Gate: The Empress
I stepped through the vision gate and found the ground trembling beneath my feet so violently that I immediately fell over to lay upon the earth. There was a final, tremendous quake and the sky seemed to split into two above me as I struggled to stand again. From out of this rift in the sky, a glowing red flower upon a hanging vine emerged from the void. It grew down from the sky towards me, shining like the sun and I fell into the heart of this flower, pulled by a power outside of my own.
When I reached the glowing flower’s secret heart, I was moved away from the center again, pushed through the blossom’s outer petals and down its stem like it was a child’s slide. I fell until I passed into the red flower’s roots, then traveled backwards in time, entering into the seed the flower had first emerged from. Within the seed’s potential, all was silent and my vision dissolved into darkness.
When I could finally see again, I found myself standing in a circular chamber. Visible energy in the form of mist swirled and coalesced around my legs, but otherwise there was nothing to either see or hear.
As I contemplated my misty surroundings, Badger burst into being at my side in his animal form. “Heidi!” he exclaimed. “Where have you been? I have missed you.” He ran around me, bumping into my body affectionately like an overgrown, excited dog. I rubbed my hands through the fur on his head.
“I missed you too, Badger,” I said. “What is this place?”
“We stand in a realm of primordial creation, a nexus of great power,” Badger said, lowering his voice in respect. “It is a very great honor.”
“It is? But there’s nothing here and no one to talk to,” I said, swirling the misty energy around with my foot.
“You’re here and so am I,” Badger said. “And there’s all this potential. What would you like to create? We can dream up anything we want.”
“I can make anything in creation that I desire?” I asked.
“Anything at all,” he replied. “We are only bound by our imaginations.”
“Let’s imagine a new world, Badger,” I said. “One for just you and me to explore if we want to.”
I opened my mind and heart, looked down at the mist as if entering a daydream, and when I looked up again, I was gazing over an ancient forest. “I think there will be trees that way,” I said and pivoted a step. “In that direction, we’ll have an ocean.” Frothy, rolling waves burst into being and I found myself gazing upon the shore of a beach.
I took another step in a different direction as if I was turning on top of a compass. “Over there, we will have fire and volcanoes.” A blasted landscape of ash and fire appeared. “And finally,” I turned one last time. “We will have a realm of the sky and clouds.” And it was so.
Badger and I now stood at the center of four worlds with primal elements clearly visible and active within each. “I like what you’ve done with the place. The elemental spirits will lose their minds in joy in these worlds,” Badger said. “What will exist at this center point where all the elements meet?”
Looking at the mist that still remained under our feet, I imagined one more embodied element. “I suppose this shall be the realm of the spirit,” I said and as I spoke the words, the last bit of mist shaped itself into a shimmering, giant flower that grew at the center of the four worlds. I sat down at the base of the stem of this flower, gazing out at creation from beneath its petals. Badger wrapped his body around me so I could lean back into his soft fur and we sat together in silence for a time.
“Badger, what is friendship?” I asked at last.
“I think it’s a form of love,” he replied. “Why do you want to know?”
I sighed. “I recently had a friendship fall apart in my waking world and took it rather badly,” I said. “My heart aches in my chest because of it. Why does Love cause such suffering? Sometimes it feels more like a ruling power of shadow than light.”
Badger pulled himself closer still and I took comfort from his presence. “Injuries of the spirit are only passing shadows, Heidi,” he said. “We can still imagine anything we want in this place, the raw potential exists for anything at all that you may desire. I suggest we make this vision not only about creation but also healing. Don’t let the ashes of a friendship break your heart.”
I sighed again. “You are my best friend, Badger,” I said. “You make many good points and I’ll give it a try but my heart really isn’t in it today.”
“Then I’ll do the hard work of imagining and you can come along for the ride into my dream of healing. Don’t be sad! It’ll be fun! Let’s begin,” Badger said as he shook himself and stood. “We’ll go farther up and further into the realm of the spirit to discover the truth of this matter. I’ll lead the way.” He took a running start and ran up the side of the giant flower. I tried my best to follow, but instead of going upwards in Badger’s shadow, I found myself falling down the flower stem into darkness.
