Gate: The Star
I stepped through the vision gate and found myself standing in the night sky. All I could see were stars within the firmament but suddenly a great wind arose and along with this force of nature I beheld spirits in the shape of men and women running through the sky. Moving quickly and with purpose, they were constructed of the sky and stars themselves and I found myself carried along with them to a destination that they knew but which I was still to discover.
We came to a bed floating in the nothingness of space and on it an ancient spirit in the shape of a woman lay who was shaped of the sky and stars like the others of our company. They gathered together weeping and reaching for the hand of the elderly sky spirit. One cried out in grief. “Mother, you cannot leave us here alone,” he said. “Please don’t leave us here in the darkness outside of your presence.”
As I gazed on at the death bed of a beloved mother, my sight shifted and instead of being constructed of the sky and stars the figures now appeared as everyday people with clothing and skin made of flesh except that from their hearts bright lights shone. The woman on the bed was ancient beyond imagining with silvery hair reaching all the way to her feet. Her light was not bright, but fading and weak and she shook with small tremors, barely able to keep her eyes open.
“My children,” she whispered. “You must be brave now. Live and laugh and love in your hearts and make that my memorial, not this grief, not this sorrow.”
One of the young men who knelt at the side of the bed, turned and saw me. He appeared to my eyes as my grandfather when he was a young man. The spirit rose angrily from his dying mother’s bedside and ran at me in anger. “Who are you to witness the death of our mother? Do you come to mock us in our grief?” he said. “Begone shadow back to the void you emerged from.”
“My name is Heidi and I am no shadow, Great One,” I said. “I did not mean to intrude on a private family matter but I was brought to this place by the moving stars in the sky. You look so familiar to me, like family from another world. Who are you?”
“You have no business or sympathy here, Formless One,” he replied. “Begone, I command you in the name of the warriors of light. Our mother hasn’t much time left and I will not waste it bandying words with a shadow.”
“Orion,” the ancient lady upon the bed whispered. “This is not a Lost One if she was brought here by our sisters and brethren of light. Stand aside and let her pass for the death of a star isn’t something that one witnesses every day. Come closer, wanderer and dreamer.”
The sky spirit named Orion bowed his head to his mother. “It shall be as you wish,” he said and gestured in my direction. I found myself propelled by his motion to the bedside of the dying star. The ancient one reached for my hand and I gave it to her.
“You may not believe me,” she whispered. “But I was young once like you with my whole life before me. Now that I see my ending, I find myself wishing I could live it all over for what marvels life holds and what wonders.”
“Great One, of course I believe you,” I answered. “You must have seen many extraordinary things in your life and had such adventures.”
“That I have, that I have,” the ancient one said. “Stars remember our births, you know. One moment we are not, the next moment we are. We have no parents nor families other than those we choose for ourselves. It is our chosen family who mourns for us when we depart the realm of the living, not necessarily the ones of our birth.”
“Is that why all of these people address you as Mother?” I said. “Is it pretend?”
The spirit wheezed softly in amusement and smiled. “It is the best kind of pretend, young one. They are the stars closest to me and I am one of the eldest among us, counseling and encouraging them to shine all their lives. Call me, Andromeda,” the ancient said. “These young ones are distraught because they love me and I have been around since they appeared, which is a very long time indeed. But once many years ago, I met someone even older than myself and he changed the course of my existence. Would you like to hear the tale?”
“Please, Andromeda,” I said. “Tell us your story, please. I will remember it so that your message will not be lost to eternity. I am very good at pretending too and will call you my mother as those who are gathered here do.”
“Will you also grieve for her as we do?” Orion said beside me. “You mock our tears as I said.”
“Peace, my son,” Andromeda said. “This one mourns already, I feel the grief in her heart. Do not deny her a place at my bedside simply because you arrived here first.”
“Mourns for us?” Orion said. “Mother, what do you mean?”
