There once was a blind bee keeper in ancient Persia who made up for his loss of sight by sharpening his faculties of the other senses. In doing so he could communicate with his queen bees.
He lived in an exceptionally majestic Oasis, was content, and his bees worked diligently in voluntary service – which helped him achieve his success. In the course of decades of being a beekeeper, he was forced to experience how disease moved into his neighbors’ beehives and how their populations were swept away in misery. The beekeeper who always felt himself to be safe from the threats, engaged himself daily in interesting philosophical discussions with his queen bees and bathed himself in the sunlight of the contentment of his contemplative world.
Then suddenly, one day in the dusk of the evening, as well as the dusk of his life, as he sat down to his usual treasured exchange with the queen bees, he made a startling, sickening discovery:
All liveliness, all blooming life of the hives was muted and he could only feel the lifeless bodies in his careworn hands. In despair he fell to the ground and cried out into a vast emptiness, an incomparable WHY? The blind beekeeper wept seven days and seven nights, but then received a surprising answer out of this apparent nothingness:
“Beekeeper, you were constantly given to consider yourself to be bathing in security and wellbeing, which became a daily routine. How could I otherwise bring it to your attention, that there is a contrast to all of that? I had already waited way too long and now you may take notice, what it means to be destitute and deprived so that you experience what poverty is. The bees have willingly, with open eyes, sacrificed themselves for you, that you may have this experience, which arguably is among the most existential.
All beings, all life must experience this contrast, for without poverty, without deprivation and destitution you will not find the way back to me. You never would have called out to me, never would have posed this question, as you had done immediately after you lost your sight. From that moment on I lived for many decades in your big heart, but then quietly disappeared, like a fading echo, little by little out of your system. And the power of routine became your God.
I love you, beekeeper. You are my child and as such should soon return home to me, Father-Mother, for the evening dusk will soon be over. Not the routine will greet you, no, I will receive you and all else will remain behind, lifeless, back on Earth.
And now, my child, be embraced, and greet the new day and the new Sun …”
