|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Chapter Sixteen
All that was unessential in the Prima Materia has died and what is precious has risen, reborn from that festering. The form its essence took in the proceeding Processes held and contained it as it went through this deathing. With this next Procedure I will set this form and solidify its constellation. I will crystallize to this unique and individual creation of the Alchemical Art from regressing to a less evolved state, or even dissolving back into the Primal Broth. It preserves and removes it from accidental outside influences. This wondrous new form of the Prima Materia becomes a stable, separate entity and substance. In accord to its own particular needs, I may devise and use unique vessels and influences to substantiate its form. This will help activate and release the Prima Materia's essence. As a psychic event, this Process stabilizes the subject's transformed awareness to its new level of realization.
The diamond cannot return to being coal. The painting can't be reduced to its constituent colors. The Prima Materia's new fundamental nature is made immutable through this process of: FIXATION
It's hopeless. What he takes for granted is terrifying for me. "I want to know the truth," I tell him. "Yes, Yason, I'm sure you do. We all do." He gives me his toothles, face- collapsing smile. "You say you're preparing me for a higher reality, but all you show me is trickery and deceit." He looks up and studies me a moment, grimacing so that his beard sticks out horizontally, some sly pleasure gleaming in his eyes. "Turo just told me that to become the Dreamer I have to kill you." I struggle to maintain my stoop, rather than sit at his side. "It is really simple to explain," he says, raising his eyebrows and flexing his face to one side. He gingerly inserts a long, dirty nailed finger into his beard to scratch. "Turo has a minor disability, you know. Sometimes he has fits when he has chores to do, like when it is time for him to slaughter. His mental stability," he wiggles his hands and eyebrows to demonstrate. "Yes. He showed me that too. I want to know, is killing you the only way for me to become the Dreamer?" "In the Rites of Transmission many mysteries are revealed. Revelations will come as you fly to the top of the Tree, to be in your body where time has never been. You will speak with the animals and spirits and be able to remember all that has been and will be. That Jewel of Paradox will be yours indeed to live from. You will have the guidance and empowerment to recreate all this exactly to your need and pleasure" This is just too much. Again I'm swept away by disappointment and confusion. "I must tell you something important first. No... No, that can wait till later. There is so much to explain at once, it seems impossible. Ah, well, never mind. It is your task so you will come to understand it all eventually." He's silent some while, then he nods at the doorway. After we enter, he motions with his jaw for me to sit. He lights two tapers, sticks them in crevices of opposite walls and holds the bottom of the door-drape in place with a stone, as if to insure privacy. "You should know why I called you," he says solemnly. Here we go again, I think with irritated frustration. More hocus-pocus. "I was sent here. You sent me here. Or rather your other self did. You said it would help me find my hidden self. So I could be whole." I try to talk calmly, in spite of my exasperation with all this. "Well, yes," he says with a nonchalant, dismissing tone. "Things do appear different from the other side." I growl under my breath, in spite of myself. "Yes, you are to here to help me pass over, to go from this life to the next. It is time for Dreamer to be renewed," he says with joy. I'm dumbfounded, but not surprised, of course, at the constantly involuting labyrinth. "You mean I really am suppose to kill you. I thought this was about my going to higher levels of being, achieving greater ranges of consciousness. But here I am, doing what I've always done." He pats my arm. "Oh, do not deform yourself for me, my friend. I will not die, not as you understand dying. There is no danger in it. The end of everything is joined to a new beginning. It is our most ancient of Rites. It frees my spirit to follow its way and lets you be Dreamer. That is how it has been done since First Times," he says, pleased with remembrance. "Have no doubts or fears for me. And it will make you one of the Shining Ones." The conviction overtakes me again that I'm playing at a sick, torturous game. I have sensations of slipping back down into a nightmare. I'm helplessly trapped, continually forced back to the thing I want most to escape. How can doing what I've always done possibly help me to become other than I am. No, that can only be the noose tightening. "But this will benefit you in the way you want too. It will bring you to wholeness. And you should be honored. I sent for you because I want you to be the next Dreamer, to take my place here in the Valley." Pride in his generosity has a ring of arrogance too. I stare wide-eyed at him. "But maybe I'm no longer capable of killing. Maybe I just don't want to." I play with these ideas for both of us. "I like and admire you and want to see you live as long as possible." I try to make him really hear me. "No, no," he snips. "See, you are misunderstanding again. I do not ask you to do this out of hate for me. It is to obey the higher ways, for both of us." I raise my eyes from the ground to his as he explains. "You were called and sent to take your part in the Rites. And it is only through