Forward or Backward?

I ran. My feet methodically pounded the earth carrying me further and further away. I ran from nothing and from everything. The constant struggle between my true humanity and what I wanted to truly be moved my feet to soar. It was as if everything I feared was behind and everything I hoped was before and the only way to reach anything was to run. Running made the reach less distant. I never stumbled, I never slowed, and I never glanced behind. I was leaving the past headed toward the horizon; the glowing, distant, beautiful horizon. I ran until I reached it, and kept running. Running as if to catch the sun and hold it down never letting it sink behind the curvature of the earth taunting me with its ever present time-turning power. I ran until I could see nothing at all. Black night settled slowly over the world calling it to drift to sleep, calling it to forget what had happened and let the blackness consume it. Night did not prevail, and I carried on more carefully than before.

Every movement forward made the wish to go back more severe. I wanted the pleasures and flesh of life more than anything. They were so easy and simple. Why the soul needed its complications was difficult if not impossible to understand which is why I ran. I ran to escape both. I ran to escape the pleasures of humanity and the purity of the soul. I ran to escape into my mind, to debate the existence of this dichotomy, to understand the middle ground. I never found it, and I kept running. I did discover the choice. To go forward, running, trapped inside my mind for all eternity, or to stop, and make the decision to pick a path. The path forward would be near impossible, but with such an ethereal end. The path back would be of ease and simplicity; everything a human of base nature wants. But I am stopped by the idea of my own humanity. If I am so tempted by what is behind, how can I ever move forward with new beauty of life? I am finally leaving the infamous cave of reflected illusions, and I am seeing the beautiful yet painful Sun, but can I simply give up and turn back to my cave? I must seek the truth of reality and understand that my life before was a lie. Everything I have ever believed, seen, trusted is simply a cheap imitation of the perfected Form above. How can I not choose to go forward?