“But they do have free will, right?”
“Yes…and no. They have a lot less than they think, yet, ironically, use but a fraction of what they actually possess.”
“What about us?” Virgil asked. “Surely we have more free will than they do, right?”
“Sorry to break it to you, Virge, but no.”
“No?” he said in a mix of indignation and disbelief.
“In fact, good buddy, we actually have a lot less than they do.”
“Get out of here! That’s just crazy talk, Kohai.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah,” Virgil protested. “We’re cupids, man! They are puny, miserable humans!”
“Miserable, yes. Puny, hardly. Think about it, Virge. If there were no humans then there would be no us. We exist on account of them. Sure, we can do and know things that the humans can’t. But they can do, know, and experience things that we can’t.”
“Like what?” Virgil challenged.
“Like change.”
“I can change,” Virgil said.
“Not like them you can’t. You’re a cupid. You’ll always be a cupid. You follow orders. You have a task to do, and you do it. Have you ever seen a cupid do anything but carry out or facilitate matches?”
“Umm…”
“No, you haven’t, and you never will. That’s all we know how to do. The humans, on the other hand, they can become lots of things, potentially. When they are born, their possibilities are limitless. They can achieve tremendous degrees of greatness. They can even rise to a higher spiritual level than we can.”
“Higher than us?” Virgil said, incredulous.
“You bet, and many have over the eons. It isn’t easy, but it’s possible.”
“But, Kohai,” Virgil countered, “what about the Immortals you mentioned? Those cupids who ascended The Seven Rungs of Righteousness? Isn’t that proof that we too have great potential?”
“Ah, but compare the distances that must be covered. We may be seven rungs away, but the humans, they are seventy rungs away. And yet, far more of them have achieved the heavenly abode than us.”
“More than us?”
“Oh, yes. We are created a cupid, and we die a cupid. It’s easy for you and I to be a cupid. It is easy for us to fulfill our duty and our potentials, for that is how we were fashioned. Not so for the humans. They can be born with the most formidable handicaps, or amidst the worst squalor, ignorance, or misery the world can dish out, and yet still die as great heroes or holy men and women who leave the likes of us in their spiritual dust. You see, it is the overcoming of their obstacles and yetzers that make them better.”
“But how is this all possible?” Virgil asked, clearly disturbed by my revelations. “What is it about the humans that makes them so special? I’ve been down there now about a dozen times, and I just don’t see it. They are pathetic creatures on the whole. They are stubborn, ungrateful, petty, and superficial. I don’t get it, Kohai.”
“I know, Virgil. It’s frustrating as heck to witness. But you bring me full circle. Again, it’s what you don’t see.”
“The invisible?”
“The biggest invisible of all. You’d better sit down for this one, Virgil.” I patted the piano bench.
“You mean it gets worse? I’m already depressed.” Virgil slunk down beside me on the bench, and sighed. “Go on.”
“They have a bigger soul than we do.”
“Ah-ha!” Virgil exclaimed, jumping back to his feet. “Now I know you’re full of it, Kohai. Now I know all you’re telling me is baloney. There’s no such thing as a soul!”
“Oh, yes, there is.”
“No, that’s a myth!” Virgil laughed and gave me a chummy punch in the shoulder. “Man, you’re gullible.”
“There is no soul because your professors say so?”
“Because everybody says so,” Virgil rejoined.
“Says so, or knows so?”
“Everybody says so and knows so,” he insisted.
“Not everybody,” I said. “Can you prove there is no soul?”
“No, but neither can you prove that there is.”
“And if I could, what then?”
“You can’t, but if you could, well…”
“Yes…?”
“I don’t know,” Virgil said, peeved.
“For one, it would mean responsibility. Theirs and ours, ours being how very important our work is. We call what we do ‘matchmaking.’ But did you know that it wasn’t always called that?”
“It wasn’t?”
