Healing Tones

“It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness”

IT’S TIME TO CROSS OVER. The veil of the impure heart, now being purified in the fire of love, has been rent in twain, allowing us to cross over to the other side and stand in our ordained place, the Holy Place of Heaven, as the Teacher instructed us to do when things begin to fall apart, as they are doing today: “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place….” I recommend that one read and think deeply upon the words of Jesus as Matthew recorded and wrote them down in the twenty-fourth chapter of his gospel. It’s very current and quite sobering.

What I really want to share with you in this post is a story I just recently enjoyed — and which gave rise to the theme and message of this post. The story itself is skillfully if intentionally injected into its author’s most engaging novel, BLUE SHAMAN ~ The Stone of Sovereignty, written and published back in 2008 by friend and rogue scholar Hugh Malafry. It’s the first book of a trilogy and series on the theme of the search for the alchemist’s “Stone of Sovereignty,” a means by which base metal may be turned into gold — a metaphor the author masterfully employs to deliver his subtle if subliminal message: restoring fallen humanity to the golden state of divine identity and oneness with a God of Love — which he more than implies is none other than the very “Holy Grail” sought by the fabled Knights of the Round Table, as well as men and women to this day. This is my third reading.

I’ll just cut to the excerpt and the story — not the whole story of course, which you’ll thoroughly enjoy yourself when you read his first book of the series, a final volume of which I am assured is being written even as I blog. The story is set in the 13th century AD when the Cathars — men, women and children — were being rounded up and burned alive as heretics by the Catholic Church in what historically came to be known as “The Inquisition” in Southern France, along with the Waldensian persecution in Northern Italy.

The setting is a castle fortress under siege atop a steep hill in the “once bright land of Languidoc, a wasteland in the shadow of death” in Occitania where the priestess and “mountain mother . . . Esclarmonde, who was the light of the world,” and “Anwyn of the In-World” were taking final refuge awaiting their own execution in the fires of the bishop of Carcassonne, Dominican prelate “Albertus Magnus.” His armies “held those of the Comte de Toulouse at bay in a final siege of the mountain sanctuary of Montsegur.” The sovereign character and champion in the story is Hugues Comte de Caron, whose inner and real identity is revealed as you read the story. With that context setup, on to the story!

LOST HALLOWS

Caron crossed the siege lines unchallenged. Rings of fires flared, and soldiers huddled together in their encampments, from the raw March wind gusting across the wastelands. The castle was secured, and terms of capitulation were given. The mountain fell off into an abyss, and there was no escape. What remained were the cold, the shame, and mortal fear of God’s retribution for the slaughter of innocence.

Caron was expected. The great gate opened with a squeal of frozen iron, and he stood for a moment looking into the dark passage before him. It seemed a different castle, made for a different time, than the one he had come to before. Then it was full of life; this was desolate. A torch was lit in the courtyard, and illumined a gnarled oak door. He could go no further, so he knocked and stood patiently waiting for it to open. It did not, and he had not come to stand out in the cold: Someone must open the door, but no one came, and it troubled him.

“Be still.”

It was a woman’s voice. He looked about himself. Nothing. Then he looked back to the great gate, and again there was nothing but a ring of glowing campfires, their sparks whirling up in the heavy gusting wind.

“He shall not enter with you.” “Who shall not enter?” he asked. “The one who hides in your shadow.”

Caron looked back at his shadow in the torchlight. It seemed unlikely he would go anywhere without it, for it was firmly attached to his feet.

“Who are you?” he asked. “Anwyn of the In-World.”

Her voice was like bright water. He looked about the silent court, shadowed in the moonlight. It was difficult to believe he stood on the threshold of another world. The past was a mystery to him, and he had always wondered how he came to be who he was. Slowly the thoughts formed, gathering to an intuition, and she seemed to feel it in him. “Do you now remember us” she asked.

“Where are you?”

“Hidden within.”

Sounds of the battlefield receded. Voices of the soldiers in the distance faded, driven off by the gusting wind sweeping the high plateau. His cares went with them; he found himself drawn into a silence, filled with peace within the eye of the storm.

A little door, about half the height of a man, set seamlessly within the greater, opened for him. He stooped, eased through on his knees, and found himself knelt in a small, unlit courtyard, facing a stone wall. The court was empty, but for the youth who immediately secured and bolted the door behind him. The boy pointed silently. Caron looked to his right where a spiral of seven stairs rose from the courtyard and disappeared in a tower. The youth was gone before Caron could question or rise from his knees, and he was alone within the silence of the keep.