this task that you will gain what you most want. Everything calls for it to be done," he says gently. He picks up and pats my hand. "You will learn to see our ways in our light. Then you will be ready and capable. Trust that everything will be as it must be." Numbly, I leave my hand in his. "How do you know I even want the damn job? It's been terrible for me since I've been here. Why didn't you pick one of your own people?" Then, thinking of the people I've met there, maybe there wasn't much to choose from. "It must always be someone called from the outside for the purpose. Renewal always comes through the hands of the other. And it is not what you think you want that matters. It is your destiny to become the Dreamer. Your own longing has led you here, as much as my calling. Your likes and dislikes... What do they matter, Yason. They pass more quickly than the clouds," the old man says with a note of melancholy in his voice and eyes. . "You know, Dreamer," I say, wondering why, "it isn't that I haven't done plenty of killing before." "Yes," the old man answers noncommittally. "I have watched you in Dream Time kill many, without hesitation or grief." "Killing was the easiest thing for me to do. Now suddenly, since meeting you, it seems the most difficult thing imaginable. Whenever I even think of it, I'm terrified." Not quite true, but more than I like. I have a strong, gut recall of Turo killing that ubu earlier, its blood on his hands and his face drenched with tears. "Ah hah! So, its that you imagine the Shining Ones made a mistake with you, that you deserve some other, better situation. What has to change is not the place, but you inside of it. The fear and holy desperation are good. Good signs that change is possible. Honor it and you will be answered to the limit. Don't forget, the Knowing seeks you too." "I don't have any idea what it would mean to me, being the Dreamer. If only I could know how all this would affect that other me, the one out there in Balangpur, I'd have more trust." He stares in my eyes, scrunching his face round, playing on expressions from horrific disdain, searing hatred to insane joy. His calm eyes keep their peace, elsewhere and uninvolved. He takes up a light smile. "It must be everything, is that it?" "What do you mean, 'everything'"? "That you must understand everything before you can stop protecting yourself. You already know as much as you need to know," he says sarcastically. "You are certain of your nothingness, your helplessness, the emptiness of your attempts. You are here because you couldn't find anything, inside or out, that wasn't some kind of despair to you. That we know, don't we?" he asks, seriously. I nod in assent. "That desperation can give you the courage you need. Just don't fight your destiny. Live it. Grow free and wise." "How can I take your place, anyway. I don't know anything about what you do, much less how you do it." I'm pressured. "Wouldn't it be better to choose somebody here who's at least familiar with your role?" I try for reasonableness. His expression in the tapers' flickering is bemused, disappointed. "Do you see anyone here that you would choose?" he asks. A long pause. He waits patiently and I numbly. "You'll give me a thorough training, won't you?" My voice is weak, hesitant. "You'll get all you need through the Rites of Transmission." "How can that be?" Now I'm really shaken. I don't like the sound or feel of this at all. All in one ceremony? "In order to be the Dreamer," he explains patiently, obviously trying to calm me, "you must receive my Dreamer's essence. You do this by taking my life, as it was passed on to me. It is really only a symbolic gesture. Ceremonial, you know. I am able to release my own essence, so you are merely a witness and receptor of it. I end as Dreamer, you begin," he explains with simple good humor. "When you take my place, you will do it the way you do it. It is a real change, not just a change of faces. The unseen worlds are ready for the change too. If you want the Valley to be a mountain top with running springs, its yours. The power and wisdom that taught me will teach you. But it will be your special way. And don't be upset. The you that now is so overwhelmed with worry won't be the you who's the Dreamer," he explains with calm certainty. "As the Dreamer, you will be surprised at how much does make sense. You will even make sense to yourself. We have special gifts. As beings of wonder and magic, our needs are all-consuming, and ever-changing. Our constant goad is ineffable longing. That" he says with a bittersweet smile, "is the secret of our power and our suffering. For us, everything but flight is hindrance. Thus we have no one defined path and are open to every ill and joy the universe can offer. "When you are Dreamer, you will find that you are who you always were, that time has done nothing but display the petals that huddled in the bud. Nothing ends or is born. From there, you see that nothing changes, grows, or decays. All that's different is appearances. We seek out and act only from the Revealed. That alone remains. And you, Yason, will be and were always meant to be the Dreamer." There's an appealing thought that it is true, that I knew as true that first night when we saw the dance-drama. "Is the killing necessary though? Isn't there another way? Did you have to kill too, to become the Dreamer?" "Yason," the old man stops and squeezes my hand that he's still holding, "you already understand that I must die if you are to make this Dream your own. You are complaining when you have reason to be joyful. You look at all this as apart from you. Every