I blinked and found myself in a coffin. I felt the stillness on all sides of the box and realized I was buried alive. “Where am I? Badger!” I called, pushing against the coffin lid. “Help me, please. I’m stuck!” I tried frantically to free myself, imagining the coffin was nothing but a misty illusion, pretending I was a molecule of air and could pass through the coffin into the earth and outwards, but nothing worked. So, I composed my breath and waited for my circumstances to change.
“Breathing in, I love you. Breathing out, I love you,” I whispered to myself. “Badger, we need to work on your imagination. This dream sucks.”
After a time, I heard a slight scratching noise coming from above me. The sound grew louder and suddenly the top of the coffin was lifted off and I was pulled into the midst of a group of brown robed monks.
“Brother, you’re back!” one of them exclaimed. “You must tell us what you saw.” All of the penitents peered into my face with some interest.
“I didn’t go anywhere. Where am I?” I said in some confusion. “What year is it? Where’s Badger?”
The one who had spoken slapped the monk standing next to him on the back. “Brother John must have gone very far, to not even remember his name.” The group burst into guffaws but then quieted when they saw that I was serious. “You asked us to bury you so you could seek the nature of reality,” the monk said gently. “Don’t you remember, John? Did you learn nothing of the mysteries of God that you can share with us?”
“John is not my name. I may not remember much, but I at least know that. My parents named me Heidi. Today I came from within a single seed of a flower that burst from the sky into a world that had yet to be created,” I said, beginning to tell the monks my latest vision but they looked at me as if I was speaking gibberish. “Using the limitless potential of the seed, I imagined a place where the four elements existed in separate worlds and met in a central realm of the spirit. Then my friend, Badger, came to me and invited me to enter a dream of healing to banish a shadow from my heart.” With those words, my fingers changed into claws and I found myself transformed into a giant badger.
The monks screamed in fear and clutched each other. I quickly changed back into a brown robed monk like everyone else but the damage was done. I had scared the life out of all of the believers around me.
“He is possessed!” one said. “He is the devil!”
“She and no I am not,” I corrected him, but went unheard in the general panic.
“We must take him to the head of the order. He will know what to do,” said another.
“Maybe an exorcism?” said a third monk. “Begone foul demon!”
“Would everybody please calm down?” I said. “I’m not possessed, I’m dreaming.”
“Be silent, Evil One!” said the first monk who had spoken. “We will wrest our brother back from your wicked claws.”
Babbling and shaking with fear, the group lifted me bodily off the floor of the room in which they had unearthed me and carried me through a large, stone castle. We rushed through various hallways until we came to a wooden door.
The monks pushed me through into the room beyond. “He went too far into the worlds of vision and lost his mind to the Devil,” said one of the order. “Father, you must save him!” Then, they turned as a group and disappeared back down the hall, brandishing their crosses at every passing shadow upon the walls as they went.
A solitary figure was standing near a bookcase beneath an opening in the stone wall, so sunlight streamed over his shoulders and shone upon his hooded head. He gave a sigh and shut the book he had been reading. “Interrupted again. Brother John, what is all this commotion about?” he said. “They say you return to us a changed man which is not unexpected for an anchorite such as yourself. What did you see to engender such fear in your brothers?”
“Father, Abbot, whoever you are, I am not your Brother John. My name is Heidi and I am a seeker from another world as well as a mother so I am demonstrably not a man,” I said. “I fell into this dream of reality in search of its true nature and for healing. I am sorry if I seem rude but I really don’t appreciate being called by another name or misgendered in my current form. Why can’t anyone see me as I am? Badger knows who I am. Where is he?”
