Gate: The Chariot
I found myself on the back of a white horse. I was leading the charge of a legion of warriors on fleet horses and we charged across a barren plain towards a towering shadow. The mounts and their riders changed into water and soon it was as if I rode my stallion in the foamy crest of an ocean wave. We crashed into the shadow, but could not pass through.
I stared into the inky fog surrounding me now. My soldiers had vanished somewhere in the mist and confusion of that moment in time. As I observed the walls of shadow, something swirled within its depths and a doorway formed into the waiting darkness. I passed through this door.
Within the walls of shadow, the darkness was a sticky tar. This substance dripped down upon me and I could not shake it. Then, the mist beneath my feet wavered and moved as if I was standing on water instead of earth. The reality of my situation on moving ground knocked me off my feet and I could not stand up anymore.
The shadow continued to drip down from the ceiling and I could not move away from it nor hide. Realizing the hopelessness of it all, I closed my eyes and relaxed into the experience rather than fighting it. I felt myself sinking into the ground.
When I could perceive again, the tar-like darkness was gone and I was standing on the edge of a tall cliff with a sheer drop at my feet. A wind came from the gulf beyond and blew my hair back from my forehead. I heard a voice borne on the wind say, “Why don’t you fly?” so I opened my arms and soared off of the edge of the cliff.
As I flew directly into the wind, my body began to dissolve into light as it had in the shadow realm. Soon, I was just a collection of lights, soaring along into a great unknown.
Other beings made of light appeared and we flew onwards, together but separate. Again, a great wall of shadow appeared on the horizon. The lights and I collided with it again. This time, because we were particles of light, the darkness intermingled with us, and began to dance and spin with the light we had carried within ourselves to that dark place.
We flipped and spun together, darkness and light spinning into a funnel of light and shifting shadows. I found myself slipping down this tunnel to the ground below.
My physical body appeared at the bottom of the spinning funnel of light and shadow. This tunnel was attached to the back of my head and held me in place. I could move neither forwards nor backwards because of the confluence of light and dark particles that were flowing into my mind from the sky above.
“I require a guide and some serious help,” I said aloud, struggling to pull away from whatever was holding me in place. Then, I heard a whisper emerge from the ground that I was standing upon.
“Echo… Echo… Echo…” she said, and my old friend, Echo, appeared. She was formed of darkness and shadows and waved to me excitedly in greeting.
“Echo, I’m stuck,” I said and tried to pull away from the funnel again, but without success.
“That’s the greater part of your consciousness,” whispered Echo in an approximation of my voice. “See how it gathers into you.”
“Greater part?” I said. “What does that mean? And why is it all light and shadow mixed together?”
“It represents your conscious and subconscious mind,” she whispered in my voice. “Isn’t it marvelous? Look at the sheer size of it.”
“It may be marvelous, Echo, but I can’t move,” I said. “Could you help me?”
“What you ask is beyond my ability,” whispered Echo. “But I will call someone who can help you.” She raised her shadowy hands above her head and slapped them on the ground. “Divine Mother!” she called out and sank into the earth.
A rumble filled my senses and another lady made of shadow and stars rose from the ground. She saw my predicament and began to laugh.
“Oh Heidi,” the Divine Mother said, laughing still. “What are you doing? You look ridiculous.”
“I’m exploring consciousness, Mother,” I said, still fighting to move from my spot.
“You’re not going to get very far unless we can assimilate more of your greater being into your light body,” she explained, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. “I’m sorry to laugh but you look so silly- all spread out like that.”
The Divine Mother shrugged her shoulders and her dark, star-filled hair flipped into motion around her. She began to gather the strands together and braid them into a single plait with three parts. As she did so, she began to sing:
Gather the energy, gather the wild,
Gather the light, into my child.
Take her and make her into the divine,
A body of light with her essence combine.
As the Divine Mother braided her long tresses, I saw all of the light and shadow begin to draw together and come down through the funnel into my head, filling my mind and body with its blended particles.
She continued her mantra:
Mars and Venus, Earth and Moon,
All planet energies start to commune.
Unite greater knowing, unite greater part,
Here is your body. Here is your heart.