act, every thought is seen as imposition. But this," he releases my hand and sweeps his hands in wide circles, encompassing of the whole Valley, "this can be your innermost eye seeing itself, a means of meeting with it as yourself. There is more, of course, always more. But the eye cannot see what the mind withholds. Your mind must change! "I will tell you something. When I too was called from the other place long ago and found myself here with a task, I knew the same trials of soul as you know now. The old must go before the new can arise. But, as you are different from me, so the task I performed in the Rites of Transmission was different than this task before you. Mine was to perform the act that I feared and desired most." I'm upset. Its not just my life that's at risk, but the reality of who I am. He knows quandary. Is he trying to upset me so much that I do end up killing him just to stop it? He smiles, very kindly, and gently, soothingly pats my cheek. "Yason, you will learn to live with the mystery and let it reveal itself." I shudder. I'm scared and excited. He reconnects me with the inside of my being. It's doing something so that I have a taste of what that would be like, to have his powers and special knowing. But in my own way, coming from this Source in the center of my being. I get a tingling sense of myself that I love. I could explore the universes of the soul and spirit as I've always yearned to. To create and to share from that Source, to open its wonders for others. The old inner chatter leaps up, warning me about how many other things I've started, enthusiastically, with such hope. Reminding me what a failure, what a hopeless failure I'd been. "Don't try to even imagine what that will be like," the Dreamer councils me. "All those 'mes' that seem so different now will merge when you awaken to your real 'I'." As if to soothe my guilt and foreboding at the role he asks me to play, I remember how touched I was when I first read where Judas says in his Gospel, "Though I must carry the dark and bitter task, it too is to fulfill Holy prophecy. Mine too is an act of loving self-sacrifice to open the way to the Kingdom." Questions turn to bafflements and bafflements to revelations, but never really anything I can take hold of yet. It seems I clearly follow everything he says with absolute assuredness, but it won't stay in my consciousness. So I can't easily reflect on what the next step might be, or formulate anything. As if every word he says dissolves before the next one can reach and connect with it. My mind just doesn't want to understand anything, or can't. Its comprehension for me in the narrowest band. 'Change your mind' feels like advising me to lift myself up by my bootstraps. That rankles me even more. "I come to you starving for help, and you feed me stone riddles." He looks at me wide-eyed and licks back the overhanging ends of his grizzled mustache with sweeps of his tongue. "You know, perhaps it is your pride that keeps you from accepting that it is happening here. I have told you, all that you experience is part of the Work, not in conflict with it. It is preparation for your Dreaming. Your fulfillment doesn't lie in your husk, your Doing part, but only in the kernel, your Being part. "Come," he motions as he clasps my shoulder to struggle to his feet. "Let us walk. This time of day in my favorite." Early evening. The sunlight has softened. The few clouds have tufts of blue-gray. He walks us across the Valley in silence to the Tree where it looks like most of the others are gathered too. Maybe he's right. My outer needs and concerns raise the loudest cries. Even so, I'm feeling less intimidated and on more of an equal footing with the old man. I'm having my questions answered, one way or the other. "Maybe I do indulge myself but I try to absorb everything offered me too. Who knows, I might even learn to get nourishment out of your stone riddles." We both laugh. "And perhaps I am too insistent that you understand things exactly as I do," he suggests bashfully. "After all, as the Dreamer, you will have powers to understand everything in your own way." I nod in agreement at that. Turo, who is crawling on his hands and knees around the Tree with a few ubus for company, hears our laughter and joins in with complete abandon. "Come, come," the old man nudges me with an elbow, "let us join our friend there." The Dreamer walks and chats with Turo as he continues his crawl. I'm more drawn now by the Tree itself. If I'm going to be the Dreamer, I'll be climbing up and down it all the time. A very expansive, exciting idea. I pass my hands over its deeply gnarled surface, walk round and round it. Pivot of the universe, I muse, a way of passing between the worlds. And pissoir for the ubus. I let my eyes climb it. The sky above is all glare, the shadowless wisps of cloud seem not to have moved since morning. I'm often aware of the Tree, this pivot and support of the Cosmos. It stands in awing contrast to its counterpart in Balangpur, there stripped of bark and leaves and life, left in chains in it's entrapping cage. I'm thrilled to see it so alive here, so flourishing. Its roots must seek down to some water bed because it's in full, vigorous leaf. There, perished in its captivity, I didn't realize how venerable and huge it is. The trunk is three, maybe four feet across, bark deeply gnarled and scarred with the assault of time. It rises straight up some 80 or 90 feet. Seven huge limbs radiate out around it every 10 or 15 feet. Each of the seven branches is well covered with broad, pointed leaves in fan-like spreads that I can't identify. "The Tree of