I
leapt out of bed, and landed in a heap. It was five in the morning. But that didn’t matter. This had to be written
down. And a picture drawn. I should have done it ages ago. But I kept putting
it off, in case I really was crazy! But I had seen ‘a telling-picture’ in that
last instant upon awakening. It must have been three weeks ago that it had
happened.
I scrambled up, threw on some clothes, and sat
back down on the bed; now with a spiral-bound notepad on my lap and a pen, I
scribbled down some of the things I had seen . . . the World . . . and me . . .
as a circle.
In that fleeting vision I’d had, I was standing
in a wide place and with my arms stretched out . . . one arm pointing West . .
. the other pointing East . . . then extending out from my two splayed hands
were two lines. One line was going to the right around the World and the other was
going to the left around it. Where the two met they had got to the end of the
World. Because they couldn’t go any further, of course! So there, in their ending,
they met and ‘married;’ there they were made one: being as they were face to
face with no gap in between . . . and having got there only by being opposite!
After a little while of mutual glee I saw they
carried on past each other. Now the right line was left; and the left line,
right! West was now East; and the East, West! Then they met again . . . back at
the beginning of the World, of course; because that was where they had begun from.
And this is why I had to draw the picture .
. . because at first it was all a bit confusing.
What did it mean?
And why did it fill me with such delight?
Two lines going in opposite directions, and meeting!
And meeting directly opposite from the place where they had begun from; because
the World was round! East met West, it
really did!
And the correlation? People are round. Oh! So
East ones could meet West ones; if, that is, they truly travelled in opposite
directions! One way of thinking and living, could meet its opposite way of
thinking and living, and find itself saying the same thing, where they met!
Like a pearl is round! ‘A pearl of truth’ is
round! So, true inner truth would meet me opposite to ‘me.’ Inner truth would
be found on the opposite side to ‘me:’ having the opposite thinking to my egotistical
thinking: selfless thinking… if, that is, I went both ways around the
pearl, at the same time! Which I did. Being split asunder. Knowing the
difference between my true self, and my false self. Knowing my right hand, from
my left hand. (And then I remembered Jonah, in Nineveh;
and I wondered if he had understood?)
Suddenly, my crazy drawing upon the page in
front of me became ‘a-picture-answer:’ to the
way of Life . . . or at least, to the way of my own inner life; it
confirmed it, sort of. This was all about emptying and filling, and about two different
things happening at the same time, which were same; and about standing upon the
sharp end of a pin, without falling off on either side!
Increase came only through decrease; and Life was in growing smaller to become
larger; it was the only way of entry into the realm of eternal youth, and the kingdom
of heaven, forever!
Going westward
or going right: I was surrendering and
losing; while going eastward, or
going left: I was filling up and gaining.
That was the answer that did it! Two opposite directions ending up at
the same place: which made you complete. …Complete!
…My destiny!
It
was the faintest thing that did it. That
set one upon the path of completeness. Small as pea that was felt, though it was under 20 mattresses.
All the time making me ‘black and blue’ all over, from all the bruises that
came in me, for feeling it. Feeling all my small points of need, where I was in
need of the light of the pin-point stab to divide me asunder, to separate my wheat
from my chaff, to sort out my right from my left, and in perfect balance set me
gloriously free, circling the Earth, and me, in a split second!
It was the lost pearl that did it; the missing truth which made complete... which was
the entrance. The door was a pearl.
Light was showing through the curtains. I
closed the notebook, threaded the pen through the spiral, and left it on the bed
while I climbed back under the bedclothes again; and with a smile on my insides,
to bookmark the place I fell asleep and woke up very late.
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