from my new book of life in the Spirit....
A Circle of Swift Songs: A Circlet of Inner-Life Stories...
When
I am old I will write a pearl.
The pearl will be 25,000 miles wide
Because it will circle the world
In one second.
It will be the smallest thing
That can do that.
Small as a pea under 20 mattresses.
That is why it will be a pearl.
Then the World will know
What it has lost and forgotten.
And I will be gone.
I
LEAPT OUT OF BED and
landed in a heap. It was four o’clock in the morning. But that didn’t matter.
This had to be written down, and a picture drawn. I should have done it ages
ago. But I had kept putting it off, in case I really was crazy. But I had
suddenly seen a telling-picture of it all in that last instant upon
awakening. And what I had been puzzling about, lately, that had seemed so
crazy, suddenly crystallized, and riveted me into action as I saw in my dream
the answer to the entire puzzle. So I had just had to wake up. To record it all before I lost it! I rubbed the
sore places on my legs from my raw awakening.
I scrambled up threw on some warm clothes and sat back down on the bed.
Now with a notepad on my lap and a pen I scribbled down some of the things I had
seen--- the World and me as a circle.
In my dream I had seen myself in miniature
standing in the middle of a ship’s compass with my arms stretched out. So,
pointing in two opposite directions. One arm pointing west. The other arm
pointing east. Then the scene changed and I was standing in front of a
beautiful, gigantic globe of the World. The antique golden kind that’s
commonly seen standing on a pedestal upon the floor of some eighteenth century
library in an English stately home, pivoting and turning upon its polar axis. But this globe was
different; it had no tilt; or else I did, and was parallel with it.
I was still standing with my two arms out stretched. But I saw that
extending now, out from my two splayed hands were two red ruby lines. One line
was going to the right around the World. And the other was going to the left
around it. And where the two met, they had got to the end of the World.
Because, of course, they couldn’t go any further. So, there at their end in
their ending they touched, and met and ‘married.’ There they were made one, and
complete, being as they were face to face now with no gap in between; and having got there only by being opposite. For
if they weren’t, they wouldn’t, would they?! The World was round.
At that point the scene in the dream switched;
and I was now high up on a polished, wooden library ladder, behind the globe;
and holding onto the pole which sticks up from these kinds of old-fashioned
library ladders. Light came in slanting rays through the immensely tall windows
to my left; they were lighting up the golden spines of a long row of ancient
books to my right. I was reaching for a book; which, impossibly, I knew I knew every word of; and before I
had even pulled it out. There was more. I knew everything, and before the World
began. And the sunbeams took me with them, where I was smaller than a dancing
speck of dust.
Now I was set in my dream in the outer expanse of the heavens, where I
was watching the slowly spinning earth in front of me. I was taken nearer.
Clouds shone in delicate swathes of white silk sweeping the oceans of the
world. Birds flew in arrow formations reaching the golden shores of the land.
Bees were gathering nectar hovering in a squillion flowers. And the un-purpled
flowers glistening were growing through walls. I stood on the earth seeing my arms around the world again and the red ruby lines.
After awhile of mutual glee in their meeting,
I saw that the lines carried on past each other. And now the right hand line
was left; and the left hand line was right; and west was now east; and the
east, west. Then they met, again, back at the beginning of the World---of course, because that was where they had begun from. They had begun from
where I had been standing and now was. And that was when I had had to wake up
from my dream. And throw off the bedclothes, and leap out of bed, and draw a
picture of it all; a diagram. Because I could sense that it was all becoming a
bit confusing.
What did it mean? And moreover, why did it fill me with such delight? Two lines going in opposite directions and
meeting. Theoretically, it was impossible. But in reality, it was being
made possible. Two lines going in two opposite directions, and meeting directly
opposite the place from where they had begun---because, of course, the
World was round. So east met west. It really did.
I had been writing all this, at about a
hundred miles per hour. I had now filled several pages, with drawings of a
people with their arms out like the cross. But, I couldn’t sketch it as I had
seen it in my dream, where I had been able to see from all sides at the same time. I couldn’t draw the back of the World now; because in one
single dimension that was impossible. I mean, that on the page before me, I
couldn’t draw on it, what was behind it, that was in front of me and where the
two lines from my two arms had met opposite me, on the other side of the World. But it wasn’t long before I realized that I could sketch it from a bird’s eye
view; if, that is, a suitable bird just happened to be passing over the North
Pole.
Well, one was. And flying high up in the stratosphere, and dreaming with
me, too. So, I spent a few more minutes sitting up in bed, drawing from this
friendly bird’s perspective some more crazy diagrams of circling arms and
lines.