With those words, the Divine Mother finished her braid and all of the light and shadow coming from the sky combined within my soul and filled my inner being with a numinous radiance. I was now able to move my physical limbs and I walked towards the Mother, expressing gratitude with every step for her succor. She smiled at me, raised one hand in benediction and disappeared.
A misty fog but with a material weight like cotton filled my vision. I was soon pushing aside fluffy swathes of it to move forward.
“Hello!” I called into the shadows. There was a tearing sound and a rip appeared in reality. A hand reached through and took my hand. Then, I was pulled through this doorway into another place.
“Welcome to the Other Side of the Mirror,” said the owner of the hand. It was Echo. She had her own voice now and a real flesh and blood body. The embodied Echo was a beautiful woman with black hair so long it trailed down her body and dragged on the floor. “Welcome to my father’s kingdom,” she said.
“I didn’t know there was another side to the mirror,” I said. “How extraordinary.” I observed we were inside a gray stone castle in a long banquet hall lined with mirrors. Lords and ladies feasted at marble tables within this space as well as upon red and gold Roman couches along the walls.
“This is my family,” said Echo, gesturing at the crowd. “We are the spirits of every mirror on Earth, gathered to commune in my father’s house.” As we began to walk the length of the hall, the revelers paused in their merriment to wave enthusiastically as we passed by.
“Every mirror has a guiding spirit?” I asked, waving back.
“Everyone and everything in existence has a guiding spirit,” Echo clarified. “I was hoping you’d make it to the other side of the mirror, but we weren’t entirely sure that you could. Not everyone can, you know.”
“Without the Divine Mother’s help, I don’t think I would have survived,” I confessed and Echo took my hand.
“Come with me,” she said. “We will go to my father. He is a great power here in his own realm.”
“This personage I believe is a great power in my inner kingdom too,” I replied and together we left the hall of feasting mirrored spirits. Together, we moved through a stone hallway- our steps echoing in the sudden stillness.
Echo’s long black hair trailed behind us as we passed deeper into the Mirror of Shadow’s realm. Finally, at the end of the hall, we came to another doorway with a blood red frame and lintel. Within this room, I saw steps leading up to a throne, upon which sat a being who had the face that I had seen within the Mirror of Shadows.
“Father,” Echo said. “Here is Heidi. She has come to visit you, at long last.” As we reached the base of the stairs, the shadowed king bowed his head to me in acknowledgment.
As I bowed back, I saw for a fleeting moment, a bright light peek around the back of the Mirror of Shadow’s throne. This new energy looked like a person made entirely of light. Then, she was gone, hidden behind the throne once more.
“Welcome to my kingdom, the Other Side of the Mirror,” said the king solicitously.
“Mirror of Shadows,” I said. “I have never had a chance to thank you for your creation of portals in my inner worlds. With your help, I have traveled with ease to places that I never even dreamed of. Thank you for that.” The king smiled, waving away my thanks as if it hardly mattered.
“Mirror, if I may ask you a question,” I said. He nodded his permission. “Who is behind your shoulder?”
“My wife and queen,” said the Mirror of Shadows. “The Lady of the Mirrored Light, Echo’s mother.”
“Why does she not sit beside you?” I asked.
“Our polarities are opposite so it causes her great discomfort to dwell so closely together,” explained the king. “She sits behind me, facing reality the other way.”
“We are both somewhat more comfortable in this manner,” he said with a sigh. “Would you like to speak with her?”
“I would, Mirror,” I said. “Very much. But first, I seek your wisdom. If you could teach me one lesson, what would it be?”
The shadowed king rose from his chair. “Look deeply into the darkness. Look deeply into the light,” he said. “Do not fear either. For within these dreams of reality, dwell self-knowledge and freedom.” The king’s eyes changed into silvered mirrored surfaces, then his face, hands, and body transformed as well.
For a moment, I gazed into the Mirror of Shadows, a giant spinning mirror standing in a wooden frame, but then, he became more. Where the king had once stood, now there was a doorway at the top of the steps. Echo took my hand and together, we climbed the stairs, and passed through this door.
