Behind The Torch – The Marantu Dispatch
We spend our lives believing we are the shape we were handed.
A name. A story.
A wound. A talent.
A family. A country.
A line drawn somewhere inside a universe we never asked to enter.
We mistake ourselves for the dot on the page.
The triangle in the corner.
The line that stretches from one moment to another.
But these are only drawings.
Temporary outlines placed on the inner surface of something far greater.
Imagine a balloon turned inside out.
You draw a dot.
A line.
A triangle.
A thousand shapes.
Then you flip the balloon back, blow it full of breath, and look inside.
The shapes remain—
but only as markings on a vast and curving space.
If you mistake yourself for the dot, you spend your life defending it.
If you mistake yourself for the line, you spend your life extending it.
If you mistake yourself for the triangle, you spend your life sharpening your edges.
But the truth is simple, quiet, and frightening:
You were never the shape.
You are the entire inside of the balloon.
The whole field of awareness upon which every shape appears.
Enlightenment is not becoming more of the dot.
It is remembering you were never the dot at all.
You do not need to flip the balloon inside out—
inside and outside are just more shapes, more illusions.
There is no outside to your being.
There is no boundary to your presence.
There is no edge where you end and the cosmos begins.
The Big Bang did not happen somewhere “out there.”
It is still happening as you.
The universe does not expand into space—
it expands because it is consciousness unfolding itself.
The shape is the costume.
The self is the space.
You were never the shape.
You were always the vastness that holds every possible shape,
every possible life,
every possible form.
Remember this,
and the borders of your suffering begin to dissolve.
Remember this,
and the torch you carry becomes lighter in your hands.
—Uzanenkosi
Torchbearer, Marantu
Y0 | Ntu 23 | Week 4