Life, Center Pole of the Cosmos," M. Tussaud had explained in great detail, there in Balangpur. Here, simply the Tree. I watch people go to it during their tasks and errands to touch it, to rest their palms on it, to sit for a while in the midst of their chores with their backs resting on it, apparently with deep pleasure. So far I'd just observed all this going on around the Tree, but now, hearing that the Dreamer plans to ceremonially ascend it tonight, I'm drawn to examine it closely. Maybe I should get to know it better. I stand next it and experience its formidable presence. The gnarls of its bark are huge and I can imagine how I might find finger and toe holds in it. But it's straight up. And the lowest of the seven branches is at least 25 feet up. There are stumps of lower branches that apparently died or were broken off over the millennia of its growth. To me, it looks like a pretty difficult if not impossible climb, especially for an old, not very fit man like him. But, I'll wait and see tonight. I'm drawn into sensing it deeper. My palms feel the outermost surface of the bark is smooth. Only in the crevices of its gnarlings is it crinkled and rough. I close my eyes and the Tree's energy grows more penetrating. My awareness expands to merge with it. I'm taken into the very core of the trunk, then down into the mammoth web of its roots. I sense the layers of earth they weave through. That earth-feel fills me. My legs extend into roots. My blood is the sap that ebbs and flows. I draw from the rawest earth for sustenance. I'm deliciously real, so solid in my being. Present, realer than I've ever felt before. So immensely gifted by the Tree, I'm touched and thankful. "Revelations will come as you fly to the top of the Tree," the Dreamer assured me. Maybe I'm sensing that calling now. I come into an even fuller resonance with the Tree, awakening to its character of consciousness. So merged with its being, I witness that it is the Pole Center, the Pivot of the Cosmos. At the base of my spine there is fiery tingling. The current of groundedness flows up into me and solidifies my soul. I awaken to myself as a primal living being. Staying grounded, my awareness merged with the Tree's, expands upward. As I'm moved up through its trunk, I'm moved up through levels of my lightbody. At the first branch, I tingle at the root of my spine and with it, savor my earthy, alive body. I learn what the stones know about the sanctity of just being a thing. My 'I-sayer' consciousness affirms, "I am this body-thing." That joy fills me to the tips of my toes and fingers till I'm utterly, ecstatically present. Another wave of awareness takes me on up to the second branch. Here the taste of soil shifts into the green tang of vegetation. My energies go up a harmonic from the simple state of being and a vast range of primal possibilities, capacities and needs open in my belly. With it, in my heart, there's deep gratitude for the Tree's nurturing this realm of aliveness that we share, libidinal drives and all. My 'I-sayer' celebrates, "I am alive." Now up into another realm at the third branch's level. Here there are active powers, like a lion's, like fire's. "I am the doer," the I-sayer says. My Solar Plexus fills with warmth, surges of potency pulsating through it. I'm brought up to the Tree's forth limb. The first three levels of earth, vegetation and animal are fused here into a level of being that creates my personhood. I'm opened to the universe of my heart, center of my being and of my universe. I listen for the voice of my 'I-sayer'here. But I'm habitually fearful of contact with my heart. Guarded that it might be more than I can handle. So I'm able to just take a glimpse the Heart dimension in things I never suspected. At the fifth limb my inner senses are startled as if by reverberations from a celestial, many-toned gong. It awakens fresh glimpses of the magic in perception and expression. The richness of the sights, sounds and smells of my lifetime gather, join in jubilant song and celebration. "I perceive and commune", my 'I-sayer' exclaims as my soul fills with joy in these bounties. Bursts of light and illumination soar through my Third Eye Center at the Sixth Branch. I recognize the realm my visions come from, a knowing as fundamental and unique as the Heart's. As I come to it now, with rootedness and fully embodied, I can participate in it with greater resource and potency. At the topmost reaching of the Tree, the seventh limb, I awake to the Crown Center atop my head where heavenly radiances flow in, Solar and Divine. At this culmination of all the Centers, ethereal consciousness lets me perceive the spiritual matrix within all that I experience. I taste the purity of Source beyond my own purposes and intentions. As I drink in this ultimate, lucent knowing, in resonance with the Tree, I am the Cosmic Man. I experience the fullness of my being, every level, every aspect. Here I know the Unity. I too am the Pole Center of the Universe. "Yes, I love to hug the Tree too. It makes me feel very good." Fars low, rough voice brings me back, still sensing my seven centers like spinning colored lights within my being. He stands at my side, his heavy mass of hair tossed back as he peers up to the Tree's top. "It always gives me so much power I can work good all day." "Does it let you see other realms, give you other kinds of knowing when you hug it?" I question him in my enthrallment. His slack-jawed expression, the lines in his face of hardship and duress aren't make-up and they weren't there when we met in Balangpur. I'm impressed with his feet, caked with dirt, thick and callused