We found ourselves at the bottom of yet another set of stairs. At the top, a lady made of light sat on a glowing throne. “Mother!” said Echo, and she practically flew up the steps.
“My child,” whispered the Queen. She reached out and gently touched Echo’s face with her fingertips. I came closer and saw the Queen had dark gray eyes with no pupils. She appeared to be blind.
“I’ve brought a friend,” said Echo, moving to stand beside her mother upon the dais. “Her name is Heidi,” she continued. “Our Father knows her well and now she has come to learn about you.”
“Heidi…” said the Queen and her voice echoed around me, coming from all parts of the space at once. “Come closer, child.” I climbed the steps and stood in front of the Lady of Mirrored Light. She reached out and touched my face as she had with Echo.
“Mirror of Light,” I said as she gently caressed my eyes and cheek. “Why are you blind?”
“I see the energy behind physical reality,” explained the Queen, quietly. “Which is a form of blindness, I suppose. Physical shapes aren’t as real as some think. The energy animating the form is a true and lasting expression in the worlds of the Tree of Life, even when the physical body is gone back into the dust from whence it came.”
“You, just like the Mirror of Shadows, and like most of humanity, only observe the physical,” she said. “So, sweet Heidi, perhaps I should ask you why you are blind, not me.” Her fingertips passed lightly again over my eyes and the center of my forehead. As she touched me, her body began to take on more solidity and I saw less of the light of the lady and more of her divine form.
“May you see reality as I see it,” she whispered in blessing. Then, she kissed my forehead. “Gaze into the Mirror of Light, Heidi. Gaze deeply and well.”
I blinked and where the Queen had sat, there was now an enormous shining mirror, standing in a frame of gold. Light exploded from its surface and, at first, I could see nothing but the blinding light of existence.
But then, as I continued to gaze into the mirror, I saw moving patterns of gold, where, in a regular mirror, I would have seen my physical body. I observed these patterns forming themselves into the world centers of the Tree of Life within my spirit.
The liquid gold moved up and down through awakened centers of energy within my body and were connected to each other by shining paths of light. I moved what should have been my hand and for a moment I could only see a hand made of light, moved by the golden energy. I waved at my reflection in the mirror and she waved back, not in unison, but with her own power.
I continued to watch the moving, shifting energy that was reflected in the Mirror of Light. On the golden paths between the energy centers, I saw tiny forms moving. I brought my face very close to the mirror’s surface and saw a tiny Holy Grail moving down one path towards an energy center, only to observe it emerge from the other side of the center on yet another path.
Figures that I have seen in my visions, traveled and moved from path to path, center to center, within my very soul. I felt overwhelmed for a moment at the sheer immensity of the inner worlds.
I took a step to the side, to try to see this universal truth from a different angle, and noticed movement in the glass. Behind me, in an unending line, I saw collections of glowing, golden energy paths and centers.
I blinked and the living energy changed into the forms of men and women in clothing from different time periods. I knew in that moment these men and women were part of myself- past lives revealed to me through their energy patterns and the echoes they left behind upon the earth. My glimpse of their physical bodies faded as quickly as it came and, afterwards, I could clearly see the glowing energy they embodied as well as left behind.
If I stood directly in front of the Mirror of Light, the numinous bodies lined up with mine exactly and their cumulative glow added to my current existence. Though I couldn’t separate their energy from mine, they didn’t overpower my view of reality. It was simply the energy pattern of my spirit and yet, it was more. I saw a glimpse of eternity.
The Mirror of Light’s voice whispered from her glass surface: “See as I see. See your energy now, see your energy as it was. See your evolution. See beyond the physical, Heidi. Look and see…look and see… look and know.”
Then, like her shadowed king before her, the Mirror of Light stretched and changed into a doorway. I moved through this new door into another reality.
I found myself walking on a surface of water. At the edges of the place in which I found myself, crickets and cicadas chirped and sang in the dusk of a day. A giant goldfish broke the surface of the water like a whale and leapt over my head, crashing into the pond behind me.
Above this pond, relaxing on a branch, butterflies of every color imaginable fanned their wings. As their wings lightly fluttered, the breezes they created swept across the water, causing small ripples and distortions to its surface.
