WAITING FOR ENLIGHTENMENT

I keep asking myself, "Why am I here? Why am I sitting on the edge of this big goddamned rock at the edge of the night with my feet dangling off into the shadowy unknown, staring for almost-- squinting now at the glowing green indicators on my watch-- three hours at the same subtle curvature of the Earth which once filled the eyepieces of countless pirates and explorers, brave souls now dead and double-parked on the bottom of the heaving deep blue below me; gazing like some moonstruck first year poetry student at the bristling white fur of the cosmic polar bear far above me?"
The answer has yet to change.
"Because you are waiting for something far greater than yourself to stem from yourself," says the voice in my head. "You are holding open-soul house for Final Truth and Real Meaning, hoping that it read the ad you placed in the Newspaper of the Infinite: ("SWM into solitude, peyote ISO Great Wisdom and Pure Fire. No pets or Jesus Freaks, pls.") You've run the gamut, trying everything from snake handling to speaking in tongues to meditation to huffing gas. And while you're pretty sure you came close to touching something a couple of times, Enlightenment always manages to slip through your fingers like a weird dream in your coffee. You seek what all beings who have sat in places like this have sought: a geyser of Unexpected Illumination, a river of Pure Insight which claims its freezing, skull-slapping headwaters from the mountains of Nowhere, yet is found Everywhere at Once, much like the Nature of God. That is why you are here. Now have another sandwich, shut up, and quit bothering me."
I settle back against the cliff face, chewing something delicious in the dark, satisfied in my purpose for the moment. This may take longer than I expected. Perhaps this burst transmission, this singing telegram from the Office of the Unknown is too large to arrive so suddenly. Nothing in nature is both big and fast. It is one or the other, whale or jaguar. And Real Enlightenment is, after all, a slow process; it takes a good many weeks to gnaw the top off a mountain.
Or maybe not. Perhaps it will strike me dead-on with a hammer blow of sudden majestic proportions; the A-bomb impact generating a powerful echo of glowing sparks which would describe a study in linear progression on the empty canvas of my open mind, like the twilight efforts of some monstrous, acid-eating blacksmith, granting me slight insight into the path I have followed to date. For all I know, my life has been a hike along the precipice of a dangerous mountain trail without a flashlight, blissfully unaware that I was marching inches from the Throat of Doom.
I want the shimmering cosmic trout that battled its way upstream against the Milky Way to flop right into my camp skillet. Yum. I want the Secret Code that will let me defeat the Big Boss on this level, claim the flaming sword, sprout wings and find an extra life before I ascend to the next. I want the elusive piece of the formula that drove Alchemists and other Practitioners of Natural Philosophy off the deep end, reducing great minds to howling lunatics, hunched over steaming cauldrons of donkey shit in some sad, sagging little hovel in the French countryside.
I've got more sandwiches in my bag and a Thermos of hot coffee; I can wait all night. Nothing less than the secret name of God will do.