At the end of any spiritual journey - you will uncover a person who is deeply exhausted and taxed from life, from learning, from realizations - from everything. The fate of the seeker is not to find. The fate of the seeker is to become tired. To suffer a complete and total loss of purpose and meaning. This is a part of every man's journey. He must be made to understand that there is no such thing as finding without first becoming lost. Those of great spirit tend to inherit a sort of inner hollowness that comes with knowing a great deal of things. While, in the past, knowledge and curiosity had a filling and rejuvenating effect - now it will only overflow, and come with a great and sudden weight. All is rendered meaningless, devoid of fascination, and any need to share the profoundness of their knowing, or to profess their power, is lost. Life becomes a burden, for the void-abyss of knowing is vast, and having gained awareness of this vastness, the once-youthful seeker finds himself an empty vessel - in need of being filled. And, somewhere along this threshold, he will be presented with a crossroads of choices. He may choose to surrender to his emptiness - to the unknowable nature of being, or he may set out to dominate that emptiness - to fill it with new wants and needs, and emotions, and words, and logic, and complex calculations, and secret spells and incantations. The one who dabbles in these dark and desperate crevices of the self will unavoidably find himself needing to drain others for vitality, starved of self-fulfillment. Vampiric substrata will form, as unconscious behavioral programs, in the mind as a result of this newfound hunger. Otherwise, he will have no power to wield - no motivation to go through life as previous, for he will have become truly and finally empty. Within his being, the dark and ignorant night of his soul will have been made complete. Emotions burn brightly, and so do the fires of passion, but they do not burn for long, their fated end is to burn out. Today you might find yourself elated beyond measure, but that elation will eventually fade - with time - and reduce itself to nothing. That is why we find ourselves becoming less emotional with time and age - as emotions are a limited resource that both arise and fade quickly. At some point, these fires are bound to dim and fail - and their bearer will be left with nothing again, in an emptiness of their own making. Yes, there is firelight that consumes the very body it derives from, that requires stoking and deadwood. The awakened man, the spiritual seeker, understands that he is--and has always been--that stoking, the deadwood vessel in which principalities may arise and fall - his earthly body serving as the means through which ritual is made accessible to greater being. But, within that emptiness, he might also come to know that there is another fire - more subtle and dim - and one that can only be known when the burning tongues of all other passions have gone out. The undying light of conscience - ever-burning in its strength. And the secret soul of God, and the proof of each man's sacred destiny. And when man chooses to nurture this fire, to consume himself in its radiance, he invites a miracle to occur. He begins to know himself - and his long and arduous journey is made complete, for through that inner knowing, he has made his emptiness conscious. He is made full with not the second but the first light - the light of creation. He is no longer stoking nor deadwood. No longer an empty vessel. For he has bathed and filled himself with the glorious radiance of his own conscience. And he shines now without burning. And meaning and purpose find him once more. And his soul is made immortal. And the vessel may be cast away. But first it will be blessed with the fire of life, and made a home to gentleness and calm, so that others, for a time, may too dwell in its light. ![[IMG_5336.jpeg]]