On the Edge of Awakening

I stood on the edge of a great abyss. I wanted to get to the otherside; in fact, I knew that crossing this chasm involved my whole purpose and reason for being. But crossing seemed impossible.

"How could one?" I asked. No one was around to answer. I was alone in this problem. At least it seemed that way: I, on the one side; my desire, on the other. "Has any man ever crossed such a wide birth?"

It was morning, a cloudless day. The early sun shown golden across the high desert air of the plateau across which I had spent the night. I felt warmed by the light, as if possibility was actually there on the otherside of hope.

All reason, all logic, all evidence however, pointed to impossibility. "There is no way," I muttered. and turned back from the precipice to look at the distance I had come. Behind me were miles of territory through which I had experienced every kind of human emotion from unbearable disappointment to unspeakable joy. I could have concluded standing there that all of life had been lived, that really, I had no more to find. I might have concluded the chasm was death, the end of the walk; but I could see much ground on the otherside and it bid me with it's green lushness, the verdure of life.

"No, this is not the end," I said. "I will find a way. A way exists; I know it."

I remembered the beginning so long ago. I, like others, had stood in the pre-dawn light and shivered with cold and fright, waiting for dawn to come. We were oppressed. We lived in darkness. We lived in fear and doubt. Many then believed there would be no dawn. They concluded that the light was false, an illusion from the heavens, an aurora perhaps dancing just over the horizon.

But I felt differently and I was not alone. Several weighed in to join me on the trek. "We'll go and meet the dawn," we proclaimed. We banded together struck out into the dark world crossing many treacherous places in search of the Awakening. Slowly, as fate would have it, our numbers dwindeld to few. Oh, we had days and daylight on that long path. We had not walked the whole way in darkness. We could see there as we see here. We could touch and feel and taste and smell. Though we trekked through spirit realms, our journey was as real as the physical to those of us who took it.

Some died, I think, in the journey. Some fell to vice. Some were overtaken. But in the last hours of the night preceding my arrival on the edge of this precipice, I had seen at least three who had come as far as I. Even as I looked back on the distance, I could feel them. I looked north and saw two walking away at some distance. I turned southward and saw one closer, standing on the edge. As I was about to hail, he sat down on a rock and put his hands to his eyes. He wept.

I took up stride to join him. I knew his emotion well. Perhaps, I could encourage him. He heard my steps and looked up as I approached. A smile passed over his countenance though his face reflected tears.

"Is this the dawn?" he asked, gesturing toward the chasm.

"No. It's morning. But this is not the end of our journey. This is not the Dawn of our Awakening. We must persevere."

"Do you suppose a way to cross exists?"

"That we cannot yet see? Yes. I suppose it does. How--I don't know. But we must not quit."

"We've come so far."

"Too far. We can't quit." In all the years of my walk, through all the searching and want and desire, I had carried hope in my heart that one day I would stand before the Glorious Light of God, that I would awaken to the Truth Within. "We cannot quit. This is only here to test us."