“Listen to my words, all of you,” the ancient spirit said. “My meaning will become clear in the fullness of time.” Then she closed her eyes and began to whisper softly:
Once upon a time, I was very, very young. My elements had just come together and they burned brightly in my heart with a ferocious, blinding light. I was a vision among the stars in the sky as I was born to be.
As I danced in the firmament shining on all who came my way, I saw a great shadow approaching from the nothingness of the void outside of space. This shadow moved slowly but inexorably towards me, stopping at every planet and star though what he was doing among them was hidden from my sight.
Finally the shadow came close enough that I could see he was an ancient, trembling spirit with long, white hair hidden within a dark cloak that covered his form and streamed out behind him like a banner in the wind. In one hand, he held an hourglass filled with shining sand and he extended his other hand towards me like a grasping claw or reaching branch of a tree. I had seen no one like this being in all my existence so I felt a great curiosity take hold of my mind. I approached this spirit as he came towards me with no fear in my heart, only a desire to understand his true nature.
“Who are you?” I asked. “I am called Andromeda by those who put me in the sky. I have never seen a spirit such as you. Are you newly born from the void of creation?”
“I am Time,” the ancient one replied in a voice that shivered with age and power. “I come to all in existence and I see you are as yet untouched by me. This is an error that shall be remedied today.”
“What is Time?” I asked. “And what might that mean to me?”
“I am he who moves through space. I am the measure of a life and all that it contains. All that dwell within the worlds are within my power and sphere of influence,” Time said. The ancient one’s grasping hand touched the end of a strand of my hair which he delicately tapped and I felt a shudder move through my hair to the center of my being where my secret heart lay.
“Am I meant to fear you, Time?” I said. “My heart trembles beneath your power but if all are within your purview then perhaps we were destined to meet rather than fight one another for dominance of the worlds.”
“Do you not fear your death, little star?” Time said. “The kings and queens of the earth bow before me and beg for more of my blessings both for them and those who follow them.”
“A wise sky spirit once told me that as I did not fear my birth so too should I not fear my death,” I said. “For neither threshold is determined by the living but by the one who put the stars in the sky and the great powers in their orbit. I try to remember his words when I feel fear about my existence ending. See how the wise one’s words give me strength.” I closed my eyes and remembered the spirit who was my grandfather and I sent that energy out from my heart where it passed through my strand of hair to touch Time himself.
For one brief moment, Time filled with my energy and love for my family. He grew young and strong beneath my calming influence but when he removed his hand from my strand of hair, he appeared to my sight as an ancient one once more.
“Not even Love can take away my power and dominion,” Time said. “You should not have shone your light upon me, Andromeda. It makes no difference in the end. You and those you love are doomed to live out your time as much as any who are alive today.”
Time turned and his cloak of darkness covered me for one moment as the ancient power prepared to continue on his way through the firmament.
“I did not challenge you for dominance, Great One,” I said. “I only wished to understand your true nature and have you understand me. Your touch is strange I confess but I do not fear you. Will I ever see you again?”
“Before the end,” Time said, his whisper crossing the space between us to enter my heart as much as his energy did. “I will come to you again. Yes, Andromeda, I will come for you at your appointed time.”
“And now,” wheezed the star as her story came to an end. “He comes… look, my children. Look and see.” I turned and saw in the far distance, but quickly approaching a great shadow in the form of an ancient man as Andromeda had described. He did not fly, but crept ever closer, unstoppable and unwavering in his power, and the stars themselves trembled at his approach.
“Mother, save us,” the stars gathered about the bedside cried out in fear. “Keep us from this great calamity, an existence outside of your presence and unconditional familial love.”
Andromeda looked at me as her children wept but I did not cry out at the approach of Time. “Do you not see my end approaching, young one?” she said. “Have they blinded you to the reality of life?”
