Lifted & Struck Golden in Eternity

[Guest guest]

"One day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all

and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar

where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell

buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it,

grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It

was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked

breathless by a powerful glance...I had been my whole life a bell, and

never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck."

 

~ Annie Dillard

 

 

"I was smelling flowers in the yard, and when I stood up I took a deep

breath and the blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up dead on my

back in the grass. I had apparently fainted, or died, for about sixty

seconds. My neighbor saw me but he thought I had just suddenly thrown

myself on the grass to enjoy the sun. During that timeless moment of

unconsciousness I saw the golden eternity. I saw heaven. In it

nothing had ever happened, the events of a million years ago were

just as phantom and ungraspable as the events of now, or the events

of the next ten minutes. It was perfect, the golden solitude, the

golden emptiness, Something-Or- Other, something surely humble. There

was a rapturous ring of silence abiding perfectly. There was no

question of being alive or not being alive, of likes and dislikes, of

near or far, no question of giving or gratitude, no question of mercy

or judgment, or of suffering or its opposite or anything. It was the

womb itself, aloneness, alaya vijnana the universal store, the Great

Free Treasure, the Great Victory, infinite completion, the joyful

mysterious essence of Arrangement. It seemed like one smiling smile,

one adorable adoration, one gracious and adorable charity,

everlasting safety, refreshing afternoon, roses, infinite brilliant

immaterial gold ash, the Golden Age. The "golden" came from the sun

in my eyelids, and the "eternity" from my sudden instant realization

as I woke up that I had just been where it all came from and where it

was all returning, the everlasting So, and so never coming or going;

therefore I call it the golden eternity but you can call it anything

you want. As I regained consciousness I felt so sorry I had a body

and a mind suddenly realizing I didn't even have a body and a mind

and nothing had ever happened and everything is alright forever and

forever and forever, O thank you thank you thank you."

 

~ Jack Kerouac, "The Scripture of the Golden Eternity"

 

As I Am,

 

Mzie