The Abbot looked mildly surprised but then came closer to peer carefully into my face. “I apologize if our order caused offense. We put Brother John into the coffin you emerged from and could hardly be blamed for expecting to pull John out of the ground again. That being said, we have no Brother Badger among us at this time, Heidi. Are you truly a woman?” he asked and I nodded. “Well, my visionary friend, then I will share with you a great secret as further proof of my sincere apology for your misidentification. Though I serve as the head of this order of Brothers in Christ, my given name was Mary.” The monk lowered her hood to reveal a tonsured head. I looked as closely into his face as he had looked into mine and saw ‘he’ was actually a ‘she’ just like me.
Mary quickly raised her hood again to conceal her features. “What nature of healing is it that you seek in my world?” she said. “For in your Badger’s absence, maybe I could be of some assistance to you in this matter.”
“The current shadow upon my heart stems from a close friendship I had with a man, a talented artist,” I said. “We shared stories of my explorations and discoveries in worlds beyond the ordinary one. He was my spiritual friend or so I thought.”
“He seemed to love my stories and discussed the symbolism within them with me at length,” I continued. “We traded art as creative people do. I shared my stories and he gave me his drawings of ideas and themes contained within them. But then one day he wished to share my body as a man lies with a woman. When I refused his advances, he said my art was not of the worth of his and I owed him piles of money for his interpretations of my magnum opus.”
“Mary, I felt so betrayed,” I said, wiping a tear from my cheek. “I thought our friendship was rooted in spirit, not the flesh or money or any other physical thing. He clearly did not share this view.”
The holy woman smiled sadly at my predicament and patted my hand to comfort me. “Do not be sad. This is a very old problem between men and women, even in the realm of the spirit,” she said. “Tell me, Heidi, why do I dress as a man?”
“Because otherwise you would not be allowed to be a monk,” I replied. “Or share in their monastic life, exploring the mysteries of God in the manner you prefer.”
“Just so,” she nodded her head. “Dressed this way, my Brothers believe I have enough wisdom and knowledge to be the head of our order. But dressed as the gender of my birth, they would not look at me twice nor value any of the words that came out of my mouth.”
“The problem is not with us, dear heart, for seeking the mysteries of God’s creation,” she said. Then Mary took my chin in her hands and dried my tears with a corner of her monk’s robe. “The trouble is there are some who cannot see beyond the flesh into the genderless perfection of the eternal spirit that moves us all. Even so, don’t despair at their lack of vision and continue to share your hidden knowledge. The ones who value you as you are will come into your reality and help you as you move along the path God has set aside for you. Let the past, this lost friendship, and all its hurts go. Forgiveness is as real as failure, Heidi. Offer this friend forgiveness and let him go.”
Tears dripped freely down my cheeks even as Mary dried them. “I have forgiven him and released him from my reality but I feel as if I have a great pain in my chest like a shadow clawing within me and trying to get out,” I said. “It hurts so badly it feels as if my heart is broken in two.” As I spoke of my emotional suffering, Mary began to glow from within, lit by a blinding light and her form began to change.
Now instead of gazing upon a robed monk, I saw the spirit as the Virgin Mary, dressed in blue with a halo around her head. I blinked once more and she changed from Mary into the Divine Mother, a goddess made of stars and the night sky with long, sparkling hair.
“Let me see this pain, my child,” she said and reached out her hand towards my broken heart. “Ah, I see the trouble clearly now,” she said, when she reached my spirit’s center. “I am happy to report your heart is not broken, Heidi, but there is a thorn of regret and longing for spiritual companionship within it.”
The Mother pulled her hand back and in her fist, there was an artist’s pencil, dripping on the end with my heart’s blood. “Wait a moment, I see something else,” she said and reached within my heart again. “Something hid in the shadow of the greater pain you were experiencing. Let us explore the hidden wound.”
When the goddess removed her hand a second time, she held a very small seed in her palm. “You carry within your spirit enough potential to create an entirely new world,” she said. “Poor child, my poor visionary child, you want the whole world to share your dreams of paradise too.”
The Divine Mother blew one enchanted breath upon the seed, igniting it with her primal power so that it started to change within her hand into a bubbling and living mass of potential forms like those that surrounded her in her sacred place in the void. After awakening the seed, the Mother placed it upon my tongue for me to swallow.
