Ethel was considering her life rather seriously. ‘I get 3 meals a day and a comfortable bed. I have a nice home and plenty of lovely food to eat.
I even get to go to the pool every now and then. I’ve got friends and a bit of influence around here. But I always feel that something is missing. There’s got to be more to life than this.
Everybody tells me that there is no more and that this is as good as it gets. I read in the papers and magazines that we are the ultimate form of life in the whole universe. Sounds good, but I am not sure. There must be more...
I look around at all of the life forms on this planet and I really don’t see much intelligence. The universe seems like such a big place, surely there’s other intelligences out there somewhere?
HELLO! ANYBODY OUT THERE?
Sometimes, I look up into the night sky and briefly think about this. But, I am usually too busy and immediately start thinking about more important things.
I’M TOO BUSY TO THINK ABOUT IT!
I mean there’s plenty more to worry about than sky and life. Anyway, I keep telling my friends that one day, I am going to leave my home and venture out into the big world. They all think I am mad.
Why would anybody want to leave the cosy and comfortable security of their little box? We often talk about it. Well, I will leave one day… but not today.’ Or tomorrow, or the next day….
The years soon passed and Ethel, the elephant got bigger and her room seemed to get smaller. Until one day it became unbearable.
‘I’ve had enough’! She told her friends. I’m tired of the same old patterns day after day, year after year. I need a change. I need to experience something new and different’.
They all agreed and said that they also would love to break out. However, they also agreed that you would have to be mad to leave the cosy and comfortable security of your little box.
One day something happened. The same something had happened many times before, but Ethel had never noticed until now. The door was not locked. She could leave at anytime... If she really wanted to. She panicked. There was nothing to stop her from going.
She started thinking crazy thoughts. ‘What if there is no food out there and I starve to death? Or what if I was to leave and a monster ate me? Or what if I fall off the edge of the world?’
Silly ideas swirled around her head like cows caught up in a tornado! She trembled and moved back from the beckoning door.
For a long time, she stood and just stared at it, fearful of what it might lead to. Later that night she carefully stepped forward and gave the door a nudge. It creaked opened a little.
She could see the night sky and her heart raced with anticipation. She pushed it again and so easily it swung open wide.
It reminded her of the wing of a bird getting ready for flight. For a moment she was lost in a fantasy as she imagined flying high amidst a flock of pink flamingos at dizzying distances above the earth.
The night was alive with songs and sounds from hidden insects and sneaky little furry things that might bite. She was sure they were waiting for her. They sounded very hungry.
Yum! An elephant
She didn’t want to think about it or she would faint in fear and then they would eat her. She stepped through the door. Oh! Her heart leapt! The night seemed so beautiful. She felt so good, so right.
It reminded her of the time that she had worn her first ballet dress. On that day she had felt more gorgeous than a disco queen at a Gay Mardi Gras!
Ethel had left the building! The air smelt so full of energy and everything seemed so alive. The darkness whispered in her ear. ‘It’s okay Ethel, all is well, you are safe, just keep on walking’.
The dark was like a strange, yet familiar friend, long forgotten. It kept calling her, a whispering and mysterious sound, full of secrets longing to be shared.
She came up against some gates. ‘Can’t stop now’, she thought as she pushed through them. They were left trampled into the ground, like spaghetti leftovers. She ignored them and moved on into this mysterious new world.
All through the night she plodded along unknown roads, delighting in unfamiliar smells from the dark undergrowth. There were odd sounds from unseen sources and fleeting glimpses of flashing eyeballs.
Sometimes she would take a left turn at a crossroad. Sometimes she would travel straight on. It didn’t matter, she felt free, she felt alive, she felt so complete. She simply followed her nose. She laughed at that thought, it was an old elephant joke.
She steadily moved on, like a snail racing to a finish line. She would stop here and there, to take water from a stream. Her trunk did not stop reaching to sample bushes and berries, grasses and leaves. She was like a child at an ice cream buffet when there were no oldies watching.
Hours turned into days. Days turned into weeks. As she continued in her aimless wanderings, she began to realise that she was not some big thing squashed into a small space, as she had been led to believe.
Rather, she was some sort of indescribable thing, living freely in infinite space. She was not even sure now, that she was really an elephant. I mean elephants are gigantic heavy things, living in a confining world. Out here, in the open land and sky, she felt like a tiny something, living in a magnificently endless something else.
She was continually entertained by her many wonderful thoughts. Her body was now free from her confining unnatural home. Her mind was also free, from what she had thought was real life. She realised that she was not a body. She was an infinite something.
She was an eternal, magnificent, strange and intriguing something other than a body. As her mind played with alien ideas and extraordinary notions, she would catch glimpses of an alternative shadow self.
She became intrigued by this discovery. This dark self became a fascination for her. It was like discovering that you are not the shadow, you are the thing that creates the shadow!
This thing is fascinatingly delicious, it is mind-consuming and strangely alluring. ‘I am something much more than a mere body’, she cried out when she realised this truth.
She thought, ‘this shadow-self of mine, is not good, nor is it bad. It is something else. It is incomparable. It is unique and tantalisingly intriguing.
It is like a delicious meal that I can never get enough of. It is like a beautiful, sensual lover whose company I can never tire of. It is like an endless song of excitement, adventure, mystery and discovery. It is a treasure chest full of the best Ebay items!’ She was getting over-excited now!
After this she would never see herself as anything, other than an infinite awareness. She knew that her elephant experience was just another adventure in the endless playground of existence.
There are countless worlds where elephants spend their lives confined to a small room, imagining that this is real life and that’s all there is to it! You can’t tell them, they have to discover reality for themselves.
Each elephant is unique and has its own individual way of seeing the open door. But even when it sees it, it does not mean that it will have the courage to walk through!
Ethel must have wandered for years and years. Nobody knows for sure. Even Ethel can’t tell you when she stopped walking the earth and became aware that she was travelling through the infinite.
She was so happy to be the infinite something that she had briefly forgotten about. She was amused to think that once, she had lived on a world, where she thought she was an elephant. It made her laugh sometimes, she put that funny story in her trunk, to be brought out, only at parties!