into leather. But they're alive, articulating with his mobile toes as we talk, not like my own, dead and welded into the form of tight shoes. Something profoundly altering has happened to him or, indeed, this is another self than Mr. Kwim-Mu Abernathy. "Well, maybe sometimes," he answers hesitantly, probably not really understanding what I mean. "But what I like best about hugging it is that I'm hugged back. Like I'm hugged by everything that is. I can work real good after that." He makes his point. How we fill the experience of union with the Tree to make it personal is very different, but we both get something very special, something life-affirming when we go to the Tree with love. Now I understand people coming to it all day long. Fars looks at me with a smile that tells me we have touched in a special way. He nods a few times and goes off. I'm still standing with my palms on the Tree, not sure how much was in the body and how much out? Did I actually climb it, or was it just in the subtle realms? Is this what the Dreamer means by climbing it? I grin with pleasure. Whatever it was, it was incredible and I'd like more. Most of the people are gone, including the Dreamer and Turo. Probably preparing for the Night Feast. I'd like to share this experience with some one and, as I look around the Valley, I see Meriflur over there, near the huts, working. As I walk across the Valley towards her, an evening breeze rises, cool and fresh as if scented by hill top pines. So, I will be and was always meant to be the Dreamer, the Dreamer, from First Times. That's quite a thought. And all that guilt I felt this afternoon, for nothing. Maybe things are starting to come together. I'm open, comfortable. I watch the last puffs of sunset dissipates and the sky darkens into night. The half-moon mid-sky meanwhile grows more radiant as does the Evening Star nearby. I'm startled for a moment, picturing last night's moon as just an early sliver. Never mind I council myself with an inner laugh. Everything here is beyond understanding. Finally, this pressure-cooker begins to cool. The time of day when God liked to walk with Adam and Eve through the Garden, the Bible describes. A longtime favorite image of mine. Strange to have it come up so strongly here, now. Some guidance, a way to view all this. I find Meriflur at a crude hand-loom, sitting on the ground next to a nubile adolescent girl who twists ubu-wool into yarn on a spindle made of a stick and a stone with a hole in it. Meriflur senses my coming and turns to greet me with a pleased smile. "Did you want to be alone?" I ask her. "No, it is perfect that you come to visit," Meriflur gently tells me. You're most welcomed." Her eyes are very warm, caring. And in the dusk the smears of dirt aren't so apparent. She has a harness of ropes strapped round her lower back, a weaving contraption of some sort. Her intricate rhythms of movement entrance me, arms lifting, reaching, shuffling. "I'm weaving you a headband," she says happily. The Dreamer is the only other person that wears one. That says something too. "A headband. Yes, that's perfect. Just what I need to go with the rest of my new outfit." I try to sound at least appreciative of her kind intentions. She looks at me hesitantly. The humor's not coming through. Not wanting to hurt her feelings, I tell her, "It's very... very special. I'll enjoy wearing it. What's that design you're making with the beads?" She holds up the small loom for me to see the weaving head on. She's working the blue beads I'd found in the pack into a design on a wide, woolly cloth. It is a heart with a vertical eye in it. I'm startled, like something had been snatched out of my chest. "What does it mean?" "It is the Heart's Eye. Blue, like yours." "Still my best feature, huh." I laugh. "It is good that people see your Emblem, there," she points at my forehead. "That way they can know you better." She grins like she's sure I know what she's talking about. "What are you talking about? Say it another way so I can understand you better." I grin back at her like we're playing a quiz game with each other. "Your Emblem is from your true self, from the unseeable you. So this lets others see what your Path is. Then they know better how to be with you. Like the Dreamer's Emblem is the Bolt of Lightening. He is the Awakener. And yours, I thought the Dreamer explained..." "Tell me, in your words, what you think this Emblem means." She looks at me for a few moments, quizzically, guardedly. I can't tell. "I've seen this confusion in New Borns before. It passes. But, it is only to say that the reason you are here, in the Valley, is that you have a Calling. We all see that you came with purpose to learn the Heart's Wisdom." She points to my Emblem, patiently drawing my attention to the obvious. "This is your Path, isn't it." I'm touched by her sweet earnestness, her caring about me. "Yes, yes, dear Meriflur. You understand me quite clearly." She smiles. "You are more relaxed now. That makes me glad. Your being here is right. We all feel it." She goes back to her weaving, but with scant attention. "Even though it means... it means that the Dreamer will die?" "We all know what it means, each in his own way." She smiles at me knowingly. I'm relieved. My stupid provocation is ignored. As the air grows even cooler, there are less and less flies, like the sound of huge generator running down. The shrinking globule of sun left on the rim of the Valley over the huts adds an awing splendor to the rhapsody of sunset. The colors evolve from the lightest pinks and roses to regal mantles of purple, darkening towards night. The breeze