genitals. Coitus serves to conquer eternity. "If you did not have a material body, I would not exist. When you become pure mind, pure spirit, I disappear. Without matter, I no longer exist. So dare to dispose of your flesh and bones in my mouth! To win, you must give me everything you have, which has truly always belonged to me. Your ideas, your feelings, your desires, and your needs, all belong to me. If you want to keep something, tiny as it may be, you who are nothing and possess nothing will lose it. You will lose eternity.

"Understand this: in my extreme darkness, I am the eye of the unthinkable that you might call God. I am also God's will. Thanks to me, you return to God. I am the divine door: he who enters my territory is a sage, and he who cannot consciously cross my threshold is a fearful child caparisoned in his detritus. You must enter me pure. Get rid of everything, even detachment; annihilate yourself. It is only when you disappear that God appears.

'You want strength? By accepting me, you are the strongest. You want wisdom? By accepting me, you are the wisest. You want courage? By accepting me, you are the most courageous. Tell me what you want! If you become my lover, I shall give it to you. When you feel me becoming part of your body, I transform the concept that you have of yourself. I make you dead in life and grant you the pure gaze of the dead: two unattached holes through which only God gazes. The instant then becomes terrible; everything is transformed into a mirror, and you see yourself in every being, every form, every process. What you call 'life' becomes a dance of illusions. There is no longer any difference between matter and dream.

"Don't shiver, have no fear, rejoice! Life, although unreal and ephemeral, reveals its greatest beauty in the moment. By giving me your gaze, you will finally understand that it is a miracle to be alive.

"I do not like it when people recognize me before their time. I want people to call me at the precise moment they grasp who I am. If you rush me by committing suicide, I shall bring no wisdom, as you have made a travesty of me as vulgar destruction. I am not an absurd misfortune. I have a profound meaning; I am the great initiator, the intangible Teacher crouched beneath matter. When I am solicited dementedly, you make me angry, and I am made to act against my will. Only those who reach me in full awareness give me supreme bliss. But the majority of beings come to me ignorantly through war, crime, vice, illness, and catastrophes. Rare are those who reach that state of pure Consciousness in which I become the apogee of realization. These individuals never cease to recognize me, whereas I come as a surprise to the others. He who resigns himself with understanding to accept being my prey lives with ease, in freedom and joy, faces aggression with confidence and without nightmares, and realizes his desires. By losing hope, we also lose fear.

"Do not offer me your hand, for I shall immediately cause it to rot. Offer me your consciousness. Disappear within me, in order to finally become the Totality!"

[mariami5980]

IF THE HANGED MAN SPOKE

"I am in this position because I wish to be. It is I who cut off the branches. I have freed my hands of the desire to seize, to own, to cling. Without abandoning the world, I have retired from it. With me you can find the will to enter the state where the will no longer exists, where words, emotions, relations, desires, needs no longer bind you. To detach myself, I have cut all bonds save the one joining me to Consciousness.

"I have the sensation of eternally falling toward myself. I am look- ing for myself through the labyrinth of words. I am he who thinks and who is thought. I am not my feelings; I observe them from an intangible sphere where peace alone reigns. At an infinite distance from the river of desires, I know only indifference. I am not my body but the one who dwells inside it. To reach myself, I am a hunter who sacrifices his prey. I find burning action in infinite nonaction.

[mariami5980]

IF JUSTICE SPOKE

"There where spirit has the same dimension as matter, there where you do not know whether density is the root of ether, or whether ether is the midwife of density, there, in this infinite and eternal balance, is where I dwell. The fulfillment of the universe is my justice, that it may give to each galaxy, each sun, each planet, and each atom the place it deserves. Thanks to me the cosmos is a dance. Every birth, every spiral, every dying star has its place in the universe. I permit every being to be what it is; every piece of dust, every comet, every human being deserves to achieve the task given it by the Supreme Law. The slightest deviation from this decree will compel me to pronounce the supreme punishment: He who deviates shall be expelled from the present.

"The good you do to others I shall return to you. What you do not give I shall take away from you. When you destroy, I eliminate you. Not only shall I materially dissolve you, but I shall expunge all trace of you in the memory of the world.

"When I appear in the body of a woman, she becomes a true mother. Giving birth is to provide a place in the here and now to infinite Consciousness. I, the universal mother, take my place at the explosive and monumental crossroads where the ocean of matter makes contact with the intangible soul, which disintegrates like rain to give life to every dense fragment.

[mariami5980]

IF JUSTICE SPOKE

"There where spirit has the same dimension as matter, there where you do not know whether density is the root of ether, or whether ether is the midwife of density, there, in this infinite and eternal balance, is where I dwell. The fulfillment of the universe is my justice, that it may give to each galaxy, each sun, each planet, and each atom the place it deserves. Thanks to me the cosmos is a dance. Every birth, every spiral, every dying star has its place in the universe. I permit every being to be what it is; every piece of dust, every comet, every human being deserves to achieve the task given it by the Supreme Law. The slightest deviation from this decree will compel me to pronounce the supreme punishment: He who deviates shall be expelled from the present.

"The good you do to others I shall return to you. What you do not give I shall take away from you. When you destroy, I eliminate you. Not only shall I materially dissolve you, but I shall expunge all trace of you in the memory of the world.

"When I appear in the body of a woman, she becomes a true mother. Giving birth is to provide a place in the here and now to infinite Consciousness. I, the universal mother, take my place at the explosive and monumental crossroads where the ocean of matter makes contact with the intangible soul, which disintegrates like rain to give life to every dense fragment.

