The Cave

This came across Facebook this morning, and I immediately thought of you, my gentle readers:

‎"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure."
—Joseph Campbell

Well, if it's one thing we M.S.ers do all too readily, it's stumble. So, by Campbell's assessment... is it here, in the life with M.S., that lies our treasure?

Mayyyybeee... to strictly follow Campbell's thought, this would be our treasure only if we were in the abyss.

Are we?

My (recent) journeys into my own personal abyss may have been occasioned by M.S., but they weren't caused by it. If anything, the M.S. journey has been the fire casting shadows on the wall of Plato's cave, and the first shadow I see... is my own.

Because in the Cave, it is only because of the light that we can see our own shadows, and those shadows clarify the reality of the walls that surround us.

So we M.S.ers may not all resonate with a call to "stand up" and walk out of the cave, but we can turn around, and pull a piece of wood out of the fire, and use it as a torch; and use its light to reveal... what?

That's the mystery, isn't it? We'll see, won't we? Only by the light of the fire, will we see; only by using the fire, will we see the truth of the Cave. Light is the gift of the fire...

And for us, the gift of M.S.