turns to rushes of wind. In the nearby field, we hear heads of grain rasp, and long leaves flay and slap. "The Dreamer hasn't been doing his best to explain his teachings to me in ways I can use. Everything seems like its about some unsolvable paradox. If he could bring Turo to his Initiation just by talking with him, why can't that work with me." "Did Turo tell you that?" she asks. Spurts of giggles escape through her nose. "No. The Dreamer did." Meriflur sets the loom aside. It is already too dark to pick out the threads. "Granddaddy was just telling a joke on himself. The way Turo's Initiation came was when the Dreamer caught him making water on his Omen-bag. After the old man was through using a stick on him, Turo couldn't move for many, many days. But look how well it worked," she laughs enthusiastically. "You mean, he beat Turo?" I ask, open-mouthed. "Granddaddy, unfortunately has a difficult temperament. Often his only moderate way is an extreme." "I really wonder if he's told me anything that is true." "It isn't lying. He isn't mean at all. It's only that with his imagination, he so often finds things a disappointment. He can't help trying to..., you know, make them more interesting. Mostly, what he makes up could never happen anyway. So it's all for the good. You see, the Dreamer, my granddaddy, he is such a special man that he is a blessing to us, even with his faults" she says, caring in her voice. The girl sitting next to her suddenly comes out of the trance she's been in. She giggles self-consciously, noticing the spindle lying idle in her hand. She leans to whisper something to Meriflur. "You should have remembered before," Meriflur snaps at her as she runs off, grinning self-consciously. "She forgot. She is to help with the preparations for the Evening Feast tonight at the Dreamer's house. I have no patience with these children!" I wonder at her reaction. Strikes me as out of character. But whose character, hers or Melissa's? She looks up to note the sky. The last of the sunset dissolves into night at the Valley's western edge. An hour or two more daylight. "The Dreamer has taught me some truths about the Heart, though I am not to be on that Path, as you are," she says apologetically. "Some might be interesting for you. He tells us that the Heart has four levels, or realms..." I'm entranced with her. The moment moves me so deeply, as if my mind really is swallowed by my heart, that her words stop registering. I totally indulge myself in the mindless adulation of just being with her. There's the sense of her sharing, though without memory of her words. After some while she's quiet and we both float in this warm Heart aura she's created. She says, "I think we can go now too. The Feast will be starting before long." I stand and offer her my hand. She warmly holds it as we walk towards the huts, the weaving in the other. "Things are better for you now, Yason, aren't they. You are not trying so hard, I think. It is all important. Can I say that some threads in my weaving are more important than others? Maybe all those loose ends for you are being woven together. With patience, you'll see the design of it all." She gives a self- conscious laugh, to make up for her lack of eloquence. "You are so at peace now," she notes. "Does this time of evening please you too?" Her tender interest touches me. "Yes, you're right. This is a special time for me and in an incredible and challenging day. She nods at me, understanding. "We call this time, 'the Night's First Kiss'." Her smile is both wise and inviting, but I feel I need some time by myself. I explain, and at the huts, she goes her way, I go mine. Inside, my hut feels good with stored warmth from the day. I thank myself for remembering to open the door-drape so the stone walls could absorb some of the brutal heat for the cool of the evening. I huddle in a far corner to savor it . The time with Meriflur is very alive for me. There's an after-feeling that a lot more happened between us than our words could carry. She was holding me in her Heart. But I realize I was so taken with what was happening between us, I didn't share anything about my Tree experience. My heart was always the last thing I wanted to make contact with. The diabolical machine! Put anything or anyone you care for into it, and watch it get ground to pieces. No thanks to that. But now she's shows me that there's more to the heart than just your life's longings and griefs. And, from the way she seems, its convincing. "And the deeper you move into your heart, the purer the feelings. You find the source of the real ones. Joy. Love. Aliveness. Beauty." Now I remember, as if she speaks to me herself here, inside. As she spoke, she moved deeper into her own heart, urging me to come with her. Then, when my mind glazed over, I didn't remember what else she said or what happened. But sitting here now, peaceful and self-possesed, I recall all the words and images of that inner journey she guided me through. I know something is about to happen again that I will have deep, rich pleasure in. And this time I can be conscious of it. I get myself settled down. Seated with my bed-rags as cushions under my butt and between my back and the wall's rough surface, I make myself surprisingly comfortable. I remember her coaching me to watch the body breath, to let the mind rest with that flow to help it become quieted. It works. After a bit and a few adjustments, inside and out, the flow of my breath flows slower, becomes effortless. This work with the heart is a kind of prayer, she'd explained. And now, a prayer seems to form by itself, framed as we prayed in the Order.
