Love Letters to the Universe #5: The Definition of Perfection

Dear Universe,

I believe we’re perfect for eachother. In fact, together, we may just be the definition of perfection. Yes, that may be a bold statement unfitting such a meager scrap of flesh which is the hairless monkey that is prone to fits of frustration, melancholy moodiness, and regrettable over-indulgences, but I have my reasons.

I have accepted the fact that I arise from your self-indulgent desire to experience yourself, but I, being a well meaning but ultimately foolish hairless monkey am never satisfied. Is that all, or do I embody some other concept, contain some other aspect that is beneficial to your beauty and culmination than just the bare essential of my very awareness?

Yes, and no. It’s never very simple is it? But, then neither am I. I am a highly sophisticated organism that has become aware of himself. This awareness has given me something that I cherish, however it causes me anxiety: Free Will.

I make choices. Every moment I live and breathe, I am choosing this or that. We see the paradox in the instant which is the hairless monkey. Just as I am connected to you, that I am the love that is you, the awareness that you have summoned to yourself, then so am I aware of my separation. Likewise, just as I see myself bound by the finite experience of time and space, I am freed by the very dichotomized prison in which I live to choose in nearly infinite profusion. In fact, the more aware I am, the more knowledgeable I become, the more I have to choose.

Why is this good for you, my love? Each moment I exist, all the possible outcomes on the threshold of being line up according to my understanding, only limited by my consciousness. I might leap to amuse you, sing to serenade you, weep to move you. Each of these possibilities exist, they are created from my very exercise of free will. I choose one, hopefully wisely, and move into the next exploding corona of possibilities. How would I choose wisely? I would decide upon that choice of action or inaction that leads to the most possible choices.

So, each moment I exist; a multitudinous array of possibilities blossom outward from me, creating alternate realities. This is a fact that I understood many years ago. It continues to drive my every decision and gives me a sense of awe that I might so contribute to your eternal glory. “How can you possibly make such a mark upon creation?” you ask. Well, because creation is an ongoing event, and in my eyes you are forever young, forever nascent and freshly arrayed.

I know, so many before me have boldly asserted their love for you and called you perfect. I, too, join the chorus, but I add a refrain. For what should the definition of perfection be, but that which encompasses and embodies the ability to become infinitely more perfect?

You, my love, are a blossoming unity which expands into the great could be. Because of my free will, I live a pioneer on the threshold of that great expansion, surfing across the great gleaming tide of possibilities. And I am not alone.

Each hairless monkey has that divine spark, that little fire which ignites and embodies free will. You use each as an engine to become more, be more.

And how might I better sing the song which is myself, which blends into the great symphony which is you, my darling?

I must become more aware. I must search for gnosis, the spiritual knowledge, which has sustained me so well so many times before. What I find, I must ingest so that I will shine out ever more with possibilities. I accept all faiths, all paths, all experiences as tantamount to this ultimate result: Your perfection. And since, I am not alone, I must learn to work in tandem with these other manifestations of your love.

When I work with another hairless monkey in harmony and gladness, the number of possibilites are not doubled, but each one of mine couples with each one of his or hers until we shine all the brighter toward your intended brilliance.

When I was a very young hairless monkey, I was raised by some very well meaning, but confused and confusing hairless monkeys. They meant love, but suffered from that tragic and common malady, exclusive insanity. They told me that there was only one way in which I might celebrate your magnificence. They told me that it would be impossible for me to be acceptable in your eyes; aye, even for me to be a good and moral monkey without their guidance and the rigors of their teaching, which came from a very confusing and often self-contradicting compilation of tales and decrees, bound in a book.

I wanted so desperately to love you, I tried to read the book. I tried to understand how the uttering of syllables by some hairless monkeys should lift them to your bosom, while other most gentle and sweet monkeys would be punished in a lake of fire for their refusal or lack of knowledge about the book or syllables.

As you can imagine, I was very confused, sweet universe. I became distraught at the idea that I was born so stained and disfigured that I should need such a limiting path to your love. I walked away from these well-meaning monkeys so that I might better see if what they said was true.

It was then that I understood the nature of free will. I saw the glory born in each and every one of us, the glory that these other monkeys seemed to have overlooked. We were not born twisted and evil, but born a shining possibility, and the most glorious, of course, was love.

I came about this understanding most soundly through suffering and tragedy. The first woman that I had ever loved was cruelly murdered by a stranger. This event sent me spiraling into the sensation of so many shining and possible universes being cancelled, snuffed out, by the whim of some unthinking brute who, sadly,must not have known the awful impact he was making upon you, my love.

I try to be grateful for the choices that lie before me. I have written these letters, and shall continue to write them, with the spirit of spreading those little seeds of consciousness that have come my way. I hope that someday my great-granddaughter may come across these letters and know me, and through the love which I have tried to thread into the fabric of them, know you, my darling.

I hope she comes to understand your state of constant birth. I hope this future monkey will know that one can know you and be good without a book, or any particular syllables uttered first in some desert by desperate hairless monkeys so long ago. I hope they will know that to kill or enslave another hairless monkey is to strip them of that great power, their free will, which enacted upon, will fulfill our purpose, which is to spread your glorious perfection, your infinite being to the fathomless limitlessness of what could be.

It is just a choice, like anything else. Like sitting down to write these letters. I see the blank whiteness of the unwritten page and think: It could be anything. Do I let myself become filled with anxiety over such whiteness and forget my purpose?

Or do, I, feeling your loving presence all about me, a presence which is never killed by a stranger, rejoice and marvel at the thought: “It could be anything!”

And so may it be.

With all the possibilities of love,

Trav