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windinthemaplesThe familiar track winds down, through the roots of the World Tree and deep into the earth's silent shadows. I cross a forest of gray-tones, following an ashy path towards a flickering silver-blue fire. It is heatless, an otherworldly feature of the Underworld and the frequent meeting place, in meditation, of Death and I.
No matter when I visit, the god is waiting for me. He always has time for visitors.
He's silent and has exchanged his usual London Fog trench coat for a length of heavy fabric wrapped around him and up over a shoulder. He's younger, filled out with muscle, his face softened with youth. In front of him, closest to the fire, stands Isis. I've never seen her in the Underworld but she looks magnificent here with her hair loose down her back and fine linen draped over her shoulders. Her eyes spark dark and the silver on her arms flashes in the light of the fires behind her. She is intense, intimidating, reminding me that she is more than a benevolent mother goddess but also the greatest magician the worlds have ever known. She is fierce and frightening.
Truth is Black. If you can find moments of Truth before Death arrives, you will grow. Open your eyes.
This wasn't the embracing message of divine grace and acceptance I'd had during my first month with Black. Isis didn't seem like the maternal, safe deity I've known since I was a teen. I wasn't sure where this meeting was going and then she was in my face, my arms gripped tight in her hands. With a little terrier shake she said,
You can only surrender or hold tight. That is all life is--surrender or hold tight. How will you ever know what to pick if you are ignoring Truth? How will you know?
I couldn't get free from her but I leaned my face away and shook my head in confusion and denial and fear. Lightning flashed behind her in counterpoint to her words. It was simply the most frightening encounter I've ever had as a witch and it was coming from good, warm, protective Isis. I just could not process it. She wasn't speaking to me as a beloved child but as a fellow mother, as a comrade in arms, albeit a faulty and unforgivably ignorant one. She pulled me up with her, through the Earth and warmth and into sunlit fields. A thick black snake lay stretched under a stand of lush golden grain. Laughter rang out and two children Graeme's age dashed through the scene. It happened too quickly to follow but both were bitten. Isis, protector of children from snakebite, stood back and watched dispassionately beside me as the little ones dropped. We were in a space outside of the scene, black and featureless, and there the children lay suspended by red and black threads.
Surrender or hold tight?
I was sobbing hysterically, trying to get to the children, trying to get Isis to act, trying to do something. She pulled a curved silver dagger from her sleeve and asked again, "Surrender or hold tight?". At my hesitation, she cut the threads above the blond-headed boy and pulled the other into her arms. The black void was replaced by the true scene, the field, and there was the boy with Graeme's hair lying cold on the ground and the other, shrieking in pain, thrashing against the goddess' grip. She looked up from her ministrations.
Truth is knowing which to choose in each case. The boy would not have lived no matter how you clung. This one will.
Dozens of scenarios flipped through. Graeme in front of a train. (Fight!) Graeme laying in a hospital, quiet and pale. (Let go.) Time and time again, I was forced to choose. It was heartbreaking every time giving my all to ensure his survival or holding his hand and smiling reassuringly at him as he died. I was so worn down, I don't know if I was finally receptive to her of if she took pity on me, because the extreme examples ceased. As an easier exercise, she put me into a burning house. The sort of hypothetical burning house scenario most of us have contemplated where I had time to get the most critical things/people out. What did I choose? My loved ones. Of course.
What then, if I had a little more time? Instead of a couple minutes to save lives, what if I had twenty minutes to gather up what was most important to me? I mentally scrambled, trying to pick the things that made the most sense. Do I get the photo albums? The file box? The electronics? The photos of my ancestors? My grandma's necklace? My wedding rings? Graeme's teddy bear? With more time, my earlier certain clarity was gone. I don't know what to grab.
What if I had an hour?
What if I had a day?
What if I had a week?
It seemed like the more time Isis granted me to sort the important from the unimportant, the less clear I was. The longer I had to think about it, the more I could justify as vital. Pretty soon I had piles of household goods and sentimental knick-knacks piled on the lawn while the house slowly consumed the rest. How was that possible when the first scenario, with minutes to live and people to save, I was grateful and complete to have Graeme and Daniel out safely? I needed nothing more but with more time, I grew increasingly resentful of the (totally replaceable) things I was forced to leave behind. It was eye-opening to me.
At Death's door, people know what is important. Their eyes are open and they perceive Truth. The more time they have to live, the less they appreciate. Some feel they have so long, they forget that they're dying. You pity the terminally ill and yet you are all dying. Everyone's house is on fire, Rachel. Hold on or let go. Hold on or let go. Hold on or let go. Know what is important. Surrender when you must and fight for what you can. Everyone's house is on fire and nobody knows how long they have.
One more time, fire flared in my home. I grabbed Graeme and Daniel and we opened the front door together. Out there, instead of the safety of the lawn, a wall of soft-packed dirt. I clawed and kicked and punched a way through it. The two of us pushed Graeme through and then wiggled in ourselves, scraping the soil away from our faces, out from our path ahead, until light opened ahead and together, we hauled ourselves up out of our tunnel and onto the grass at the base of the World Tree. Daniel and I lay back, exhausted, and pulled Graeme into our arms. With a sigh, the two of them melted into phantoms, settling gently within me, pooling under my ribs with an ache.
~*~
This month, it seems, my task with Black is to learn greater discernment. What do I focus my time and energy on? Am I grasping onto material, unimportant things? When is it best to float peacefully with the unfolding flow of events and when should I swim hard against the current? What do I value and what do my actions suggest I value? Am I living, with my eyes open, as if my days are truly numbered? Do I face Truths open-heartedly, Truths like my own impending and eventual death, or am I numbing myself with self-deception and fear-driven white noise?
Can I operate from that place of Black--that place of stillness, peace, and unflinching Truth?
