Hikmah

The image that only one man can imagine is the echo of a forgotten symbol that destiny hid in other times.

In a secluded corner of my library, I discovered a book with weathered pages, with a mysterious map printed on the cover in the form of an ancient parchment. The words on the first page were almost erased, as if touched by too many hands, but one of the phrases followed me in my dreams: "Every journey is a return to oneself."

When I opened my eyes at dawn, I found a fine trace of sand on the window sill, reminding me of my journey this year to the Holy Land, the realm of endless sands. Jorge Luis Borges himself had such a revelation when he wrote "The Book of Sand", reducing the idea of otherness to a succession of reflections, organizing it like a pendulum that oscillates between reality and dream, until the dream invades reality.

The road was difficult during the day in the desert: the sun was melting in the sky into a hot magma, covering the entire celestial vault, the sand making my steps uncertain and heavy. I still remember how the caravan leader, an old man dressed in white, tried to encourage us with gentle words. Immediately after the caravan left the oasis, the air became dry, making breathing increasingly difficult. Somehow, I was waiting for a sign from God that would calm my soul. And throughout the journey, I kept leaning over the waves, having the impression that the sun, pulsating in a mysterious rhythm, was trying to tell me something.

What is the subtle relationship between the present event and the course of a recurring destiny, from the point of view of the invisible connection between symbol and eternity?

At each step, quite uncertainly, I tried to discover new meanings of the signs that appeared from everywhere and nowhere, like a little breeze that constantly caressed my face, or a scarab lost among the camels' legs, or even the mirage that seemed to always appear on the horizon. The newly formed vision, facilitating the understanding of the Aleph, was realized in a composition that was reminiscent of Merlin's mirror, as a way of revelation, reflecting my image in another pose. Throughout the journey, in a way that I could not explain to myself, I heard the call of the past of an Arab hero who wandered these lands. It was the shadow of the other me, returned to a past.

Traveling means re-encountering your past, finding yourself as someone else who is, in fact, a reflection of who you will be.

Only then, on the path that passed through the hot sands, I realized that, like the ancient Kabbalists, I was trying to get out of the labyrinth of the unknown, striving to discover something, some clue, some secret message, but that, in fact, no one was to blame for my inability to understand what nature was showing me all around me. Suddenly, another scarab stopped at my feet. Instinctively, I placed it in a small box in which I kept fragments of memories. Something told me that this second scarab, from the middle of the desert, had not appeared at my feet for nothing. Sooner or later, the meaning of this sign would somehow be revealed to me, beyond the deceptive appearances of the world.

What part of yourself are you willing to give up so that your vision can take the form of a symbol that will last beyond you?

But then, I suddenly remembered the character in Jorge Luis Borges' work. Perhaps he, like the scarab, was destined to be carried through the labyrinth of destiny, caught in a captivity that was not an end, but only a transformation. Something inside him felt stifled and rebelled, and then God spoke to him in a dream:

"You will live and die in this dungeon, so that a man I know may look at you a certain number of times and then not be able to forget you, placing your creature and symbol in a poem that has its precise place in the fabric of the universe. Endure your captivity, but you will give that poem a word that will echo eternally through the ages."

Could the scarab have been the key to my entire journey that scorching day? I watched it struggle to continue on its path, reminding me of the ancient Egyptian legends in which the scarab was the messenger of the gods, the consciousness of a destiny emanating from eternity, Ingeriso Unsyekel.

And, still looking at the little scarab in my box, I suddenly understood the connection with that Borgesian character, condemned to darkness to become light in the verses of an unknown poet. The box, his physical prison, was, in fact, the gateway to immortality through the power to live in my memory and that of all those who will read these lines. His captivity could only be another form of freedom, for words grant eternal life to those who would otherwise be forgotten.

Can the image of a forgotten symbol arise in your mind, which destiny has locked away in the silence of other times to make you search for the hidden meaning of existence?

Destiny speaks to us through signs that we must decipher, and whoever fails to understand them through his reflection in the image that followed him, crosses the desert in vain. For only eyes open to the unseen transform each encounter into a potential revelation about the meaning of existence, about the freedom of the spirit and about the message of God. Of course, each scarab can be the ephemeral shadow of a sand dune or the guide of a caravan, but it can also take the form of a fallen date by the side of the road, or turn into a small breeze.

The end of the journey takes on the grandeur of a revelation. A glance can decipher the mysteries of the universe better than a thousand words, but only one word can open the gates of eternity: Hikmah.

The scarab was the silent messenger of an unexpected revelation, a kind of bridge between the seen and the unseen, because it managed to show me the way, becoming one with the sacred word Hikmah. Something told me that, likewise, the same word would ensure my passage beyond the veil of time, in accordance with the belonging to the sacred mystery formulated by Borges: "It is enough to know one thing to realize on the spot a whole series of features that confirm it, unsuspected before."

I understood something deeper. The image that only a man can imagine is that of a lost scarab, carrying on its back the shadow of an unspoken word that only the desert can read. From this point of view, destiny does not trample on an ephemeral creature, but brings out a hidden idea, to be kept in a box, from which it can only be truly freed by speaking. Someday, I will meet myself again, in a circle of destiny, and I will reappear like a scarab lost in the endless sands of time.

A forgotten symbol always returns to where someone is ready to understand it, like an echo returning on the trail of a destiny waiting to be deciphered.

Hikmah represents the silent wisdom that is acquired through the revelation of a hidden sign, from which an inner certainty is born, beyond the limits of immediate reason. Here, I take into account the idea that each symbol is a special key, by reference to the mysteries written in the warp of time, as an argument for the fact that nothing is accidental in the order of the universe.

Even now, I feel the need to ask myself the question: if I ever meet again, will I still be the same or will I become someone else?