“Nope. Captain Cyrus said we used to call it ‘soulmating.’ You agree that our purpose is to serve the humans, right?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, but if the humans have no soul, then how could they have any purpose other than a fictitious one—one they make up for themselves?”
“Um, well, I’m not a philosopher, so…”
“You don’t have to be, Virge. We have common sense, which is the soundest philosophy of all. Listen, without a soul everything is subjective—just a series of likes and dislikes, appetites and desires, not one really more meaningful than the next. And if that were so, our purpose would be just as illusory as theirs. You don’t believe that, do you?”
“Of course not. Why would we have been created to assist in such a pointless and futile mission?”
“Exactly! A soulless world would be an absurd world, and not one worth saving. When we help humans find their soulmate, we are, in effect, assisting them along their way to discovering their different purposes while carrying out our own, and could there be a greater job than that? So you see, Virgil, it’s the invisible, not the visible that runs the world.”
20
Honey Marooned
Ellen Veetal spotted her newlywed friend, Jill Taylor, now Jill Taylor-Sanders, standing on tiptoes, scouting for her over the heads of the students in the crowded university cafeteria. Ellen waved her hand. “Jill, over here!”
Jill smiled and weaved her way over between the tables and chairs of the bustling mess hall.
Ellen expected to see a new radiance and vitality in her recently married girlfriend, but the addition of two more syllables to her name didn’t appear to coincide with any newfound effervescence.
Jill Taylor-Sanders looked much like the Jill Taylor of a couple weeks earlier, a woman carrying the woes of the world on her skinny, sloping shoulders, albeit with a new tan in the middle stages of peeling. Ellen was a little disappointed. She was hoping to see in Jill the future elation that she was going to know with Chance.
Jill planted a kiss on Ellen’s cheek and pulled up a chair across from her at the small round table, forcing Captain Cyrus to go get another.
Cyrus had also been observing Jill, but he wasn’t looking for change. He was looking for clues.
Ellen lifted the lid from the take-away latte she had readied for her friend. She slid the steaming coffee across the table to her.
“Thanks,” Jill chirped. “Three sugars?”
“Four.”
“Just testing you.”
“Sooo,” Ellen sang. “Tell me. How was it?”
“How was what?”
Ellen rolled her eyes. “The honeymoon, dummy.”
“Oh, I thought you meant finals.”
“Finals are still a ways away, Jill.”
Jill Taylor-Sanders was also a TA and graduate student at the university, working, in her case, on a Ph.D. in political science.
“I know, but the students aren’t nearly ready, and I got a lot to prepare them for. I keep getting distracted by the current election.” Jill sighed and tore open another packet of sugar and dumped it into her latte.
Ellen grimaced at the concoction.
Jill finished stirring her latte, ran her hand through her thin, strawberry-blond hair, and sipped. She sighed again, but this time more in relief.
“So,” Ellen sang again, gesturing for Jill to quit keeping her in suspense. “Hawaii!”
&nbs
p; “Yeah, Hawaii was beautiful,” Jill replied with all the enthusiasm of a traffic report. “The water, the beaches, the mountains, the weather. Gorgeous.”
“Jill, I know the postcard. Give me the honey in honeymoon! You and Jack. Romance. Love. You dreamed about this for months.”
“We had a fine time,” Jill Taylor-Sanders said.
“Fine?”
“Uh-huh. I did some shopping. See…?” She put out her wrist to show off a cheap leather and bead bracelet.
“How…fine. Sweetie, are you okay?”
Jill took another sip of her latte, and when she looked up, her eyes were welling. “Oh Ellen, I think I made a horrible mistake marrying Jack.”
“But…I don’t understand,” Ellen said, her fears confirmed. “You two were made for each other. That’s what you said, and everyone could see it.”
“Everyone but Jack, apparently.”
“Well, did he say anything or do anything?”
“No. He said nothing and he did nothing.”
