Gate: The Pineal Gland
I stepped through the vision gate and found myself running along the edge of a forest. Behind me, there was a wall of shadow. I stopped running and it swept over me like an ocean wave, then there was silence.
“Hello?” I called. “Is anyone here? I require a guide.”
The mist shifted and formed itself into two rows of soldiers, facing each other. They framed a path upon which I stood but they did not acknowledge my presence. “Can any of you help me discover the nature of this place?” I asked.
I saw movement further down the soldier-lined path and ran towards it. A dark figure was inching her way forward and I recognized my shadow self, but she was carrying a heavy burden. A chain connected her ankle to a weight made of shadows and she could hardly move.
“Shadow, I didn’t expect to find you here,” I said.
She glared at me. “See how I labor under the weight of your expectations?” she hissed, shuffling her way further down the path.
“Don’t blame me for your discomfort,” I said. “For I have only now arrived in this place.” Then, I laid my hands on the chain that wreathed her ankle and, where I touched, it disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Now you are free to move as you wish.”
Shadow drew herself up and shook her limbs in a convulsive gesture. “You think you’re so special,” she huffed. “Popping in and out of reality like a royal, freeing your shadow, changing your worlds.” She shook a claw-tipped finger in my face. “You are as nothing to me.”
“There’s no need to be like that,” I said, but Shadow turned her back on me and flew down the path. “I need a guide in this place and you may be it!” I called after her and followed as quickly as I was able.
“Oh, I’ll show you where to go,” she hissed and shot up into the misty air. “Follow me if you dare.” Then, she dropped like a stone into the ground.
“Thank you?” I said and found myself sinking as well.
I was now in a dark cave where shifting stalks like algae rose from the floor and hung from the ceiling, moving backwards and forwards in a wind. A bright light shined within this cave.
Encased in a pillar of light, a woman stood with her arms upraised and her feet melded into the floor. She was made of light and in places, her limbs disappeared so it was difficult to tell where she ended and the brightness began. The wind that moved the algae came and went from this pillar.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Breath,” she answered, her shining white hair billowing about her centralized brilliance. “I am with you every moment of your life.”
“Why would my shadow lead me here?” I asked.
“I am intimately acquainted with Fear,” said the woman. “When you are afraid, Shadow wraps about my throat and shuts down your breath. But, then I return.”
“Is there some way that I could release you from Fear’s grasp?” I asked.
The woman swayed with the intake and outtake of my breath. “When you are afraid, ask yourself, what is real?” she said. “Just asking the question will free the breath.”
“What else can you teach me about reality? I have been led here for a reason,” I said. “And I wish to know what that reason is.”
“Breath is not just a bodily function,” she said. “I am a doorway into other realities. Pass through me, Heidi, and you will find what you seek.” A door frame made of mist appeared on the side of the gleaming pillar.
“Thank you, Breath. I will not forget you,” I said.
The woman bent slightly at the waist and swayed next to my face. “With each breath in, I send you love. With each breath out, I send you love,” she whispered and kissed my cheek. I passed through her doorway into another reality.
Now I stood in a cave made of red rock. A crashing noise shook the cavern and the walls trembled with the power of it. “Push, pull, push, pull…” I covered my ears with my hands and moved towards the center of the cave, where a red-skinned giant with four heads, one pointing in each direction, stood.
Beneath each head, set into a barrel-chested body, a single muscled arm grasped the walls of the cave. The four-headed, four-armed giant was constantly in motion. Two sets of arms pushed out, while the other two pulled in- timed perfectly with his shouts.
“Push, pull, push, pull,” he screamed and then one of the giant’s heads noticed me. “Small woman, what do you require of the Heart? We are busy!” The other heads continued to chant their work song.
“I’m sorry to disturb your labors,” I shouted into the chaos. “What can the Heart teach me about reality?”
The movement didn’t stop but all four heads turned towards me in astonishment. Together they screamed: “What you see before you is not work. It is a dance. See the beauty in it?”
I saw the giant did indeed dance- a thrusting, punching, primal ballet. “The Heart doesn’t ask for recognition,” said the giant. “We ask for balance. After one’s work day is through, take the time to rest and offer love to your Heart.”
Then, he opened his mouths and sang:
Push, pull, push, pull.
Hearts work, Hearts toil.
Blood moves, Blood boils.
Through life, towards life,
Blood swirls, Blood roils.
Hearts work, Hearts toil.
Push, pull, push, pull.
And the giant repeated these words over and over again.
Eventually, I had heard enough. “Thank you for this lesson,” I shouted. “How do I leave this place?”
One of the heads nodded towards a far wall. “There you may pass beyond,” he screamed. “But only a very small person will fit.”
I beheld a tiny passage at the bottom of the wall that led into darkness and shadow. I became a miniscule point of light and I passed into yet another reality, leaving the noisy cave of the Heart behind.
I now stood in a long, low room where, above me, there were the gray clouds of a thunderstorm. Lightning flashed across the clouds, but no thunder sounded and the flickering, silent lights passed through again and again.
On one side of the room, scholars clothed all in white sat at old fashioned desks, scribbling away with puffy quills. On the other side, there were lines of easels and artists dressed in white smocks who stood before canvases. I moved closer to observe their work and saw the pictures that they created moved under their own power.
Within one, I recognized a lazy summer day from my childhood when I was running around outside with my sisters. The memory played itself out under the brush strokes of the artist. When it faded, as memories do, he began again on a new canvas.
