Praying at the altar.
I guess we all have to pray at one altar or another. I’m not sure that we even have a choice. Without some sort of altar, then surely we become subject to forces greater than us? I’m not sure that an altar is a guiding light, but perhaps more a waystone towards one. Remove the biblical connotations, if you are able to. The altar does not tell us where to find light and truth, but it may just allow us to access it if we are listening. I suppose this leaves us open to a few questions, each as important and inextricable as the other.
The question of which altar to be prayed at then is perhaps the most important, and difficult, question. I like to believe that we can go to our own place of worship of choosing, if we know what we are looking for. Or have an idea of what we are looking for. Or maybe a feeling. It would seem that all these answer only bring up more questions, but maybe that is the point. Go ask your altar if you are confused. Light and truth is there. I think really what the altar does, is help make sense of our own worlds. Reality is too large to grasp, we need a helping hand to make sense of it all. Huxley claimed our minds acted as a security measure against the vastness. If this is true, then the altar helps us shape an understanding of slivers of vastness. I believe that at this point in the game, we are powerful enough to make an altar of our own choosing. Philosophy out of the hands of the philosophers and into the hands of the masses.
Choosing an altar makes us human. Perhaps it even gives us free will, if we do it properly. I’m not sure if I am qualified to back that statement up. We are all raised, in some way or shape or form, at the altars of others. Most of the time, from what I can observe, we adopt those altars for our own. But to make ourselves our own, we should abandon the altar altogether until we are sure of where we will pray. To pray at the wrong altar is to be lost to the vastness forever, as we will never make sense of it all. The antipodes of the mind are all well and fine, until we spend too much time down there. But by sampling the altars of others, we can know where our own may be found. Maybe even someone you know is already there.