“Mother, I am not afraid for I have also experienced Time in the Inner Worlds,” I said. “He appeared to me as a great centipede who carried me from one lesson to the next, effortlessly and as swiftly as the wind over the fields. The exit from his realms is nothing to fear just as existence within Time is nothing to fear. I also had a family member speak similar words to me as you described once upon a time. To my eyes, he stands beside me here today in the company of your children.”
“I thought so,” Andromeda said. “It is a blessing from Time that brought you to my death bed today. What do you think, Orion?”
Orion looked from the coming shadow to me and back again. “Mother, your words are strange to my ears,” he said. “How do you know, Formless One, that there is an existence out of Time’s grasp? Perhaps you lie like all shadows do. It is as simple to your kind as breathing.”
“I have a form, Orion, but I do not know that I could ever convince you of it,” I said. “That knowledge is something that can be experienced but rarely shared. Sometimes when you pretend with all your heart, your imagination makes the fantasy real. For example, when your Mother was telling us the story from her youth just now, I bet she felt as young as she did the day she met Time. Look to our Mother and tell me what you see.”
Andromeda smiled in recollection of her youth and the fading light in her heart flared for a moment. In its brilliant glow, she was young again.
“You see, Orion,” I gestured to the star’s light. “The spirit who ignites her form never ages nor dies, she always exists as vital as the moment she first reached consciousness. She and all other spirits in existence are the eternal in Time, the untouchable, deathless children of the Creator of All. It is Time and death that are the illusions in the impermanence of reality.”
“You are not a formless shadow to speak words like this,” Orion said. “Who are you?”
“My parents named me Heidi,” I said then Time himself arrived.
The shadow took the form of an ancient man with an hourglass and he moved silently to the end of the bed Andromeda reclined upon. Where Time passed, the illusion of the room faded in his footsteps and the night sky with its myriad stars was visible once more.
“Little star, beautiful star, deathless Andromeda,” Time whispered. Dry, skeletal hands moved towards the ancient one’s feet under the blanket as Time stood at the end of her bed. “I’m sorry your time has come but I rejoice to be in your presence again.” He stroked the star’s feet as lightly as a feather upon her skin and the Mother’s light faded until it was gone.
Andromeda gave one final sigh and breathed her last. The stars around the bed began to wail and clutch at their Mother’s hands but Time simply turned away as if to depart and leave the family to their endless grief.
“Wait, Great One,” I said. “I would speak with you if I could. As a centipede, we have only had moments of time. Perhaps in this form, we could have a more fruitful conversation about your true nature.”
“Heidi, Heidi, Heidi,” Time in the form of Death murmured and reached his hand towards me. “You are so untouched by time. Shall we remedy this error?”
The skeletal hand continued to move towards my face. He touched my cheek gently like the brush of a petal across my skin. I felt a brief spark pass between us and moment of terror at the touch of Time. “Could you take me with you?” I asked. “As you do when you are a centipede? You always take me to the exact place I need to be.”
Time brought his hand back from my face. “I can take you wherever you desire,” he said. “I will do so for you ask me and those I touch usually flee in fear rather than seeking the further mysteries of Time.”
“Please, Great One, would you take me to the Now?” I asked. “I’ve imagined there is such a place but I feel like I’ve never been there. It’s like I’m always running between the past and the future chasing shadows.”
Time stood very still as he considered my request. “Is that not possible?” I asked, confused by his stillness. “I live in a world where anything is possible but sometimes I think I ask too much of the ruling powers as I walk through my fantasy of a better world.”
“The Now is an aspect of myself,” he said. “I will take you there, but you must embrace me first. Have you the courage to face your time?”
The ancient one threw wide his cloak so that it blotted out every star in the sky and there was nothing but the void of creation. The flesh fell from his body as he opened his arms and Time stood in my sight as a grinning skeleton with an hourglass in one of his hands. I felt my spirit pull away from his new form but then I steeled my heart against his predations.
