Gate: A Mountain Wreathed in Mist
For whatever reason, I had some difficulty getting the vision gate to open on this particular day. I called Badger and Dream, who stood to my right and left sides respectively, in their human forms. Even with their added power, the gate remained flat and lifeless until Sylvie materialized behind me. She put her hands on my shoulders and closed her eyes.
Suddenly, the gate’s arch melded together with an audible snap and it opened. My friends and I fell through the gate together.
On the other side, a tunnel made out of darkness like a giant eyeless worm lurched towards us. It opened its mouth revealing teeth made of shadow and it swallowed us. We fell into deeper darkness.
When I could see again, I was gazing into a ball of water that floated between my hands. The water moved within itself, flowing and circling, controlled by tiny movements I made with my fingers. All at once, the water began to move under its own power.
It pulled towards a center point, condensing into the giant eyeball of Now. As it rose into the air, two chains sprouted from the sides of the eye like connective tear drops.
One of the chains snaked itself into my hands and I was pulled upwards into nothingness. The other chain pulled a being shaped like my Animus. We went up until we broke through a cloud bank that appeared out of the ether. The chains released their grip.
We landed on the clouds, facing each other. As I raised my hands in greeting, so did he. Every one of my movements was mirrored in his body, and as we approached each other, we started to dance in a circle.
The closer we got to each other, the tighter the spiral, until the moment when I flung myself into his arms and he began to spin in place. We moved in a whirling dervish dance but with two people instead of one.
My body began to shine with light and its edges dissolved. The hypnotic spin took me deep within myself and I could feel energy pouring from the sky into my body. His body took on a spirit form as well and I watched energy coming up from the ground into him.
As both of our boundaries disappeared, the energy I was pulling from the sky began to twist and mingle with his energy from the earth. It eventually merged into a spinning pillar with undefined energy sources pulling from above and below.
I felt Animus stop spinning and our bodies returned to us. He carefully sat on the clouds, crossing his legs in a meditative pose. Then, he took my hand and seated my body on his, wrapping my legs around his back.
I leaned backwards until I was reclining on the clouds and we held still, joined together by our lower bodies. Then, he began to stroke my body, gently up and down, and put his other hand on the center of my chest.
“Pull energy through me, Heidi,” he said and closed his eyes. I closed my eyes too, melting into the sensations and I followed the energy coursing between our bodies. Down in my abdomen, I found the place where our forms touched and I leapt through that chasm, following the energy down further.
I began to sink like a stone through water. As I fell, I experienced a sense of expansion but instead of the usual upwards tug, the pull was down, deep into the earth. I felt Badger with me as I sank. Occasionally, our downward motion slowed.
“Touch the sky,” Badger said. “Touch the sky and we can go further, Heidi.”
“It’s all in your mind,” a different voice said. This other presence came from around me, as opposed to within me, and for a moment I was again beneath Animus’s stroking hands. But then as I connected with the energy from above once more, I sank further, following the trail downwards into a peaceful darkness.
I came to a place full of stillness. My limbs felt heavy, not in the sense that I couldn’t move them, but connected in a powerful way to the throbbing power beneath my feet. Within this still space, I saw a cave filled with red light.
The light flickered and pulsed from the ground, revealing a stone ceiling above and black rock on all sides. There was something in the cave, rustling and shifting from rock to rock, faster than I could see.
I reached upwards for energy one more time and pulled it into the space. It coalesced and took the form of Mercury in his winged shoes. The brilliant light of the god glowed like a star within the red cavern, illuminating the shadow within.
Blood began to fall from the rock ceiling of the cave but it didn’t touch Mercury or my badger who had appeared beside me as well. The liquid only landed upon me. I turned my palms upwards as the blood flow increased then my attention was drawn to Mercury.
“It blocks the way,” he said and raised his wand of power, indicating a greater shadow at the far end of the cave.
The shadow had a devil’s horns and tail and its lower half was the legs of a goat but the creature bore my face. It was growling and chewing on something on a rock in front of it. As the blood dripped down my face from the cave’s ceiling, Mercury’s light shone on the creature’s meal, spotlighting the half-consumed carcass of a shadow-wrapped baby made of ivy.
I screamed as the god winged his way towards the monster. “Shield her eyes,” he commanded and Badger, taking his human form, embraced me from behind and covered my face with his hands.
“Touch the sky, Heidi,” Badger murmured in my ear. “Touch the sky. We fear no shadow.”
I could hear growls and screams but tried to block it out and reached deep within myself once more. A tiny thread connected upwards and I grabbed at it with my mind like a drowning person clutches a rescuing hand. I pulled and felt a rush of feathers take the place of the blood coming from the ceiling.
“Touch the sky,” Badger repeated like a mantra. “Touch the sky, Heidi. That’s all we need you to do.”
