Love and Egoism: Human Limitations Part One

Night Fire: Love and Egoism: Human Limitations Part One

For every soul that wanders freely throughout the non-material world, the reincarnation represents the greatest challenge that the becoming presents to existence. The situation of the being that is born is, in reality, like the situation of the being that dies. "The individual that is born dies from the world of the dead, and the individual that dies is born in the world of the dead." So is the initiatic teachings in Africa. The two worlds represent a great challenge that our souls encounter considering that our aspirations as living beings on Earth are not necessarily the same aspirations as souls freed from the material that they have inhabited on Earth. The values we establish on Earth, like material wealth and emotional attachments have their boundaries. The edge of the tomb also represents the limits of our Earthly attachments. When the body is buried in the hole, the soul goes freely with no remorse and continues its cycle of becoming in the domain that is different from the becoming of the matter. 

This is a sad spiritual reality that hits our tendency to confuse the naive beauties of our dreams and the realities of the existence that transforms. The story I'm going to tell is millennia old, but it continues to bring light on the great distance that exists between the greatness of our dreams and aspirations and the fragility of our genesis as living beings. Life is nothing but a fragile balance between intelligences and groups of intelligences. 

A lot has been said about the Pharaoh Akenaton, his artistic revolution and especially his creation and introduction of monotheism. The modern archeology and what we call Egyptology will tell us a lot about him, his creation of the city of the sun, his will to reunify all the  religions into one...etc., but for us, it is what happened after the death of Akenaton that retains our attention, because we know that the whole humanity can draw lessons from it.

Akenaton was a Pharaoh that never stopped intriguing priests and all members of his court. At one moment he was nicknamed "The Crazy Pharaoh". He was not particularly athletic and was suffering from diverse physical handicaps. It is said that he was the crazy being that was not measuring the consequences of his decisions... What attracted the attention of people was the devotion and love that was shown by his first wife, the Queen Nefertiti. It is said that her passion and love towards Akenaton had no equal. Queen Nefertiti would fight every idea that reminded her of the fragility of anything that exists. One day, in the temple of Aten (Temple of the Sun), she announced that she was accepting that everything that lives under the sun transforms except her and love for Akenaton, the son of the sun. The new priests of Aten announced that she must have become as crazy as her husband. 

One day the inevitable happened: the Pharaoh died. The priests decreed 90 days of mourning. The Queen Nefertiti stayed by her husband even during the preparation and embalmment of Akenaton. She did not leave his body and refused to listen to anything the priests were saying to console her. The Queen even became part of the royal criers that were accompanying the body the of the Pharaoh to his tomb. After the burial of Akenaton by the Nile River, the Queen refused to return home. She announced to everybody that she will sit by the tomb of her husband until the day death will come for her so she can join paralyzed by a curse thrown on him by him. "Here is my place," she said. "The his competitors the day of his election as day the Nile will change its bed will be a Pharaoh. Intelligent? Ingenious? the day I will leave the tomb of my Courageous? Talented? He was all of husband." she vowed. The priests came these things, but for the priests, he was to her and said, "But the Nile did not change its bed for the last 150,000 years." "This means I will stay here until my last day!" she answered vehemently. 

The Queen Nefertiti kept the admiration and respect of the whole humanity. She became the perfect example of love, attachment and devotion that every individual expects   from their partner. The history of the Queen Nefertiti and the Pharaoh Akenaton was the touchable example of love that transcends the frontiers of death in humans. For the first time, humans have crossed the boundary imposed on them by the fragility of their nature. 

Months passed, then years. One day, the wife of a priest realized that she did not have enough water in her pot, and the sun was setting. She then decided to run to the river and fetch some water before her husband returned from the temple. While she was fetching water, her daydream was interrupted by a big noise; first she thought a crocodile had plunged in the river. But when she lifted her eyes, she saw a silhouette of a woman pushing big rocks in the river. It didn't take a lot of time before she realized it was the Queen. What was she doing? Why was she pushing rocks in the river? Troubled by what she had just seen, the woman walked slowly towards her house. 

When she reached her house she saw her husband calmly chatting with a colleague he has invited for dinner. The preoccupied attitude of the woman did not escape the vigilance of her husband: "What happened? Why do I see sadness on your face?" asked the  husband. "The perfect woman, the ideal woman... the woman that said she would not leave the tomb of her husband until the day the Nile changes its bed, the wife of Akenaton, I just saw her pushing big rocks in the river! I just saw her trying to help the river change its course!" she said.

The two priests were not totally surprised. "Everything that exists is nothing but one of the faces of the becoming of Khepra, the God of Transformation," answered the two priests in unison before they returned to their conversation.

There is no love that transcends human nature. Maybe it is the spiritual honesty that will lead us into accepting that we do not love the other because of them, but we love the other because of ourselves. This is why we must be thankful to those we love. We love the other only for what we feel in their presence; and it is the search for the same feeling that is pushing us toward attachment to those we love. Love, before anything, is an egoistic act. It is by recognizing this fact honestly that we will understand what we owe to those we love so that we can help them have the same sentiments towards us. 

