The Visions

The Vision of Great Stones

Great stones standing tall into the wind; grey, grey-white, speckled black and moss-bound. Rough-hewn faces, worn smooth by gale and sheeting rain, standing silent sentinel, as though grown, through aeons, from Earth's dark and warm moistness. Standing still, in wide-cast circle, marking rise of grassy mound to sacred place within.

Sloping gently to the sky, cold damp carpet lushly green, flat-topped hill which grows within the ring of stones, meeting-place and doorway of the mind. Ancient path circling round, follow passage of the Sun; dusk's purple haze spreads about, climb higher yet till world and care are left without.

Silent, cool, and twinkling star, shining in the soft blue sky. Listen, calm, and watch; breathe easy, rest, and still the mind.

Now gaze upon the darkening sky and mist-enshrouded Earth; where before there was form and shape and being, now is there only dark-grey shadow, hints of what might be and what has been. All space is lost; all time as sense is blind. This might be, is, the Dawn of all Creation; then, now, and to come, where all is one, where then is now and now is what might be. A shape, a form, a ray of light, twisting, bending, slowly all around, as some great knot drawn by ancient hand.

This ray of light, this spiralling beam that twists upon itself and coils about. Knowing not, you look behind, and see that where you move you leave yourself; a thousand selves, joined all in one, every movement not past but now, where time is space and curves upon itself.

And as you, so too all things; great sweeps of colour, marking motion in unending form, a web of light, a living tartan cloth where colours merge and blend, converging one upon another as paths cross now, then, and to be. The more converge, the more a shape emerges, fixed points determined by the meeting of the strands.

How then say this is this, and that is that, when clearly all is one vast woven pattern. Nor is this all. For now you see the colours are but dull reflections of a greater light. Greater not in size, for here there is no size, but in radiant glow and sparkling life.

Other, finer, strands and beams begin to play. These cannot be the trace of solid matter, but something finer, brighter, closer to the Light. And hovering here about, points of fairy light dancing on silken wing, before once more becoming lost, merging in the greater light, leaving faintest trace of where its been. Are these not thoughts, which in this place take form and shape, yet rarely bend or mould the pattern? Then great waves of colour, flooding through the web now finely wrought, changing shades and washing through the spaces in between.

Is not this vision, this backdrop to the world we daily see, the very Dance of Life, the Great Dance whose silent music guides our every step?

And as the colours merge and flow, pulsing deeply with some hidden life, so the maze-like form that holds the mind entranced dims and shrinks, swallowing into itself all that was before about. Coolness fans the face, a breath of breeze so light not one hair is moved.

See, then, the dark night sky, where before was not; come into being here, and there, till all around once more is Earth, and good clean turf beneath your feet. Trace now the steps back into Time; down spiral path toward the mist. Which parts, then fades, as level ground erupts with cold grey stone. Giant, solid, set firm in Earth's sweet grasp. Touch; feel; cold and rough, yet kind and ever there, Life within so slow that nothing can disturb, Guardian to the sacred place behind, barring all but thee.

Pass beyond the Stone and see once more the world as is, but take away the sight of that which lies beyond, beneath, behind; within the world as is, of which the world is part.