“I can face anything,” I said. “Even your fearful power, Time.” I wrapped my hands around his bony back and pressed my cheek to his skull, embracing the end of my time. Then I blinked and found myself standing on a cloud bank, high above the surface of another world.
The sun was either rising or setting as the clouds were tinged with a rosy red hue as well as pink and all of the shades in between. To my surprise, Andromeda stood next to me as a young woman with flying, shining hair as she had been when the universe was new. “Where are we, my child?” Andromeda asked. “I died and now I am here with you.”
“I think we stand outside of time, Mother, but I’m not sure where,” I said. “I asked to meet the Now but I don’t see anything. It is you and I and the clouds before the setting sun.”
“Let’s look together,” said Andromeda as we peered in every direction. “The great mysteries of life sometimes take a little searching to discover. Do not fear, we will stand together no matter what reveals itself to us in time.”
“Thank you for taking this journey with me, Mother,” I said. “I do not like to walk alone.”
As Andromeda smiled at me and squeezed my hand in encouragement, a gigantic eye emerged from the rose-colored clouds. It blinked slowly at the star and I, awake and seemingly aware.
“Hello, are you the Now?” I said. “You are only an eye to my sight. Can you speak?” The eye continued to blink but no sound issued from it. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? My name is Heidi,” I said. “And the spirit beside me is called Andromeda, who was once a star on earth but now exists outside of time for her ending came for her. Time embraced me and sent me here to your doorstep. Who are you?”
The great eye peered at us curiously and swept its long lashes down over itself in a slow blink. “Let’s pretend we have a language that allows us to communicate with ease. If you can understand me,” I said. “Blink twice in quick succession.” The enormous eye blinked twice. “You can understand me!” I said excitedly. Again, it blinked twice. “Are you the Now moment?” I asked. It blinked twice.
“How extraordinary,” said Andromeda. “The eye has no language yet it speaks. Do you know me? Blink three times if you do.” The eye blinked three times and I turned to Andromeda.
“The Now seems to have intelligence,” I said. Andromeda and I moved close enough to the eye so that we could see ourselves reflected in its living surface. “I wonder how we can communicate complex ideas with each other, those ephemeral thoughts that are beyond a yes or a no.”
The eye suddenly flew up into the air and back down again through the clouds. Then, Now burst through the cloud bank again and swooped and twirled in circles about us. We watched Now move and spin for a time when Andromeda gave an excited cry of recognition.
“I know what it is doing,” she exclaimed. “The Now moves in the dance of the stars. It took me some time to recognize it because it’s moving so much faster than my brethren and sisters of the sky dance it, but watch the motions! I know this dance.”
Andromeda raised her hands and began a stately pacing across the clouds. The Now slowed its movements and floated opposite to Andromeda and as she spun, it spun. In ever widening circles, the Now and the star moved and twirled about each other. The dance was similar to planetary motions with circular movements but there was also something uncontained about it. It was an expansive, ecstatic dance of existence and a language all of its own.
“Dance with us, my child!” Andromeda said. “Come and dance with Now and I.”
“I don’t know the dance of the stars,” I said, but Andromeda took my hand and led me through the steps. Together the star, the Now, and I moved in a pattern that wasn’t a pattern, a dance with no beginning or end, simply joy in being and motion and life.
This continued for a timeless moment and I lost myself to the ecstasy of being in the dance until Andromeda and I began to spin in a tightening circle with her hair flying around us, creating a tunnel of starlight. My vision blurred as we came closer together until I blinked and Andromeda was gone from my reality to somewhere beyond the worlds I knew.
“Mother, where have you gone?” I cried out as I ceased the dance. “Mother, why did you leave me here alone?” I started to search through the misty clouds but could find no evidence of Andromeda.
The Now, still appearing to my sight as a gigantic eye, floated in front of me. As I looked at it, bright blue skin began to shape itself around the eye. Now, there were two eyes below that and a neck, and a body that seemed to have too many arms at first, but when I looked closer resolved themselves into the usual two. This new being with the eye of Now wide open on her forehead sat serenely in a cross legged pose atop the rose-colored clouds.