PART TWO 

Whatever is our belief and ideology, we should try to understand this shocking reality: love, in its essence, is an egoistic act! We do not love the other because of them, but because of what we feel in their presence. Every time we tell somebody that we love them, what we are really telling them is that something in him or her triggers in us feelings of security, compassion, accompliceness, etc. We do not love the other for themselves. It is by recognizing that fact that we realize the greatness of what we owe to those we love. This is why we easily destroy our relationships by expecting from our lovers acts and behaviors that are not necessarily a part of what they are. On this level already, the spiritual dishonesty of the one that loves pushes them into ignoring the most important aspect of their love: the fact that the person we love exists. 

The whole city of the sun, or Akhet-Aten, was shocked to learn the behavior of the Queen Nefertiti. She was the one that people were preparing to deify for the strength of her love for Akenaton. It is not old news to see men and women that are seriously affected by the death of their partner; some of them cried the death of their partner for years and then went to find the lost comfort in the hands of another person and slowly rebuilt their life. But Nefertiti said she would sit by the tomb of her husband for the rest of her life and will only leave that tomb the day the Nile changes its bed. Nobody had ever taken this kind of decision throughout the whole history of humanity. But the wife of the priest saw her trying to put big rocks in the river, and one does not place rocks in the river unless one wants to force the water to change its bed. 

Neferitti, the Queen that was once admired by all of the women for the love she had for her husband, suddenly became the symbol of the frustration of the whole humanity in front of the difficult task that is presented by the transcendental love. One should say that from all the entire population of the city of the sun, the male gender appears to be the one that was not too affected by the acts of Nefertiti. It is the women, yes, the women; these people in whom we see the finesse and the non-savage fragility of humanity, always hanging on a dream of a possible love between the mortals. They received the news like a dagger in the heart. 

For many days, the priest observed that his wife was not in a good mood at all. She was crying hot tears every time she found herself alone. And when her husband, returning from the temple, found her in that state, he was never pleased. One day he asked her what was her problem. In a sort of contained anger, she said, "The ideal woman; the one to which all the men compared us with, the one that knows how to love more than any other woman, found herself trying to change the bed of the river! And you think that all this is normal? No. You owe us an apology." And then she continued after a deep breath, "All the men must apologize to their wives for placing Nefertiti above the other women!" The priest, after a long moment of silence, replied, "I'm not blaming other women. The truth is, there is a limit that our human nature does not allow us to transcend. What do we do if the person we love dies..." "We should die too. We should kill ourselves so that we can continue our love in the other world!" his wife cut in. The priest hesitated for a moment, and then he murmured, "We will see..." and then his wife continued, "Yes, we will see. All the women of this earth are better than Nefertiti; those who killed themselves at the death of their husband; those who stayed alive so that they could take care of the children, those who perpetuated the memory of their husband and those who continued the presentation of the offerings to the soul of their husband." 

Days passed by, and the priest decided to test his wife. His friends agreed to help him. 

One day the friend of the priest came to the priests house crying hot tears. He found the priests wife cooking the evening dinner. He came and fell by her feet, crying, "Madam, your husband. He just died in the temple," he said between whimpers. The priest's wife received the words like thunder. She started running towards the temple, crying and covering herself with dust. In the temple, the body of her husband was presented to her, but he was already covered with a shroud and was ready to be sent to the house of life, meaning the place where bodies are embalmed. Not knowing that her husband was only playing dead, she sat by the body and cried for a long time how her life was not worth anything and how she loved her husband. The priest's friends came and helped her return home. When she got home, the friend of the husband offered to spend the night there to help them during this difficult moment. He stayed for days, telling her sweet words and encouraging her to stay strong: "Madam, know that you are not alone. I will be by your side. I know that your dead husband would like to see you happy. I will do all that is possible to help you, even if I must stay in your house for the rest of my life." The wife thanked him for his kindness. 

One month later, the priest's friend asked the priest's wife to marry him. He told her that it was about time she start thinking of the future. The wife agreed, but asked him to wait for a few months before celebrating their wedding, but to consider each other as engaged. That evening, the priest's wife cooked the best meal of the region. She went into the cave and retrieved the rare wine that her late husband has kept for special occasions. She put on her best clothes of silk and cotton. While they were eating and drinking with great joy, the priest's friend pretended to have a stroke. He grabbed his chest and froze himself before falling on the ground. In a sort of panic, the wife ran and lifted his head: "Oh no! What is wrong? Don't die on me, I just lost my first husband and I won't stand the loss of a second within a few weeks. Talk..." 

The friend of the priest, between hiccups, said, "It is my heart...I'm going to die. I will survive only when the nose of a person that died exactly thirty days ago is applied on my chest. But I don't know where to find a person that died thirty days ago." He closed his eyes; but the priest's wife reacted: "Wait! My late husband, he died exactly thirty days ago today! Wait, I’m going to cut his nose off. Wait, I’m coming very soon.” She ran in the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife that she hid inside her dress, and ran toward the house of embalming, stepping over embalmed bodies looking for the corpse of her late husband. When she found the body, she removed the bandage and grabbed his nose with her left hand. While she was raising the knife, she sensed that the body moved. Her husband opened his eyes and said with a very sad smile, "If to try to change the bed of a river is treason to the memory of the husband, what would you say about cutting the nose of the husband?!" After that, what do you say... 

Love is a beautiful feeling; it is our weaknesses and our human limitations that always betray us.