Belief

Belief was a golden-haired child born in the state of desire within the realm of the word.
The word: right, gleaming, sometimes dark and full of clouds.
All was true.
None was true- just like dreams during bouts of thunder.
He had never been in the realm of the Real, cushioned as he was by the pillowy softness of DESIRE and THE WORD; he only caught short glimpses of the Real, tiny fragments of light he could never remember. It was as if they had never happened. The golden-haired child, born on the white bed during the time of blue, little did it know that nothing born of the word could walk in the realm of the Real.

Belief was born in a place where the urge to fulfil needs is transferred into abstract longings whose ends can never be met, a place where yearning goes on and on because there can be no end to yearning. Belief was a necessity, a logical conclusion to such yearning. It worked like a bottle with a cork, how tight it kept all those things locked down. Blue and brown bottles all lined up and evenly spaced on the shelf, tidy and ordered and gleaming like church windows in noonday sun.

Belief was a natural product of desire. Oh, that dress. That kiss, more, more, please.
Whereas a need could be met, a desire knew no fulfillment and so it naturally blossomed into Belief.
Oh, that touch, more, more please.
It is the notion which makes us believe that what one longs for does exist, will happen, is coming eventually to those who are good, to those who believe. The houses they promised, the dream they spoke of, the heaven that awaits after toil and suffering, the approval of the father after a lifetime of whipped dog-like subservience, the love of one and only one other human.
All of it- belief.

Once, not too long ago, Belief knew he was a man of god. He was a street preacher with long blond hair pulled tight behind his head. Many people regarded him as a semi-delusional zealot who imagined he could hear God in his head. He stood by the courthouse steps and told them the evil of their ways. He was a man in an old brown suit that was one inch too short for his pale limbs.
Many people prayed to god. Hands clasped tightly, desires leaking from their mouths. They talked to him, some even thought they heard answers or saw signs in response. But when a man did nothing but stand on the street and preach and shout and lecture to the passers-by about the word of God, the majority, even the church-going people, thought that his mind had slipped into the cave of fantasy. From his own perspective, he was the only one who believed in the lord enough to give up all other things. He saw himself as truly devotional, the messenger, a solider in God’s army.

It all happened for Belief within the realm of the symbolic order. All of this happened because a symbol was not the thing itself. A car was not a car, love was not love. Words, words, symbols. It was like a shadow, it took a shape that couldn't be grasped, a shape that could take on a life of its own and birth new shapes with no correspondences to the Real. These shapes, these shadows with no correspondences, were the makers of DESIRE, the grandparents of Belief. They were dark storms that clouded the Real.

Belief constructed a world around himself, as we all do, to explain his existence. It was elaborate and full of detail, rich in explanations which he liked to share often with whomever would listen. In his world, God spoke to him, God commanded him. There was one word that mattered, one sound that trumped all others. In his world, men could do what they wanted with their women as long as they were married. It was what God commanded, what he actually wanted for the men of earth. He knew that people must be humbled, for now their pride eclipsed their accomplishments, and their ego would not let in the glory of the lord. They needed to experience the low human-state so they could one day experience a higher one.
It was the only way. He knew it. As God’s solider, it was his mission to teach THE WORD. God told him the way to humble these humans who coveted their fine clothes, their hot meals, their whims and merriment.

Belief was a prince in the house of DESIRE. He ran to and fro calling for some action or other in his name. People gladly indulged this spoiled child because it gave them Hope, his lovely sister and wife. She was only another word. Hope lacked anything that could keep it from floating away during the night. Hope was the golden-haired sister of Belief. Sticky, sweet and empty. Always encouraging one to embrace Belief, for if you stuck with him, you would get to taste her sweetness, like dime-store candy.

Once, not too long ago, there was a family that trusted Belief. This family hired him to help repair their roof which had been leaking for many years. He worked at their house for five hours one day.
On the 5th night, as had been his plan for several days, he cut a hole in their screen door, which was partially open to let in the wonderful summer-scented night air. He let himself in while the moon was still high. As everyone slept, he kidnapped Hope from her bed.
He had recognized her as his long lost sister and lover. He took her to the woods where he had told his wife to wait for him under the trees. His wife gave Hope a robe and told her to change into it.