“Send this seed of potential through the portal of your heart, Heidi. Perhaps this way, you will find some relief from the lingering suffering caused by a very large, as-yet unrealized dream. As for your artist’s thorn and lost friendship, understand there was blinding lust at the root of his attention, not unconditional love,” she said. “That is why you felt such pain when his true desires towards you were expressed. His twisted version of spiritual love tried to grow where it was not welcome or expected.”
“Thank you, Mother, for opening my eyes to the reality of my heart’s wounds,” I said and she nodded her head serenely to me. “Thank you for the healing power of your unconditional love.” Then, the strength deserted my limbs and I fell backwards in a stupor through the stone floor of the castle. The floor vanished beneath me and I continued to fall through a clear blue sky, puffy clouds passing on either side. Suddenly, my fall was arrested and I found myself swinging in mid-air. My feet were tied by a rope to the branch of an enormous tree and I was hanging upside down with my hands tied behind my back.
Gazing down towards the earth from my sacrificed state, I saw a spirit shaped like me at the base of the tree, looking up at myself, hanging helplessly in the air. The woman on the ground began to organize a group of grass blades into a rescue party and the plants swarmed up the tree towards me. “Don’t cut me down, Heidi! It’s me! I’m you!” I tried to shout but I found I couldn’t speak. My voice had been taken from me.
The blades of grass cut my ropes and suddenly I was falling again but instead of landing on the ground next to myself, I fell through it, and continued to fall down and down into cavernous darkness and shadow.
When I could see again, I was standing in a cave, deep beneath the earth. Water dripped slowly from a single point in the ceiling into an underground pond that filled the center of this chamber. As I watched the water falling and the hypnotic ripples it created, Badger appeared at my side and took my hand.
“What do you think of my dream so far?” he said.
“The entry gates and interludes could use a little work,” I said. “But the Divine Mother came to me within it and offered me unconditional love so I really have no room to complain. Where are we now?”
“I have no idea,” Badger said. “Let’s explore together.”
The moment Badger invited me to join him, the water stopped dripping down from above, reversing itself and dripping back into the ceiling. Together, my friend and I watched the pool empty itself. On the ground of the cavern, where the water had concealed it, we found a carving in the shape of an enormous eye, the sigil of Horus.
As we watched, the stone carving came alive and the Now moment burst from the floor of the chamber. It twirled and spun around Badger and I, and then abruptly split into two. From the center of the eye, a beautiful woman stepped forth. Then, the giant eye melded itself back together and continued its dance around the room.
“Who are you?” I asked the new spirit. “My name is Heidi and this is Badger. We stand together in one of his dreams.”
“I am the Creative Potential in the Now,” she said. “Another of the many aspects of the Divine Mother.” As the goddess walked towards me, seeds of all shapes and sizes spilled from her voluminous dress and dripped from her hair and fingers.
“The goddess speaks to me, Heidi, and says you seek and require true healing,” the spirit said. “You seek my true nature.” She came very close, spilling seeds all over the underground cavern as she did so. “As a reward for seeking me, you shall have both, a vision of my nature and healing.” A bright light burst into being on the other side of the cavern and the Creative Potential turned towards it. “We shall affect this healing together for here is my male counterpart,” she said. “The living energy who ignites my seeds of potential. I call him Divine Inspiration and, though we appear as two, we are one being.”
The light coalesced into a handsome, shining god, who was taller than the goddess and brimming with barely concealed light. Where he walked in the cavern, the seeds from the Creative Potential burst from their shells and tiny flowering vines began to emerge.
“Greetings unto you, Heidi and Badger,” Divine Inspiration said. “My consort says you have a seed that does not grow. Do not despair, I can help amend this difficulty.” He lifted his hand and the seed the Divine Mother had blessed flew out of my heart center and landed in his palm. “Do you know what I do with seeds that will not grow?”
“No, Great One,” I said. “I have no idea. Please instruct us in your wisdom and mysteries.”
