In a corner of my memory, there is a magical place that I cherish with affection — the cinema in my hometown. I still remember the Sunday matinees, at a time when few families had televisions, and that was the moment awaited with great expectation and enthusiasm.
The audience was thrilled with the frenzy of restless and talkative children, and in all this excitement, candies and popcorn could not be missing, as everything was part of the great show.
Gently the ambient lights dimmed for the gigantic screen to light up. With our attentive eyes focused on it, we immersed ourselves in the luminous images, the sounds, the movements, the drama. We forgot where we were and who we were. We experienced each emotion with our entire body. We shouted, whistled, laughed, gestured and clapped, while our feet beat the rhythm of our hearts on the wooden floor and the back of the armchair in front of us. White popcorn thrown into the air was like snowflakes on a Christmas card. We were the pure emotion of a living innocence. We were children.
When the drama reached its end and the lamps came back on, illuminating the audience, still confused we rubbed our eyes and, little by little, we noticed ourselves, the seats, the screen, the cinema, while the elders informed us that the show had ended and it was time to return to our homes.
Today I contemplate these memories and mirror in them my own life—a matinee in an immemorial cinema. The anticipation of adventure completely captivates us all, and the concentrated focus of our attention on this dense dimension makes us forget who we are, where we came from, and why we came.
Immersed in the drama, we feel in our core the need to remember and even heal, and so we create paths and languages in the hope of one day waking up. We create art in all its forms and religions in all their variations; we sow therapies with each flash of our awakening; we invent virtual reality and an intelligence to guide and connect us. We create our own fractal with the purest and most genuine desire to exist.
And in the continuous flow of the lights, the audience is illuminated again and the screen is configured before our now enlarged gaze. We then clearly perceive the characters of the drama being staged and the child who watches it; we feel its innocence and the beating of its heart; and an immense compassion is born within us, the compassion of the Spirit that recognizes itself in the child playing, experiencing puerility in order to emerge from it in its wisdom, conscious of itself.
Now we see human creativity and spirituality from a new perspective, no longer as the longing for return, ascension or liberation, but as the opening or permission for the Spirit to be fulfilled, and for the child to dawn its day, illuminating its ground.
We are the projectionist with his projector, we are the child in the audience, we are the character in the drama in this ceaseless flow of lights through the densities of creation. Finally, my eyes rest on the simplicity of a pure intention, the intention to always remain sensitive and open to the sacred blessings of this mysterious and indelible flow.
December 09, 2024.
Maris. 