The Blinding Absence Of Light (9)

is like the prison it describes,
not a place for the weak of constitution,

it being a narrative about life as prisoner
in a Moroccan prison where the indifference
of the guards is a mercy, the active attention
of the guards is a test of the prisoners will to live.

But every so often an uplifting quote comes up,
where why the prisoners were so stubborn
as to want to live is made clearer...

Chapter 28, page 124

'Suffering did not choose my path for me - I did, before and beyond all suffering. I had to overcome my doubts, my failures, and most of all, the illusions nourished by every human being. How? By letting them wither away inside me. I no longer trusted those images that falsified reality. It is a weakness to mistake one's feelings for reality, to foster a lie that begins and ends in oneself, and to consider this an accomplishment.

Now, to make headway through this desert, I had to break free of everything. I understood that only a mind that can shake off all bonds can lead us to the subtle peace I will call ecstasy.'.