To live based on what is necessary is to live in the desert…

The desert leaves the traveller without the diversion of the senses. There is nothing striking to look at, nothing striking to listen to; only a uniform immensity appears, and so we lose the variety that simulates intensity. At first the desert is boring. Unable to entertain ourselves outside, the mind plunges into its own affairs.

And this may not be boring, but it is frightening. We begin to go through the shelves of memory, covered with fears, shelves full of memories that burn or hurt or bewilder; everything that has not been pacified appears as a noisy tumult. The shadows emerge. Here the road forks: shall I drink from fantasies to calm myself, or shall I cross this ghostly realm?

Nothing is as necessary as the pure water of truth. It tastes of nothing particularly remarkable, and yet it fills us with life. Water in the desert… as necessary as inner truth. In the end, it is the only path to freedom. To leave behind false hopes, old illusions, vain cares; to ask for the courage to meet face to face, alone with you… (to be continued)

“He found him in a desert land, in a solitude full of howling; he surrounded him, caring for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.” Deuteronomy 32:10 *

*The biblical quotation was taken from the “Biblia del Peregrino”, translated by Luis Alonso Schökel.

elsantonombre.org