The inner experience

The inner experience

A few days ago, Emanuela and I went on a beautiful speleological hike to a cave. Obviously we don't see anything sensational, we barely saw anything. However, it remains in our memory as a beautiful experience: moving through the tunnels, finding a way to enter and descend into very narrow holes, perceiving the underground flow of water, being in a sort of underground cathedral without being able to see its contours.

At the end, a girl told us that if we were interested, nearby there was a cave, all lit up and "cosy" with a beautiful waterfall that we could have admired without any effort. I didn't answer her to avoid unsolicited explanations, but, deep within, I wonder how it is possible not to understand that beauty and magic lies in the inner experience and not in what the eyes see or in the external object and that fatigue and suffering are part of beauty. What has a worth, what teaches us something and what we will take with us, is not the external object but what the outside ignites inside us. After all, we admire the evolutions of our consciousness that learns and expands.

The staircase in the photo, for example, became a sort of "stairway to heaven" for us, only because its view arrived after five hours of climbing and effort. Even the simple photograph comes to life thanks to the emotional load of those who took it at the moment they did it.

The surviving human beings must necessarily understand this difference, otherwise the ongoing operation of dehumanization will find its completion.

The imperative is to value what makes us unique. 

m.m.

*Cover photo by Emanuela Boriotti, Great Smoky Mountain - North Carolina