Patriarch's Pond

Is there really no other way, Merry, other than crashing the dimensions like that?

Of course there is.

Really?

There’s always another way, but you’ll notice that turning towards the void isn’t the gut wrenching thing it was first time round – in fact you’re beginning to enjoy it – are you not?

Er… you know, I hate to admit it but you’re right. It’s beginning to feel normal – in fact I can’t figure out how I lived without it before this.

What do you mean?

Well it makes things seem different – brighter   bigger   deeper  – and being able to hone in on something – to tune into the atom behind, within whatever it is I’m observing – that’s a complete game changer, isn’t it?

Then what’s the problem?

Oh, some of the chat room crowd – they feel it’s all a bit too dramatic – not sufficiently zen.

They want the zen approach, do they?

I guess they’d like to know more about the alternative.

Fair enough. Are you ready to give it your best shot?

When have I ever said “no”?

Oh – once or twice. Ok – here goes. We can do this sitting or walking. Actually, I prefer it walking so let’s start with that.

Alright. So we’re walking along.

By Patriarch’s Pond

By Patriarch’s Pond – where Woland chats with Berlioz and Bezdomniy in Bulgakov’s masterpiece “The Master and Margarita”.

I didn’t know you’d read that – amazing book, is it not?

Pure genius – but hopefully nothing supernatural’s going to affect us now.

Don’t be so sure. So what you do is breathe through your stream of thoughts, your stream of consciousness, the transmission constantly being emitted, coming out of your head. Just breathe through it. Allow yourself to feel how your breath is feeling it – is scanning it – reading it – de-ionising it… can you do that?

I can try.

So you carry on breathing as normal – but now you're conscious of the fact that your breath is no longer just happening – that you’re directing it and feeling any feedback, any effect it may have on the mind’s transmission, the stream of consciousness which you’re constantly emitting.

But why?

Why what?

Why am I constantly emitting or transmitting this thought stream?

That’s an excellent question. What do you think would happen if it stopped, which it will do the moment you become sufficiently aware, through your breath, of the process?

I have no idea. Perhaps I’ll start seeing things differently.

Correct. Because when the thought flow stops, you’re no longer held in place – your conscious-awareness is no longer locked in the 3D mind slot.

Oh.

You’re free to experience things, or perceive them in any of the myriad alternative slots, alternative positions.

Oh.

So what are you waiting for?

But…

Yes?

If it’s really so simple – how come no one seems to do this?

Bewildering, isn’t it.

There must be some reason…

Bias.

Bias? What do you mean?

Everything is outwardly biased, outwardly focussed. The world around you, your reality is dripping with jewels and candy for the mind, for desires – an emporium of things which usually keep you distracted.

But still – there must be some people who succeed in breaking the spell?

Of course – but to what end?

Huh?

Well, once the stream of consciousness comes to a standstill you can go anywhere, do or be anything – but only if you have a clear intent.

Oh.

Otherwise you simply enjoy a few moments of stillness, and then return to the hubbub renewed  refreshed.

Oh. So what’s my intent going to be?

What do you want? What do you need?

I want to see how this noisy reality is but one side of the whole – the totality. I want to bring it all together – to be able to move throughout – above if need be, and below.

Then go to it. As you breathe your column of thoughts – allow yourself to become distantly, dimly, vaguely aware of the other side of is. Allow yourself to sense the bridge, the all-seeing-eye which doesn’t look out any more than it looks in   behind   above or  below. But how will you bring anything back to this reality of what you see, what you experience in this state?

I… don’t know. Is it difficult?

You’ll be seeing so much more, so much faster – it will be very hard to contain it within the dribbling thought-stream that is available to you here in 3D – so you need to increase the bandwidth – you need to set our friends the gnomiki to work with fibre optic cables or some other technology.

You’re kidding, right?

Do I look like I’m kidding?

No, but – the gnomiki – these are imaginary creatures – for children.

Dear Zie, be not so dull-witted. You are the child. Your mind is presently only capable of dialup speed data streaming. If you’re at all interested in learning about the round world of consciousness, as opposed to the blinkered, tunnel vision realm you’re currently in, you’ll soon discover that every thing ever mentioned here in 3D exists in some shape or form – and far from being childish or foolish, is essential to broadening your psychic horizons beyond mere clanking  wheezing  being-less things.

Oh.

And children still retain a little of their peripheral vision which is why they’re more open to elves, fairies, unicorns, demons and gnomiki. They see more, until that is, they join the mind-shut-tight brigade of so-called adults.

Oh. In that case, I’ll swallow my pride

Good for you Zie. Well done.

I’ll call on gnomiki – whoever, whatever you be – to assist me in extricating myself from the hole or tunnel I seem to be stuck in – to help me open up faster, broader channels of perception, of data processing – to hit the critical speed of awareness that will enable me to be consciously aware of the bigger, greater truth.

Excellent. Do they respond.

I… I don’t know.

Well do you feel anything?

I… maybe.

Right – so you see – they’re going to have to put you through your paces. It’s all very well experiencing the greater all – but unless your mind can move at hyperspeed, you simply won’t be able to recall or process it here – so this is going to require a different kind of mind from the operating system you’re currently using. Parallel processing for a start – that kind of thing.

Oh my God – you make it sound like a new computer system.

Well there is some truth in that – the mind, though biological, has some very machine-like limitations, until you change how you see things and the world in general. When you lighten up, make it your intention to be open to all that is, no matter what, to suspend judgement – that kind of thing – then you can really move forwards.

It’s like training for a race – the way you put it.

Except, of course, your mind is already fully capable, fully enabled, the only thing stopping it is thing, or things.

Huh?

This obsession with thingification, and the snail pace processing of matter, and what matters, and why… loaded and larded with prejudice, with system bias, with values which are designed and intended to keep you weighed down and aware of nothing more than slowest, lowest frequency of things.

