The Irrepressible Life

  Time alone for a year in an open place; a new world where more can be gained by what cannot be grasped. You have taken the bravest step. Entered where few dare to go. You stand now in a land so transparent both sides of infinity meet. The veil between heaven and earth but a fading vapour. A mountainous land, above an emerald winding river bordered by dark beech forest, where the passage of time and possibility has taken you into such acceptance and extraordinary levels of living that the world becomes better off for your having entered it. You are immersed in a vast expansion of life: illumined, long desired in waiting, closed-eye-taken on an extension of your inner–innermost journey, re-enthused, re-inspired alight in the land walled with mirrors. Now you know, the way of wisdom.

  You never actually know what will happen next, being as you are brought by a way in which you know not: led in paths you have not known that the unknown might be made visible before you. Life lived in the spirit is thrilling transforming, and whatever does happen next is, for you, having passed through the air between worlds and sifted of all harm.

  Back in March, 2019, while driving in the South Island of New Zealand I encountered the living truth of all that I had been writing about and had one of those experiences that forever after are always present. The beauty of the natural world all around, touched and broke me, and for a moment there was no barrier between: the thinness, complete. And I saw and heard; and it completely transformed me. The Lindis Pass, which forms the divide, the boundary between the Waitaki District and Central Otago lifted me through and beyond: the whole region of the approach to the Pass majestic, ascendant . . . glorious. The Pass is above the tree-line. Not even a single bush there; or, any plant taller than another. In every direction you look, the mountains are spread with a rich cloak; its colour, an infusion of saffron, copper and gold; its texture like the fur of a lion; its sound a hush: a suede mantle composed entirely of native tussock and brown grass and its effect is magical because there is no other colour.

  I could do nothing but stare at this wonder as I drove slowly along. As the beauty encompassed me, and then entered; I suddenly saw through. My son came to me. I briefly saw him; and glimpsed too the life he lived above; he had never breathed the air of this world. I had not remembered him in years, or so I thought, yet here he was with, warmth, reaching out with flowing forgiveness and love, total and utter. I seemed to know that I must write his story. More, that I had needed to write it; or, that I already had but hadn’t understood it. Now it was given me in a moment; and in tears. As the illumined truth sank in and hit base: a deep sobbing . . . an agony from out of the unknown that was known: Love, bending me, gripping, clutching… and meeting… same… crying and imploding… a destroying consuming ecstasy in being known… known… and loved? Deep inside…. Yes… and a tumbling cartwheel of joy tipped me upside down, and over and over, laughing! Laughing and crying, together: being together: the All desire of every wounded heart. The sun met the earth and its rays warmed and melted it.

At the summit of the Lindis Pass, I reached back for my beautiful wardrobe notebook and began writing my son’s astonishing tale and his message to the world of a love, so great, it had not yet, even entered our consciousness.

  I could only scribble short notes, at the time. The light, the joy, mostly hid inside, not conceptualized in my head but somewhere greater. But such was the depth of the inspiration given that I was kept continually focused: flooded with new and developing understanding as his story unfolded before me, day after day. It infused my travels along uplifting strands of ozone, undulating light, raising and lowering; still, taking in, in waves, the entering enigmatic beauty of a nearerland. Beside me, even now as I write, the wardrobe notebook, signs, looks up at me, open; its endpapers the same golden bright irrepressible colour as the lion of the Lindis Pass.

  The day after we arrived home in the Far North, I opened my laptop and watched my fingers fly over the keys, as I saw Raef’s life play out in front of me. Every writing day I had only to sit at my desk, the screen before me, and believe the inspiration would continue to weave the story I could perceive in my spirit to touch and bring forth the reality it portrayed there. The intricacies of the warp and weft of the fabric of Raef’s life became for me a continuing effortless joy. Linking me with that ethereal handloom of the something more beforehand, where the threads of the warp are strong with truth, and the weft, gentle with a fathomless love. The afterlife was always before, and in the meeting place, the true one.

  The weaving being formed had a sound; a voice, not like the clattering loom of earth, but soft and mystical, as uplifting as an Aeolian harp played upon by the wind of the spirit. To say that this manuscript, wove, or wrote itself is an understatement; for when I read back to see what I had written, I realized that many of its paragraphs were deeper than anything I could invent.

   Raef’s book, took nearly a year to write and spirit edit. When it was finished, I sent it (early January, 2020) to a literary consultant: a well-known New Zealand author and former literary agent. ‘. . . an impressive piece of work.’ Comments were encouraging. I made the adjustments recommended and towards the end of March submitted the manuscript to the Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust Awards; Auckland, 2020: the Mind Body Spirit Unpublished Manuscript Award that the consultant had suggested might be the next step. I am shortly to attend their Awards winner announcements and prize giving: knowing I didn’t make it. My novel, themed on fathoming solitude and the afterlife with living exponential evidence of the something more beforehand was probably not what they were wanting! Having too small a field of interest, perhaps; or, too avant-garde. More light more life: spiritually literary content written in spirit; there being no other way to communicate, that which worked. More could be gained from what couldn’t be grasped.  Literary fiction, buoyed active synchronistically exploring the fourth dimension inworked in innocence in the fifth element: so, not commercial fiction, per se; and such a book would probably be too hard to find a publisher for; which was the conclusion my literary consultant had reached in his summary in his written report on my manuscript. Quintessence, agile scary blew mind away.  

   So, I have not even looked for a publisher. Though, principally, this is because the whole commercial world: marketing, sales, and promotion, etc, with all it entails is too daunting for me; and in all of me, I want nothing to do with it. I am a reclusive writer, and a broken hearted poet. So, my twenty unpublished books and I remain in our hermitage. But, like any other writer, I cannot ever lose the dream of being read.

I won’t say much about the emergent multilayered plot of my novel; or, give you a synopsis. (BELOW, is my imaginary publishers’ back cover blurb; which is all you get, anyway, when you pick up a book.) I have chosen all along to make this article, personal; and, now, more so: sharing with you what cannot be fully discerned from my manuscript, testifying to this: that Raef’s story, which came so irrepressibly out of a literal golden world is tied to my own life by one wrong act. But, my long-ago, grievous action, followed by years of buried guilt and remorse was washed away and completely turned around when I saw him. My tiny baby, whose life had been taken, his life never died, I saw him as an alive, adult! He was happy! Fulfilled, complete, filled, and so lovingly intimately, aware, educated, lacking nothing! Life never dies, it only changes. So, tears had shone, lifted to smiles and cartwheels of joy. Loss had become love’s gain. Tragedy, purposed from the beginning by infinite love was for infinite reasons, infinitely good! Truly we do not know the half of what has been prepared for those who love and accept the truth against themselves.

  ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit:   for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.’  1 Corinthians 2: 9, 10

  As I became more and more willing to accept the truth against myself: loving authentic living enough, for it to search me out, find me in those lightless places within    to meet and know me there, the light shined, and love and delight increased and I began to discover that the natural world all around was communicating with me, lovingly, personally, intimately. If, that is, I was listening, and two improbable things happened at the same time:  If, the eyes of my soul were focused and in alignment with the eyes of my spirit in the marriage of truth and love willing to be broken, again . . . and again . . . and again . . . to be found in it, the light. The pain: the joy. The dividing work: the ecstatic joining. The penetration: to meet. The irresistible Lapidary honing perfection, the ceaseless attrition to find his face. His tool: a feather. The seed in the jar, it cannot grow until it has split apart.