What really matters in natural selection is the survival of genes. The male peacock could legitimately be imagined as saying: ‘If I grow inconspicuous feathers, I will probably live a long time, but I will not find a mate. If I produce colorful feathers, I will probably die early—but before that I can pass on many genes, including those for producing colorful feathers.’ Richard Dawkins

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“Everything is vibration. This vibration of life occurs in an eternal, wave-like rhythm of expansion and contraction that the Tantrics call Spanda.” Diana Sans

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“The experience of our reality ... is completely different for a liberated and awakened person than for someone who experiences it from the perspective of their conditioning.” Christopher Wallis

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“The Tantric Revolution (a thousand years ago) brought its followers similarly liberating innovations as many political upheavals in Europe many centuries later. It did away with the notions of a patriarchal caste system and taught freedom, equality and integration based on the common divine origin of all beings.” Diana Sans

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“I walked home across the fields. It was mid-summer. The hay in the meadows had already been harvested and the rye was being mown.” Leo Tolstoy

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“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein

*

“I was calm and serene like the wrath of God.” Davide Enia

The Fin/Cosmic Intensity

The fin — it could have been a ray or a dolphin. In that moment, I realized how alive and dangerous everything was. How little control we had. How deeply intertwined everything was — desire, life, fear. And how far beauty reached — all the way to the edge of the uncanny.

Of course, I didn’t consciously think this. There was only fear, and soon after, desire. You held me steadfastly. And then the unimaginable happened. Without a word, we returned to the sea. It was an exorcism. Our courage reached only to our navels.

We were caught in a shower of shooting stars. The cosmic intensity highlighted our smallness. I felt the echo of your body within me. So much merged in an overwhelming surge. Thankfully, I eventually fell asleep in your arms.

Morning broke for us along the Mozambique Channel. Before us lay the islands of the Bazaruto Archipelago. The sea was the warmth of human hands.

The Bazaruto Archipelago lies off the southern coast of Mozambique, thirty kilometers east of Vilankulo in the Indian Ocean. It consists of five main islands — Bazaruto, Benguerra, Magaruque, Santa Carolina (Paradise Island), and Bangue. Since 1971, the area has been a national park.

Half a dozen couples had settled nearby. They indulged in a backpacker cult for which you and I were too old. The air was like oceanic silk, stirring a tumult of bliss within me. Far from us lay the estranged notions of existence of the industrialized world.

Chewing Gum for Omnivores

We landed at a beach bar, typical for the genre, made of driftwood and corrugated metal, on the edge of the inhabited world. That’s where we were meeting Samuel. He stuck to the lukewarm beer of a local brewery. Samuel drove a battered Land Cruiser, like everyone who knew that roads were merely suggestions. In the dry heart of the land, man belonged to the dust.

We stowed our bags among water canisters, folding chairs, and drums that Samuel had packed “for the evening.” We were city people and had no idea.

Samuel was visibly cultivating his own bush myth. He chewed on something tough—a chewing gum for omnivores.

“If you stare at the landscape for too long,” he said, “you eventually forget why you came.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.”

Soon, the road existed only as a suggestion. We followed a track that dissolved into the shimmering heat. On either side, thorn bushes, termite mounds, and wrecks. The sky stretched above us like an inverted burning mirror.

“This is where you learn when resistance makes sense,” Samuel declared, swatting at flies around us.
“And when letting go is wiser.”

After hours of monotonous expanse, we stopped at an improvised gas station—corrugated metal, the smell of petrol, scorching sun. Inside, it smelled of ammonia and sewage. The toilets were a chapter of their own.

“It can always get worse,” Samuel said, with dry understatement.