“Then, why—”
“I mean,” Jill said, no longer able to contain a disillusionment bordering on disgust. “He said nothing and did nothing. He was like this big, boring blob of…blasé.”
“What do you think got into him?” Ellen asked.
“Not him,” Cyrus said. “Her.” His words, of course, were inaudible.
“Beats me,” Jill said. “At first I just figured we were both tired. But after a couple of days I sensed that it wasn’t a temporary thing. Jack was not the same Jack.”
“That’s so weird. And he didn’t say anything?”
“No, but his silence spoke volumes. I think he was having regrets, but I can’t think of anything I did differently. We only made love once the entire holiday. It’s like he found me…repulsive.”
With the word, her eyes brimmed to overflowing. Two fat tears streamed down the sides of her otherwise expressionless face.
Ellen took Jill’s hand in hers. “I’m so sorry. It sounds awful. Would you like me to talk to him? Maybe I could—”
“No!”
“Okay…sure. I understand. How about Chance, I mean Professor Matterson? He’s a guy, and an excellent psychologist. I’m sure if I asked him, he’d meet with Jack.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” Jill attempted to recompose herself by straightening in her chair. “It’s probably just temporary,” she said hollowly. “Jack has been very busy, and has been through a lot this year. I think maybe he’s just going through a sorting-out process.”
“Well, if you change your mind…”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Cyrus acknowledged that stories like Jill’s had become the norm over the past decades. What surprised him, however, was that they usually unfolded more slowly. Such distress typically didn’t manifest for six to twelve months after marriage, not during the span of a romantic Hawaiian honeymoon.
He placed his hand over Jill’s head, expecting to see a typical nest of recently hatched, hungry and squawking baby yetzers, most of which, in normal circumstances and times, would never grow to maturity within the confines of a healthy marriage.
Cyrus jerked his hand back. “Whoa! Repulsive is right.”
What flashed before him was not one, but two full-grown yetzers, melded at the hip like Siamese twins. Only they weren’t twins.
One was a woolly, pike-toothed Fault-finding Yetzer, and the other, a tall, slimy, worm-shaped and pincer-armed Utopia Yetzer. They roared at him. Cyrus knew he didn’t have to consult the Midrasha to find out what had transpired during Jill’s honeymoon. The species of yetzers themselves told him what he needed to know.
He recalled Jill’s own words, ‘Something changed.’ And her follow up, ‘He said nothing and did nothing.’ Cyrus quickly understood that it wasn’t that her husband had changed. He was probably much the same guy she had dated. What was different was her discovery of his resistance to her brand of change. She had never fallen in love with Jack, but only with her idealization of Jack.
Surely, the cupid who had carried out the match had recognized her pair of yetzers and thought that he had slain them. But he had botched the job. Instead, the two injured yetzers had licked each other’s wounds, joined forces, and kept a low profile until they had regained their strength. Now they were bigger and more powerful than ever. Poor Jack. He had been henpecked into desolation, and his long dreamed of honeymoon had proved to be little more than a crash course in identity politics.
Cyrus knew this boded ill. Clearly, the potions the cupids were using had lost their effectiveness. How many more Jack and Jills were out there? How many honeymoons every day were ending in disaster? What new contagion was spreading? How much longer could the forces of harmony and love hold out against those of bitterness and chaos?
“Have things improved at all since you’ve been back?” Ellen asked.
“No. They’ve gone from bad to worse. Honestly, I’m this close to giving him an ultimatum to shape up or ship out!”
“No need to act rashly, Jill. Marriage is new for the both of you. I’m sure you can work things out. Give it some time.”
Cyrus took a long, considering look at Ellen as she continued to offer useless words of advice and consolation to her doomed friend.
Was he, Cyrus, going to send her to a similar fate? More than ever, the Swerver was needed. Was Ellen Veetal the one? Did she carry within her the torch that could check a quickly darkening and loveless world? Was she worth risking his reputation and very life for?
21
Future Shock
What a fool I had been.
