How deluded you are, my friend, to blithely accept the reality of the world your parents handed down!

I can only wonder if I myself—callow youth that I was—displayed the same innocence and unquestioning nature when I was your age. Just like you, my parents never doubted, or ever really thought about, the assumptions that were the foundation of their lives. They taught me to believe all creatures move through their lives with no greater purpose than to travel from Point A to Point Z, acquiring friends, possessions and obligations along the way, inexorably and instinctively moving from birth to death, womb to tomb, with little more thought to higher matters than a slug experiences while sliming its way across the slate walkway of a garden path.

Only later, once I put aside childish things, did I realize that, in spite of my sluggishness, I was actually crawling across a beautiful garden, and that the spiritual aspect to this life was lush and all-pervasive, merely well-hidden and closely-guarded against prying eyes or immature minds. So much so that I rarely ever thought about it during the length of my days, nor pondered its significance.

Like most human beings I was easily satisfied with the Cliff Notes version of Life and quick to ignore the complexities around me.

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Excerpted from “Perfidious Blossom”, a novel in progress by Paul Steven Stone