For nearly three weeks we’ve been laying over at a little house on Lake Corpus Christi in a no-stop-light town in southern Texas. Every morning I wake up before the sun and settle into a dark spot in the sunroom where I watch deep orange crest on the horizon, becoming coral then cotton candy then blazing lemon. Many days here the wind whips relentlessly, then for a short stretch of hours it stills to glass. Sometimes a heavy fog sits over the water until midday, sometimes everything is gray for a long, long time then a mob of gusts blow the sky clean and that blazing lemon beats down again. If one pays attention and pans out of time, they might perceive the landscape kaleidoscope forever shifting, shifting, shifting. Heron, turtle, storm, mist, dawn, dusk, glass, wave. And yet, the water and the weathered docks and the hard line of the horizon hold their posts.
It’s like this with us, our inner kaleidoscope ever turning. But something stands still.
There was a night with no moon I sat before the lake turning and turning until I felt compelled to close my eyes and receive the darkness totally. In the standing-still of contemplation, an edge arose and I sensed something beyond it, a feeling I have felt before, on my mat in the early morning head bowed to the earth. But little janes in me were afraid and did not want to cross. How do we pass into the Kingdom of Heaven?
Each of us are legion: heron, turtle, storm, mist, dawn, dusk, glass, wave. We have learned to be all of these and more. In an effort to sustain life, we shapeshift constantly, meaningfully, doing our very best under every circumstance until we believe we are the things we can become in any moment. Then.
We sense something beyond it.
I consider that enlightenment means death to all my cherished shapeshifting, the losing of every inner landscape I’ve faithfully planted and reaped. So long to all I’ve come to love! But also what I hate and, perhaps, that would be a relief. I worry about my family — I have to trust, any transformation in my Being is to their benefit and will result only in greater capacity to Love, to bear, to behold, to exercise mercy under every constraint.
The Cross teaches me. It shows me the promise of New Life beyond every conscious death.
Pay attention to the shape of a cross and consider the point in the middle, the still dot on which everything journeying from the right toward the left and left toward the right collides and then! changes direction completely, entering the standing beam. Notice the length of the horizontal axis and the length of the vertical. Which one has roots in something solid?
I remember Maurice Nicoll’s dream. He describes it like this, “Someone pushes me up a grass slope. There is a ditch, it is not wide but difficult to cross. The difficult to cross ditch at the top of the slope is full of bones of prehistoric animals, the remains of violent things, of beast of prey, of monsters, of snakes. They go far down into the abyss. There is a plank to cross by, but the air seems full of restraining power like the invisible influence of some powerful magnet. And this, with the fear of crossing this depth, although the width is not great, holds me back. I cannot say for how long, as there is no ordinary time in all this. Then, I find myself across on the other side.”
How do we pass into the Kingdom of Heaven?
Heron, turtle, storm, mist, dawn, dusk, glass, wave.
Water, dock, horizon. Beam.
By the Force of Love within and beyond us, may we cross over the bones of ourselves.
Maurice Nicoll is a 20th century spiritual teacher, formed by the teachings of Jesus and Gurdjieff. His dream is a portal into a new vision for ourselves and our world. In total, it’s six minutes long and I hope you find a quiet space to listen. For further reading on Nicoll and the Fourth Way, this article is exceptional.
For a highly personalized introduction to The Work/The Fourth Way by yours truly, listen to this free offering on the Inner Eye podcast:
“Wish” is a special concept in the Work, much like prayer. This link provides further context. I feel so touched and inspired by wishing, there is something in the word itself that lands in my heart.
Lastly, let us consider Jesus’ teaching in The Gospel of Thomas on these themes.
Yeshua Says, Whoever does not refuse father and mother cannot become my student. Whoever does not reject brother and sister accepting the cross as I do, is not ready for me.
Lynn Bauman adds the following commentary to this hard teaching:
“To refuse to believe the definitions of the self perpetuated by social conditioning is not a dishonor to our parents or siblings, but it does require an act of courage that may, in some respects, be as difficult as physical crucifixion. For to leave behind the carefully defined self is to run counter to the expectations of who we are that are maintained around us. To step outside those boundaries can be, for many, a form of excruciating pain, especially when the familiar world then becomes hostile to the new definitions we begin to express. This can be a daunting task, but the courage it takes to undergo this evolutionary transformation readies one for the teachings and ministrations of wisdom’s Master.”
Beloveds, may we receive the inner crossing.
PS.