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Order this writing in the collection book Unlocking the Mysteries available for only $1795 |
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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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Ready To See
Mark Joseph Kiewlak
It began when I heard the church bells ringing in the middle of the night. I got up out of bed and went out into the street. There was no movement, no sound. Only the bells to guide me. The world was frozen in place and I did not think this strange.
I opened the door and saw that the lights were on, that the body of the church was crowded with people. I tried to think of what holiday it could be, but none came to mind. I couldn’t find a seat. There was not one empty space.
Then a little girl with dark hair stepped out into the aisle and walked back to where I stood. She took me by the hand and led me further back to empty pews that I had not seen before. She sat beside me with many empty rows between the rest of the congregation and us. Her hair was pulled back in a fancy bow and her gown was black and velvety. Candles were burning all around.
“Sit here until you’re ready,” she said.
She knelt forward and I did the same, hands clasped before me. The others were all in the same posture, with heads bowed. No one was speaking.
I waited and then the sound of the bells abruptly ceased. I turned toward the girl. “What is all this?” I said.
She looked at me as if the answer was obvious and I was a moron for not knowing it.
“It’s the end of the world,” she said.
I paused for just a moment before I took her by the wrist, stood up, and led her out into the cold. I noticed now that I was wearing my pajamas and slippers from home. The world around us still wasn’t moving.
“I’m not going back in there,” I said. “And neither are you, until I understand what’s going on here.”
She slipped her arm free of my grip and smoothed her gown beneath her as she sat down on the cold concrete of the church steps. She hugged herself, huddling forward and rubbing her bare arms to stay warm. And as she did this, she seemed to me a very old soul in possession of this little girl’s body.
“What were you doing,” she said, “just before you came here?”
I stared down the length of the empty dark street. “I’d rather not say,” I said.
She rocked a little, back and forth.
“Oh, I already know what you were doing,” she said. “But it’s important to have you say it, so we can get this thing started.”
The light around the street lamps formed a succession of motionless halos dwindling out of sight. There was no sound in the world but that of my voice.
“I was waiting to die,” I said.
It had been with me everywhere these past few weeks — the intimation that everything in my life was about to change. I had turned away from this feeling as best I could, in order to live my daily life, but it just kept getting stronger. So much so that I had spent the past few days settling my affairs and saying my good-byes. And then, just a few moments ago, as I prepared for bed, I was filled with the sensation that the end was near. That there was nothing else in front of me. Nothing left to accomplish here. I knew I was ready to move on.
“And so you have,” the little girl said.
I knew I had not spoken aloud.
“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “Now please concentrate. It’s coming into focus now.”
I sat down next to her, but I wouldn’t close my eyes. It seemed important not to do that.
“We’re moving on,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“But how did I know that?” I said. “Where did that thought come from?”
She shivered a little and smiled slyly to herself.
“From your greater self,” she said.
I felt doors opening inside of me, chains falling away, locks being released.
“You knew about this,” she said. “You knew that you were a part of a greater whole, an aspect of something that you could never quite grasp. But you knew it was there just the same.”
I watched her in profile as she spoke with wisdom beyond her years, and I tried to feel the words, to let them change me, but the larger part of me still resisted. There was a strand of hair hanging down over her forehead and I wanted to reach over and tuck it back behind her ear.
“Why here?” I said. “Why was I led here?”
“This is a sacred place. A holy place.”
I glanced behind me at the towering spires. The fog, too, was motionless.
“But I stopped practicing this religion a long time ago.”
She smiled her sly smile again. “You have it backwards,” she said. “You seem to think that this is a holy place because of what’s been built here. But this has been built here only because it was already a holy place. A gathering point of energy. A nexus of vitality.”
“What about the others in there? Are we the last ones left? What’s happened to the world? Why is everything so quiet, so still?”
She was beginning to shake now from the cold. I wasn’t sure what to do. I had no coat to give her.
“They’re all here for the same reason you are,” she said. “Because they’re ready.”
“Ready to die?”
She shook her head.
“Nobody dies,” she said.
“Nobody dies?”
“It’s a safe universe,” she said.
I felt myself again just within reach of what she was saying, but I couldn’t close the gap.
“This isn’t the end of the world at all,” I said.
“No.”
“Then why did you tell me that it was?”
“At that particular moment it was the only answer that you could understand. The only belief that would lead you forward.”
“You still haven’t explained what’s happened to the world,” I said.
She got to her feet and glanced toward the sky.
“Nothing has happened,” she said. “It’s still there, just as you remember it. And you’re still there, too. The You that you remember. A part of you is still that person. But this part of you isn’t.”
The absence of sound was adding weight and resonance to everything she said.
“Many parts of you carry memories,” she said, “of many other parts.”
I felt indecisive suddenly, as if I couldn’t move at all from the cold concrete until my understanding was resolved.
“So this is a new Me?” I said.
“On a new adventure.”
“I’ve just been created?”
“Not yet,” she said. “You’re holding things up.”
“Inside the church, you mean.”
She nodded.
“And you’re out here freezing to death, a lovable little girl, to give me further incentive to go back inside and do whatever it is I have to do.”
“Now you’re catching on,” she said. I could hear her teeth chattering.
“I’ll go back in,” I said. “But first I need to know who set all of this up.”
She walked past me and climbed the stairs and held the door open for me.
“You did,” she said.
I followed her back to the same pew we had occupied before. We knelt forward.
“You’re still not ready,” she said.
“Why not?”
“You’re beginning to understand, but you don’t yet believe.”
I kept my voice to a whisper.
“What is it exactly that I’m supposed to believe in?”
She smiled her sly smile and said not a word. She placed her hand atop my arm and I closed my eyes automatically, without thinking.
I saw my life as one long progression into becoming. But becoming what? What I did for a living was of no consequence. Character is not built on such things. I tried as best I could to bring joy to those around me. I had at some point taken ultimate responsibility for my own life. No one could make me sad. No one could make me happy, but that I allowed for it. It was all up to me. I had learned to focus only on the moment at hand, and to create freely, with only the best of all possible outcomes held in my mind for each endeavor in which I took part. I had been happy and satisfied with all that the world had provided me, each unique experience, but there was, always on the periphery, a power inherent in this understanding that I shied away from. I felt not worthy of what it was telling me, for it was telling me that there was only goodness surrounding me, only grace. And because I could not accept this, I had concocted demons, manifested them in all forms around me. I knew of a perfection that caused me pain because the world kept spinning it out of my grasp. But I could make the world stop, if need be. And I had.
We all had that power.
“Open your eyes,” she said.
I opened my eyes and everyone was gone.
“Go outside,” she said. “Your final steps.”
I made my way to the door and was disappointed to find the world still frozen in place. I stepped out into the middle of the street.
And then it began.
New senses that I had previously been aware of only in dreams were inundating my consciousness. As the world began to move again I could feel the energy of everything. I could flow with it if I chose, lose myself inside it, or I could stay outside the flow just enough to maintain awareness, to watch the sun burn away the fog, to play with the light and the heat that it brought. I was awestruck by the way in which each surface, each substance, each atom reacted to one another.
Everything was alive!
I could paint with sounds. I could become the elements. I could fly!
And the others I had seen were there too, moving at a new vibration to the world. We weren’t even separate anymore. There was a link across space and time, which weren’t even real. The universe was a playground to me. And I was a child forever.
I saw her then, coming down the church steps, the little girl in the black velvety gown. I smiled at her and acknowledged, without speaking, all that she had helped me to understand. She nodded and gave me that sly smile one last time.
“It was always there in front of you,” she said. “It was just a question of when you were ready to see.”
