Gate: The Lovers
I stepped through the vision gate and was standing on a cut log floating down a fast moving stream. I was in the midst of other logs and they bumped and pushed against each other. Then, quite suddenly, the stream turned into a tall waterfall and the imaginary armada and I careened over the side and fell into a mammoth pond at the waterfall’s base.
As we fell from the immense heights, the wood smashed into each other and mixed with the water so, by the time we finally reached the pond, they were reduced to large splinters of wood and little else.
I floated above this pond for a moment, avoiding the rapids and observing the steadily falling logs, their destruction, and remnants floating in the pond. After some time, I realized something was in the pond itself, pulling the splinters down from the water’s surface into its murky depths.
I entered the water and discovered a swarm of undines, swimming up from the deep waters of the pond, plucking a single splinter from the wreckage at the surface, and then taking the wood back to their watery abode. I decided to follow the undines to their final destination to further understand their nature.
As I journeyed downwards, a bubble filled with light appeared at my elbow. “Hello, Heidi,” the guardian spirit said.
“Hello, Bubble,” I answered. “Where am I?”
“You are at the base of the Fall of Knowledge,” the spirit said. “Did you see the mysteries descending from on high to feed the dreams of Poseidon?”
“To me, it looked like a bunch of cut trees coming down a river,” I replied. “What are the dreams of Poseidon?”
“Come and see,” said the bubble and led the way down into the waters. The guardian took me to where the undines were rising and falling continually with the splinters of wood.
I observed the undines feeding the wood into the mouth of an enormous golden starfish. Delicately, an undine placed a single piece of the wreckage into the starfish’s mouth. He bit down, chewed once, then opened his mouth again for another morsel. Another undine with yet another splinter was always waiting, to feed the starfish again.
“His mouth is rather small for his size,” I said. “Don’t you think?”
“One can only take in so much unknown at a time,” replied Bubble. My guardian shined a light ahead of us and I saw, instead of only one enormous starfish, we were gazing at fields and fields of starfish. Each had undine attendants who swam back and forth from the surface of the pond, bringing the splinters of the trees of mystery to feed the undersea creatures.
All of the starfish were connected together by their arms into a solid wall made of grey stone. I backed up from this scene and the starfish grew smaller and smaller, but the wall grew larger. I knew suddenly I had been viewing the wall at a microscopic level of being.
Now that I was my customary size, I found myself at the doorway to a castle made of an infinite number of tiny starfish. The undine attendants for the bricks of this palace were so small my eyes dismissed the crowds of them as tiny bubbles in the shadowy water.
This living structure, built of mystery, was the home of the gods beneath the sea. Their front gate made of pearls stood open before me.
“Is this the dream of Poseidon?” I asked the bubble.
“No, silly,” my guardian replied. “This is his castle. Let’s go in.” We passed the threshold of the gate together.
Within the castle’s walls, long hallways made of shell dripped with seaweed from the ceiling and walls. Living clams covered the floor and, as I walked upon them, the clams opened up, startled by my steps, then closed again to become the floor once more.
Bits of music came from within the castle but could not see the source of the sound. Shadows moved on the edges of my vision but when I looked directly at them, they faded into the waving seaweed or walls of pearlescent shell.
“Why do so many shadows dwell within the Castle of Poseidon?” I asked.
“The Sea Lord dwells within your subconscious mind in a castle created of mystery that literally fell out of your psyche,” said the bubble. “Is it any wonder there are things here even you cannot see?”
“I suppose not,” I acknowledged. My guardian and I went deeper into the castle and came to a hallway shaped like a spiral shell that led to a deep darkness. A wind came in and out of this hall, blowing the water past my face like the current of strong river.
“What’s down there?” I asked, feeling a moment of trepidation.
The bubble came close to my ear. “The Kraken,” the water spirit whispered. “He sleeps. Don’t wake the monster!”
“What is the Kraken?” I asked.
“A weapon of Poseidon,” the bubble murmured in my ear. “He unleashes the beast when the subconscious is threatened. The Kraken vanquishes all interlopers.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, entering the dark hallway. “What need would Poseidon have of a weapon with that sort of capability?”
“The depths of this subconscious sea hold creatures you could not even imagine,” the bubble said, matching my pace and floating at my left shoulder. “Poseidon has his reasons.”
“I would see this Kraken,” I said as we reached the end of the hall. Ahead, I perceived movement in a echoing room but could see nothing definitive through the murk and shadows. The space was a living, breathing void.
“Hello!” I called, the skin prickling on the back of my neck, as I felt something immense move between me and the exit. “Is anyone there? My name is Heidi and I have come to know your nature…”
A giant eye appeared and, at first, I thought it was the Now moment, coalescing out of the shadows. But this eye was not the Now, because it was completely blind- its large pupil sealed and clouded with cataracts. The sea creature’s eye twirled in a gross parody of the dance of the Now, bumping and slamming itself from side to side, smashing into my body and then back out again into the darkness.