“The Now had no voice to speak with you,” said the spirit of the bluest sky who had the Now as her third eye. “But I do. I know you, Heidi, I know you well.”
“How do you know me?” I said. “Are you Mother in a different form? Where is Andromeda?”
“Andromeda lives in the hearts of those who loved her. I am one of those who waits eternally at the edge of creation for the beings contained in time to guide those who are able to escape his grasp,” she said and smiled. “Welcome to the Now.”
“Andromeda had many who loved her, including I even if it was only for a brief moment of time,” I said. “She taught me the dance of existence.” A tear fell down my cheek at the knowledge that she had passed from my reality. “Who are you if not her?” I said as I wiped the tear from my face.
“I am an awakened being outside of time, Heidi,” the spirit intoned. Then when she spoke again, her voice was woven with many others though I could only see one being in front of me. “We are what you can be if you only open your eye as we have. Wake up to the Now, Heidi. Open your eye.” The being reached towards me with a blue arm and for a moment again it seemed as if she had a dozen arms shaping arcane symbols as she moved in my direction.
The enlightened one extended one long finger and pressed gently on my face where I felt something shift and an eye opened in the center of my forehead too. I could see through this new eye and it laid itself on top of my normal vision, a blurry addition that was becoming clearer by the moment.
“Great One, I was blind but now I see,” I said. “Is this heaven?”
“Child, you make me smile,” the spirit said as she removed her touch from my forehead and took a lotus pose upon the clouds. “This is Now. Welcome home.”
I blinked with my newly opened eye and found myself surrounded by dark and rain-filled storm clouds. A fierce wind was blowing and darkness surrounded the enlightened being and I, yet she continued to smile serenely as she sat in meditation and contemplation.
“Is this heaven?” she asked, not mockingly but as a teacher would speak to a student. “Are there storms in heaven, Heidi? Is there darkness in the perfected realms of the timeless?”
“No, Great One,” I said, some measure of understanding reaching my mind and heart. “This is Now. We are in the Now.”
My third eyelid fluttered again, our surroundings changed and the enlightened being and I stood in a bleak desert, under a merciless, glaring sun. Monuments rose and fell from the sand as the spirit and I watched the ravages of Time.
“Is this heaven?” the spirit asked again. “Is there suffering in heaven? Do fortunes change beneath the sun of the Creator of All? Are the mighty made weak in the realm of the timeless ones?”
“This is Now,” I said. “A realm in which Time holds sway and causes fear, panic, suffering and countless other sorrows. Tears fall in the Now. I wonder do they weep in heaven?”
“Let us see together, you and I, Heidi,” the enlightened one said.
Once more, the world around me changed and the spirit and I were seated in a sky filled with stars. Andromeda was dancing with the spirits of men and women who looked like her, shining beings with light that streamed forth from their hearts, their essential natures on full display for any who viewed them. I watched as the spirits of stars who had died continued their stately dance, beyond time and space, in a world of undying joy and motion.
“Is this heaven?” my teacher asked.
“This is the Now,” I said and I began to cry at the beauty of what I was seeing as the stars in their dance disappeared. “Since I weep, this must not be heaven.”
“No, dear child,” the enlightened one said. “This is Now.”
“Is Now within Time or outside of it?” I asked.
“Now cannot be separated from Time. It is within but also outside of it, contained within the past, present, and future,” the spirit said. “The Now is one of the great mysteries of life. You can spend your entire existence exploring the Now and only brush the surface of what may be known in the fullness of time.” The being blinked her three eyes at me and her form shifted as she did so, but too quickly for me to see who she was.
“Must I pass through Time?” I said. “I want to stop suffering beneath the weight of my Time but he is there before me no matter where I walk or the worlds I explore.”