"Oh, Lord of Darkness and of Light, I am here within Your Sight. In Your shimmering Eye, I pray To see my heart as it is today.
A higher part of me comes in, a more expansive, knowing part that was there, though unknown to me, when Meriflur guided me through this heart work. My body, through kinesthetic guidance leads me to hold my open left palm a foot or so in front of the center of my chest. I close my eyes and inner sight turns down to focus on that place behind my breastbone that I feel getting warmer. Something clicks in place and the process begins. I'm jolted with a barrage of familiar hurts and pains, needs and fantasies. Feelings and emotions desperately scattered, uncertain, searching for direction, for fulfillment. Their blaring screams make thought impossible. "This is the realm of the heart that meets and mixes with the outer world," she'd described. " What you wanted and didn't get and didn't want and got. The Dreamer says that is where the "me/you" and the "you/me" bump noses." Here, at the outermost level, is the heart-realm of the personality, of ego. With the awareness I'm now granted, I see that the froth and turmoil, the fragility and limitedness of this realm can only bring me frustration and suffering. And always has. I can hear my screaming, begging little voices there. "I want... I need... I must..." Perpetual, pointless neediness. The place I'd lived from most of that other life, taking it for granted that these endless tantrums were the end-all and be-all of life. And here I am, my hand and heart in energetic communion, experiencing myself as I never could have before. Unimaginable new ways of knowing and relating with my life, coming to myself from my heart. "Lord of Compassion, have mercy. Lord of Mercy, have compassion," I'm led to softly repeat and repeat till there is an easing at this outermost level. A dissolving , a release that comes with a full sigh. I'm moved to draw my open palm closer to my heart center. Again that sense of passing beyond a boundary there, of a profound shift into another place -another, deeper level to my heart. Hurt and longings are here too, but freer of circumstance, less fragmented and fleeting. Here are my real and ongoing concerns in life, the ones I've lived and might die by. These are diverse rather than scattered and are signs of my many sides. My consciousness here is reflective rather than worried. These self-concerns are weightier than the personality's, more significant. There is a more definite knowing of who I am and what I'm about. A sense of more spaciousness for myself, many more dimensions and possibilities of experience, of more purpose and value to me. "The Dreamer explained that this is the part of him that makes the journeys," she explained. "Sometimes when he climbs the Tree, I see this soul part of him, very bright." That's all I remember her saying about this realm, but it feels very known. I'm moved to bring my palm closer again. Again, there is a discreet shift in awareness of my Heart Center, of myself. This realm, I remember, she called the realm of spirit. Much subtler, more difficult to grasp, mysterious, I'm opened to more intuitive knowing. As if my inner seeing gets fuzzier, less concerned with details, more aware of the wholeness of things. Boundless and expansive, infinite dimensions and ways of relating them. My emotions here are rich, rising up from the deepest levels of my being, each one gifting me with truer knowing of who I am, what I truly feel, what really matters to me. Though it's the first time I've knowingly experienced this level of my heart, I'm certain that here is the source of meaning in my life. This is where the currents of my gifts and callings run clear. This is where I can really find my Self. Within the richness and giftings, beyond and beneath it, is a bittersweet longing, a desperate waiting to be really, fully born. Not to be just born in a body, with a name and a history, but being really born so that I am the spiritual being I live and act from, and all that clutter and busy-ness out there doesn't distract or torment me anymore. Now, standing before my Holy of Holies, I'm guided to rest my left hand right on the warmth of my Heart Center. This shift into a higher, distinct domain of experience takes my breath away. My awareness plummets down, deep within to this core-center of my heart, my mind utterly quiet, overcome, entranced. All the experiences of the first three realms disappear into this awing, peaceful calm. "The Heart of your heart," she'd called this. I recall a phrase in Judas' teaching about God's Heart being inside ours. That's what this feels like, the utter Source of it all, here in the center of my heart. I'm drawn upward through it, as if by a gentle tornado, soothing and loving. There's a quenching of a thirst I've