Self Awareness

The way in is the way out, you must go through at the gate

Sensei said

We ate the fruit of the tree of  knowledge

We consumed a principle of justice, the understanding of good and evil

We became self-aware and cognizant of our failings

We became writers of laws

We wasted the world in selfish-conflict, greed

We became aware, and became aware of ourselves, of our lies

We were mired in the taxonomy of differentiation

We became arbiters of the law

We saw the other as our enemy, making them into effigies

We regarded ourselves with loathing, the cancer of dissatisfaction

We engaged in violent reprisals

We became instruments of the law

We went to the dance with Ego and Id

We were like Caine and Able, the herdsman and the farmer

We were urban and pagan, nomad and builder

The law blinded us to the demands of justice, we were its fools

Facing mirrors that pass through the universe

Gathering new images on the way—endlessly reflexive

The infinite seen as finite

The analogue of consciousness, coded with the cell

Carrying the sensed bits of eternity[1]

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[1] Herbert, Frank, Chapter House Dune, 1985