THE Kingdom of the Web

Chapter 4.

THE WIZARD MERGES WITH THE W.E.B.

 

Kyxara aided Shantu Ya' prepare for his initiation into the W.E.B. with

great patience and attention. She had him prepare himself with a special diet

and certain specific meditative practices. She taught him many skills and

exercises of body and mind, toning his flesh and psyche till he was readied with

new capacities, psychic skills and sensitivities. He felt healthier, more alert and

perceptive. Even his emotions, that had always seemed unpredictable grew

calmer, more manageable.

The other Chimeras were obviously aware and helped in this preparation

as occasional arose, but it was Kyxara who was in wise, nurturing attendance

throughout. Many hours were pleasantly spent together engrossed in his

preparation. And, one way or the other, the teachings and practices were about

being fully present to oneself and with each other.

One of these practices, using the breath, was especially effective for

him. He described it to Kyxara with a poem.

 

THE FLOW

 

It begins with the breath. Bringing consciousness to rest there,

I nourish the body, the deep mind, using the breath

to sense, to open, to center.

It awakens the inner watching, allowing it to settle

down to subtler awareness, down through to the life

within the living flesh. The breath and awareness

flow through this core of the body-mind's vitality

and create a vibration, a heart toning.

This resonance attunes from one part of my body to another,

its tone and pitch to suit each cell's state,

enlivening all even more fully.

 

A gradual awakening. The flow of life force permeates

through the confines of held postures and attitudes.

Boundaries dissolve. Muscles and joints,

organs and nerves blend and flux as the higher breath,

the subtle force awakens -the link with the cosmic-

and unifies with the lower breath.

 

I stretch and flex as my awoken dream-body leads.

Both cords of life-force -personal and universal-

easily entwine, blissfully stream through me.

All limitation, all containment dissolves.

At one, what I experience no longer separates

into impulse and action, self and other.

I am fully present and devoutly absorbed

in the Presence of Divine Flow.

 

As preparation for receiving his true place in the W.E.B., she

explained, that he had to first release a lot of human mind-madness. This

offered insight into who he really was and wasn't. It brought him into depths

of his being he'd never been aware of.

Then, only a few days after sharing this, Kyxara confronted him.

"Dear one, what is it that keeps your feelings held so in yourself. It seems

you hold yourself like a stone, rigidly formed, solidly known." she wiggled

down her spine, as expression of laughter. "The way you hold Truth is the

way you know and experience it, of course. But when we assume our

aliveness and realities to be so fixed and predictable, it is like pretending to

constrain a flame inside a cotton cloth or force the weather the weather to

turn back."That thought threw her into gales of "laughter" again and she

rolled on her back and wiggled like a baby chipta.

He felt a little assaulted with all this. Not exactly criticized, but not

known in the boundless loving way he was used to from her. She, of course,

sensed these feelings and rolled back onto her paws and crouched face to

face with him where he sat. "It is not about who you are, dear one, but about

how you hold your being." Her huge emerald eyes reflected the hurt, worried

look on his face. "And the vessel you enter the W.E.B. with defines how you

experience it. We, dear Wizard and benefactor," she lowered her head and

rested a huge paw gently on his knees," we want only that you are free to

know the boundless, infinite potentials of the W.E.B." He had newer known

the love of a human woman, but he could not imagine a more tender,

intimate gesture.

"Yes, Kyxara, dear friend and midwife, it is a timely motive. But how

am I to release all that I believe myself to be so that I can know the unity the

W.E.B. conveys? Kyxara, I'm afraid," he confessed with a tight sob." He

didn't remember such touching fear in his life. This was something unusual

for him, especially with tears. Yes, this had ultimate an seriousness for him.

"I'm afraid of letting go of everything."

She curled her tail around so he could sit on it and be closely next to

her. "The merging, though it happens uniquely to each, relieves you of even

the possibility of such concerns. That is only a symptom of your confusion,"

she hissed with an uncontrolled laugh that rolled down her spine and gently

flicked him off her tail.

"Are you telling me that all I've gained in my very special life is

worthy to just to be abandoned?" he asked as he climbed back on her tail.