“Be still, Kraken,” I said and reached out a hand the next time the monster crashed into me. Light exploded from my palm and the pupil of the eye suddenly cleared, healed by the light of love. Now, the creature’s pupil was slit up and down like the eye of an enormous cat. It glowed red and glared malevolently, freed from its long blindness.
Then, I heard laughter coming from the shadows of the room. The eye blinked and I found myself gazing into the face of a golden skinned cyclops.
From the waist up, the monster was shaped like a man with arms like tree trunks, built powerfully and strong. From the waist down, the cyclops had the many legs of a hermit crab. He scuttled and slithered his way towards me from out of the deeper shadows.
“I can see you now,” he hissed, through pointed, shark-like teeth. “Poseidon kept me blind to control me.” The cyclops opened his mouth wide and came towards me, maw opened wide to devour and consume.
“Back, creature!” someone yelled. I saw a flash of blue light. Then, a man with blue skin, bearing a trident, came running from behind me, out of the tunnel. He was covered in smooth armor made of fish scales, glittering and iridescent. “How dare you threaten the Messenger of Love!”
A slithering tongue came out of the cyclop’s mouth as he licked his lips. “She came to me,” he hissed. “She visited me before you, oh great Poseidon. My call was stronger than yours.”
“She is here to fix the problem you and I could not,” said Poseidon and he waved his trident once more. “Time to go back to your prison, monster. I call you now by your true names: Kraken, Shadowarm, Darkspear, Dream Devourer. I call you and bind you.”
The god held up a black pearl in his fist and the Kraken hissed in his rage and impotence. There was a whirlpool and a great wind beneath the waves, then silence. The monster was gone, contained within the pearl in Poseidon’s hand which was now marked with a single red slash like the pupil of his mammoth, evil eye.
Poseidon placed the black pearl into the crown of coral on his brow. The living coral took the pearl and held it fast, making it a part of its structure. Now, the sea god turned to me.
“Welcome to my home, Heidi,” he said. “There was no need to see the shadows first. But now they have been seen, so let’s go see some light to banish any further misgivings you may feel.” He gestured towards the exit and I followed the blue-skinned god out of the Kraken’s lair and deeper into his castle.
With Poseidon at my side, the shadows in his halls revealed themselves to be laughing, playing undines who waved and giggled as we passed, flicking their fins at us, and tumbling through the seaweed.
“I thought you would follow the music here, first,” said Poseidon, smiling and leading me into a room that was filled with flickering light. “See, now, one of the great wonders of my domain.”
We entered a cavernous hall filled with bright, rainbow light pouring out of a living coral bed that took up more than half the room. Sea creatures such as fish, crabs, sea serpents, tiny seahorses ridden by even smaller undine, and glowing jellyfish moved through the coral.
“This coral represents your subconscious mind,” said the god. “See how it lives and breathes. See how it grows slowly outwards, providing structure to the energy that comes from within it.”
Poseidon moved around the edges of the coral, pointing at one wonder after another. “I see your mind and help guide it,” he said encouragingly. “I also see threats and help eliminate them, but, I have been unable to address an issue that has arisen over here…”
The sea god led me to the far side of the coral under an overhanging branch which was jutting out from the rest. Underneath this section, skeletons of once living coral clung to a blasted surface. All was gray, crumbling, and rotten.
“I believe the decay originated from this growth here,” Poseidon said and indicated one small, black barnacle. “Would you be willing to go within that place and heal the imbalance? I sent in the Kraken to drive out the demon, but, when he emerged, laughing and dripping with shadow energy, the darkness was even worse than before.” Poseidon looked troubled. “I fear I made a mistake using him against whatever this is.”
I put a comforting hand on Poseidon’s arm. “You did what you thought was best,” I said. “Has the Kraken ever successfully balanced the subconscious for you in the past?”
The god nodded affirmatively. “Whenever deep sea creatures of unknown complexes and fears emerged, he was always strong enough to consume them or drive them back into the void. This one though,” Poseidon shook his head slowly and negatively. “This one is different. The hurt must be something more primal. Something only you, the Dreamer of this place, can fix.”
The god reached into a different part of his crown and pulled out a tiny, bright jellyfish. “I give you this talisman, Heidi, to take with you into the darkness and shadow.”
“What is it?” I asked as the blue jellyfish floated into my palm and became one with me.
“One night, I slept and had the most beautiful dream,” said Poseidon. “I dreamed of music, laughter, fresh water and growing coral. I dreamed of a child who never aged from whence all of this beauty flowed. Then, when I woke, this small creature, this jellyfish, was laying on my pillow.”
