The Weekly Report Cornerstone

   WEEK 45 Oct 27th to November 2nd 2003

   A NIGHT IN THE FOREST

   A Samhain special edition

   by Amos Keppler

   Halloween, Samhain night me and three other friends went deep into the forest. We didn't feel for the usual empty headed and empty "celebration". We were sick and tired of looking for life, for spirituality among the walking dead. So we took off.
   I have strived a bit to put it all into words. How do you describe what cannot really be described? How can words supplant what cannot be supplanted?
   We all experienced what happened differently. My experience is that this is usually the case. But we agree on certain things, on the key ingredients. We went into the forest. We walked a well-known path, one we had walked many times before. The one thing we did differently this time, at least initially was to start on the rituals before entering the forest. It was a hunch, an instinct. I have learned to trust my hunches, my instincts, even though they can be treacherous, or easily misunderstood in this modern world.
   So we did the "opening" thingie. We opened our inside. That's what the witch does, bring to the outside what is inside, embracing the outside, embracing oneself. "I am open", we said. "I am open for the world, for the other world, this world, the vast alien fields from which we spring". I felt it, the change in the Earth and the Sky. I always feel it, to a certain degree, but tonight it was almost pervasive, a thick musk in the air. I heard the voices, the voices of spirits. I always hear it. That's what a Shaman does, talking to, communing with spirits. But tonight I could almost make out words (that aren't words).
   We entered the forest, the vast alien fields from which we spring. We felt the destruction. We felt nature constantly attempting to counteract it. A war is going on, at least on one level. But entropy will win, it always does. That's one singular truth most present day people don't get. And thus they are alienating themselves... from nature... from themselves. We sensed it, in an almost physical way. We died, we lived. And that was only the first few steps into the forest. And then we passed any of the petty considerations dominating the present day world, the world of manifestations, of destruction. And entropy embraced us, and we Lived. It's an amazing feeling, to die, and then to live. Once again our feet touched the forest bed for the first time. Once again we breathed its air, its mystery and creation for the first time. We were still the same people that had entered the forest a few seconds earlier. We merely noticed so much more of ourselves, of what we truly are.
   And what we are, is Shadow. Other people met us. We talked to them, sometimes by moving our lips, sometimes not. They walked by our side, sometimes on the forest trail, sometimes they were "nothing" but shapes between the trees. They were transparent and so were we. By now we were deep inside the forest and seconds had turned to hours to days and years, and everything had happened so fast, from one blink of an eye to the next. Most people insist on drinking or ingesting something, anything, insisting on the use of crutches, fearing they will not achieve anything without it. it can have its uses, I know that, but nothing beats the moments when these experiences... invade you without it. All we did was a few preparations that often doesn't work, and we were there. Entropy embraced us, and we were scouting the next world, the wastelands so "close" to our own. That is the beginning, what is usually scaring most unwilling Travelers beyond their wits, making them run for the nearest padded cell. Spirits, all kinds are roaming the wastelands. You can't avoid them there, as you can usually do "here". This is the next world, the waiting room for the infinity, eternity Beyond. And it's all the same anyway. A fire is burning in the wet forest. We're sitting in a circle, holding hands, not holding hands. Dust is flowing in the dry air. This is the desert, the flooded land. Everything has ended here, even those that never began. Everything begins here, even those travels never started. What we know as the physical universe is just one grain of dust here. We have passed through it, an eternity ago, a glance, a moment in our eternal existence. The forest is pervasive around us. The forest is everywhere. "We go", one of us says. One of us four, one of us four hundred, nothing compared to the millions, the legion we are.
   And then the wasteland is nothing but a memory. There is no Guide tonight. We guide ourselves, both because we don't have any choice, and because we want to. There is Chaos, and we are Lost. One moment we are gone, the other we are more Here than ever before. It's so hard to focus, when all your senses are being bombarded by thousand suns, when focusing means noticing a million things simultaneously. This is the moment scaring the shit out of some who haven't been scared shitless before. There is a mirror somewhere. I see myself from infinite angles. I see the true me, the Shadow. And I am everything, the creator and destroyer of worlds. I am God. I am one god. Such considerations turn meaningless. Scale is meaningless. Time is a dustbin in some place left behind long ago. Yes, this is actualization, this is creation. Every moment is alive with possibilities. My friends are still with me, at least two of them, I can't sense the two others. And there are others. We are connected, but we are not One. I can sense this just as clearly as I can sense myself. I know them, but they are not me. A billion years later, and they are gone, and the universe we met is dust, and an even vaster reality reveals itself, one I have just glimpsed on other Travels. Thoughts are so fast now, that everything happens simultaneously. This is reality, hyperreality, the Universe as it "really" is. Even though there are always new places to experience, this is what most people are hiding from. This is not an end-station, it's not the beginning.
   It just is.
   Thoughts, actions are perception. Perception is reality. It is a forest, a maze, an Invisible Labyrinth. This is us. This is who we are. We are the ant contemplating the Universe. We are the Universe contemplating the ant. This doesn't put us at the center of creation, because there is no center, there is no creation. It doesn't put us at some backwards part of reality, because there is no backwards part of reality. We are Human Beings. We are not servants. We are not masters. No one created us. We created ourselves. We were born on Earth, and we will always belong there, just like we are Here, belong here. There are no contradictions.
   I write down words on a piece of paper in the dark pit of the woods. I write on the wall of eternity, and it's all the same. We sit here in the cold night sweating, and the cold isn't touching us. The cold and the heat is riding us like a dragon, the firespitting dragon riding between stars, between clusters of universes by our feet. This is realization, this is an Opening. And like an ever-growing tree we keep branching out, also in the space between the branches. The image of Yggdrasil, the world tree is the closest one can come to describe what cannot be described.
   Slowly, slowly we return to what we were, what we are not so long ago. This looks like the same universe we left, but it isn't. It's just sort of familiar, one we have created to be born, to die. Again. Awareness fails us, and we die, second by second as we shed our wings, as they start growing anew. Yes, we are birds flying in the night. We are Phoenix rising from our own ashes, and there will always be the wings, there will always be the bird.
   From the desert night the Phoenix came. To the desert it will one day return.
   The wind is blowing, shaking the treetops, shaking us to our very foundation. We sit there by the fire in the forest, an early autumn morning, coincidently about "ten hours" from "when" we left, so much more than we were.
   We will always be.

  

  

  

  

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Entered 2003-11-02