Oh.

But away – to the breath – for the breath knows no speed limits, no mind restrictions – it crosses any physical barrier in the body, the mind of the spirit.

Oh… Ok… here goes…

And while you’re at it – I’ll walk alongside and provide a little sound support – which will make it easier for you to hold your intent and continue – even when you’re away with the fairies. My song will be like an umbilical cord – connecting this world and wherever you now get to.

Oh… Ok… thanks.

Zie walks around Patriarch’s Pond following the circular path half a dozen times – focussed intently on his breathing, noticing things getting lighter and lighter – barely noticing Merrie’s quiet song – and now he’s abruptly aware that he’s dreaming – or in a state that normally is associated with dreaming. His thoughts are flowing all around – faster and faster – as if the wheel has been released and can turn at any speed. It whirrs merrily as he continues breathing the column of consciousness which extends out of the top of his head, still aware of Merrie’s song which somehow helps hold it all together.

Out of his mind’s eye he sees creatures – magical creatures or beings – all around. Some of them sweet. Some of them diabolical. Yet he looks on dispassionately, without thinking them or judging them – in fact he’s quite unable to do any more than observe and be aware. Anything else would slow him down and shove him back down into the tunnel, the tramlined thought stream he’s normally in.

As he continues walking he becomes increasingly aware of the other people. He can see their thoughts – how they’re locked, stocked and barrelled in a narrow thought channel. It’s abundantly evident why they can see nothing more than what they see – why they’re unable to see the gnomiki, the other creatures and beings who are an integral part of this and every landscape – because their thought stream is simply too slow, too narrow to register what’s going on in the hyperspace of the unfettered mind, the in-no-ways sinister all-seeing-eye of conscious-awareness.

A kind of melancholy touches Zie lightly – for there is something pitiful in observing the state of mind we’re generally trapped in, in which we only see things in a tendentious, front-loaded fashion. Now Zie is allowing his mind to go further, beyond the Patriarch’s Pond – over Moscow, over Russia, and still further beyond – for there seems to be no limit affecting how fast, how high his mind can spin, can extend. It’s wonderful to behold the wider, bigger picture – but how to find a solution – how to enable the 3D mind to change gears more readily, to rise up above the low-level smog and recall  remember  recollect the greater all that is?

Amazingly the answer comes to him from Merry, who continues to sing his lilting melody. Now it becomes clear – Merry’s song is a conduit – in fact Merry himself is a kind of hyperlink or channel. How does he do it? Zie finds himself asking    observing – and to his surprise – sees Merry in a new light – as an empty space – almost like a tube, or a drum, as opposed to the person, the thing he normally sees. “It’s not what he says,” Zie hears himself thinking – he imparts data through the silence, the space between words. His actual words are merely a kind of music   a drum frame   a beating drum. I too can start to hear this music, this beat – to disengage from the what of thing, the matter of words and what was said – and allow the silence to speak to me – for we are living in a field of fullness, of all that is – a field of conscious-awareness, and the limiting factor is  and always was  the apparatus of what, the endless tinkering thingness of thought, which keeps us heavy and slow in a muchness of matter.

And story – the tales Merry tells. They too are hyperlinks. They too carry traces of infinity, of all that is – when you breathe them, when you hear their inner silence, their magic, their peace, and not merely their what is what.

And Zie observes a story being told to one of the children on the far side of the pond – and the child’s mind, still too young to understand every word, whirrs, spins into the silence, the multi-dimensional  space within that story, fanning out, expanding, filling it with breath and light – the light of conscious awareness, so that the small child sees every aspect of that story in its entirety – the way it really happened hundreds of years ago – as well as how the story came to be passed down through the ages – how it was edited, how it evolved and why – until the child has learnt more in five, six, seven minutes than it will learn for the rest of its life, during eighteen years of formal education at school then university. Such is the magic of story, even when the teller is oblivious to the higher planes, the magics happening around about, and woven into the very fibre of the tale so innocently told.

Zie’s eyes fill up with tears as he observes the beauty of the child hearing the tale – watching its consciousness pulse, flash and flow like a collection of the most brilliant fish, octopi and creatures of the deep – for the field of consciousness is so very close to being the ocean itself

– that it is barely distinguishable, in fact, we are at a loss to determine where consciousness ends and the ocean begins – the two seem to yin and yang one another seamlessly. Salt water flows down his cheeks as he continues walking around the Patriarch’s Pond, with Merry by his side, invisible to most the people there, and Woland seated on a bench telling

Berlioz and Bezdomniy a tale of Yeshua, of Hegemon, known to us as Pilate, the glaring sun and a terrible headache he was experiencing. Annushka has already spilt her oil and a tram rumbles along from the direction of the Danilov monastery, though time has now grown hopelessly muddled in this picture of stories interwoven through ages past and ages yet to come.

I can’t believe how much that child, still a toddler was able to see, experience and learn as it heard the tale its mother was telling it. And as for Woland – to think I’ve come here so many times and never seen him sitting on the bench over there with Berlioz and Bezdomniy. It makes me want to weep what I’ve been denying myself.

Indeed, dear Zie, tis strange, tis strange – the way we humans choose to live.

We?

We. I too started out like you, but the further I proceeded, the more intent I was on living the greater tale, the master story, until I am as you see me now – almost completely empty inside, which explains how I have lasted this long.

Suddenly a kind of shiver passes over Zie as he realises, to his astonishment, how old Merry in fact is. It is as if time itself recoils into the distance, leaving Merry the space to shine a light of his own, and bring in a little, tiny breeze of I know not what – a breath of the gnomiki which is sometimes enough, sometimes all it takes to tip the balance between death and life, between blindness and sight, between nothing and knowing…