"When you let them all that you gained empty of what you filled

them with, then all you have gained will become sacred vessals." She paused

a while. Her verdant eyes took his into their depths. He gasped with awe at

all this revealed. "Nothing is needed but your trusting, wise openness, so

there is no cause to cling to anything. Through the W.E.B., you will find

knowing access to your true treasures, and to every other beings'. Like the

cells in your body know what every other cell knows, yet still have their own

way, you will bountiously discover yourself in every momentary wholeness.

"It is not just 'knowing'. It is wisdom through felt-knowing that

network through all your being. When L'Met describes his ideas and

awarensses to me, I feel-know them as fully as he does. I can experience

them to that degree. I am left with no uncertainties that can't be resolved

with a word or gesture. I am still fully Kyxara, yet fully experiencing him. I

am him. This is through felt-knowing.

Caring for him first, in the holy center of my Heart, and welcoming

that to fill me. Though he is my son, he and I are very different beings,

different creatures, really. I, a female with offspring, of the Sixth, he a

young solitary male of the Seventh, in some ways as different as you and I."

She shared all this with such warmth of voice and gesture, it came across to

the Wizard with pleased excitement.

"And that openness of felt-knowing to L'Met lets me experience his

wisest, most skillful and developed felt-knowings too: his role in the Inner

Circle; the special gifts he carries as a Seventh; felt-knowings so primal and

inclusive that even he might not be aware of them. Although we of the Sixth

only bear only wing stubs, through this way of being at one, I know the

soaring feel of winged flight above the mountain peaks, the peace of letting

those ancient winds carry me.

"This is the gesture we prepare you for, Shantu Ya', the gesture of

opening the deep Heart."

She sat back on her haunches, eyes closed, her tail curved up over her

feet, claws resting on her chest, and considered some while. He couldn't tell

if she were tuning deeper into his soul or communing with the others.

"Yes," she affirmed after a bit, "we can draw on Alchemy, a source

that you already well know, to guide us through the preparation. I will say

no more because your own explanations will serve you best."

She told him to turn and lean back against her. Because resting back

on her paws was such a pleasure in itself, it was a while before he realized

that the pleasurable relaxation was part of the preparation. They continued

this practice almost daily over many weeks. Soon, he understood that it was

not just a general or abstract processes. Through their sharing this

peacefulness, she guided and supported him in a process of transformation

that he recognized as Alchemy, although he had only learned to apply it to

the physical. Now she was able to bring his wisdom of that Work up to the

spiritual levels.

The main meditation he practiced in order to simulate a sense of the

counsciousness she described was simply to sit on his bedding and gaze out

the window. Wave after wave of soaring snow peaks and mist filled vallies

held his mind in most profound, expansive peace.

Over the period of his preparation, he was moved through stages of

this archetypal process (that she called Cosmosis) on primal levels of his

psyche and many subtle levels of his being, from energetic to mythopoetic.

He understood the same principles of Alchemy that he had applied to the

chiptas' transformation were now preparing his individual consciousness

into readiness to merge with the universal, Cosmic W.E.B. It gradually

brought him from a very separate, isolated knowing of himself, to a

readiness to know himself in that Connectedness.

Their work together in that process always began with his energetic

and emotional emptying out. Cleaning the vessel, was her description. He

was left still him, very much in his personhood. But all the clutter and

details were naturally dropped. He was just him. Then she'd take him into

the flow of her breath, as in her gentle caring way, it filled and emptied her

aura.

As the Wizard journeyed through these stages, he was moved to

describe them through drawings and quatrains.

(Take him though the 11 Cosmograms.)

 

It was after almost two years of this training when Kyxara told Shantu

Ya' that the Inner Circle regarded him as ready to merge with the W.E.B.

That evening, he reflected on his life in the Citadel, as he sometimes did

over the years. But this time it was by way of a final assesment and goodbye.

His reviews before usually brought up details of why he was glad not to be

there. This time, it was with the certainty that none of it would ever be

experienced in the same way again. It would soon be truly gone, with great

relief and gratitude.

