Volume 5 Issue 2 FALL 2019

6 0 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 9 Chapter Three As the sun enchanted him, the distant fog turned to tempting glowing clouds. “What a beautiful, shining day it is!” the knight thought as the clouds receded again. “And not only shines the sun, everything else around shines! There’s sun everywhere, there’s actually sun in everything! So many bright clouds in the blue sky, resembling fleecy lambs! In fact – what lambs, I already know you well, you’re just fog inside! Yet how beautifully you can reflect the rays of the sun… only this one wandered off somehow, I have to rush him… Into the gallop!” The knight took hold of his spear and felt his horse accelerate gradually beneath him, turning into a gallop. As they approached within sight of the brilliant cloud, the knight was startled: “Oh, but from near, that’s not a lamb, but a grown ram…And how mighty he is! Look, he is standing on his hind legs and grimly sets his curved horns, as if urging me to fight.” The knight stops his horse and stares up at the dark, shaggy ram’s head. He screams at the top of his lungs: “So you won’t obey me, you devil’s head?” “Come on, poor earthling, just try!” hears he a sneering reply. So the knight starts up, holds his spear out in front of him, and grips the shield with a tightly clenched hand, as he expects to feel a violent impact. But what’s going on? The spear just stabs into the thin fog, and it penetrates on and on, without any resistance, without any meaning or purpose. A crosswind props into his shield, curls it, and he suddenly loses his correct direction. His head is spinning; he can’t see what is left and right, not even up and down. The fog, still the same, dull and incomprehensible, seemed to surround him from all sides, as if there were always only this and nothing else. The knight understood that he was lost, and that the whole fight had been in vain: “I had lost before I started. Again, there are the same clouds everywhere as before! But how is a resolute voice, urging his horse into a gallop. not cover me. We have to get up, keep up!” exclaimed he in Until I get high enough, it is foolish to rely that the clouds do does it do me that the sun shines just as kindly over them? Clouds, they tend to be low once, then high again. What good “Who could it had been, the voice? oh, yes, I guess now! went on. forehead, and worked hard to see where the mountain trail The knight stopped the horse, wiped cold sweat from his to go right now? Don’t hesitate, one way, just up!” into a fog. You have to get out of it! That you can’t see where don’t know about it. The cloud is all around you as it’s turned your head all the time! As long as you are in a cloud, you the same clouds again, yet your beloved sun is high above “nowhere, it’s only the clouds that went up, my dear knight, “And where did the sun leave me, then?” and let yourself be surrounded by fog.” lost to you again, and then you completely forgot about it, “Because you took it for granted that the sun would never be a high-pitched, ringing voice: fade in the distance, but it carries on, answering him in voice: “Why? Why?” But the echo does not end, it does not Amid this cold silence, he can hear the far echo of his own Why?” screams into the fog in all directions. same sad, grey day again, with no warmth and no love. Why? “How is that possible? My beloved sun has left me! It’s the and sticky, cold to the bones. even see the tip of the spear, just thick fog all around, wet It’s just like before, there’s the eternal gloom again! You can’t

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