Shattered into the Light part I

by Anonymous
(Asia)

Spiraling down from betwixt the clouds a light suddenly bursts forth and eyes weary with night cast upwards and heart rejoices. Now all is illuminated and revealed to be joy overflowing and uniting and recreating eternity to eternity. There is no line misplaced, no straggler unaccounted for, no waif unembraced. The veil drops and it is fiercely, consumingly clear, the Divine is here. The Divine dwells within all and all within the Divine. The eagle lifts into the sky and spreads her wings like the dawning sun. Her swift gaze lights upon the world and it is received as one; as a hatchling straining for blessing. There is nothing lost of Divine Love.

I interiorly whisper gratitude for each miracle moment that presses into consciousness—the song of a mockingbird, the dew shimmering gold in the morning light, the marbled stone beside the path, the arms of the sassafras reaching up and out to greet the sun, the breath within my lungs.
The feelings is expanding out, through my forearms and shining out of my hands. It makes my face to smile and my head to push back and draw in the sky. I can’t but beam at those I see as the revelation of perfect harmony within all life is herself smiling at me within them and within all. The sky is raining down petals of golden love which enter in and then shine back out. The answers to all misery are resolved and embraced within the kiss of a child. Everything is precisely as it has been foretold from eternity and ordained into being. We are held within the ever evolving expression of Divine Love, bursting forth into life and returning again unto life. There is no stone misplaced, no falling leaf left to chance. I can feel it. These truths are shining more brilliant than the sun herself, than seven suns.
In class, my mind is a spacious sky with a myriad golden threads of light who dance of their own accord into a weave of celestial song. I can’t help but smile at the absurd juxtaposition of sterile classroom and empty academics exteriorly with the kaleidoscopic river of life let loose interiorly.
“You look happy today, what’s funny?” I laugh. In fact, I’m the only student. “I just am having a good day. Happy to be in class!” Not a lie. I am happy to be there. Ancient Hebrew with the witty and reserved teacher. I notice his face in a new way, actually not his face, something deeper. I can see his eyes—a tension, a fear, an edge of disquiet. If he could see what I am seeing, there could be nothing but exaltation. There is no communicating this, however, and I am aware of that.
Class ends and I am out in campus. Students are about me. I am seeing into them in the same way. Social personas are recognized and seen clearly as flimsy, clumsy walls erected of the fear of self. They fall away before me like dreams and I can feel the souls behind the faces. There is only love and fear. Some faces shine out love, others are contorted with fear. It is harsh to witness, like seeing a loved one taken captive and whipped mercilessly. There is one student whose face I cannot bear to behold, so agonized is his spirit within tangled prisons of self-terror. I turn and walk away and weep.
Once alone, I allow myself to weep loud and long for the suffering. The sense of separation between me and that which is about me is falling fast. The pain of that student, of which he himself is unaware, I am certain, weighs on me until the last tear has dropped. The grass amidst which I sit is the stuff of my soul and the blessing of my soul is its grateful desire. I take it in and it is of me. We are One.
Ideas cascade into my mind and I know I must write a book. I descend to the computer lab and begin typing. The ideas and sentences flow out lithely and soon I’ve written ten pages. Before two weeks, I've written almost 200. We are all One. In a thousand ways and worlds and words, We are One. You are within me and I within you. We are bound by the delusion of self and enslaved to the rapacious desires that snake forth from within that delusion. Awaken to one’s unity with all and one is liberated from all fears, all greed and all misery. One enters into her true being, his true being, the light and life of love; the joy of unity. The agony of a woman on the other side of the world is the agony of all. The man who is caught in a cottony web of comfort and constraint will find release from misery when he moves to release those less fortunate from theirs. This is what I write.
I am on fire. My stomach is burning and my mind aflame. The trees bow to me and the birds of the air alight upon my open hands. I thrust them up and throughout the heavens they fill the earth with blessing. I now know beyond any doubt that there is something profoundly altered about me. I consider the possibility of insanity. If I can carry on with my daily routine, going to class, completing my homework, interacting with others in more or less normal manner, than I know that I am not insane, I say to myself. And I don’t believe myself to be insane, but to, for the first time, be sane; to be alive. I am finally awake in the way I knew could be true, had to be true and for which my soul yearned ceaselessly.
I sensed an overarching architecture lacing through every detail, every blade of grass and every human endeavor, representing and recapitulating the anatomy of the Whole. I began to see how this Pattern of Patterns made impotent the concepts of past, present and future, for all just is of Isness; all shines refulgent of the One Light. The future is within the past and the past within the future and both are here and now in fullness. The Guardians of the past are with me, tall as the mountains, smiling, guiding my footsteps, giving path to my thoughts. The Angels of the future shout Hallelujah from the top of every shimmering tree and every resplendent flower. They dance and cry out unable to contain their rapture. I hear their voices singing to me. I feel their kisses upon my skin. I can’t stop weeping.
They talk to me at night as I lay unasleep upon my mattress. When the clouds within rupture to reveal the brilliant inward sun, the rising and setting of the dim orb outside is of little consequence. They whisper love to me and caress my brow. They tell me to rest gently, despite sleep’s abandon. Then they tell me to arise. It is well before dawn. Pray they say and I am on my knees. I cannot distinguish between their loving suggestions and my own doing. We are One. Read they say and I open the Bible. It is agony which contorts my face into more weeping and I cannot but close the book. It robs me of self. It strips away the last vestiges of imagined autonomy and it is unbearable. I am wholly eclipsed. Read, they whisper and again I open the book. And again I am torn asunder even unto soul. I am burned.
The Guardians lift me up and bring me downstairs to the large bay window where first morning light will soon sing into the room her song of gentle adoration. I am led to look at the potted plants that line the window and I do, and I am comforted by their tender lines, their pattern and their silence. I allow myself to be of them and I am replenished...

(continued in Part 2)