He sat pleasantly immobile for some long while, aware only of the

wind murmur and moan by his window, and the barely moving flow of his

breath. The mountain ranges were but wisps in the overcast far distance. He

was suspended in an immense, still spaciousness. All the skills and

awarenesses that had been so honed throughout his being where alsostill,

peacefully suspended. He smiled with grateful satisfaction. This was the

state Kyxara had described. He was an empty vessel, prepared to receive.

Then, with his soul felt intention gathered, he lit three candles on his

altar-shelf and smudged with a few dried herb leaves in the small brass

censer. In immence and dedicated prayer, he affirmed to the Great Mystery

that he sought It alone through all this.

He had been blessed and bathed in that Source several times over his

life, and so he never confused Its Splendor with any lessor quest.

Three days later Kyxara came to his alcove and led him into the

beehive shaped Chapel where the others awaited them.

It had been seldom used while Shantu Ya' was an initiate here, only

for the highest of ceremonies. He hadn't been here since his last gathering

here with the Chimeras. Its mammoth arching fieldstone walls and shadow

peaked ceiling still filled him with awe. The seven Chimeras of the Inner

Circle, their upper bodies wrapped in some ancient brocades, sat in a circle.

He was guided to sit in its center on cushions, legs comfortably folded in a

meditation posture. After some while, as he felt the silence tangibly deepen,

they began to profoundly intone chants and invocations, their voices

resonating so that it seemed there was a multitude of beings around him. His

awareness settled profoundly within, away from all outer concerns and

circumstances, far beneath his usual sense of self. He was taken into

visionary consciousness.

The Chimeras hovered over him, in such a state of resonance with

each other they again seemed a host, as their toning had, and began their

psycho-spiritual surgery. Without causing the Wizard any discomfort, they

opened the sutures along the top of his head. A triangular trough was formed

from his forehead to the base of his skull, open nearly ear to ear.

Each with a different and precise task, gently and with coordinated

precision, they connected many leads to vital points in his brain, nexus loci that

were the origins for all his psyche's patterns. Made out of the same substance as

his brain, flexible and translucent, the connections easily and naturally fused

with his flesh, to his soul. It seemed to Shantu Ya', when they'd finished, that

there were many leads stretching out around his skull.

He felt immense spaciousness now opened above his naked brain as the

leads became antennas leaping out into the universe. It took him some while to

accustom himself to this expansive, multidimensional sense of his own psyche.

It brought a peaceful stillness that grew healing, flushing out the core of every

tension and concern, every guardedness and hesitation, everything that was

apart from that utterly secure inner repose. He still attended to the Chanters'

liquid musical refrain, but he no longer just listened but was also of it.

He felt secure in a way free of all perception and circumstance, a great

bondage released. A freedom, and a loss of the limited self he'd believed

himself to be. No longer who he was, and as yet unable to imagine who he will

be. There was an anxious excitement in this for him, an enticing trepidation.

Suspended in that uncertain state of utter freedom and annihilation, he felt an

aura of caring warmth gather about him. As surely as if he looked into her

emerald eyes, or felt her raspy tongue against his cheek in affection, he was

certain it was Kyxara. Mothering him, in a most ultimately caring intimacy.

His awareness was now lofted up to a higher more subtle dimension,

consciousness made more inclusive, permeable, joy filled. Here he witnessed

the ends of the leads radiating out round his brain melded to similar leads from

extending out around the Chimeras' brains and psyches. An amazing

multidimensional matrix was thus formed linking them. Although awed and

astounded, he remained totally at peace.

And that was just the beginning, Shantu Ya' soon realized. He had

always had a rich inner life. He had long seen the energy fields and auras

around others and, when a student here, had learned to understand and heal

through those subtle bodies. In his teaching visions, he'd witnessed his physical

body consumed down to the bone and refurbished with new flesh. He'd soared

to the top of the Cosmic Tree where First Light reigned. He'd accompanied

lonely spirits of the dead through their darkness to help them release from he

material world they were leaving.

But, of course, nothing could have prepared him for anything like this. It

opened psychic skills and capacities that made his former not negligible

wizardly skills seem naive.

First, he became aware that he was in contact with others' inner beings

in a most direct way, his mind able to intimately touch on memories, attitudes

and perceptions that were totally other than his own.