I now understood why the captains had been so insistent about Torah study—the generic term the captains used to encompass all the sacred texts—and regretted that I had resisted their sage advice as long as I had. To my delight, I found that the more I applied myself to these studies, the better and faster I was able to navigate the Midrasha.
My newfound enthusiasm had a calibrating effect that permitted me to move with greater ease through the records. It raised my mental vibration, allowing me to ‘tune in,’ similar to how humans used to edge the dial left and right around an old AM radio station to clear the white noise and sharpen the broadcast. So, after having put in eight solid hours of intensive study in the yeshiva archives, I jogged off to explore new realms of Midrasha.
I descended the winding staircase leading to the Noachian cave Cyrus had revealed to me, and came to the large granite door that hid the central chamber. It had taken me a few times before I had mastered the knack for opening it. To do so one needed to be in a devout frame of mind, and then utter the secret passwords: a phrase that had to be repeated three times in three different ways. Not until the correct vibrational frequency was obtained did the door gracefully surrender its treasure.6
Note 6: Because I swore an oath of secrecy, I cannot divulge the phrase. However, I can reveal that it was Aramaic, and that the uttered passage is found in the text of the holy Zohar.
Upon entering the cave, I was surprised to see Captain Cyrus sitting legs crossed in the center of the chamber. I said hello, but he didn’t answer. Clearly, he was in a deep meditative state.
Not wanting to bother him, I plunked myself down beside him to begin my own voyage and research. There was so much to learn, and so much I wanted to know. I wondered where amidst the vastness of the Midrasha Captain Cyrus was hanging out, and what he might be investigating. I wondered if I could find him in there, sneak up on him, and tap him on his spectral shoulder, so to speak.
I shook the dumb idea from my mind. Surely to have done such a thing would have resulted in a stern rebuke, and a scolding for treating the holy Midrasha like a souped-up video game. I prepared myself for my ascent with prayer, meditation, and breathing, and then away I went…
I established a good connection. The cosmic weather was fine, and I could see the crystal records with a clarity I hadn’t experienced until now. I wondered if I was getting better at this, or just a boost from being in
the presence of Cyrus’s far superior voltage.
My intention for coming to the Midrasha this day was to look up the life of a great sage: Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer, the holy Baal Shem Tov (the Master of the Good Name). I had recently mentioned him to Virgil, and I wanted to check my facts.
The Baal Shem Tov, 1698-1760, was a rabbi who dramatically shook up and revitalized the Jewish communities and thought of his time. He breathed new life into a downtrodden and beleaguered nation at the end of its rope. The past century of sadistic pogroms, discrimination, and false messiahs had come close to permanently crushing the spirit of his people. The teachings of the Baal Shem Tov continued to be studied down the centuries; both by his direct followers—known as Chassidim—as well as by those of other streams of Jewish thought, who saw wisdom in many of his parables and the stories told of him.
So absorbing was his life and deeds, I couldn’t tear myself away from his record. The Besht (an acronym for Baal Shem Tov), as he was also known, was born in the small village of Okup on the Russian Polish border in 1698. I reviewed his boyhood and how his elderly, pious parents brought up their only child. I saw his dying father call the five-year-old Yisrael to his bedside and tell him, “My last message to you, dear son, is fear no one and nothing but the Creator! Love every person with all your heart and soul!”
Now parentless, young Yisrael was drawn to nature to seek out his Father in Heaven. I observed him often going into the fields and woods, spending many hours alone, praying, reciting psalms, and speaking to God like a child to his father.
Skipping ahead a few years, I saw him as a young man being recruited by a mysterious group of “hidden tzaddikim”; anonymous, learned-but-humble sages who traveled among the common people. They aroused the hearts of their dejected and long-suffering kinsmen by elevating their souls with kindness, good works, and joyous prayer, reconnecting them to their spiritual roots.
Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Book 1: Hell-bent (Shooting Eros Series) Page 12