“It is your choice and a question of free will,” the enlightened being said. “This is another of the great mysteries that can only be answered by living in the Now.”
“It seems as if the Now is a mystery shrouded in mysteries,” I said. “Thank you for your wisdom and for embodying a form who could answer my endless questions so succinctly and in a manner which I can comprehend.”
“We await anyone who looks for us,” the spirit said, her voice echoing with power. “The eternal in me rejoices in the eternal in you. Creation rejoices for creation.” With those words, the enlightened being shut all of her eyes and bowed her head as if in prayer.
I bowed back, closing all my eyes and when I opened them again, I had my cheek pressed to the skeletal face of Time as if I had never left his embrace. Before I could speak a word, Time flipped his shining hourglass and disappeared from my reality.
I found myself at the death bed of a beloved Mother as the young stars were still mourning the death of Andromeda. “Do not mourn,” I said, touching first one shoulder then another. “I have seen our Mother and she dances outside of time with all those who have gone before her.”
Orion wiped the tears from his cheeks. “But how shall we know our mother now?” he asked. “Or learn her wisdom and share in her experiences without her spoken words? Are you so heartless that you do not care about her death?”
I took Orion’s hands in mine as the tears fell down my own cheeks as well. “When you dance the dance of your existence, you honor and remember her,” I said through my sorrow. “As you pace the steps of the heavens, she moves also in the realm beyond death and this brings you together once more. Live your life as best you can and you shall know her through it. Then, one day far in the future, Time will stop for you, and you will be together again in the realms beyond death if not sorrow. Dance with me, Orion, and remember her.”
“I do not feel like dancing,” Orion said. “Mother is dead and there are none alive like her in wisdom and knowledge. We are as the living dead now outside of her presence.”
“Please try, Orion,” I said. “In memory of all she left us. I don’t feel like dancing either but we have to try for we are her legacy in this vale of tears.”
Slowly, Orion and I began to move in the dance Andromeda had taught me and the other stars rose from their bedside vigil to join us. Just as I had seen in the Now moment, the stars aligned and moved about one another in a ceaseless, joyful dance. I did not feel the ecstasy that I had experienced in the dance above the clouds with Andromeda but I did feel a lightness entering my being as I paced in the steps of one who was greater than I.
As Orion danced with me, I could see as if through a veil or mist Andromeda moving in time with him from whatever realm she now existed in. When he raised his hands and smiled at her during one of his dancing turns, I could tell he saw her too and they were connected through the dance as much as they had been through familial and unconditional love upon earth.
As I moved with the stars, I saw my deceased Grandpa moving with Andromeda as well. I smiled to see him but also wept because the space between life and the realm beyond death feels so real, so vast. One can know that there is no such distance and yet still feel the pain of the space between Now and the place where there is no sorrow, loss, or fear, my dream of heaven.
As I wept, I fell from the sky as Orion and the stars continued in their dance without me. I found myself standing on the surface of the moon, gazing down upon the Earth in its orbit. At first, the moon’s surface was barren and empty, but gray plants made of mist and starlight began to erupt from the soil all around me. Soon, a lush, shining jungle dotted the moon’s surface. I began to explore my new home, looking for companions in my separate reality from the stars.
From among the plants, gray figures who shined like the jungle appeared and danced on the moon. Reaching out their hands, they drew me into the dance with them. “You are not alone,” they whispered as I learned a new dance from the one I had moved in before. “We are here with you, whoever you are. Dance with us and become someone new.”
Then there was a rumble from beneath the soil and the giant centipede Time burst from the moon and took my new companions upon his back. Time carried the moon dancers away and I was left in the jungle, all alone again.
Before my tears resumed, there came the patter of many feet and Time returned, moving around me and wrapping me in his coils again and again until I could see nothing but Time himself. I began a new existence once more within Time and danced upon the surface of the moon by myself but I wasn’t really alone for he was there with me, every moment, every breath.
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 