“I have been here before,” I said in realization. “This is the Pool of Destiny.”
The water started to speak to me. “Welcome, Heidi, to this place and time. Do you know how a mirror and a lake’s surface are the same?” whispered the pool.
“No, tell me,” I said. “Though this seems like a riddle I should have known the answer to.”
“Both reflect reality,” said the water. “Both are a doorway to another dimension.”
I walked on the water beneath the fluttering wings of the butterflies who filled the whole of the sky both day and night. Then, a geyser shot from the pool. Water flew high into the air as if ejected from the blowhole of a mighty beast of the deep or a gushing fountain. Then, the droplets fell and the water inverted itself, forming a whirlpool. The water was sucked down, then, explosively, shot into the air again.
I watched the Pool of Destiny go up, then down, in an observable pattern, again and again.
“What causes this disturbance?” I asked, while watching the phenomena.
“Eternity breathes,” came a whisper out of thin air.
“Is Eternity someone I could meet?” I asked.
“Anything is possible,” sighed the waters and a spiral staircase formed down into the pool, swirling around the eternally moving geyser and whirlpool. I traveled down these stairs, feeling as though someone was with me though I could not see him.
At first, I passed clear water lining the stairs, but then, as the light from above faded, I moved through complete darkness. Finally, I reached the bottom of the stairs and there was nothing.
“Hello?” I tried to say, but I was unable to produce a sound. Instead, my spoken word wrote itself into the air in front of me, in shining letters made of golden light. “Hello?” I tried again and the letters appeared again.
“HELLO,” someone finally wrote in response. His expression was in capital letters of blinding, gossamer light, next to my own written word.
“Who are you?” I wrote with my spirit.
“I AM ∞” came the reply. “WHO ARE YOU?”
“I am Heidi,” I wrote as I could not speak. “Eternity, please instruct me as to your nature.”
The symbol for eternity filled my vision. A voice spoke directly into my mind: “I contain all things. The first and the last, everything that exists within time for I am Eternity.” The symbol twisted and spun, filled with living light and taking up my lens of perception so that I could see nothing but this reality.
“Most people within time see Death as a final ending,” this being said. Then, I saw a skeleton dressed in a monk’s robes standing above the glowing eternity symbol. With his great scythe, he cut the floating eternity into two halves.
“Most people see living existence and non-living existence as separated from each other with Death as a untraversable canyon in between,” said the skeleton. “But it is not so. See now, Heidi, a great secret.”
As I watched, the two halves of the separated eternity symbol reconnected themselves and then flipped so instead of side by side, Eternity was now standing up. The two newly aligned circles of the eternity symbol shaped themselves into a living hourglass.
The skeleton who represented Death stood between the two circles at the point where the sand passed from one part of the hourglass to the other side. “See the connection. See the doorway?” he asked. “There is no severing of life and death, Heidi. I promise you, there is only continual existence within eternity. Anyone who says otherwise speaks with a different voice or from a place of shadow.”
Eternity’s hourglass flipped itself over and over, sending the sand forward and back, again and again, through the portal of Death. Finally, the symbol turned back to the side and was once more: ∞
“Are you a god?” I asked. “Who else would know a truth such as this?”
“I contain all things, even Time, within my limits. I am the creation and destruction of form. You know me by another name, sweet Heidi…” I looked at the symbol and saw two bright eyes gazing at me through the center of eternity’s loops. The eyes were set in a female form made of shadow and stars. I realized the Divine Mother was looking at me through Eternity’s mask.
“My dear one,” said the Divine Mother. “My child, I love you.” She spread her arms and I saw, contained within them, all existence, all time, all life and all death. She enveloped me in her embrace and I found myself shooting through the air, being expelled from the Pool of Destiny in the waters of the geyser.
Then, I was sucked down into the water and expelled again. I was able to float away from the moving power of the pool and saw, at the bottom of the lake through the crystal clear water, a sleeping giant.
Upon closer inspection, I saw that this giant was myself. The geyser and whirlpool were caused by my breath passing in and out of my own lungs. There, my vision ended.
The Light Congress 