A wisp of wind found its way through my half open window. A tiny curled
feather drifted in. I stopped, and looked up. It was nearly five in the morning
now. The stars were very bright in the wide curtainless window. It was new
moon. The sky at its blackest. That sphere a dark round. The little flake of
white landed near the foot of the bed. In the same moment I heard the familiar
call of the little owl. And, out of all context; or, so I thought, I often
missed the synchronicities two thoughts came one after the other: Stars are
like people. Stars are round. And I saw: Oh. People are round. And, thoughts are,
too. So it was all true---east
met west, and where each line of thought---passed through the other---each became the other, visa versa.
Oh. So east could meet west: if, that is, they truly travelled in
opposite directions. Then one line of thinking and living could meet its
opposite line of thinking and living and find itself saying the same thing
where they met.
Where one peoples’ way, met another peoples’
way, those who thought they were of an eastern way or a new age, met those of a
western way who thought, the opposite---and there where their arms
stretched out---completely and utterly---each would learn from the
other, as, and where, they met.
When a person with their two arms stretched out, kept them stretching
out, until they met on the other side of the thought, which ‘travelled’ in
opposite directions, they ‘married’ them, and were whole.
Another light gust of wind blew in through the window. The lace curtains
at its edge shivered slightly. The wind moaned its silken way in, in its
soul-stirring whooshing ‘ooh.’ Pages of paper hurriedly torn from my notepad
lifted and moved. I put down my pen, and daydreamed or rather night-dreamed it
was after five, and still darkest night. And, as I do, now and then, when I’m
thinking, I fingered my pretty necklace. I wear a star on a black thread around
my neck, cut out from a piece of iridescent paua shell; and a pearl, too. They
were precious mementos from a friend who really cared about me. And I thought
about how a pearl is made in its host the oyster shell.
A pearl is round. And, by the same magic, the same principle, a thought
is made round. So, ‘A pearl of truth’
is round.
Inner truth would meet me where it found me opposite to it: i.e. where I acknowledged that from the fall I
had been wired up back-to-front; so I was opposite.
Spiritual ‘me’ would be found
opposite to natural ‘me:’ having the
opposite thinking: i.e. its selfless thinking, instead of my egotistical
thinking---if, that is, I went both
ways around ‘the pearl’ at the same time. Which I did. Being as I was split
asunder. Knowing the difference between my true new self, and my false old
self. The ‘old man’ and ‘the new man.’ Knowing my right hand, from my left
hand. And then I remembered Jonah, in Nineveh; and I wondered if he had
understood?
Suddenly my crazy drawings upon the page in front of me became a
picture-answer to the way of life---or at least, to the way of my own inner life. It confirmed it, sort of, and this was all about emptying and filling,
and about two different things happening at the same time and meeting; which
was as challenging, as standing upon the sharp end of a pin without falling off
on either side.
Increase came through decrease. And life,
in growing smaller to become larger. It was the only way of entry into
Everland, the realm of eternal youth, and the kingdom of heaven, forever.
Going right: I was surrendering and losing; while going left: I was
filling up and gaining. That was the answer that did it. Two opposite
directions, ending at the same place which made you complete--- Complete.
It was the faintest thing that did
it. The alighting of a thing of nought. Light---as a white as, curling feather of surrender that sent you
round and around upon the lines of completeness; coating the grit that was
‘you,’ with glorious layers of iridescent pearl.
Small as pea that was felt,
though it were under 20 mattresses. Which all the time was making you black and
blue all over, from all the bruises that came in you, for feeling it.* Feeling
all the small points of need, where you were in need of the light of the
pin-point stab to divide you asunder, to separate your wheat from your chaff,
to sort out your right from your left; and in perfect balance set you
gloriously free, circling the earth and you---in a split second.
It was the lost pearl that did it. The missing truth which
made you complete, which was the beginning: the entering---in---to the stretching out.
The door to heaven was a pearl.
There was so much, yet, to understand, but the light of dawn was showing
through the window. It was nearly morning now. But how few would see, what that
spoke of? So many were closed to what was new. ‘Many will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.’
The high ceiling-ed library in the stately home flashed into mind; the
golden room of my dream in a bygone age. I did pull out the book. It sits on a
gigantic oak desk piled high with parchments and books in the centre of the
room, waiting to be understood. It had always been telling the answer. But no
one heard. They were too busy hearing it with their own ears, which they didn’t
believe were deaf to it, and so they were.
I closed my notepad, threaded the pen through its spiral, and left it on
the bedside table, while I climbed back under the bedclothes again. And with a
smile on my inner face, to bookmark the place, fell asleep, and woke up very
late.
*
_____________________________________________________
[*
No real bruises: no real liberty of the glorious kind! No real cross: no
real life!]
