The Dare
I’m in Heaven, hanging out with some angels. We’re playing catch, tossing around a ball of clay, and with every throw, its shape and color and texture alter, right in midair. It keeps rearranging itself like it can’t make up its mind what to be. It’s supposed to coagulate into a form with color and texture and possibly some kind of translucent substance, something complex.
The ball is supposed to contain certain patterns that have to do with the form my next lifetime on Earth will take. After many tosses, it becomes evident that the clay is refusing to hold to one form or plan; it remains a dull ball containing no imprints or designs.
Finally one of the angels tosses the ball in the air, catches it, and announces, “It’s not time yet.” I reach for the ball; I don’t buy it. “The odds are stacked against you,” he warns and throws it to me.
“I’ll take my chances,” I answer, throwing it to someone I’m hoping might be more sympathetic. But the next one has the same impression and says, “Forget it,” dropping the ball to the ground. I make a mental note not to ask that one for advice in the future.
Another one, a female, says, “Why don’t we sit down and talk about this?” and then everyone sits in the dandelions, some smiling sympathetically, others very solemn.
They try other tactics, saying I’ll be alone, that my pals the Native Americans won’t be coming back for a long time. I remain unmoved, so they try pleading. They tell me that there are people on Earth who won’t be able to understand me. I say I’ll educate them. They try frightening me with the assertion there are people whose souls have wandered off, leaving them like machinery left idling while the owners are at lunch.
But I am unconvinced. So what if the present structure down there has absolutely no use for me; so what if I have no idea what to do in such a place? So what if I’m setting myself up for failure? I only see incarnation as a win-win situation: I will probably learn something, but even if I don’t, I will eventually come back here, which isn’t so bad. I have nothing to lose. I say I want to try. I insist on another chance.
An angel with maternal energy whose gender is difficult to discern reaches for my hand. He/she looks above my head at my darkening aura and says gravely, “You don’t just throw yourself at the world; you work your way up through lifetimes,” meaning that I don’t have enough past lifetimes on Earth to pull off this next venture. Meaning that it will be a waste of time.
But I hold to my resolve. He/she wants to say that it can’t work, that others will suffer, but instead she looks piercingly into my aura, as if instilling her light into my energy body for a time when I will need it.
I experience a feeling of suspension, like the pause at the bottom of an exhalation. I can’t see her anymore; I only see that exploding golden light that never fails to appear at momentous beginnings and endings.
I hear a river, but it is no longer by the field of dandelions where we had tossed the ball; instead, it is rushing through me, and its sound is that of a long universal sigh. My Gods and Goddesses are sitting in heaven, shaking their heads, saying, “Have it your way, then.”
When the rushing subsides, I hear, “It is done.” And at that moment, I am unbearably sad. Only then do I reconsider, but like a babe being born, I cannot crawl back into the womb.
“Can’t you make some kind of provision?” I call out in terror as I feel myself propelled through a tunnel swirling with the muted and changing colors of my own thoughts. I call out, but everyone has passed beyond my awareness. Far, far ahead I see a spinning vortex of golden light. “Remember!” something echoes, “Remember!” Remember what? I wonder. I’m spinning down, squishing through a pinhole, it seems. I can’t imagine how I will survive. I am sure that I will pop right back out and land in that field. But I don’t. The noise has stopped. Silence brings one true thought: The light – it must be the light that I need to remember.
From a long, dreamy distance, I hear a voice faintly calling out to me, using my other name: “Little Sun! Little Sun! If you succeed in this, the gains will be enormous!”
~
The ball is supposed to contain certain patterns that have to do with the form my next lifetime on Earth will take. After many tosses, it becomes evident that the clay is refusing to hold to one form or plan; it remains a dull ball containing no imprints or designs.
Finally one of the angels tosses the ball in the air, catches it, and announces, “It’s not time yet.” I reach for the ball; I don’t buy it. “The odds are stacked against you,” he warns and throws it to me.
“I’ll take my chances,” I answer, throwing it to someone I’m hoping might be more sympathetic. But the next one has the same impression and says, “Forget it,” dropping the ball to the ground. I make a mental note not to ask that one for advice in the future.
Another one, a female, says, “Why don’t we sit down and talk about this?” and then everyone sits in the dandelions, some smiling sympathetically, others very solemn.
They try other tactics, saying I’ll be alone, that my pals the Native Americans won’t be coming back for a long time. I remain unmoved, so they try pleading. They tell me that there are people on Earth who won’t be able to understand me. I say I’ll educate them. They try frightening me with the assertion there are people whose souls have wandered off, leaving them like machinery left idling while the owners are at lunch.
But I am unconvinced. So what if the present structure down there has absolutely no use for me; so what if I have no idea what to do in such a place? So what if I’m setting myself up for failure? I only see incarnation as a win-win situation: I will probably learn something, but even if I don’t, I will eventually come back here, which isn’t so bad. I have nothing to lose. I say I want to try. I insist on another chance.
An angel with maternal energy whose gender is difficult to discern reaches for my hand. He/she looks above my head at my darkening aura and says gravely, “You don’t just throw yourself at the world; you work your way up through lifetimes,” meaning that I don’t have enough past lifetimes on Earth to pull off this next venture. Meaning that it will be a waste of time.
But I hold to my resolve. He/she wants to say that it can’t work, that others will suffer, but instead she looks piercingly into my aura, as if instilling her light into my energy body for a time when I will need it.
I experience a feeling of suspension, like the pause at the bottom of an exhalation. I can’t see her anymore; I only see that exploding golden light that never fails to appear at momentous beginnings and endings.
I hear a river, but it is no longer by the field of dandelions where we had tossed the ball; instead, it is rushing through me, and its sound is that of a long universal sigh. My Gods and Goddesses are sitting in heaven, shaking their heads, saying, “Have it your way, then.”
When the rushing subsides, I hear, “It is done.” And at that moment, I am unbearably sad. Only then do I reconsider, but like a babe being born, I cannot crawl back into the womb.
“Can’t you make some kind of provision?” I call out in terror as I feel myself propelled through a tunnel swirling with the muted and changing colors of my own thoughts. I call out, but everyone has passed beyond my awareness. Far, far ahead I see a spinning vortex of golden light. “Remember!” something echoes, “Remember!” Remember what? I wonder. I’m spinning down, squishing through a pinhole, it seems. I can’t imagine how I will survive. I am sure that I will pop right back out and land in that field. But I don’t. The noise has stopped. Silence brings one true thought: The light – it must be the light that I need to remember.
From a long, dreamy distance, I hear a voice faintly calling out to me, using my other name: “Little Sun! Little Sun! If you succeed in this, the gains will be enormous!”
~
