A contemplative essay about awakening and learning to live beyond paradise — and enjoying it.
Last week, I decided to rewatch a trilogy that has always been one of my favorites for self-reflection – The Falls, by Jon Garcia.
Since I was born and raised in a well-defined evangelical environment, I relate deeply to the two young Mormon missionaries portrayed there. And as I keep walking my own path of awareness, revisiting stories that mirror the beginning of my journey in this life gives me a fresh perspective on the past – and maybe, a small realignment of coordinates for the future.
This time, what caught my attention was the seed of doubt unintentionally planted in Elder Merril’s mind by one of the people they visit in the first film.
The young missionary had been invited to a dinner, ready to deliver his well-rehearsed speech like a recorded sermon, until the host asked a few questions that shook the foundations of his world beyond repair.
The host wasn’t offensive, sarcastic, or rude. He was simply direct, logical, and rational – the way anyone who lived outside the crystal dome of belief where Elder Merril was born and raised would naturally be.
That logic created a crack wide enough for light to enter – a moment that forced Merrill to ask himself where he truly fit in the world.
It wasn’t the classic “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?” – those answers had been carved into him since birth.
The lightning bolt that tore through his consciousness came from a different question:
“What do I do with my life while I’m still here?”
That’s the question that changes everything. It’s the instant someone is expelled from paradise and realizes they’re still alive – not just a soul waiting to go back to heaven, but a human being who’s going to spend a long time on Earth, with a body, a mind, desires, instincts, and ambitions.
Once the veil separating mind and heart is torn, two paths usually appear:
One is trying to go back to paradise, pretending nothing ever happened.
The other is pretending paradise never existed and trying to forget it.
Both are merely ways of soothing the ego’s pain – the pain of having to admit it was wrong, that the world we were raised to see as special is, in fact, just one more world among many. We weren’t chosen, or more blessed, or luckier than others. We were simply one more piece of humanity, no better and no worse.
True self-knowledge, when it finally arrives, brings with it the middle path – not as an attempt to balance extremes, but as the conscious construction of a way of seeing that gathers the best of both experiences.
Because in the end, no matter how far the roads may diverge, they all began in the same place: you.
From the Middle Path,
Marquis David
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