The highest mountain

You are the highest mountain in my life...
I stumbled and fell on level ground...
I fell from the hills and cliffs of my imperfections...
But if I fall from where I've climbed - nothing will save me... Do not release my hand...
I entrust myself wholly to You...

Always and in everything I have preferred You, though my human frailties led my paths into the dead ends of life experience. You calmly waited until falsehood would expose itself...

I have never feared being who I am. To fear means to die. And I love to live...

I never rejected those whom You sent to me...
They praised me – and I smiled gently...
They scolded me – and I looked upon them with compassion...
They accused, scorned, flattered, threatened, hated, deified, wounded, placed me on pedestals only to remove me after some time...
I accepted all this, regarding them as brethren who need yet more years to discern who they truly are... and where they dwell...
I considered them Your friends, seeing the sacred light of their souls... This I learned from the priests who hear our confessions...
I was always astonished at how they, after hearing all that we do, could look upon us with such love...
And one of them answered me that he gazes not at the person, but at You, dwelling in every heart...

I always told You:
- I shall do what I deem necessary, so as not to constrain my heart and Soul in any way, and You, if need be - correct me.
And so it was...

I read and studied everything within my reach... only to later laugh at worldly knowledge, which substitutes breadth for depth...
Halfway up the mountain, You showed me how little I know, how poorly I use life, how absurd my motives are, and how fathomless the abyss of my ignorance...

You taught me to regard my body with indifference...
Comfort, the need to eat, to sleep, to dwell somewhere - all proved laughably contrived and unnecessary...
And for this!... many exchange their freedom and their right to ascend to the summit and embrace You!?...
Verily, they know not what they forfeit!

You taught me to attach myself to nothing...
And You took from me, one by one, objects dear to my heart, the treasures of this world, friends, close ones, relatives, beloved ones, children...
Eventually I even grew to enjoy giving away – for with each surrender I became perceptibly lighter...

Finally, seizing upon my despair and faintheartedness, You took away my very life...
I went behind the curtain and saw that even in death there is nothing frightening...
Since then I have learned well that it is not I who must die, but that which is already dead;
That which is within me, yet not mine...
It is precisely this that hinders me from gazing upon You without distraction...

But even death was not the final trial...
You shook my convictions, took from me my certainty in the reality of the surrounding world...
You revealed the artifice of that which I had held as sacred truth since tender childhood...
All these human canons and rules, proving upon examination to be mere superstition...
All this unshakeable conviction in the solidity of the world, proving in truth to be malleable as clay...

Time and space no longer hold sway. Fellow travelers have fallen behind. Common sense has lost its significance where only the heart can guide...
But I am not alone...