In the sacred scripture of ancient India, the Bhagavad-gita (The Song of God), Supreme Lord Krishna, the avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism, reveals transcendental knowledge, including this: everyone has a path they must follow in order to uphold righteousness, and that leads to their individual salvation, which is the purpose and goal of human existence.

Find your soul, your dharma, and the form of your art will follow organically.

I was in a Starbucks this afternoon having a cappuccino with Adele, my mother.

The topic of taking a stand came up and the importance of right action. This sparked a memory that took me back to when I was a senior in high school.

“Here’s a story about a bully I never told you,” I said.

She perked up.

Here it is:

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The Bible parable of Lot’s wife makes a telling point. God warned Lot, his wife, and two daughters not to look back at the destruction of Sodom.

Lot’s wife peeked and paid the price. She was turned into a pillar of salt. Once you have seen the light, it’s essential not to “look” back. Once you are committed to a direction and purpose, looking back is not only pointless, it is counterproductive. 

But, then there is a time when it is important to look back. The time is “now and then” when the spirit moves you and the “why” of it is this: If you don’t look back to where you have been, how will you know that you have gone anywhere? There is strength in knowing you have come, at least, this far.

Written in 1912, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka remains a remarkably modern parable for gaining insight into one’s true nature—that is, if you have the guts. While Kafka wasn’t famous in his lifetime, his legacy is rich. 

For how I see the essence of this tale, read Kafka and I: Angst for the Memories inside the main site gallery.

The following excerpt “Gregor Samsa and Modern Spirituality by Martin Greenberg” is from the book Franz Kafka’s the Metamorphosis by Harold Bloom; Chelsea House, 1988.

The mother follow’d, weeping loud,
“0, that I such a fiend should bear!”

—BLAKE

In the Middle Ages it was the temporal which was the inessential in relation to spirituality; in the nineteenth century the opposite occurred: the temporal was primary and the spiritual was the inessential parasite which gnawed away at it and tried to destroy it.

—SARTRE

The Metamorphosis is peculiar as a narrative in having its climax in the very first sentence: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” The rest of the novella falls away from this high point of astonishment in one long expiring sigh, punctuated by three subclimaxes (the three eruptions of the bug from the bedroom). How is it possible, one may ask, for a story to start at the climax and then merely subside? What kind of story is that?

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We’ve heard this before: Wherever you go, there you are.

There is much to learn from this declaration. As Deepak Chopra points out: You are your attention. You are where your attention takes you. If your attention is in the past, then you are in the past; if your attention is in the future, then you are in the future; if your attention is on courage, then you are encouraged; if your attention is on fear, then you are afraid—and so on.

Better to be in the present moment and have your attention on God as you move through the eternal matrix we call life.

After all, as the cosmic tick tock clicks away, who better to model your self after than the Creator of every thing.