1991-ish...
"What are you Here to know?"
In a silent white space is where I found myself. Not hearing. Not listening. Not knowing. I walked forward into the endless white space of this place...just forward with no thought and no intent. Then a small black dot was ahead. Like a single black blemish in this perfect land of peaceful nothing and I just gave it notice and continued to walk.
A skinny black figure was there. His eyes gentle with wisdom and deep with mischief but eyes that I somehow knew and loved right away. I stood there looking into them, tracing the outline of his face, his nappy grey hair... his wrinkled yellow linen shirt hung on his frame like a tea stain and a pair of old ankles in shiny black shoes. A perfect crease in his pant leg and the eyes, never moving their fix on me as I looked over this familiar figure in the white. He was content to let me have my look. Patient until I was ready. A bow tie was wrapped around his neck and I just knew somehow that his love had tied that for him. Then I wondered if I knew how to tie a bow tie?
I managed a small smile after a while ... but he didn't move or shift his gaze from me. He wasn't smoking anything but there seemed to be a corn cob pipe in between his lips, is what I was thinking. I was content to let him have his look also. I noticed the knobs in his bony knees bent over the edge of that straight back chair and it was funny to me that I really didn't see the chair at all either... just him in it.
"Well my dear, you've come with a question for me" He finally said. I managed the smile but waited for him to speak first. It just seemed proper that way. Had I come here with a question I wondered? Or was he telling me I had?
"May I know something Mister?" I whispered after a moment. Not fearful to ask, but perhaps a bit fearful he might say yes.
"Speak your question Little One. What are you Here to know?"
I paused there. Somehow, I knew it was only one question that I could ask...only one... and I knew he would have the answer... and I knew it would be the only answer. What was I here to know?
For the first time ever that I could recall, I continued my pause and he was content to wait. We were there for a few minutes more and I almost wished to myself that he would prompt me again to speak my question, but he didn't. He only sat patiently waiting for me to voice it. I think he might have sat there for hours and perhaps days more if he needed to... and now that I had uttered the whisper to begin with, I knew I would have to answer his question with my question... there was no turning back on that one. I somehow knew that much.
I wanted to proceed with care... somehow I knew this would be a most important question, even if I had yet to know what I was here to know. I indulged in a moment more and let his soft voice run through my head again... working up my nerve and hoping that my mind might think of it soon....
"Speak your question Little One. What are you Here to know" echoed into my mind and then before I knew it, one word came to me. Only one. I didn't even know if it was proper for me to answer his question with such a question but... I managed it out anyway.
"Everything?" ... I requested in a humble and soft but shaky voice. Before I could stop myself it just came forward and I wasn't sure why I even wanted to stop myself, except that I had the flash of thought that maybe it was a bit much to ask. Before I was even sure I was ready and after I had stood there before Him with such care, there it was... my question to His question.
There was no motion from the skinny Black Monk after that... and I don't know if he really was a Monk or not but it seemed proper that he might be. His eyes never moving their fix from mine and now mine fixed on his. Eyes so dark they were like the deepest part of midnight, just like mine and then it was as though we were the same. I know I had no thought after that. Just silently waiting for His answer to my question and he was content to take his Time. So there we were, midnight fixed to midnight in the perfect peace of this white space. I knew He was giving it good consideration...
Then with no sound, no wind and motion out of no motion, he raised one hand from behind his back. I hadn't noticed it was tucked there until he pulled it forward... and in it, one piece of paper that he gently tossed into the white air of this place.
That was the moment that the midnight faded and my eyes moved to the paper following it's flight with no Wind behind it. It was proper, now that I had asked and that He had answered, that I looked to it. Without thinking, I knew this to be True.
It floated high at first. Gentle like a little white feather caught on an afternoon breeze... and there was only peaceful silence in my mind, I remembered that. As it neared the level of my eyes, the colors began. Then the silent music and the motionless sound of His wind that carried it. I could hear that silence... I remembered that too. I could see the colors dance out from the center of that paper like a magical spiral and spirals within that. Worlds of Universe in speckles of colored dust... and then, like where I started when I first saw Him, there was indeed Everything in one small dot. I was standing on it and it was a really, really long way down...
My life has never been the same. Which life was that to begin with I ask myself these days? This is all I could remember when I woke up in a frantic panic to capture His answer and I remember a husband back then, next to me in the bed, shaking me awake before I was completely ready. "Honey, you're dreaming again...wake up."
That was many years ago. Lifetimes ago maybe, I'm not quite sure. I never got a chance to write down that answer and I sat wondering for years what it might have been. Actually, the truth is that the Monk followed me thru time and reminded me every now and again, that I had asked Him to know something....and He was due my memory of His answer.
How odd to me that I could clearly remember the dream, clearly remember the Monk and clearly remember myself asking... but His answer faded away, like the midnight, when I was forced awake. Ever undo a golf ball and unwind that strand of rubber band inside of it? It was kind of like that. One question, one answer and a lifetime to undo that rude awakening. Now I think I remember it though. Just like I wrote here in this journal of another white space. Right after having to wake up again in another lifetime. How many Times has this sleep been? How many Times did I think I was awake again?
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