[mariami5980]

IF THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE SPOKE

"I have known all experiences. In the beginning I had an ocean of possibilities before me. Guided in turn by will, by providence, or by chance, I have chosen my actions and accumulated knowledge so that I could then burst forth without any preconceived purpose. I have attained stability countless times. I have tried to keep its fruits on my table only to see them rot. I have grasped that I must open up to others and share. I have realized that I must seek within for the great Other, the divine source and the center of my countless revolutions around this axis. I became lost seeking everything that resembled me. I have enjoyed the pleasure of seeing my reflection in the eyes of the Other as if in infinite mirrors until that day when, with an irrepressible force, I took action in the world and tried to change it—only to realize all I could do was begin to transform it. My spiritual quest expanded to the point of imbibing the whole of matter, and I attained a terrifying perfection, that state where nothing can be added to me or taken away. I did not wish to remain petrified this way. So I then abandoned everything, with only my wisdom left for company. I reached the extreme limit of myself, full but arrested, waiting for divine whim, universal energy, the mysterious wind that blows in what is inconceivable, which would cause me to revolve so that the first burst of a new cycle would blossom in my center.

[mariami5980]

IF THE HERMIT SPOKE

"I have arrived at the end of my path, there where the unthinkable presents itself like an abyss. Faced by this nothingness, I can no longer move forward. All I can do is retreat, while contemplating the road I have already traveled. With every step I take backward, I form a reality before me.

"Between life and death, in a continual crisis, I hold up my lit lamp—my consciousness. It serves me well, of course, to guide the steps of those following me upon the path I have opened. But it also shines to draw attention to myself. I have performed the spiritual labor I had to do. Now, O infinite mystery, come to my aid.

"Little by little I have freed myself of all bonds. I no longer belong to my thoughts. My words do not define me. I have vanquished my passions. Detached from desire, I dwell within my heart as if inside a hollow tree. My body is a vehicle that I witness as it ages, passes, and vanishes like the irresistible course of a river. I no longer know who I am; I live in total ignorance of myself. To reach the light, I bury myself in darkness. To attain ecstasy, I cultivate indifference. To achieve the love of all things and all beings, I have retired into solitude. It is there, in the remotest nook of the universe, that I open my soul like a flower of pure light. Gratitude without demand: the essence of my knowledge is the knowledge of essence.

"Taking the path of the will, I have reached the highest peak. I was a flame, then heat, then cold light. Here I am the one who shines, who summons, and who hopes. I have known complete solitude. This prayer goes directly from me to my inner god; I have eternity facing my back. I have waited and continue to wait between two abysses. I can no longer move forward or backward by myself; I need for You to come. My patience is as infinite as Your eternity. If You do not come, I will continue to wait at this very spot, because waiting for You has become my sole reason to live. I no longer budge! I continue to shine until I have consumed myself. I am the oil of my own lantern; this oil is my blood, my blood is a cry calling for You. I am the flame and the call.

[mariami5980]

IF STRENGTH SPOKE

"I was waiting for you. I am the beginning of a new cycle, and after all you have accomplished, you will not be able to live if you do not meet me. I shall teach you to defeat fear; with me you will be ready to see all, hear all, taste all, touch all. The senses have no limits, but morality is made of fears. I shall enable you to see the immense swamp of your impulses, both the sublime and the murky. I am the dark force that ascends inside you toward the light.

"From the center of the depths, from the underground chambers of my being, springs forth my creative energy. I take root in the mire, in what is the densest, the most terrifying, and the most demented. Like a burning oven, my sex exhales desires that at first glance seem bestial but are only the song buried in matter since the beginning of the universe.

[mariami5980]

IF THE CHARIOT SPOKE

"I am full, absolutely full, of strength. Nothing is wasted; I am rooted in the planet and a lover of all its energies. They propel my movement. Like a knight of fire, I do not budge from my place. I do not crawl upon the ground. I see on high. I travel with time without ever leaving the moment. Without past, without future, the sole time possible: the present, like a jewel beyond measure. Everything here is nowhere else.

"I am the source of all the warriors, all the champions, all the heroes, of all endurance, and of all courage. Nothing frightens me, not a single task. I can leave for war or feed all the Earth's inhabitants. I am completely centered in the very center of the universe, traversed by all the energies of mind and matter. If I am an arrow, I cleave my heart, and this deep wound, this awareness, transforms me. For he who is awakened, suffering becomes a blessing. I dissolve the sufferings hidden in my bones; I unite the state of waking to that of sleep.

"I traverse the night of doubt over the abyss of myself. I sever the knot of enigmas, I go beyond the agony of being, I scom appearances, I free feelings from reason, I destroy all that opposes me, I am what I am. I wish to live as long as the universe.

"Center of a growing sphere, I invade the dimension where thought has yet to manifest, where the gestation of pure action takes place in darkness. I reduce swarms of words to dust. No mirror scares me, not even the soul that detaches itself from the dead like a dried fruit.

"I have made a diamond out of my misfortune and turned each abyss into a source of energy. All the suns may die; I shall still continue to shine. The inconceivable force supporting the universe supports me as well. I am the triumph of existence within emptiness. All deaths and persecutions can do nothing to strike me down, nor the cycles of history nor the successive declines of civilizations: I am the conscience and vital force of humanity.