Poseidon looked down in remembrance. “I believe the jellyfish is the dream, coalesced into something tangible, out of the ether from which he emerged,” he continued. “Keep him close to you. He is a token of power here, one of my own dreams, and he will keep you safe.”
“Thank you, Poseidon,” I said and, where the jellyfish merged into my palm, he continued to glow with a soothing light. I took a deep breath, placed my hand on the shadow’s barnacle and was sucked up by a whirlpool that came from it, and was pulled down into darkness.
I now stood on the ocean floor next to a subterranean crack through which lava flowed beneath the surface of the world. Sighs came from the molten rock as it touched the cold waters. All around this crack, there was shadow- deep and impenetrable.
A voice came from the darkness around me. “You have come to the place of a dream that has died,” the spirit announced.
“Who is there?” I called. Poseidon’s dream flew out of my palm and threw himself into the molten lava, and was gone. “Who calls me?” I said again, speaking into the shadows.
A long, snaking tongue made of shadows and darkness slashed out of the waters and wrapped itself around my upper arm. Another came from the other side and grabbed my other arm. Tongues flew from all sides and I found my arms and legs held and bound by living darkness.
“My name is Heidi and I have come to know the nature of this place,” I said, feeling the pressure of the tongues trying to pull me in all directions. “I am not afraid of you.”
“Do you wish to know the nature of the dream that died?” came the voice again and I saw something dragging itself along the ocean floor on two human arms. The tongues came out of the thing’s broken legs, which dangled uselessly from its torso. It was surrounded by a cloud of long, entangling hair that flowed out of its head in every direction. This nightmare came closer to me.
“Who are you and what do you want?” I asked.
“I am Disappointment,” the abomination said and pulled on its tongues so I felt the fabric of my being stretched by its pressure. “You go looking into your mind, again and again. You look and what do you find?”
I felt one of the thing’s tongues enter my ear and its voice came even more clearly. “More places, more beings, more situations that need to be fixed,” the creature moaned. “Aren’t you disappointed? Aren’t you tired? Don’t you just want to lay down and die?”
Disappointment dragged itself closer. I felt its shadow entering my mind and heart. “Did you think that you were going to find something worthwhile? How sad, how very, very sad indeed…”
The creature was so close now, I could feel its hissing breath against my face. Tears, unbidden, were falling down my cheeks. The shadow’s words wrapped themselves around my mind and I could think of nothing other than what it was whispering to me.
“You dreamed this dream and now it has died.” Dark claws were reaching towards my face. “I claim this moment, Dreamer, for the shadow. I claim you…”
Suddenly, from the lava in the earth behind me, beings made of fire and energy began to pour from the ground. They were led by the shining jellyfish, a dream of Poseidon. I could hear the crowd of them, calling my name and rushing towards me.
Here was Odin and Merlin, the Divine Mother and the Oak tree, the Lion and the Coyote, my Snake, the ravens, Hecate and Dionysus, my Badger… all of them, the Light Congress themselves, exploded from beneath the sea and raced towards me, slicing through the countless tongues of Disappointment with their light and heat.
I discovered I was free of Disappointment’s clutches and my tears dried. With my friends’ courage on full display, I found my voice once more. “You are not real,” I said to the creeping thing revealed by the light of my inner worlds.
“My dream is not dead, in fact, it has just begun,” I continued. “And you, whatever truth you are concealing in your darkness, are going to reveal it to me now.”
Disappointment disappeared with an angry hiss. Where it once crawled, a gray doorway had appeared.
The Light Congress waved to me and, one by one, leapt back into the lava beneath the subconscious waters of my mind. The crack in the earth drew itself together and was gone- as if the split in the foundation of the ocean had never been.
Poseidon’s dream, which had not gone back into the lava, alighted on my shoulder and, together, we passed through Disappointment’s doorway into another reality.
I found myself in the backyard of my childhood home on a bright, sunny day. I watched myself as a child, no older than five or six, running, laughing, and playing in the sun. Then, I saw, as if in fast motion, time passed, the child grew taller, entered puberty, went to school, went to college, aged some more, and had a child… this all occurred in the blink of an eye.
“You grew up,” I heard a voice that sounded like my own.
“All children grow up,” I replied. “I am no exception to that particular rule.”
Now, I was standing in a gray space, like an empty room, and a child laid on the floor, coloring a page. She hummed to herself, completely engrossed in her work. I sat down beside her. To my astonishment, she was drawing a perfect copy of the jellyfish that was currently sitting on my shoulder.
“Child,” I said in surprise. “What are you doing?”
She looked up and I saw the girl was me. “I’m bringing it to life,” she said and went back to her work. I suddenly remembered a game I used to play when I was that age. I’d pretend that coloring pictures would awaken whatever was depicted on the pages when the crayons touched its outlines.
“I’ve brought them all to life,” she said quietly. Lining the walls of this gray room, picture after picture of the Light Congress stood like silent sentinels. All of my friends were there- illuminated and preserved in a child’s scribbles.