“I use them to fertilize the viable ones,” he said. Then, the god squeezed his hands together and mashed the small seed into a bubbling paste that retained its shifting forms from the Divine Mother’s breath. He smeared this living concoction onto my hair, face, shoulders, arms, and hands then he anointed Badger as well.
Creative Potential smiled at our transformation from Heidi and Badger into divinely inspired beings of unlimited potential. “This small failure and unrealized dream will make a beautiful creation,” the goddess said and as she spoke flowers exploded from Badger and my bodies out of the boiling seed paste and our new growth added to the existent flowers and vines from the god and goddess, covering the cavern floor in nature’s abundance.
The goddess held out her hand to the god and together they began a sweeping waltz around the cave. The Now, the great eye, spun around them in circles as Badger and I continued to grow. As we watched Creative Potential and Divine Inspiration in their eternal dance, we began to grow in size as well as abundance, then my head burst through the top of the cavern and I could no longer perceive anything at all.
When I could see again, I was a blade of grass among a field of grass, and was staring down into the face of a woman who stood before me. “We are the Blades of Eternity,” I heard whispers coming from the plants around me. “We cut the breath from the Giant of Thought.”
“Heidi, it’s me, your Badger,” I whispered to the woman, my voice getting lost among the voices of all the others. “Don’t you recognize me?”
Just as I remembered and had experienced in the time before, I saw myself taken up by the Giant of Thought and swallowed to have further adventures without me by her side. “Guess she didn’t need me today,” I said to myself, swallowing my own disappointment.
Then I fell out of the blade of grass and was myself, the woman named Heidi, again. The great centipede called Time swept up from the ground beneath me and I was flying through the air upon his back as I had once upon a time, long ago. Together, Time and I flew upwards towards the sun which changed itself into a fiery flower.
We burst into the sun and I was spilling out of the blossom of the spirit flower I had placed in the center of the four worlds of the elements. Badger was waiting for me and wrapped me in his arms the moment I landed. “Were you really among the Blades of Eternity the first time I met them?” I said, looking up into his furry face.
“I didn’t want to tell you about my presence in your visions because I was embarrassed that you couldn’t hear me above the roaring crowd and never recognized me among the other spirits, no matter what form I appeared to you as,” Badger said, looking away from me towards the worlds of the elements. “I could never project my voice loud enough or in time to tell you I was there. Maybe we could pretend that I was never there in the first place.”
“I don’t want to pretend something like that,” I said. “What if, instead, we pretend that every male spirit I ever encounter in vision is you and all of the females are me? That way, we don’t have to mess about with trying to remember who is who or what time we’re in or even what world. We can be you and me and offer each other unconditional love at every turn. This could be the new world that I dreamed of and you could walk in my dream just as I walked in yours.”
“That is a very big pretend,” Badger said. “There may be those who get upset with us because of it.”
“But it is my dream world,” I said. “Don’t we have a right to exist somewhere in all of creation? If not in my dream, then where could we go?”
Badger sighed and looked back into my eyes. “I’ll give it a try, Heidi,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like we’ve tried everything else and I’m very, very tired. Is there anywhere in your dream that I could find a little rest?”
“Of course there is! Thank you, Badger, for agreeing to give it your best shot,” I said, giving him a big hug. “I’m so sorry I never saw you in the visions you were in. My sight sees true but there’s so much I miss that it is as much of an embarrassment to me as your quiet voice is to you. Take heart, your dream led me to true healing and I feel so much better now. I’m ready to dream again for both of us and that is no small thing.”
“No thanks required, Heidi,” he replied. “For look at what you have done for both of us.” As I held Badger’s hand and gazed out at the elemental worlds, I saw the flowers and vines from Creative Potential and Divine Inspiration growing and spreading out from where we stood together into my dream worlds of the forest, ocean, volcano, and sky. All I beheld was abundance, evolution, beauty and love. “There’s so much here,” said Badger. “Let’s explore it together.”
There my vision ended and my secret dream began.
The Light Congress 