LIFE A JOURNEY OF SELF DISCOVERY.

“To be acquainted with what is best and oldest in yourself, is to know yourself as you were, before the world was made, before you emerged into time.”

Henry Corbin

One of the questions that remember as a child, that frequently asked  myself, it was to wonder who I would become, once reaching adulthood, on my life journey

At the time ignoring, that at that point I was already setting, who in time, I will  turn to be,  as a result of my own early inquiry.

Just by the fact of posing the question, the signs were present, as we know, character its destiny.

I should add, that meanwhile my young friends  were enthusiastic, about becoming a policeman, a firefighter, or a pilot, myself even if playing and liking those rolls was not really sure that I may choose to be something so straightforward, and wondered if life would not have some more deeper nuance, than that?

Not knowing then, that the question already was working within my inner self, and my path has being decided, well before I knew it consciously.

Sometime before vaguely remember I wrote maybe on one of the many posts of my blog, that at an early age, I do not recall the exact time, a friend of us a few years older come into our house visiting us and telling about a philosophy class he had and repeating what he had learnt that day.

He quoted the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

They are the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. More simply put, suffering exists; it has a cause; it has an end; and it has a cause to bring about its end.

That moment was like a revelation to me on hearing those words, from that day on, I will question him about what he learnt  on his philosophy class, so I learned about the pre-Socratic Philosophers, then Socrates, and Plato, and I wanted to know everything about it, and will wonder when I will be able to grow up and be taking a philosophy class?

At the time maybe in fourth, or fifth grade at elementary school, couldn’t wait to be our friend’s age to be studying those issues.

From then, even if I played games of pretending with friends my age, I knew it was just pretense, and play, Philosophy would be my path.

And no, I didn’t wait until my time to take a philosophy class, when going into a bookstore will check books with titles about philosophy, or related themes, at our little town bookstore, (The town didn’t had a library) the owners a couple of elderly widows, would complain to my father about my purchases, and say something like this:

“Mr. Anaya, that child of yours come here buying books not proper, or suitable to his young age, he shouldn’t be readings such things, you better keep an eye on him.”

My father would laugh about it, well aware of my reading inclinations by that time.

My old bookstore now a prosaic bank.

Even if later on, he clipped my wings on going to college and study Philosophy, on the belief I would not be able to make a living out of it.

I do not blame him he probably was right at the time.

But that did not affected me, on my choice or reading materials, I kept at it.

Well now lets move forward to a few days ago.

Feeling a little depressed about myself, and the state of affairs of my current living, several things happened by chance, one, I did some lectures about subjects dear to me, over a year ago, someone took videos from it but didn’t uploaded them all, a few remained sort of lost.

Then someone call me and tell me those videos were finally uploaded, even now just over a year ago couldn’t remember too well what did I talk about it, so curious I watch myself on them, and  a sudden realization hit me.

I was looking at myself like the guy in my screen was not me, but someone else, a great Teacher of mine who I dreamt many years ago.

Yes, he had come into my dreams maybe a half a dozen of times, in critical, and unexpected moments through my life since I was 19, or so, then close to 40, and a little bit after 42, and a few times more since.

Yes I was looking at myself on the screen, but for the first time realizing my image, was the image of the man in my dreams, talking like I did on those videos.

Well, you all know looking at the mirror, we do not find who we are, but if you look at a picture, or a video, somehow you look different of what you see in the mirror, there is talk on the net about this phenomena but I will not go into it just saying It’s a sense that something about the photographed self seems unquantifiably different than the mirrored self. It’s in your head.

Other people, including photographers, don’t see this version of you. They see a version that you are rarely privy to, and that can seem wildly foreign to our ingrained sensibilities.

Well that shocked me, and picking up a couple of books at random,  went out to a café, and after seating with my coffee open the book and I read at the first page I open:

“Ibn ‘Arabi was and never ceased to be the disciple of an invisible master, a mysterious prophet figure to who a number of traditions, both significant and obscure, lend features which relate him, or tend to identify him, with Elijah, Saint George, and still others. Ibn ‘Arabi was above all the disciple of Khidr. (khadir)”

After several lines discoursing into something else he come back and says:

“The function of Khidr is to reveal each disciple to himself…He leads each disciple to his own theophany..because that theophany correspond to his own “inner heaven,” to the form of his own being, to his eternal individuality…Khidr mission consist in enabling you to attain to the Khidr of your own being.” for its in this inner depth in this “prophet of your being,” that springs the Water of Life.”

I sat there marveling at the synchronicity, first my shock at discovering my resemblance on the video to the one in my dreams, and then within a trip of some minutes and ordering my coffee, reading totally by chance those passages.

My early distress vanished like a momentary cloud on the horizon, and a feeling of wellbeing, and peace returned  into my heart.

A Gnostic quote reads as follow posted on  my post of August 2012  :

“Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, “My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.” Learn the sources of sorrow:, joy, love, hate . . . If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself.”

We are all blessed, but its to each of us to discover those blessings.