THE CARNIVAL MESSAGE
The Carnival message! And since when does carnival serve as an inspiration for messages?
This happens from the time when we understand that we can and must learn from all that takes place around us. Because we can always learn something from whatever happens independent of the event, even from an event that seems to offer nothing of worth like the carnival feast there is something to learn from it.
All the events of this period speak to us continually, insistently, that we recognize its causes and consequences, so that we can always maintain and direct the rudder of our lives in the right direction. As whoever manages to correctly know the causes of wrong living and, principally, to recognize the consequences of this, will regiment all his forces, with the maximum zeal, to redirect the life that he has lived up to now. With every certainty.
Really, with all certainty. Absolute certainty. Only if one does not make an effort to proceed on the ascending path, the one who doesn't see where he steps, or better, he who doesn't want to know where he is stepping, even when he has already sunk in the murky swamp of vices and passions. The lack of knowledge on the operation of these natural Laws blunts the human spirit, stiffens it, clouds his vision and slowly destroys his capacity of discernment. The voluntary ignorance on the causes and consequences of the many multiple and significant happenings of daily events acts on a tired spirit, already possessed by an unprecedented sleep, like a comforting lullaby, that is very much welcomed. A sweet song, that little by little becomes for him a swan's song, to wrap him up in a guaranteed sleep of spiritual death.
There are two aspects that immediately call one's attention to, during the short reign of the King Momo. Therefore, both deserve to be analyzed more deeply.
The first deals with fantasies, to the meaning they contain. What would be the real motivation capable of making a person believe that it is within the patterns of normality, for example, to put on a plastic cape adorned with rhinestones, and a Louis XVI wig, then crown oneself with a cardboard crown and go out parading around, all sovereign like to the beat of small Brazilian drum-like instruments and tambourines?
Of course, enjoyment, evidently! Be happy! Free yourself! But why exactly does anybody have a good time playing the role of someone who he isn't? Could this Joe Soap really want to feel like Louis XVI for 72 hours, with the airs of a fictitious king amongst his illusory subjects, or, to the contrary, what does he really want in this short period, does he really want to forget that he is Joe Soap? Doesn't he want to temporarily exempt himself of any responsibility, until being guillotined by reality?
To put on ostentatious garments, hide ones face behind a mask, and to jump and sing and flaunt around like the opposite sex, under the influence of alcohol and other drugs, seems to be much more of an escape than amusement. Four days of total distraction, of the most complete alienation, on a binge, without having to give account for anything or to anyone, not even to oneself. Is this what is called happiness in the carnival ballrooms. Absolute irresponsibility, inebriated by lance-perfume(1); dignity suffocated by confetti, being strangled by paper streamers. It is exactly this that the partygoers want. They want to dive entirely into the raving of the crazy libertine lifestyle, ample and unrestricted, which, nevertheless, only makes the inevitable return from the darkness even much more bitter on Ash Wednesday.
All of them are senseless. In fact they are all senseless and much more still are the people who make one big carnival out of their lives. Those chastely dressed imagine that they can corrupt the will of their fellow man unpunished, with noxious thoughts; those who for their own profit destroy reputations with a few knavish words, disguised by the mask of cunning; those that put on very well cut and cunning fancy dress costumes, that enables them to bring multiple harm to their fellow man, for profit and personal satisfaction, through the most sordid scheming, are always prodigiously destructive. In short, all those who make hedonism and egocentrism their most sacred divinities, and to whom they are frequently submissive on a daily basis, to these they have long sold their souls to.
Senseless, indeed they are senseless, because all of them have unexpectedly arrived on the Ash Wednesday. The time has come to wake up. Clowns and Columbines that until today have lead a life of fun and games, only caring about acquiring new pleasures and sensations, caring little about the misfortunes of others, they will have their masks pulled off and their costumes torn from top to bottom, so that they are exposed to be who they really are. Their huge carnival block will dissipate, and they'll never be able to regroup to continue using the disordered life of until then, routinely supporting themselves on the pain and the suffering inflicted on their fellow man. The carnival lifestyle of today has to stop, and with it the devilish slogan of live till you drop, so cunningly executed and disseminated by them here on Earth. They will have to learn very late indeed that responsibility is never treated as something singular, and separate from the action of the human spirit, even though it may be a fallen spirit.
The second aspect worthy of note in relation to carnival is shame, or better put the lack of it. For certain, nobody, who has already seen something of the carnival parties in Brazil will consider the statement exaggerated that they are nothing but consented orgies, depraved rhythms danced by perverted men and embellished by degenerate women. Men and women that are no longer anything other than males and females, who degrade themselves mutually in these samba-orgies, make an effort with incredible zeal to lower their level well below that of any animal, which always ever uses sex in a healthy and natural way.
Here a special mention for the women who use carnival as an excellent pretext to vainly exhibit their nude and half-naked bodies, in a disgusting visual collective of prostitution, regally paid with each masculine look that covets her. Creatures who have transformed their bodies an instrument that exists for the work of the spirit – into voluptuous traps and seductive bait ready to hook and disgrace legions of foolish idiots and stupid weaklings.
They don't know that with their sensual contortions they show themselves to be much more than a supposed carnal attraction. For shame is a direct, exact, and unmistakable measurement of ones own spiritual value as a person. A human who has removed all types of shame from him is a spiritually empty being. And a spiritually empty being fails to fulfill his fundamental prerogative, the reason of his own existence, that is the obtaining and maintenance of the self conscience acquired through experiences, in his pilgrimages through matter.
Naturally this infallible measure is equally valid in the opposite case, and in both directions. Thus, the more ennobled the human being, the more integral and unshaken his intuitive feeling of bodily shame will also be. And vice-versa.
The biblical metaphor written in Genesis about the recognition of the nakedness by the human couple, and the need for both to feel the need to cover it when the notion of good and evil was awaken in them, is an image that gives evidence of the start of this process of awareness of the human spirit, the last and fundamental objective of his passage through the several parts of Creation, that eventually facilitates one's own entrance into Paradise. For a developed spirit who already has established a certain degree of self- awareness, body and soul are absolutely intangible, inviolable and incorruptible casings. Never would such a person consent to have his body exposed for public contemplation, neither his soul undressed before pretentious psychic specialists.
Dances and carnival parades, as well as several other similar contingencies, just act as catalysts of a long process of interior degradation, in the course of the intimacy of countless number of people who have failed as human beings. They constitute mere opportunities for a visible exacerbation of the stage where they find that the lack of shame has been a long time latent in them.
Through this simple and direct measure of the manifestation of the feeling of shame, the reader can well imagine the real spiritual position of the majority of terrestrial humanity.
Roberto C. P. Junior
1. Lance-perfume: a spray that temporarily leaves one dizzy. Return