THE TRIQUETRA OF LIFE: Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness

A Chapter Seventeen Excerpt

Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous

A True Story of Chasing Shadows

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the shadows on the wall represent illusions and the false reality that people perceive as truth. Chained prisoners mistake these shadows, cast by objects ritually borne by others in front of a fire, as the whole of reality because they have no other experience. The allegory is a metaphor for the human condition, where individuals must escape the “cave” of ignorance and societal beliefs to pursue true knowledge, which is a painful but ultimately enlightening journey. 

Plato’s Cave Shadow helped me understand why my future as an engineer had never really been mine. It was my father’s shadow projected across the wall by his hearthfire that I perceived as if my own. His hope became my reflection—his dream, my duty. Electrical engineering fit his image of success, not the innate talents of my soul. Only by struggling away from his shadowed projection into the sun could I begin to see my own persona.

Slowly, I began to sense that all education—its textbooks, its tests, its rigid hierarchy of obedience—had been shaping us to fit a pattern, rather than discover one. From parents and priests to laws and lesson plans, the same silent command echoed through every corridor: conform or else. Learning had become rehearsal — a polite suffocation of the child who once asked why.

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”  Ralph W. Emerson

If I were ever to live truthfully, I would have to unlearn what had been instilled in me — to peel away the trained reflex of obedience and recover the unguarded self. Everything I’d been taught was a mirror reflecting the past, not a window opening to the future. So where, then, was the real me?

Three years later, I would learn the truth the hard way — through the traumatic grace of a nervous breakdown that shattered my invisible chains. It arrived first as fog, then as blinding clarity: I had been living a lie, as so many still do — mistaking reflection for reality, the shadow for substance. Only by walking out of the cave would I find the Source. On my awakening from pitch darkness, the noonday sun was a scorching experience.

---

                                    

From the memoir-in-progress, nearing publication:
Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous
—a spiritual epic for truth-seekers, contemplative mystics, and all who long for God.

For more insights, visit www.RMDellOrfanoAuthor.com, and pass it forward.