I closed my eyes and found myself standing upon the diamond sands of intuition beneath a blazing desert sun. A warrior god stood before me, dressed in shining armor of burnished red. Though he bore an identity-concealing helmet upon his head, long dark hair came from beneath the helmet and brushed his shoulders. In his right hand, the god held a cruel whip and he cracked it over my head.
“Dance, woman, dance,” commanded the god. “You will dance for me and the Sons of Abaddon. This is what you were born to do, so submit yourself to me.”
“But Great One,” I said, shielding my face from his weapon. “I do not know how to dance nor do I want to at the present moment.”
The diamond sands beneath my feet started to change and grow larger, becoming enormous stones that absorbed the heat from the sky and the tremendous energy pouring off of the warrior spirit. I started to shift my weight from foot to foot, trying to prevent my flesh from being burned by the attention of the god. He laughed at my antics and I felt a rage building in my heart at my treatment at his hands.
“You laugh now, oh warrior king,” I said, flames from the enlarged diamond sands beginning to crawl up my legs and engulf my being. “But if I am forced to perform the dance of Now for your amusement and attendant shadows then so shall the whole world move with me.” As the words left my lips, I burst into flames and pushed my energy out from my heart into the space around us.
My love and rage changed into beings made of living flame who surrounded me and filled the dance floor of diamond sand. Together, we began the ancient and timeless dance of Now, each of us moving to the patterns dictated by our existence beneath the sun and the sight of the warrior deity. We were separate yet connected somehow by Love, no longer playthings but mighty. Together, we were legion and the beings of legend.
I saw our living and dancing energy reflected in the warrior’s helmet and the observing god’s eyes shone upon us like two stars burning in the night sky. My friends and I gave off a red light which shone off of our presence like a beacon. Then, it was as if the mists cleared from around the observing god and I saw another light shining behind him.
This answering light was blue and shone just as brightly as my cohort and I. Though I could not make out the beings dancing in the blue light, I could feel that they were there. I felt balance enter my spirit when the blue light mingled with the red light around the god like a halo or aura made of elemental fire. Then, as I continued to move through my dance and observed the lights and spirits around me a while longer, I felt more than balance. I knew hope for the very first time because there was someone out there who moved through the Now just like me.
My attention was drawn away from the blue lights behind the god when he chose to speak again. “What a footprint you will leave throughout time,” the god said at last, his powerful voice halting our dance. The beings made of flame changed back into heart energy and rushed back into me, filling me with their raw power. On the far side of the warrior king, I observed the blue lights doing the same thing about a figure who was so distant from me that all I could perceive was a shadow.
“I am well pleased, well pleased indeed,” the warrior declared. “I shall call you, Mouse. You and yours will live on in my civilization, always. In this way, you shall know that you have my eternal favor.”
Now that the lights and my friends had left the diamond sands of intuition, I felt very alone which caused a longing to return to the dance enter my soul. I inhaled a calming breath to soothe my aching heart and gazed back at the god. I watched the whip in his hand change into an animal’s tail. As the god’s weapon changed into something else, I felt myself changing too.
I blinked and the god’s presence and I stood together as disembodied energy over an immense battlefield. I saw warriors from many eras and places lying dead on the ground, their blood watering the earth and the beasts of the field and sky feasting upon their flesh.
“See there, Mouse,” said the voice of the god within my heart. “See how the sacrifice of the mighty builds the honor and glory of my civilizations upon the world.”
I felt tears falling from my eyes at the horror of the vision and the tremendous loss. “It is too much, Great One,” I said. “You demand too much from the people within your power.”
The presence that was beside me moved closer until we became one above the battlefield. “How do you not see the greatness of what my warriors of light have accomplished?” he said. “I wish to see with your eyes, Mouse. Allow me to see how and what you see.”
Using my sight upon the earth’s wasteland, the vultures and other predatory birds changed into some of the living flames who had danced with me upon the burning diamond sands of intuition. They took the form of tall warrior women with the wings of angels and who were clothed in shining silver armor.
I felt my heart breaking as the embodied angels reached into the dried bones of the fallen warriors and pulled their lost souls up with them to the heavens. As each extended her hand again and again to save the maimed and forgotten spirits from time’s battlefields, I heard them speaking words which flowed from my heart and the one who was observing with me. “The Mother weeps for you,” they said simply. “The Mother weeps for you.”
Tears began to fall from my eyes like a river filled with floodwaters. I felt as if I would never feel joy again. All I could perceive was loss and destruction. The god pulled himself from me and we stood as two separate entities once more, gazing down upon the endless battlefield of existence and its attendant Valkyries.
“Oh my Mouse,” he said at last. “Your vision has made the Father weep too.”
“Help me, please, Great One,” I said. “I cannot contain this sorrow alone. No one can. Please return my ancient companions to me. I cannot continue to move through this world alone.”
