The Thought That Lingers: Part Seven

The thought that lingers, will not rest,
of man, and of man’s true nature.
Man outwards bent, resisting inwards,
the source of his true nature.

Not finding  clarity without,
man fears turning inwards towards Self;
the healing  Self he must encounter,
and yet he willfully avoids.

What man fears most must be his thoughts;
thoughts that are intrusions to his mind;
sober thoughts that seem quite threatening,
their source unknown to thinking man.

Without thoughts man has no conscience,
no science or philosophy;
no mathematics for him to measure
the scope of his intelligence.

Man is a dreamer, and so must dream;
create a world, a universe
within himself; even greater than himself;
an artist whose canvas is his own mind.

This is the nature of modern man.
This is the nature of all mankind.
Freedom-loving  man enslaving man;
caught in the Betwixt and the Between.

This is the man we now examine;
man of dreams and man of thought.
Man questioning his very nature;
perplexed by his own existence.

Is all life nothing but a dream,
our dreaming man does ask;
or is the thinking, dreaming man,
the product of his own dreams.

By his dreams man creates wonders,
numerous in quantity;
spinning tales of great imagination;
tales of marvelous  inventions.

Is this vast universe of ours,
the moon and all the stars;
the planets that we know,
all energies of our private thoughts?

From where do these thoughts come?
What force has placed them here?
Are we the architects of our thoughts
that we ourselves cannot comprehend?

The thought that lingers is, in deed,
unbridled golden thought;
their source beyond our personal thoughts;
from some forbidden Tree of Knowledge.

We are forever pursuing
that which we deem we’ve lost.
We make it thus our driven goal
of returning to where we came from.

For this we have our rituals,
our myriad celebrations;
our religious homages of faith;
to return us to that place of origin.

Perpetually lost to knowing Self,
we fashion histories with no beginnings;
creating myths to fill blank spaces;
about who we are, and where we came from.

Reflecting, man bemoaning his fate,
dwells on the acts of his cogitation.
No longer reptilian beast, he strives
in nature to be God-like.

A thinking animal must think.
A thinking man must meditate;
must see beyond his fertile thoughts;
must see what is the probable.

A thinking man must conjure what could be;
must reconstruct beyond  his legacy,
where ontogeny recapitulates
his envelope of phylogeny.

So modern man  strives to evolve
beyond what nature offers;
providing him the impetus
to move from imp to man.

How wise then is this modern man,
evolved from primeval cave?
How vast is his new-formed knowledge?
How sensible is his mind?

Man passes on with sleight of hand
his new-found source of knowledge;
gleaned from his technology
transforming him into a machine-god.

This wizened man now roams the earth,
the continents and their oceans;
enlightened by his new-found world,
where his technology abounds.

And so this gifted creature, man,
by crafted tools and speech,
ascends his newly cultured throne,
enamored of his mind.

This mechanical modern man
by science and technology wrought,
his thoughts presumed empirical,
admiring his universe of sophistry.

Technology is modern man’s new toy
by which his intellect is oiled;
with schemes of immortality
as modern robotic machine-man.

His new map is the Internet;
used as his modern Super Highway.
The web on which he telegraphs
is encoded with cryptic platform messages.

And so man glows with fantasies
of being übermensch;
poised now to climb Jacob’s Ladder
and ascend to the highest heaven.

Man pursues his new beginnings
with lofty dreams of his ascension;
of conquering new worlds in space;
the galaxies and beyond.

With astronaut’s wings man reaches out,
ever pointing upwards;
upwards and outwards to the skies;
towards distant galaxies.

Like Phaeton in his chariot,
a warrior mightily driven,
modern man strives to be a god;
a master of the stars.

Foolish gods do not know limits.
Hubris governs them.
Like youthful Oedipus of Thebes,
they envy that which gives them birth.

A royal prince of the material,
foolish man strives to be king of all.
Ruled once by nature,
he now must seek to rule all nature.

Is this prize now the ultimate
that satisfies man’s appetite;
or is there something  more sinister
that modern man strives after?

For man cannot be satisfied,
He wants to have it all.
He wants that of which he knows not;
ironically, his very source of being.

The search within brings recompense.
It is the search for soul.
The search in outer space brings hope.
The search within fulfills that hope.

Man straddles two different worlds.
Those of the Betwixt and the Between.
Man is like a snake biting its own tail.
Modern man as an Ouroboros.

This ouroboros dance of modern man
is archetypal in its nature;
unending dance without completion,
for the wholeness sought is never found.

In such a labyrinth finds modern man;
Self-knowledge ever eluding him.
The more he seeks, the less he finds;
not ever searching inwardly.

And so man travels on in time,
a neophyte modern übermensch.
In spite of outward exploration,
he finds himself in quandary of his nature.

The thought that lingers never rests
of fearless man with reptilian brain.
Forging ever forward, outwards;
more fearful of exploring bravely; inwards.