Transcend self, I cannot.
It is a curse, a vice, a sin,
You say.
Self is worthless,
An entity to be undermined,
Subdued, suppressed,
Choked to death.
Transcend beyond it
To the self of God,
You say.
Merge and fuse
With a million other selves;
faceless and disowned by themselves;
merge and drown in the moving jelly mass
of lost identities,
to become great.
In that clumsy inertia in worthlessness,
In destruction of uniqueness,
Lies salvation;
That is what you say…..
And O salvation!
It does not even lie in the mass
But beyond it,
Ever evasive.
Mortify your flesh,
Denounce your mind;
Create pain on pain
Until you forget
The distinction between
Pain and life.
Perhaps then,
Perhaps
You will almost reach
That elusive state….
You say this too.
And what of life?
You will find another,
Beyond the airy clouds,
But not unless you lose
The one you have,
In the abysmal darkness of misery;
For, in the brokenness of your being
Lies the unbroken wholeness
Of a Supreme Force.
Break yourself,
So it can break you some more;
And whine and plead and beg
To be made whole once more;
To crawl by the belly,
Into the deceptive,
Idle, lustful, parasitic existence
That you call Salvation.
You have said it over and over again
For centuries beyond memory;
Only in different voices,
Only in different guises,
To guileless minds
Upon guileless minds.
I have heard you all through.
I have seen power change hands
On just these words.
Yet, your salvation is not mine,
Pain and misery
Are not dear to me.
In willingness to beg and plead and crawl,
I see no glory;
Only weakness clinging to weakness.
Negation of the mind,
I do not covet.
My senses, my life,
My recognition of both,
Lies beyond your ‘Salvation’ lisping tongues.
Transcend self, you say.
Transcend self I shall not!