had my whole life, totally fulfilled with this presence, wonderment and joy. The ascending swirl, infinite, eternal, draws me up out of the Cosmic Whirlpool. Maybe its the Serpent they carved on the wall. However I perceive or experience it, I know I'm Home... Yes, here, at the center, at this deepest level of my heart is where the rays of the Sun of Truth enter my being. My awareness swells open, its focus expands to near infinity. I see myself sitting here, the hut I'm in, the huts all around me with others inside them, napping, chatting, smoozing. The visioning shows from inside all this, where I witness the Sun of Truth's rays touching it. My view continues to expand, out to the plain above, the surrounding jungles, out and out, knowing the Aliveness in all of it. Balangpur with the places I knew there and the people. The Ocean we flew over to get there. The Order's Headquarters, the Abbot and all his henchmen. Awareness still expanding out and out. And within it all, beneath it all, I'm held in this gentle divine tornado, in the Sun's golden warmth, knowing that it fills and inspires all that is. The gigantic panorama fades, remains only as an after-knowing of the Rays permeating everything, here in the Heart of their hearts. This is where I find it! I affirm, pressing my palms to my Heart Center with tears of joy. I taste the nectar abundantly, drink it in to quench my deepest thirsts, dissolve in it, until there's only timeless enthrallment. Realization blooms. This is the Power that lifts me up out of the Cosmic Whirlpool. This is the Longing that lovingly draws me to the Sun of Truth. This is a ray of the Wholelife Energy Bond sourced in my being. Awoken by visions and driven by desperation, I've been prepared, readied to receive from this core- center of my heart. Without reserve or hesitation. I drink and drink of its splendor, drunk with it beyond all imagining.
Someone's, "Cough, cough, cough," outside my door-drape snaps me back to myself, my little limited self. It's the Dreamer. "Excuse me, Yason. Not to interrupt. I felt the radiance all the way across in my house." I'm startled with the sudden shift in consciousness, too self- absorbed to follow what he's saying or to ask for explanation. My most secret parts have been exposed. He grins at my expression, my defensive flinch. "Next time I will guide you through the heart work." He smiles at me with satisfaction. "Come, this is a good time for us to talk." He beckons me with a nod and a conspiratorial flick of his eyebrows. I follow, head down, silent, savoring the awareness of the radiance still spiraling up from my heart-center, moving, ascending, carrying me up, up. He leads us to the Tree. He turns and squats to lean his back on it and motions me to do the same. In a breath my journey through my Heart and the Tree's earlier gift-vision merge. "I was moved as I felt the Radiance from your Heart," he says after a bit. " I know you are brought to the Knowing through your own path. Yet, I suggest that, when you touch on the Source, in that at-onement with your heart's Heart, and earlier when you ascended this Tree, then let It radiate out. It is good to bring it out through the other layers of your being too and fill all the realms with it. That will attune them with each other. That will fix the Innermost as your home and open the radiance to the world around you." I soak in this bliss of merged visions. My whole being, chakra by chakra, is illumined with the Light from that center-most realm, the Heart of my heart. The Dreamer's tone is soothing and his words embellish my state. "For example, from the seventh, the highest limb of this Tree," he affectionately pats the top of his head, "when I gaze down on the Serpent, I see that its wiggle is not just this," he sweep his hand up and down in a wave. "From there," he nods upward, "I see that It also goes like this." Now his whole arm engages in a spiraling to demonstrate a helix." Boom! Another startling merging of vision teachings. Knowing is opened to recognize that this Serpent carved in the Valley's wall and the Cosmic Whirlpool are the shadow-aspects and images of the radiant Spiral of the Source. As in my vision of the journey to the Sun of Truth, I recognize I've finished with the effort of making my own way. I can release myself to the guidance inherent in all that happens. "Good, now to the Night Feast," he tells me as he steps away from the Tree with a grunt to carry his own weight. He looks at me for a moment, sees my complete, helpless entrancement and says, "All right, gather yourself. But...don't...be...late!" I nod my agreement, but otherwise can only remain motionless.
Click on the chapters from the list on top left. Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2010 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
