VISIONARY TEACHINGS
by Gill Schwartz

IN THE WALK OF THE SPIRIT
THE JOURNEY

I've been walking this black band of highway for some long while now. I have faint memory-traces of the land about me as parched desert, or deep forest or steep glacier. Now there are fields, crops of ripening wheat and tall stalks of browning corn. The sun crouches low and the darkening roseate sky tells me it's late in the day.

          For some while now, too, I've seen where this road ends up ahead, where the land itself ends. As I draw near it, I see the edge of the earth and the widening abyss beyond. Now, with sudden finality, I'm there. The land beneath my feet, out in both directions as far as I can see, ends here and drops straight down into shear precipice

            Beyond there is nothing but open, endless sky.

           I stand, breath held, in bewildered awe. All this long-walk's while I've felt a comfort and rightness, a sense of hidden guidance. But now, before this terrifying scene demanding nothing but total self- surrender, I close my eyes, uncertain. I look behind me along this road I've walked so long, too long. Do I stop here, turn around, retrace those steps. A heartsick thought. I have no urge for that at all.

All that world of passing appetites and pointless desperations, obligations and regrets is finished. It leaves me free of all that's been to follow my soul's longing. I turn back to face the abyss in resignation. Whether taken by dominating fantasy, a daimon's wary tricks, or true guidance from above, I'm led to cautiously step out, beyond the earth's edge.

My stomach lurches in body-clench as my weight drops. But, with a reassuring startle, my foot finds a resting spot, only inches lower than my body-sense had anticipated. Something is there to hold me, invisible but solid. Using that as a resting place for my left foot, mystifyingly reassured, I step out with my right.                        

A step is taken      
that aims for nothing
until the place is shown,     
the foot then firmly placed
where there was no place before.
Another step in faith,   
another revelation.

As the rearward foot releases
in reaching urgency,
its weight supporting place weakens, dissolves.    
All that is left is a trail of has-beenness.
In the Eternal Plain lie these hazy tracings,
wandering, solitary, at times confused,
yet striving, yearning towards that Light.

          In total surrender and total freedom, I effortlessly continue, trustingly guided from one brave, unknowing step to another, far, far out. The flat face of the earth-ending precipice fades behind me. All about me, there is only the heavenly, boundless seas of blue space and rolling mountains of cloud.

           Still something is here to guide and sustains me, something other than but within me that opens me to spiritual depths that, before, had been closed.

          Gradually, up ahead, a luminous house-covered mountain comes into view, the source of its reflected brightness unseen but felt. Approaching, I'm delighted that all the houses have white flowing shapes. The low twisting rows are brightly milky smooth with endless layers of whitewashing, like a Mediterranean village.

I walk through the serpentine stone-paved lanes between the houses' high-windowed walls. The aura of the town evokes memories of many other towns familiar and dear to me. It reawakens the stirrings of forgotten aspirations, past longings of soul and flesh, desperate needs that had been quenched or denied, ineffable dreams, never fully realized yet still vital -all these rise to be known in a new and dispassionate way. Now they can be released from the web of my psyche. Joys and tears, shames and aspirations, layers of wounding and confusion wash away as I shed the shields and misbeliefs that had protected and imprisoned me.

As these fabricated selves dissolve, my Essence is revealed more blatantly than my old consciousness can contain. I recognize that It has always been with me. Steadily, this inner light of Self continues to show forth, ever clearer as I work my way through this celestial village.

Who is to follow a trail wrought of faith
and destiny, save he who truly believes?
Who is to step from a place graced solid
to where there is no place at all,
save he who has no other way to go?

         As I leave the city's last arched passageway behind me, I see a vast globe of splendor in the far distance, the Source the village's glow but palely reflects. Indescribably majestic. Ten-thousand suns bright, golden white, yet without biting glare. The Sun of Truth, I'm told by Knowing.

Profound images, feelings and understandings blossom into awareness as I come into greater resonance with the Sun's vibration. I recognize and experience how all realms prayerfully open to this Light. Spirits, angels, celestial beings of all kinds abound in my journey and I'm gifted with insights and inspired perspectives from these beings that teach and guide as Perfect Presence intoxicates me.

As I'm irresistibly drawn, my longing to merge fully with It dissolves veils of false self from me, cast away by Its rays, disclosing me more fully to the Source's awing Presence. As they dissolve, so limitations and restrictions in my mind and sense of self release till no form is left in my psyche, no shadow is cast. Though I'm freed of shape and substance, I'm still completely me, thinking, feeling, knowing.

Gradually, I'm aware there are many other beings about me, some human, others not, each drawn on their own unique pilgrimage towards this Source and Center. All these other beings have also been cleansed down to their essences. From every corner of the universe, they follow their shimmering paths, drawn by this Effulgence, as I am. The Sun of Truth's pervading Light is all around and through us, all enveloping, permeating. I am me, and yet every other being about me is also present and known to me, all merged through the Sun's rays of Compassionate Illumination.

It is the Now from before Eternity began. Enraptured, seething with joyful anticipation, I'm drawn towards It without action or effort, floating in the bliss of It's allure. There is no evidence left behind me but the shimmering path.

Eons pass unnoticed as I'm drawn closer, though the distances ahead are still infinite and go on forever. Sometimes there's a flicker of memory of some other reality, some other way of being. But it fades quickly as there's little left of me for it to cling to. And I swiftly reabsorb into the ever heightening Presence of this Ultimate Reality. In It's radiance every thing, thought and feeling is in its fully evolved, redeemed state. Here, nothing wants for anything.

The pillar of flame of my being comes into finer resonance with this Resplendence towards blissful At-onement. It is the High Love calling of God's sweet desire to reunite with His sons and daughters. It is the Source re-merging with the sparks of Its Essence that had been sent forth as reflections and minions of Its truth.

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Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2003   www.WisdomVisions.com