"My God," he said aloud. "These are from the souls of the Chimeras". Of

He immediately recognized those he knew, their inner selves. The others that he

perceived for the first time, it was with soul knowing, from the inside out.

The first he quickly recognized in this higher consciusness and turned

to, with great curiosity and excitement, was Kyxara. She was waiting for him

with an inner smile. The love they had for each other now merged directly,

without restrictions of form. He experienced Kyxara as openly and immediately

as he knew himself, without hesitation or confusion, even though he was a

human and she a lizard. He was touched and pleased.

He had long explored the various levels of consciousness with skill and

ease, both from curiosity and in his wizardly tasks. And therefore he was at

ease in the cosmic realms. He felt he knew the universe. But not till he merged

with Kyxara did he realize that was only his own cosmos that he knew.

At first he could not believe it. He had pictured that this would be like

and expansion of what was already familiar. But turning to her then, merged

with the W.E.B. so that he could truly know her, he suddenly found himself

startled, at the edge of a boundless precipice: her cosmos. Though he was

terrified, the etheric support of the W.E.B. gave him courage and capacity to

open and step into it.

Least expected was that he felt his mind and senses shifting to

accommodate to hers. His very way of putting thoughts together changed, as if

they were moving into the depths of his own nervous system where the reptilian

brain lie. Rather thanclear awareness and sharp discernment being the guiding

concerns, his thinking grew nebulous, became more profound, settled into

dealing with the core of mentation rather than the frills and details. He had the

bizzare awareness that this mode of consciousness was patterned on swirling

through ocean depths rather than walking the earth step by step.

Only after he let himself be completely repatterned to this mode did he

begin to experience her full being. Not an empty abyss at all! The first wave

that washed through him was experiencing her motherliness, her bountiful

nurturing femininity. This is what L'Met had described to him as her role in the

Inner Circle. And he had certainly tasted of it while she prepared him for this

moment. But he found that when their two beings were at one in their inmost

hearts like this, all obstacles were dissolved and differences mended. Though,

gratefully, he lost none of his discernment, so he could know her as she knew

herself, and still perceive her with the appreciation of an "other".

And gradually, as he could contain it, he experienced the vastness of her

soul. It wasn't conveyed to him through incidents or details of her essential

values and goals. All that was easily implied. As it absorbed him, he perceived

that it was if her instincts --as a female of the Sixth-- blossomed up through

their archetypes and images into her very personal reality.

How could his mind hold another mind, his cosmos blend so with

another's? He couldn't grasp it, but, happily he realized, he didn't have to. It was

there. Another recognition of the scope of reality had taken over his own. So he

had an instinctive experience of who Kyxara was, her qualities and skills, her

concerns and understandings. Entwined with her soul like that, he felt he might

manifest those same skills and understandings. Shantu Ya' recognized that

perhaps he could even mother as she did.

And he was certain she was experiencing him as fully.

Although he was given over to this experience of her living flame

completely, given over to another's being more fully than he could ever have

imagined, he felt completely calm, trusting. Everything was so clearly known

and felt. Even things that might be hidden to herself were evident to him, like

seeing a maze from above. Feelings, memories, longings and fears, all the intra-

weavings of each one of them became inticately interwoven with the W.E.B. Its

aura held them in this higher, splendid continuum, where they could merge in

this way.

Though he was a sensitive and a trained Wizard with considerable

psychic gifts, personally, he had always felt apart, isolated. But barely knowing

his parents, although grateful for the caring adoption by his mentor Wizard,

he'd never had such access to another's inner being, such a blissful sense of

connectedness. The merging was not obliteration but expansion of each unique

self. His sense of "I" was freed from its deluded constraints and delusions. This

gave the deepest assurance that he was valued and safe.

As he moved his attention around the circle, he connected with in a

similiar way. Though their individualities remained distinct, he could flow from

one to another, from psyche to psyche, ,with the simplest gesture of intent,

observing their subtle structures and the natures of the characters they held, to

know each of them with as much naturalness as he experienced his own being.

Thus his mind view continued to expand, each mind merging extended

the range of his own, gave him another world view, another alien, but rich

personal history through which to know all things. Each such fusion opened his

scope of knowing to that other's realm and view, as galactic as his own, and

totally different. Tears of pleasurable release welled up in this most intimate

companionship. He sometimes lost track of his own person in the vast and

intricate formation.

