Spelunking: Escaping the Cave and Illusion

You find yourself deep in the bottom of a giant cave, seated on the ground, your hands and feet shackled, your head harnessed in such a way that you can only turn it about forty-five degrees in either direction.  Looking to your right and left and before you, you see others shackled in the same fashion. You assume others are seated and shackled behind you as well because you hear voices and rattling chains at your back.  Looking around, you see thousands of people, just like you, inhabiting the bottom of this cave.

            All of you face the same direction, staring at a giant wall.  Upon this wall dark shapes of all kinds move to and fro, colliding with each other.  You hear all kinds of noises:  voices yelling, mumbling, laughing, and crying.  You hear strange noises coming from these dark shapes on the wall of the cave.  Then suddenly, your shackles fall off!

            You slowly stand up, looking at your feet and wrists in wonder.  For the first time in your life, you turn your head and body one hundred and eighty degrees, making a complete about face. You see thousands, sitting on the ground, shackled just as you were a moment ago.  Looking up, you see something in the distance. Uncertain, you walk toward it, weaving your way through rows of shackled people.

Some one hundred yards away you see an elevated walkway traversing the entire length of the giant cave.  On the walkway all kinds of shapes move back and forth.  As you approach the walkway, the shapes grow clearer, and you now see people dressed in all kinds of attire, walking, carrying all kinds of objects: animal figures carved out of wood, pieces of vibrant, colored cloth, books, garden tools, bags of groceries, and women carrying infants.  Some people lead animals along the pathway.

You are overwhelmed. It’s almost too much to take in.  Then, your eye is drawn to a dancing light beyond the walkway.  And for the first time in your life you see fire!

            You climb onto the walkway, trying to stay out of the way of the bustling crowds, peering at the giant bonfire burning some fifty yards further up the cave.  Your mind ignites! For the first time in your life you discover the answer to the mystery of your existence in the bottom of the cave.

Slowly, you turn around, look back from where you came, where you once sat, shackled.  You see the thousands of chained people, their backs to you.  You look beyond them to the giant wall at the base of the cave.  You lift your arms in the air, waving them back and forth, and you see a black shape on the wall doing exactly the same thing.  You realize all the shapes dancing on the wall, running into each other are but mere shadows of all those people, animals, and objects traversing the walkway in the cave, cast upon the wall by the giant bonfire that burns.  You understand that the noises you’ve heard all your life are the echoing sounds made by those people and animals traversing the walkway.

Everything becomes clear.  For most of your life, shackled at the base of the cave, facing the wall, what you considered real was only an illusion.  Now you know the truth, what lies beyond your former existence, and you know your life will never be the same.  You turn back toward the fire, taking in the light of knowledge.  Your perception has radically shifted the way you see everything. You have awakened!

Then, out of the corner of your eye you see a tiny, round light, which, in comparison to the huge bonfire burning, shines much brighter.  It is so small yet so intense, and it seems hundreds of yards away.

            Suddenly, you find yourself surrounded by the brightest, purest, most intense light. To open your eyes brings piercing pain.  But as time passes, your eyes grow accustomed to the light, and ever so slowly you begin to see.

Before you lay large, dazzling, green fields with grasses and cascades of flowers dancing in the slight, warm breeze.  And in these fields large, green and blossoming trees sway in the breeze.  Under these trees all sorts of animals rest and graze passively.  A herd of horses gallop across the fields before you, jumping and whinnying.  People drive horse-drawn carts with wagons brimming with fruits, vegetables, and wares of every kind. Children skip and play games together.

Beyond the fields lay houses and buildings with streets where people go about their day buying or selling.  Beyond the town you see a huge, blue expanse that seems to go on forever, a deep, blue sea dotted with white sails and cutter ships.  You turn around, to see what’s behind you.

            A large rocky mountain rises into the blue sky, and there, at its base opens a giant mouth to a cave.  You’ve been transported from deep inside that giant mouth.  Somehow you know that deep in that cave dwell thousands of people, shackled and bound, who have no idea that this beautiful world even exists.

You turn around again, taking in the beauty.  You understand that while in the cave, the bright light you saw in the distance was the mouth you stand before now. Somehow you know that the people on the platform busily bustling to and fro in the cave have no idea what lies beyond.

            Suddenly, you find yourself surrounded by deep darkness unable to see anything, but you recognize the noises you hear.  It’s the rattle of chains and the echoing sounds from the wall.

You reach down, and your hand rests on chains and flesh, and a man’s voice yells, “Get off me!  Leave me alone!”  You look up, barely making out movements dancing on the wall of the cave.  The beautiful light of the sun in which you were just immersed has left you blind in the darkness of your former dwelling place.

You stumble around, crying out to those shackled, “This is not real!  Brothers and sisters, loose your chains!  Rip them from your hands and feet and head!  It’s all just shadows!  It’s all illusion!”

As you stumble, yelling in desperation, scornful and mocking voices greet you:  “Look at the blind fool!  Leave us be!”  Others gaze at you, horrified, a monster, an alien who has entered their world.  And no matter how much you try to convince them that there is so much more to existence than this, your words fall on deaf ears.  They will not see.  They will not hear.

Sadly, you realize that all you can do is live what you have seen and heard. You resolve to begin immediately!  Now!  This very moment!

            You’ve seen it.  You’ve heard it!  You’ve tasted it!  You believe it!  And so you begin!  You turn away from the shadows on the wall, the illusions so many are content to live with, and you walk, beyond the shackled masses, beyond the crowds on the walkway, beyond the bonfire of human understanding, your eyes fixed on the light of the sun, of a world that awaits, of a vast universe, the truth of your existence, which has become your life-force.  You walk one step at a time, ascending the steeps of the cave, the obstacles in your path, because you have tasted and seen, and for you, the journey is already done.  Now, it is just a matter of walking it out!*

*adapted from Plato's Allegory of the Cave