Story. ) The Well of Eternal Youth... Part Three... Small as a Pea...

                                Small as a pea under 20 mattresses.
                                That is why it will be a pearl.                         

    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.

                                                          * 

Story. ) The Well of Eternal Youth... Part Two... A Silk Purse & a Sow's Ear...

from new manuscript of short stories: A Circle of Swift Songs: A Circlet of Inner-Life Stories



      A Silk Purse & a Sow's Ear

                                               That men may not be grieved by it

                                               They leave the truth aside

                                               And move to other things

                                               More obtuse . . .

  

 I HAD BEEN STANDING looking at it. Just looking at it. The beautiful antique map on my wall. And it had struck me, that out of my surface ‘anything’ I could make a lively ‘something’ beneath it, which could show me what it is, I really wanted to know: the things that would change me, to bring me more and more into the light; which things, though, are naturally uncomfortable; change challenges my own status quo to alter my orbit. But I am not afraid.

   I had remembered this: It is not those things we want to know that help us the most and reveal what we’re after, but those we don’t want to know and turn from; the real treasure it was where we hadn’t looked for it before.

   This old map on my wall was made of inert paper; thick paper. ‘Thick,’ like me! But out of that, I could make a living-thing of inner joy which could teach me and change me. Out of all the ordinary things I saw around me, I could make something extraordinary; because I was silly enough to see inside me, and crazy enough, not to be too fearful to go there. I realized with delight that I had discovered the opposite of that old saying: ‘…You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

   (I had looked this proverb up in a concordance of the Bible; but I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. Apparently, it was a phrase coined by Stephen Gosson in the sixteenth century. In 1579, to be exact. And it is in the book, Ephemerides of Phialo: Deuided Into Three Bookes; p62v.)

   I had a feeling that I had so crossed a divide that now everything I looked at from inside of me had its mirror image of my inner life. It had in it, a helpful picture of the truth that went seemingly ‘against’ me, which unlovely insight could aid me in the journey of my life, and become my true and lasting treasure. Though, this reflection, of course, I could only receive, if I was happy enough with my being ‘crossed out.’

   But I could take a tough thing and make of it a delicate currency with which to ‘buy’ life . . . ‘gold tried in the fire.’ And then, an earful of un-connecting chatter from the muddied world could become a purse full of connecting gentility closeted securely beneath the usual conversation of the world.

    You see, I had become so terribly free . . . that I was glad, glad, glad that I was thick, and dumb, and stupid; and that all my treasures were only those the world discarded; those of a prodigal swineherd and a foolish son; for so was there ever accorded me an entrance into the kingdom of God; and a fatted calf. 

      

                                                                           *

  

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The quotes above are from my book, IN THE PATHS OF MYRDDIN WYLLT: Yn y Llwybrau Myrddin Wyllt; A Welsh Legend of Merlin.

Story.) The Well of Eternal Youth... Part One... The Map beneath the Map...

from my book manuscript: A Circle of Swift Songs: A Circlet of Inner-Life Stories . . .



               The Well of Eternal Youth & 
                The Map Beneath the Map

 BEFORE ME WAS LAID OUT a map of the World. An ancient and beautiful map. As I gazed at it, a deep wondering was in me: ‘Where in the World was the Well of Eternal Youth?’ Upon the instant, a faint gold line appeared from the land where I was and moved across the map. As it did so it changed colours . . . antique gold entwined with ruby red and emerald and sapphire blue . . . all the deep, rich colours of old illuminated manuscripts. A hidden line it was; but now revealed and full of light; and drawn out into a thin and serpentine line that led across the World.
   In me, in the same instant, I knew this thing: That because I followed the tracing line with the eyes of my heart more than through the eyes of my intellect, it grew stronger and deeper and penetrated through the surface map.   It sank through to the map beneath. To the living map which is always underneath all things; which had we the eyes to see would give us the answers to all the questions asked of our own heart. For there was no hidden thing which was not known; and where in me I was known: there I could see: and there I could know the things beneath.   I saw the tracing line go all around the World. Its colours imperceptibly changing all the time . . . as though it was seeking. As though it were questioning for me searching out all the deep things of God and the answer to my question: ‘Where in the World was the Well of Eternal Youth?’   As I watched, I saw the beautiful line follow the full circle of the World and return to me: for it never stopped until it found me, and where it found me, it answered me: ‘In your own heart the well of eternal youth: for in you in your own ending a well of water springing up unto everlasting life through my Son; and whoever drinks of this water he shall never thirst.’
  And, all at once, I drank my fill from the Well at the World’s End! Here was the Well of Eternal Youth! Where there was an ending of the old surface World in me, it was found! For here was a beginning of the new inner World in me! So, here, life was revived in a continual renewing of life; and all the while I ‘died:’ which was really living! And so here was youth, forever! The Well was beneath! And I rejoiced, and circled the World in one second. The answer, it was so small it had been lost and forgotten.                                                                                                                                                      (-The Pearl)

                                                          *

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  The Well’s foreshadowing ‘picture,’ its mystical symbol in the Earthly Realm, it was drawn upon the ancient map before me. It was where I stood in spirit on the land at the End of the World: upon the holy Isle of Iona, in the faraway isles off the West Coast of Scotland. There in my heart, I stood upon the brink of its windswept hill of Dun I: in being given the underneath meaning of its name: Done I: and now, I’m Done with I. And, yes, Dumb I: for now I know that the Well of Eternal Youth, it begins where I know I am nothing and I can let my self go and be free! Upon the Isle of Iona, ‘I own her’ within my own heart!