Hope and Belief, together once again, offered justification to the house of desire. Like the children of a couple that has become disenchanted with one another, they were the fantasies that made all other fantasies survive.

A small ceremony was performed and Belief proclaimed Hope as his wife. He become one with her, as he would many times afterwards, many times each day. Hope was found nearly a year later walking on the street of a town she once had seen through very different eyes. The colors she remembered had taken on a fractured quality, as though she had merged with some other creature while chained in the woods. The blue authorities wrote down her words:
"Anything I showed resistance or hesitation to, he would turn to me and say, 'The Lord has commanded you to do this. You have to experience the lowest form of humanity to experience the highest.’ I watched him from the ground, talking as he did with emphatic movements. Then he would get on top of me and humble me once again.”

Belief and his first wife were taken into police custody. They were both declared mentally unfit to stand trial. It was Belief's explanation that the court saw as unstable. His preaching on the courthouse steps, his very thoughts on God.

If we could only have Belief we would join God in Heaven and bring Truth back to life. With Belief’s hand in mine, it was okay to kill and take another’s land. His presence supported actions borne from desire, his company justified all actions. Human thoughts became God’s thoughts.

With Belief at your side, you will do any number of absurd things; set out cookies for an immortal in a red suit, or eat crackers and wine and call it the flesh and blood of your God, or burn a person at the stake, or drive your neighbors from their homes and push them into the sea, or destroy all of the natural resources available to you and the rest of your race. With belief, it is what God desires, what God has asked for in an inaudible voice that shook the walls with its power.

The writer of a particular text about Hope used words like “horrific and sick” to describe Belief. This is the conflict. One man believes he is doing what God wants him to do. He is humbling a young woman so that one day she can reach a higher state, so they can both become what they were meant to be. This is Belief.
One deed is thought of as righteous, the same deed is seen by others as evil. Both are words used to describe an action.

There is nothing that “can’t” or “shouldn’t” be done when you can say that Belief is with you. No door can be closed to you when you come from the house of Desire, frothing at the mouth with want of a satisfaction that can’t be had, golden Belief and fair Hope marching at your side demanding that you take, take, take. Take what you want and say it was for Belief. Your basket is full, Belief is there at your side, a parrot on your shoulder.

Even in custody, Belief continuously sang hymns to himself until he was removed from the courtroom. The world around him was crazy, full of evil men who had no contact with God. He sang to remind himself that he was the one with the truth. He was the one with God on his side. He had to sing to protect his world. He sang to protect his symbolic order, the world he had built for himself, the only world that still had a place for him.

He ran amok under the shadowy banners of the house of Desire within the Realm of the symbolic. There it was glorious, there it was beautiful. In the realm of the Real, Belief and Hope vanished like evil spirits.
In the realm of the Real, you stand alone with blood on your hands, raw animal death under your fingernails, spattered on your face, shivering through your bones.

The Real is void of Gods, void of hope, void of salvation or damnation, void of any branch to which you might cling and profess “It is so!” In the state of the real you would not search for your lost sister, because there is no sister to lose, no “other” to humble or cling to, to subordinate or raise higher. There is an endless sea of “something” which defies explanation, which eludes capture in the realm of the symbolic. Whenever you dip your hand into the well of the Real and try to bring it into the realm of the Word, what you retrieve is transformed from life into death, from unity into separation, categorization and humiliation.

The Real cannot be perceived through the word, not through the damaged eyes of Belief or Hope, made of words as they are.
Nothing that can be said is true.
All those who speak lie, from dawn till dusk they lie and only in the darkness is the truth revealed to them, in their nightly visits to the well of the Real. Something voyages between these two realms, the land of THE WORD and the kingdom of the REAL.
When it is in one state it is one thing and when it is in the other it is another. This something is a voyager, sometimes captured by the gravitational pull of the WORD. To be free of the word and of desire you must sacrifice Belief and Hope, stop expending vital energy in supplication to these false deities. They are closest to you, and therefore easiest to reach.
Then you must tell Mother desire that you know she is a lie forged of the illusory substance of Father word and then your tongue will be tied by the white hot heat that leaves you howling and wriggling as you abandon the WORD, achieving lift off.