The girl shifted to color another portion of the jellyfish and I saw she had a chain around her neck that led to a hole in the wall behind us. “Child,” I said, touching the chain with one finger. “What is this that is binding you in this space?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, totally unconcerned. “The monsters pull it sometimes and try to keep me from coloring. I don’t let them bother me.”
“Do these monsters have names?” I asked.
“They whisper to me,” she said. “One is Duty, another is Responsibility, but the worst is Disappointment.” The child looked up at me again. “She pulls until I can’t breathe, sometimes.”
Tears began to fall down my face again. I laid my hands on the chain and it vanished into a wisp of smoke. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know you were here. I would never have let them hurt you if I had known.”
The child saw the chain was gone and smiled, as undisturbed by its disappearance as she was by having it around her neck. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said. “You grew up. That’s all.” The child rose from the floor and took my hand. “Would you play a game with me before you go?”
“Anything you want,” I said.
“Let’s pretend for a moment,” said the child. “That I am you, a grown-up, and you are me.”
“Ok,” I said and found myself shrinking down to the child’s size as the child grew to be me. I picked up the crayons to finish coloring the picture of the jellyfish.
“Once upon a time,” said my Inner Child. “There was a little girl who could hear whispers in the wind and perceive the reality behind the world. This child watched the reality behind reality to the point where her parents and teachers were afraid something was really wrong.”
“She wouldn’t engage with them as if they were the reality behind reality, just silly whispers in front of it,” she continued. “So, being the caring adults they were, they taught the girl to pay more attention to what they thought was real instead of what she thought was real.”
I colored one of the arms of the jellyfish on my page a neon blue as the Inner Child’s story unspooled.
“They taught her to ignore the whispers in the wind and to listen to their voices instead. They taught her to call her visions just “dreams” and to use her imagination to finish her homework and work assignments rather than see the truths behind reality,” she said. “In essence, they taught her to grow up.”
The Inner Child leaned closer to me and smiled in approval at the, now completed, picture of the jellyfish. “But you know what, Heidi?”
“What?” I asked in a child’s voice.
“We’ve fooled them all for a part of the girl never grew up and never will,” she said. “The part that brings forth dreams from the void and releases them into the world will always dwell here, safe and protected from anything that happens in the outside world.”
“Nothing can bind this part of your spirit,” said the child with my adult voice. “No monsters whispering or pulling chains of various hues will ever bother her. Did you know that?” The Inner Child took my hand and led me past her countless drawings on the wall to a toy chest that sat in the corner of the gray room.
“What’s in the box?” I asked, itching to open it.
“Let’s open it and see,” she said. I struggled with the heavy lid so the Inner Child stepped forward to help me. Together, we opened the toy chest and an enormous gossamer jellyfish, far bigger than Poseidon’s dream but otherwise the same, floated up out of the box and past the gray walls of the room, which vaporized into bubbles as it passed.
I found myself stretching, growing, and returning to my previous form. The Inner Child shrank and became herself again as well.
“You have released the Dream Maker,” she said. “Look!” As the huge jellyfish moved into the waters of the subconscious mind, it released a cloud of tiny jellyfish just like it. Every moment, more and more dreams poured from its body to enter the oceans and shine its light into the darkness.
The child took my right hand. “Tell Poseidon to keep the Dream Devourer bound now its lighter half has re-entered the oceans,” she said, very seriously for one so small. “Tell him the Inner Child is unchained and unchanged. Tell him his dream was true…” I found myself sucked up in a whirlpool and emerged from the coral into Poseidon’s castle once more.
The blue god looked at the formerly decaying coral which now grew and thrived. “You have done it!” he exclaimed. “Thank you, Heidi. Well done, you.”
I lifted his bright jellyfish from my shoulder and returned it to Poseidon’s keeping. “I come bearing a message for you,” I said. “The Inner Child says to keep the Kraken bound because its lighter side has been released, she is unchained as well as unchanged, and your dream was true.”
Poseidon laughed and reached up to his crown where he withdrew the black pearl that contained the Kraken. He tossed it into the air and the tiny jellyfish of his dream moved as quick as lightning and swallowed the pearl in one gulp.
“I will tell you a secret, Heidi,” he said and leaned close. “When the Kraken wasn’t able to banish this Disappointment, I was secretly afraid it was true, that the Inner Child had perished and her light had been extinguished from this world.”
“How pleased I am to discover that fear was made only of shadow,” he said quietly. “How the oceans will flourish now the Dream Maker swims once more.” The god moved away from me, waving his trident at the creatures of the palace coral. Then he announced: “To the celebration, my friends!”
I smiled at the god and his mysterious castle, the sea creatures contained within it, and the whole ocean coming to life with music and light. There, my vision ended.
The Light Congress 