Boxes

Imagine a pyramid of cardboard boxes so large that its base stretches from horizon to horizon, and its top disappears into the clouds. Inside each box is a human being. The boxes are arranged by size according to a person’s standing within society.

The bottom rows of boxes, which make up the base, are short and narrow, barely allowing the person inside to move about. They are so cramped that the people within cannot stand up or stretch out to sleep. They live a miserable life of bare survival, entrapped, confused, and without hope.

All of the boxes of this size, even though they might be located farther up on the pyramid, are all internally dimensionally the same. They make up 50% of the pyramid or half of humanity.

As we walk up the sides of the pyramid, we begin to notice that the boxes start to get a little larger. The next size offers the inhabitant room to stand erect and there is space to recline for sleeping. It offers a little more than the boxes beneath it. It is still a dungeon of despair.

However, like all of the inhabitants of the pyramid, they are aware of their position within the structure. Even though they possess little in comparison to the boxes above them, they’re violently opposed to any upward mobility of the people in the boxes below them. They perceive that their extra amount of room supports their false belief of superiority. They make up 25% of the box pyramid.

As we climb farther up, we notice that the boxes start to become substantially larger. The next layers have room to jump and dance, play hide and seek, and travel in automobiles. They are nowhere near as confined as the people in the layers just below them.

People have the freedom, or so they think, to move about unfettered and uncased; they know the people below are cramped because they refuse to lift their boxes up by their straps and move upward like they have done.

They are uncaring, insensitive, callous, and live their lives boxed in and selfishly for themselves. They reason that if God had wanted the 75% below them to have a better box, they would have been born higher up the pyramid.

They represent, as a group, 15% of the total pyramid. They live for the day when their hard work and social standing will allow them to ascend to the near top of the pyramid.

The next group of boxes is indeed opulent. They have fine exquisite decorations on their exteriors; theirs is the finest of cardboard, but still paper nonetheless.

They have room and freedoms in their boxes that the dwellers below can only dream of. They eat the best of foods, drink the finest wines and liquors, and disdain the masses that have to indulge in cheap chemical highs to escape their sordid conditions.

They have room in their boxes to burn and all of the amenities of the good life to go with their hedonistic, self-indulgent existence. They know that since they are situated so close to the top, that it is merely a matter of time before they are initiated into the clan of the power elites. They are 9% of the population.

At the top, the next three levels of the pyramid are the boxes of the aristocratic rich and the power elites. As we finish our climb, we examine them in ascending order.

The rich and famous, kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, dictators and autocrats that have assumed power by rigged elections and military coups occupy the third level of the pyramid. But even they pay homage to the second level from the top.

On the second level, live the super rich merchant class and the heads of multi-national corporations and the business movers and shakers of the world.

Their only concern is making money and lots of it no matter the cost in human lives, living conditions or the destruction of Mother Earth. Profit trumps national allegiances and borders. Their God is the greatest God of them all, the almighty dollar.

At the top of the pyramid is a single box shaped like the stack of boxes that it sits atop. Its size can barely be measured. Its four massive sides slope down to meet the boxes below at the precise angle of the pyramid, ensuring harmony and blessings to all below.

The occupant of this illustrious habitat has windows everywhere for him to look out and down upon the seething masses, but the windows are opaque and does not allow for viewing outside.

He sits in his regal robes of infallibility, on the holy throne of the church, where he and his predecessors have ruled for nearly 2,000 years. The resident of the top box of the pyramid is none other than His Holiness, the Pope.

Yet as regal and rich as the power elites of the top three levels of the pyramid are, they and the people below, all have one thing in common. They are all trapped in boxes. The lower level dwellers are enclosed in boxes of social and economic inequality. The upper echelons, although socially and economically free, are trapped along with all of humanity, regardless of station, in boxes of mental delusion about the meaning of life and their place in the universe.

Now imagine while cocooned in your own private box, a box that you have become extremely comfortable living in because you think that you have got it all figured out, you hear a scratching sound somewhere in your boxed in world.

You could be home, out having a picnic or driving to or from work, when you start to hear a nagging persistent noise, kind of like a knife cutting heavy paper. You cannot place the origin exactly, but it seems to be somewhere in front of your eyes.

The noise gets louder and louder; and finally in the middle of the room that you are sitting in, you see the silver edge of a sharp object surrounded by a brilliant cascade of light that hurts your eyes.

Slowly you can make out a two-inch equilateral triangular hole being cut into the side of the box. The triangular shape is soon completed and a beam of brilliant light pours through into your boxed in universe.

A strong voice calls out to you through the aperture, “Is anyone in there?”

You are startled and frightened. You don’t have a clue as to what is going on. Again the voice calls out, “I said is anyone in there?” You manage a feeble “Yes, I’m in here,” not really sure of where in here is anymore. “What do you want?”

“I have come to show you the way out of the cardboard box that you are living in.”

You yell back, “But I am not in a box! I don’t know who or what you are or where you come from; but I do know one thing, I am not living in a cardboard box!”

The outside voice replies, “I know how you feel. I used to live in a box about 50 miles from you on this same level, but I was able to cut myself free. One day I went to sleep in my comfortable box and had a most disturbing but enlightening dream.

When I opened my eyes the next day, I found a heavy handled object with a sharp pointed edge lying next to me in bed. I had no clue as to what it was used for; but when I picked it up, I intuitively knew that it was a box cutter and was designed to free me from my box filled with half-truths and outright lies.

I went to the nearest wall and made a small incision and the blinding light of truth started to pour in. The light had a warm fuzzy feeling to it as it caressed my skin. I quickly cut a larger hole and crawled through into a world of endless light.

I was astounded to learn that I had been living my life in a box stacked along side billions of other boxes in the shape of a gigantic pyramid.

I found out in short order, as I made my first small triangular cut into each new box, that no one equated living in the box as being trapped, both physically and mentally. They all thought that everything was fine.”

You shout back, “But everything in my box, not that I believe that you are telling me the truth, is just fine and dandy. Why would I want to leave?”

“Because you will learn the truth and the truth will set you free.”

 “Let me assume for a moment that what you are telling me is true. Tell me what it is like in your box-free world.”

“It is simply glorious! I am at total peace with myself, my neighbors, my planet, and I now have full knowledge of my place in the universal scheme of things.”

“The free people, unencumbered by the box, love one another and practice the Golden Rule. We do no harm! We no longer wage war. We live to enhance the lives of one another. And we live in full certainty of the glory to come.

Our lives are stress free and we no longer fear death. We know that death is only a passage point from a life well lived to a state of absolute contentment.”

You have started to think and say, “Sounds too good to be true.”

“I know.”

“What if I want to think about it, will you be coming back?”

“Of course, I will! All you have to do is call loudly through the hole that I made; and no matter where I am, I will hear you and come back. Meanwhile, before I go, I want to leave you a little something,” and saying that I drop through the two-inch hole a strange heavy handled object.

As I start to move on to the next box, I hear you call one last time, “What is this?”

I reply back over my shoulder, “It’s a box cutter. With it, you can cut your way out. Use it when you feel ready.”

The foreign object is lying at your feet. Dare you pick it up? As you reach for the knife, it changes into this book that you are reading. Are you ready to know the truth and escape your box of fears? The choice is yours.