My greatest struggle of flesh is with pride and lust. For years I have put myself above others, thinking that I know all there is to know, or at least that my intellectual path was at the right direction, and just because those who differed in their opinions could not express themselves as well as I, I thought they were farther away from the truth. For years has my mind entertained perverse ideas and actions to please the flesh, even knowing well its vanity, I still entertained those desires. I fall for those sins as if I don't know they bring me nothing, but momentary pleasures and distractions. At the end of every fall I could see I headed nowhere; that I had nothing and there was no one to help me. Empty, and conscious.
The truth is always humbling, when one encounters it. Whether one recognizes it or not. For someone who maintained an illusion of an intellectual, I failed to recognize this thin veil of time that I put between myself and the my death. The more I got intrigued by and studied the human mind, throughout the years I realized how little we know of anything. This convictions that some trivial scientific evidences give us is nothing short of faith. And as any true skepticism collapses into itself, I started doubting my sense of reason. This eventually lead me to a realization that I might die never knowing the truth. The truth of how it came to be that I am conscious. The greatest miracle and, in fact, all that I have and know for certain — that I am — would at some point cease; that whether there was God, afterlife, or eternal nothingness, my current state of being would no longer be; that quarter, perhaps even the third of my life has already passed in ignorance, within a blink of an eye. There I laid in the middle of the night thinking over where I am, where I have been and what I have achieved, yet I am completely helpless and ignorant, while death is right there before me, behind this thin veil of time that concealed it due to me being distracted by the world, the flesh. Shortly after I had given in to lust, with the mind that was tired yet clear, no longer drunk with desire, it crept up on me, like the nights before but with much greater clarity then ever before. There I realized that I am nobody. I have nothing (but my consciousness), but everything to loose.
And here I still am. Just as oblivious, engaging in the same distractions as I was before, and still unable to sleep some nights, for between falling asleep and waking up I realize the state I'm going to be in for eternity.
I am still hopeful, even though I do not know. I feel like the truth is right there before me and I am still blind to it. This is the first step I take to move away from the distractions of the flesh, even if for a short while, to reflect on my steps towards finding the truth. It is a shame that I am still pursuing the world and its temporal rewards, knowing full well how hollow its fruits are. I play along the role everyone expects me to play for I do not know how else to be, and I cannot find it in myself to hurt them. But I found that even distractions do not last, and in between I see the inevitable. I will no longer hide from it.
So I will write.