And what would my life look like if I was living it with the wisdom of those whose burning house only gives them a minute or two to choose what's important?
No matter when I visit, the god is waiting for me. He always has time for visitors.
He's silent and has exchanged his usual London Fog trench coat for a length of heavy fabric wrapped around him and up over a shoulder. He's younger, filled out with muscle, his face softened with youth. In front of him, closest to the fire, stands Isis. I've never seen her in the Underworld but she looks magnificent here with her hair loose down her back and fine linen draped over her shoulders. Her eyes spark dark and the silver on her arms flashes in the light of the fires behind her. She is intense, intimidating, reminding me that she is more than a benevolent mother goddess but also the greatest magician the worlds have ever known. She is fierce and frightening.
Truth is Black. If you can find moments of Truth before Death arrives, you will grow. Open your eyes.
This wasn't the embracing message of divine grace and acceptance I'd had during my first month with Black. Isis didn't seem like the maternal, safe deity I've known since I was a teen. I wasn't sure where this meeting was going and then she was in my face, my arms gripped tight in her hands. With a little terrier shake she said,
You can only surrender or hold tight. That is all life is--surrender or hold tight. How will you ever know what to pick if you are ignoring Truth? How will you know?
I couldn't get free from her but I leaned my face away and shook my head in confusion and denial and fear. Lightning flashed behind her in counterpoint to her words. It was simply the most frightening encounter I've ever had as a witch and it was coming from good, warm, protective Isis. I just could not process it. She wasn't speaking to me as a beloved child but as a fellow mother, as a comrade in arms, albeit a faulty and unforgivably ignorant one. She pulled me up with her, through the Earth and warmth and into sunlit fields. A thick black snake lay stretched under a stand of lush golden grain. Laughter rang out and two children Graeme's age dashed through the scene. It happened too quickly to follow but both were bitten. Isis, protector of children from snakebite, stood back and watched dispassionately beside me as the little ones dropped. We were in a space outside of the scene, black and featureless, and there the children lay suspended by red and black threads.
Surrender or hold tight?
I was sobbing hysterically, trying to get to the children, trying to get Isis to act, trying to do something. She pulled a curved silver dagger from her sleeve and asked again, "Surrender or hold tight?". At my hesitation, she cut the threads above the blond-headed boy and pulled the other into her arms. The black void was replaced by the true scene, the field, and there was the boy with Graeme's hair lying cold on the ground and the other, shrieking in pain, thrashing against the goddess' grip. She looked up from her ministrations.
Truth is knowing which to choose in each case. The boy would not have lived no matter how you clung. This one will.
Dozens of scenarios flipped through. Graeme in front of a train. (Fight!) Graeme laying in a hospital, quiet and pale. (Let go.) Time and time again, I was forced to choose. It was heartbreaking every time giving my all to ensure his survival or holding his hand and smiling reassuringly at him as he died. I was so worn down, I don't know if I was finally receptive to her of if she took pity on me, because the extreme examples ceased. As an easier exercise, she put me into a burning house. The sort of hypothetical burning house scenario most of us have contemplated where I had time to get the most critical things/people out. What did I choose? My loved ones. Of course.
What then, if I had a little more time? Instead of a couple minutes to save lives, what if I had twenty minutes to gather up what was most important to me? I mentally scrambled, trying to pick the things that made the most sense. Do I get the photo albums? The file box? The electronics? The photos of my ancestors? My grandma's necklace? My wedding rings? Graeme's teddy bear? With more time, my earlier certain clarity was gone. I don't know what to grab.
What if I had an hour?
What if I had a day?
What if I had a week?
It seemed like the more time Isis granted me to sort the important from the unimportant, the less clear I was. The longer I had to think about it, the more I could justify as vital. Pretty soon I had piles of household goods and sentimental knick-knacks piled on the lawn while the house slowly consumed the rest. How was that possible when the first scenario, with minutes to live and people to save, I was grateful and complete to have Graeme and Daniel out safely? I needed nothing more but with more time, I grew increasingly resentful of the (totally replaceable) things I was forced to leave behind. It was eye-opening to me.
At Death's door, people know what is important. Their eyes are open and they perceive Truth. The more time they have to live, the less they appreciate. Some feel they have so long, they forget that they're dying. You pity the terminally ill and yet you are all dying. Everyone's house is on fire, Rachel. Hold on or let go. Hold on or let go. Hold on or let go. Know what is important. Surrender when you must and fight for what you can. Everyone's house is on fire and nobody knows how long they have.
One more time, fire flared in my home. I grabbed Graeme and Daniel and we opened the front door together. Out there, instead of the safety of the lawn, a wall of soft-packed dirt. I clawed and kicked and punched a way through it. The two of us pushed Graeme through and then wiggled in ourselves, scraping the soil away from our faces, out from our path ahead, until light opened ahead and together, we hauled ourselves up out of our tunnel and onto the grass at the base of the World Tree. Daniel and I lay back, exhausted, and pulled Graeme into our arms. With a sigh, the two of them melted into phantoms, settling gently within me, pooling under my ribs with an ache.
~*~
This month, it seems, my task with Black is to learn greater discernment. What do I focus my time and energy on? Am I grasping onto material, unimportant things? When is it best to float peacefully with the unfolding flow of events and when should I swim hard against the current? What do I value and what do my actions suggest I value? Am I living, with my eyes open, as if my days are truly numbered? Do I face Truths open-heartedly, Truths like my own impending and eventual death, or am I numbing myself with self-deception and fear-driven white noise?
Can I operate from that place of Black--that place of stillness, peace, and unflinching Truth?
And what would my life look like if I was living it with the wisdom of those whose burning house only gives them a minute or two to choose what's important?
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Date: 2011-06-02 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-02 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-02 06:44 pm (UTC)