There was nowhere else to go, so Caron cautiously climbed the spiral stairs, counting twenty-four steps in all, before it ended at another closed door with no latch or bar upon it. Instead, carved in hard oak and inlaid with silver, there was the curious design of an endless knot, a weave of intersecting paths, having no beginning or ending, but a pattern that traced and repeated itself. He pressed on the door but it would not open, so he waited as he had done before, but this time no boy came to his aid.

“Anwyn, guide me to the In-world.” He waited for her reply, but none came. He began to feel foolish standing before another closed door. To go forward he must find the way in himself. His attention returned to the silver knot. He studied then touched and traced his finger along it. Dread fear like dark waters rose upon him. He struggled, as if he breathed water, and would drown. He drew back in panic, but settled his breathing, and gathered his senses.

When he came to himself he heard a murmur of voices beyond the door, like the sound of a distant fall of water, and it filled him with longing. He pressed the door with both hands, and still it would not yield. He stood at the top of the stair feeling frustrated, resisting the urge to bang upon it.

He had not come here by chance; he had right and a purpose: it was his time, his place, and his ignorance surely could be forgiven him. Mastering his fear, Caron again touched the endless knot. This time his fingers tingled, and as he did not resist there was no shock; rather his body filled with pleasant warmth at the contact. And Anwyn was back.

“You must let go your shadow.” Her words fell like rain on dry dust. “To cross over, you must see yourself on the other side.”

Again he traced the pattern with his finger tips, and felt the weave of the knot melt to his touch. He let go and found the door not so solid as he had supposed. A light shone from beyond it, filtering through the edges. The seams of the oak frame rent with fissures through which the light shone. Caron began to see something beyond. He tried to focus his eyes on it, but the harder he tried the more solid the door became, and the shining beyond faded. What was within would not be taken. It was not by will that he saw beyond the door, but by inner light that brightened the eye, and made transparent what appeared opaque.

Caron let go his grip on what seemed so real and impassable, the stone wall and the oaken door that stood in his way, and began at once to see differently. The heavy oak door was less substantial; first a thing of rough-hewn timbers and iron plates, then cracks and fissures through which the light streamed, then little more than tatters and a threadbare shroud through which the light shone. Beyond was a man who shone like the sun, enveloped in glory like clouds streaming with sunlight.

Caron could not face the one in the light. He looked away, as one catches a glimpse of but cannot look into the sun. He could not enter in; he could not turn back. Of himself he could do nothing: he was dust and ashes. The other dwelled in light; he dwelled in the shadow of death. The other stood in fiery beauty, he upon a cold wind-swept waste of mountains, looking from without in. He was hung between two worlds. All that he sought was in here in this moment, but for a divide he could not cross. “Who am I,” he asked. “The one who hides in the shadow or the one who dwells in the light?” His voice faltered as he asked it for his state was wretched.

A great wind swept the plateau. The bishop’s fire blew up in a shower of sparks setting the tents aflame, singing the shaman’s hands. He dropped his staff and recoiled from the conflagration, his connection with Caron broken. The shaman picked up his scorched staff, stood a careful distance off, and whispered into the fire. “He is the one,” the shaman said. “They are much mistaken in him. He is the one.”

Within Montsegur, Caron heard a keen of wind across the high plateau of dark mountains, and in it the voice of the emptiness of the world. “If world and will is all there is then I am dust and ashes,” he said.

He had come to the door at the end of time, and he had seen himself on the other side. He was not all dust and ashes. “I am that one,” he said. “I am the light of the world.” He let go into the light and the light took him. The illusion of separation passed. He crossed over, and there was one man. All the worlds were in him, and he in all the worlds.

I hope you enjoyed the story and could see your own transformation journey culminating at the threshold between the outer and inner worlds, which in reality are one: a true duality of Heaven and Earth — One Whole Holy World, which is in you and you in it. I am, you are, the light of the world. I do not hide my light under a cloud of safety and isolation. Rather I shine my light where all can see it and be enlightened. What about you? Are you afraid to shine your light? Afraid of judgment and criticism . . . from your own human ego? “Who do you think your are? You’re a nobody!” What a lie! On the other side of the veil You are the Light of the world. See your Self on the other side. Cross over the threshold and be Who you really are: the Light of the World — where there are no shadows but only light, the Light of your own Creator Being, who you ARE: the Light of Love.

HEALING YOUR HEARTBREAK

I’ll leave you with a brief inspiration from my friend and fellow blogger, Will Wilkinson.

“It’s a choice to be vulnerable, just as it’s a choice to . . . find our heartbreak…then figure out what to do about it.” (Click on Will’s name above to share his timely message.)

Until my next post,

Be Love. Be loved

Anthony ~ tpal70@gmail.com