I felt the god beside me issue a summons and the female warriors turned from their eternal task and shone their countenances upon me. Then, as one, they rose from the field and came towards me, filling me with their energy and strength as they had once before in a time long past. I still felt sorrow but we carried the great burden of sacrifice together.
I swooned and the spirit beside me caught me before I fell. I felt myself being carried to a new place in the arms of the great warrior god. Through the glimpses I could see though my eyes were closed, I beheld somewhere swathed in clouds.
Then, the voice of the being carrying me spoke. “You will hold her until the appointed hour,” he said. “Hold her close and safe. I will return for her one day. Until then, let her sleep in the merciful realms of forgetfulness and fantasy, walking beneath the eaves of the forest she loves so well.”
I was laid upon a surface so soft I felt as if I reclined on mist. Though an exhaustion such as I have never known was filling my mind, I managed to open my eyes for a brief moment and gazed upwards.
The blue-skinned being whose third eye was the Now gazed back at me from high above. I was in the giant’s lap and as comfortable in that place as anywhere I have ever been. The bodhisattva’s three eyes blinked then the Now moment’s eyelid began to close. I heard a melodious voice come from the giant: “We will hold her until she is required. Come with us, Small One, to a safe place where the eternally young dream and live the adventures they were denied in harsh reality.”
“Who are you?” I murmured. “Why would you do all this for me?”
The bodhisattva smiled at me in silence then turned their countenance away to address the unseen spirits who were gathered around us. “Lost Ones, if you wish to accompany Heidi to the realm that Time forgot, you must leave all enmity here,” they said.
“How about memories?” a voice said from the clouds.
“Or dreams?” asked another.
“Only cessation of hostility is required of you,” said the bodhisattva. “We will open the portal but once so make your decision now.”
Witnessing that declaration, I closed my eyes, fell into deep sleep and remained that way for a very long time.
While in the lap of the bodhisattva of Mercy, I dreamed I lived in a forest out of time where I never grew old or tired or hungry. Within the forest, there was a group of children who dwelt with me and protected me from all harm or shadows until one-by-one they were pulled away into another world. This continued until one day I found myself walking alone beneath the trees.
“Where on earth has everyone gone?” I said to myself as I searched one favorite hiding place after another but finding none of my favored companions. “How is everybody lost but me?”
Suddenly, though I could not see anyone beneath the trees, I felt a presence moving towards me, a darkness and shadow that I had forgotten existed and he called my name. “I have come for you, Heidi,” said the god. “It is the appointed hour. Awaken and remember all that has gone before.”
I fled before the summoning darkness, unwilling to give up my dream world, but the spirit sent music towards me instead of his voice, the notes weaving a tune of such loveliness and longing for my presence that I ceased my flight through the woods. Laying my head down upon the stacked leaves of the forest floor, I fell asleep to the sound of a song played just for me, summoning me back to a world I once knew and to those I loved with all my heart.
I awoke to the sensation of feathers brushing past my body. Then, that movement ceased and all became silent within my heart center once more. I blinked and an all-encompassing sense of stillness filled my limbs as Badger removed his hands from my eyes.
I found myself back with Badger and Mercury in the cave of raining blood but the falling liquid had ended. The red light that had filled the cavern now came from only one place, a well. Mercury stood beside the shining red waters with his hands resting on the well’s circular stone wall.
Around the god, female warriors with the wings of angels stood at attention. The Valkyries raised their spears towards me in a salute and jumped as one, vanishing through the ceiling of the cave.
Mercury grinned. “The way is now open and the dreamer has awakened,” he said. “Welcome home, Heidi.” With a diver’s grace, the god leapt down the well, disappearing from my reality.
Badger took my arm and helped me over to the water. Together, we washed the blood off of me until I was clean but still shaking with the power of the visions and dreams that came while his hands were over my eyes.
“Badger, would you come with me into the Waters of Creation?” I asked. “I feel as if I have slept for a very long time and I wish to awaken once more. We have to find our friends. I bet they are looking for us too.” Badger nodded and embraced me tightly, melding into my spirit.
I climbed on the wall of the well and let myself sink into its red waters. The pulsing red light took on a hypnotic quality. As I bathed in the water and energy, my chest split open, revealing a white lotus flower shining with light.
“Come back to me,” a voice said and I was above the clouds with Animus once more. My chest was still wide open and the lotus flower shone from within. He pulled me into his arms, up and off of the clouds, not breaking the connection between us.
When my lotus flower touched his chest, our bodies began to change. His form stretched and expanded, changing from a man into a mountain. I floated upwards, changing from a woman into the clouds that wreathed his heights and bathed the cliffs and valleys with my tears.
Our new energy moved up and down from the ground to the sky and back again. At the peak of the mountain, a single lotus flower blossomed where it was kissed by the mist from the sky.
And there my vision ended.
The Light Congress 