“I’m in my brain!” I said aloud, understanding dawning suddenly.
Lightning flashed overhead as both sides of the room continued their work. “Excuse me,” I addressed the artist. “Do the two sides ever work in concert? It seems like you both are caught up in your separate functions.”
Everyone paused and turned towards me. “Music!” they exclaimed and a Chopin nocturne sounded from the clouds.
The artists ran from their easels and the scholars rose from their desks, lining themselves along the center of the room and raising their hands to touch the palms of the other group. For a moment, both sides of the brain were aligned and connected while the music ran around and through the room like living light. When the last note sounded, the sides separated and returned to their memories and scribbling.
“How fascinating,” I said and poked the artist once more.
“What do you want?” he asked in annoyance. “I have work to do.”
“Could you speak to me about the nature of reality?” I asked hopefully.
“You’ll want the Oracle for that,” he sniffed and gestured towards a shadowy corner of the room. “That personage handles all questions of that nature.”
“My thanks,” I said and moved in the direction he had indicated as a humming sound began to come from the clouds.
“Ohmmmmmmmmm,” said the sky of the brain as if it were a monastery of chanting monks. Wisps of the cloud came down from the sky and wreathed the figure seated at the far end of the room which, at first, I thought was a pile of blankets topped by an enormous pinecone, but then I realized the spiky protuberance was the being’s head.
“Oracle?” I asked and the tines of the pinecone shifted revealing the center core was composed of eyes. They peered out at me from within the protective branches of the cone.
The hum intensified. “We are Oracle,” the voice came from the eyes and all around me.
“My name is Heidi. It is very nice to meet you. Could you teach me about the nature of reality?” I asked.
“There is nothing in the body or mind who knows more about the nature of reality than we,” Oracle said as their eyes gazed at me curiously. “We are the bridge between reality and spirit. How came you here?”
“I passed through the Breath and Heart,” I said and the pinecone shifted on their base.
“There are many ways to Oracle,” they acknowledged. “That is one.”
“Why do you have so many eyes?” I asked.
“We look at the past, present, and future. Up, down, sideways, and within, we see all,” they said. “Would you see what we see? Come, come sit with Oracle.” Hands rose from within the protective blankets under the giant pinecone and they were covered with eyes like the rest of the being.
Oracle took my hand and turned me so that I stood next to them and gazed at, what first appeared to be, a blank wall. Then, suddenly, lightning passed through the wall and I perceived flashes of images.
“See through, see beyond, see as I see,” whispered Oracle and the humming in the brain reached a fevered pitch. I found myself standing on a pillar, high in the air, above a foggy landscape. I saw others standing like me, frozen and staring into space, not moving for fear of falling from the pillars into oblivion.
“See how they limit themselves?” the voice of Oracle came from the fog. “So many do not realize what they see is one small point of light in reality. Come down, Heidi. Come down and see more of the truth.”
I gingerly lowered myself to the pillar beneath me, put my arms around it like a fireman’s pole, and slid a long way down. My feet hit what I first took to be water, but it was more viscous and solid than any liquid on earth. I cupped some of this substance in my hand and gazed into it.
This liquid was like a handful of tiny easels from the brain room as perfect living pictures existed in each molecule of the stuff. I rolled it around my hands, watching it change and shift, reflecting all manner of reality.
“Oracle,” I said. “What is this?”
“Anima Mundi,” came the reply. “The Waters of Life. You hold within your hand the raw stuff of creation. It forms you and all in existence. It holds you as a goldfish in water. It is the building blocks of reality.”
“Who created it?” I asked in wonder.
“It created itself,” whispered Oracle.
I returned my handful of Anima Mundi to its source and moved through its reality, past the bases of countless other pillars, holding their human figures far above the fog and the waters. Suddenly, the water began to spin as if in a whirlpool and I was sucked down and through it into yet another world.
The Waters of Life reflected light down on me as if I was standing beneath a giant aquarium. Around me, clouds with the curious attributes of the Anima Mundi floated in space and as I passed through their mist, I could see tiny moving pictures within the fog itself. I tried to cup the clouds in my hands as I had with the water, but they were far too ephemeral for me to do so.
From out of the living fog, a child appeared wearing a pharaoh’s cylindrically-shaped ceremonial hat. “You trespass within the world of dreams,” she said and raised her arms at me, seemingly in warning.
“Oracle was showing me the nature of reality,” I said. “I didn’t mean to intrude here. I fell through the water.”
“Oracle of the Mind, you mean,” said the child, laughing. “I am the Oracle of Dream, her counterpart on the other side of reality, where the spirit of the infinite touches the mind.”
The child reached into the clouds and pulled some of the material from the mist then molded it into a ball in her hands. “Watch,” she exclaimed. The whirlpool formed in the sky above us and I saw, through the hole that it created, the pinecone shape of Oracle of the Mind.
The child threw the ball of dreams through the hole and the whirlpool vanished. “For your dreams tonight,” she said, grinning.
“Could you teach me how to lucid dream?” I asked. “For I’ve always desired to do so but I can’t seem to master the trick of it.”
“It’s so simple, Heidi,” said the child. She came towards me and delicately touched a finger to the center of my forehead. “You must learn to be awake at all times. See with this eye and not the others.”
The Oracle of Dream nudged my forehead gently with her index finger but I collapsed as if she had taken a sledgehammer to my face. I fell backwards into the mist of the vapor of Anima Mundi. There, my vision ended.
The Light Congress 