Breaking Through

By

Michael F. McCarthy

Contents

Birth

Seconds After Death

Nirvana Stage 1

Nirvana Stage 2

Nirvana Stage 3

Birth

It is almost time to be a carnal being again. My quarters are very cramped. While . I have been contemplating my past lives while I develop into my next form.

I am trying to be a better being so that I can end this cycle of rebirths and reach my goal of attaining Nirvana. I focus on how I should have handled some situations that went south. I want to learn from my past mistakes. The trouble is, once I realize I am born again, I forget my collective memory and live as if I had only this one life.

At regular intervals, the heat source from above is removed, and my living space gets turned upside down. It would seem that I am to be born again as something other than an amphibian, fish, crustacean, or mammal, as in prior lives, because, in the case of the former three, I would see changes in the light corresponding to day and night as the sun passed over the water I would be living in and I haven’t seen that in this enclosure. I push at the walls with my head and feel them for any weakness. I don’t find any. In the past, If I found a weakness in the wall, or birth canal, I had pushed on it until I popped out. Not this time. Not yet.

The wall is very smooth and curved. I have to get out of here because this space is much too small for my body now. I keep banging my head against the wall with the hope of someone hearing me and helping out of these cramped quarters. But wait, with the last bang I felt the wall give way a bit. So I try to keep banging the same spot. It is hard to do because my muscles don’t coordinate with my thoughts. Suddenly, though, I see a small ray of light. I bang my head against the wall there a few more times. All of a sudden I am in bright sunlight and hear the mighty roar of a dragon welcoming me into this world.

Seconds After Death

Oh, my physical body has died again. I remember the sky was dark. There was lightening in the clouds in the distance and the faint rumble of thunder. Our parents tried to instill in us fledglings a fear of thunder and lightning; I recall them shooing us into a shelter at the first clap. I didn’t care. I was hungry, and I had developed a strange taste, for a dragon, for seared flesh.

Our parents showed us how to hunt with our talons and beaks and how to limit our fiery breath. Fire was for defense purposes only. The more I think about what my parents said about fire, the more I think they were trying to protect us. Only when we were under attack was our firey breath to be focused into a nice stream. Otherwise, it was all over the place. Once in my youth, I had a cold and sneezed some fire on my dinner. When I came to that part of the carcass, it tasted different, and I liked it. My parents were dismayed that I liked seared flesh and took every opportunity to make fun of me and to tell me that it was not “the Fire Breathing Dragon way” and “We eat our meat raw.”

After I fledged I experimented with different levels of searing to discover just the right amount. I also experimented to see if could control my fire better. I found that if I focused on what I was doing, I could send my fire stream straight where I wanted it, like lightening at will. After I left my parents’ nest and had my own, I made sure all of my dragonets had the opportunity to taste seared flesh so that they could decide for themselves if they liked it. All of my broods did.

Like I said, I was hungry. I had spied a rather large, enticing animal next to a cave. Intensely focused on swooping in on my dinner from the correct angle, so that the creature would not know I was coming, I did not realize that the storm was fast approaching. If an animal knows it is going to be attacked it tenses its muscles while it tries to escape. Tense muscles are not tender. It took a while to figure this out. I knew I liked my meal a lot more because it was so tender. It took a lot of reflection to figure this out. Then it took a lot of trial and error to perfect the technique. I made sure that I passed it on to all my dragonets and mates.

Back to my tale. I had just deftly killed my dinner, and was about to apply some light searing to the carcass when lightning struck me. This caused me great pain and I, in agony, sprayed the area with the full force of my fiery breath. As a result of my spraying, my dinner got burnt, and several nearby trees caught fire.

Nirvana Stage 1

Wow! I now understand that my technique for killing my prey quickly and painlessly will save countless animals from suffering and that this is what got me to this place. I never thought my essence had done anything to be worthy of this feeling. Have I attained what I have been striving for my entire existence? Nirvana? Yet, I retain my identity. How can that be? I thought my identity would be subsumed into the Godhead and thus my uniqueness vanish. I wonder if this force will undergo the same seeming endless cycle of rebirth until it achieves something even more remarkable or are there different levels of Nirvana? Time will tell. I guess there are many paths to Nirvana.

Nirvana Stage 2

I see other bodies are attached to trunk of this being as I am. I can tell more have arrived since I got here. Every now and then I see like a wave of water heading towards a body. That wave never engulfs more than one body. Once engulfed the body looses its distintness on the trunk becomes a bump on trunk much like a pithon digesting its food. Within a short period of time, it disappears. Another body will appear near the location of the body that was subsumed into the trunk of this being. I used to think that it was the same location, but on closer observation it is never presisely the same location.

Nirvana Stage 3

I have been here a while. I now realize that what got me here was thinking thoughts and doing things, just not in the dragon prescribed way. I had a lot of time to think deep thoughts. Like, if God is all good, how can there be evil. I just had this flash: God is not evil. Well, that redefines things a bit. With that thought, I felt my distinct consciousness lessen and merging with some larger being. I just had this thought: if God is Love, how can hate exist? But if God is not hateful that also redefines action we consider hateful. Oh, my, I …

The End