Held Prisoner By Your Skin....

The following poem was posted on a list I am a (lurking) member of. 

What's it like to be a human
the bird asked

I myself don't know
it's being held prisoner by your skin
while reaching infinity
being a captive of your scrap of time
while touching eternity
being hopelessly uncertain
and helplessly hopeful

The poem is by Anna Kamienska...and there is more....but these first few lines caught my attention.  It reminds me of what Paul bemoans in Romans about living in a body of death.....

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:24)

Other versions render it "who will rescue me"....still the same idea.

We are held prisoner by our skins.  Interesting way of wording that don't you think?

And then the time part...a captive of your scrap of time...while touching eternity. 

Same thought...worded a bit differently....

Ecclesiastes 3:11

He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts, but man cannot discover the work God has done from beginning to end. (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

Joel Goldsmith, a modern day Christian mystic wrote a book called A Parenthesis in Eternity. 

In his book, Real Magic, Wayne Dyer says this of the parenthesis. 

Try thinking of your life as a parenthesis in eternity.  The parenthesis opens at the moment of your conception and closes at the instant of your death.  The space within this parenthesis is your life, surrounded by something called eternity.  That something we label eternity is not experienced physically, yet it exists in some mysterious way within the mind.  There is something that is very much a part of us that is invisible.

The invisible self, the part that is not your physical sensory self, is the part that can contemplate eternity. 

Deepak Chopra says:

“We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.”

And Sir Thomas Browne

The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity.

And while we are in Ecclesiastes, how about this verse that sends the egoic mind into a tizzy trying to figure it out....

Ecclesiastes 3:15 (Darby Translation)

That which is was long ago, and that which is to be hath already been; and God bringeth back again that which is past.

Ecclesiastes seems to be a book of the Bible written specifically to/about the futility of the egoic self.  That might make a really good series of blog posts.  Perhaps more on that to come?