After he'd carried out this exploration for some while, (time existed, but

in a way completely different from any he'd ever known), these revelations of

world-views built in intensity till he was raised to yet another, higher realm of

perception and realization.

From this new vantage place, he experienced the resonance of all their

individual beings and souls merged in the overriding harmonics of the

Wholelife Energy Bond, the Cosmic W.E.B. With visionary sight, he beheld

that the grid work of linked brains formed another brain, a Cosmic Brain, of

which each individual's brain was but a single cell. The complexity, the

resonating interrelationships, the overall synthesis held him in spellbound awe.

Yet each being remained unique --he is still Shantu Ya'. Though he was

but a cell in this Mind's far reaches, through the luminous links of the

Wholelife Energy Bond, Its thoughts flow through his own mind, transformed

it. Joy ascended into ecstatic eternities. Its astounded him like bone-trembling

earth-shifts.

 

He reveled in the Knowing, this was a flight with the wings of Crazy

Owl. It took him through a thousand suns' blazing and eternities of onyx

emptiness. Though his own psyche was a speck somewhere across the galaxy

of Universal Mind, he flew on the Owl's crystal wings to its very center. He

knew, in depths beyond imagining, the enormous, imponderable meta-thoughts

of the Cosmic Mind. The sheer mass and momentum of its thoughts were like

land masses shifting, separating and colliding to surge up and form impassable

mountain ranges or vast canyons, open rifts into which oceans of consciousness

poured.

He was awarely absorbed in that Splendor. Here was purpose that far

transcended his own comprehension, but unquestionably included and, in some

way inexpressible way, depended on him.

 

Then, his "me" bubble burst. His sense of self was gone and he was at

one with the Inner Ring of Chimeras. He was aware as he flowed from sea to

sea which member of the Inner Ring it was, as clearly as the signature of voice

or the bent of temperament.

Then that bubble too dissolved, expanding out to all the other Chimeras

beyond that room. Shantu Ya' experienced outwardly what he had inwardly

experienced in trance, his mind and being linked and resonant with theirs. The

expansions continued, out beyond the race of Chimeras to connect with other

species, other kinds of being in other worlds and realms. Now he better

understood why it was call the Wholelife Energy Bond.

It seemed eons before the Wizard came back to himself, both elated and

thoroughly drained. At last he opened his eyes and looked into the eyes of each

of the Chimeras around him, with tears streaming from his eyes. He paused,

bowed to them, one by one, and knowingly said, "Hello god Kyxara. Hello god

L'Met. Hello god Tlin."

When he had come full circle and looked into Kyxara's gem green eyes,

she told him aloud and to his soul, "And hello to you, god, Shantu Ya'. And

welcome to the Wholelife Energy Bond, the universal W.E.B. of compassion

that flows through all beings."

 

* * *

Living in that connectedness was bliss, but he couldn't take it all in at once.

That evening he collapsed, which didn't seem to surprise the Inner Ring. The

overwhelm through him into a kind of shock. He slept most of three days, was

cared for and kept apart from the others'. When he came to, he recognized that

his own psyche and his relationship with it had been changed by the experience.

Gradually, he felt the integration of the new seeing, well prepared and

motivated as he was, and was able to take the wonder in his stride. He'd

survived many challenges to mind and soul. But being in the W.E.B. was the

most life transforming challenge he'd known.

Hour by hour, day by day the W.E.B. continued to alter his thoughts,

feelings, and perceptions through the new spectrum of his reality. The

Awareness of the Cosmic Mind was ever there, his consciousness as a focus of

its, his mind and soul resonant with it. He gradually grew used to Knowing in

so many new ways.

The intuition he had developed as a Wizard blossomed into an infinitely

fuller, many aspected process. He now perceived that everything was bursting

with nuances and ramifications. Reality was a shifting multiplexing

kaleidoscope of patterns. Shantu Ya recalled his initiation vision. Now,

immersed in the W.E.B., he knew that Crazy Owl was what he was inwardly

becoming.

 

Click on the chapters from the list on top left.

Return to top

Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2010