The Images that Destroyed Me

There was a fear in me, as old as my birth,

But only to be reckoned with my consciousness,

And I cannot reveal the root cause of it,

Though I have come to know about of late;

But I am ready to reveal all the superficial fears

That have emanated from the root and appearing as real,

The fear of being nobody in front of all,

The fear of facing the insult due to that identity;

No doubt, I was cleaver and intelligent relatively,

And so well recognized and encouraged by all,

Which remained as a moment to be cherished,

Only until I became conscious of the root cause;

My dictionary of love and yours only game begun,

When the art of image making came to my rescue,

The desire to hide the identity of nobody grew stronger,

With the ease of learning this art;

First I acquired the image of somebody

As the opposite of nobody against every character,

Then I created the image about others

As nobody with respect to my own images;

The image of somebody against the image of nobody

Helped me to acquire new images about myself

And now, somebody transformed into superior,

Along with nobody in others transforming into inferior;

This is the manner in which the images grew stronger,

Not as a healthy and cheerful competition,

But as a long, miserable and often helpless struggle,

Since all the images had blinded my consciousness;

So, the sense of superiority prevented further learning,

Thereby confirming the identity of nobody in me,

And the fear of getting this identity exposed grew,

Along with the struggle to escape from the facts;

Notwithstanding all this I survived everywhere easily,

By the act of escaping, lying, avoiding and hiding,

Only to dig my own grave as deeply as possible,

Never to surface again on my own,

As the confidence, passion and honesty dwindled fast;

As I continued to be conscious of all that I did,

There started within a small urge to end this struggle,

Not by exposing the act of image making and my true identities,

But by ending my relationship with the small world;

The ending came one day from an entity that was watching me,

And not through my own wish as a matter of realization,

Of course, I accepted it gracefully as though I was waiting,

With a deep silence as an outcome of the sense of relief;

 

It was not a total freedom yet since all my images were intact,

But there was a deep sense of introspection,

The struggle to survive in that relationship had faded a lot,

And hence I never turned back again to open up another;

In a way, all kinds of images had withered away on their own,

And the old urge to cling to them had vanished too,

There appeared a small hope to continue with my survival,

But in a different way by depending on my remaining strength;

As the time passed by, I started tasting the total freedom,

The freedom from the art of image making and surviving,

The growing sense of freedom reminded every moment

Of the havoc played in my life by the images;

Total freedom seems to be far away still

Since the fear due to the root cause must be still there,

This may force me to have another kind of image one day,

But no doubt, there is a calmness within me;

I know I cannot be free from this root fear totally,

Unless I face it with all my energy directly,

But I am ready to encounter any experience in life,

While I maintain my attention to understand who I am.