It’s may 6th 2023, a few hours after a full solar eclipse. I had been dreaming of late of my old abandoned miners shack where I went mad thirty years ago. I note with frustration that the local council has whitewashed the ruin for tourism. They have removed all the old tin sheets that I had gathered from other ruined mining operation. But essentially the walls and the old fire place remained in tact, a crumbling mess now of fallen stones and debris, and yet by some miracle the ash covered conclave has remained functional. It’s been a mild day weather wise and I am feeling relatively comfortable, which is when it happened. I’ve barely had time to compose my thoughts. I’ve just finished dinner, four eggs on toast, washed down by a full bottle of coke and a block of snack chocolate. Sublime, I had to work hard to patch together a sort of plastic shelter, a broad roof covering stuck together with duck tape bailing wire, before the dawning of the light, the descent of an overcast sky. It’s just as I did all those decades ago. It’s begun to rain. Everything has changed. There is no longer any urgency. A day ago I was thinking of ending it all, such a stupid idea. I don’t expect to be here that long, and yet I have some time on my hands and should attempt to make a record of my breakthrough.
Pre solar eclipse musings
Yesterday I wrote in my journal. This bush hut is a sacred place for me, it’s where it all began , and where it might inevitably end. It’s where I sought refuge from the insanity and pointlessness of my life, It’s where I opened a precarious portal into another way of being. It hasn’t been an easy journey if I am completely honest. And not without long term consequences. I was then outside of myself, hearing voices, accessing subtle vibrational frequencies, I had no idea what was coming, nor could sensed the immensity of what would redefine my life’s path. And so with lots of time on my hands, reconciled to what had probably always been an inevitable outcome, free of the distractions and routine of my mundane life, my drift into obscurity and irrelevance began. It was my mid life crisis, my chance to go inward with as much sincerity as I could muster, an honest accounting of my hopes and expectations. What is it that compelled us to endure the agonies and inner sorrows.?
Today I’ve brought with me this ever evolving a Microsoft word essay, its sort of my manifesto, a term I dislike but possibly true if I am being honest about my intentions, it’s my testimonial upon a weird life, and oh my what an agony in composition, and yet profoundly satisfying. It’s not the document of an enlightened person. It’s my story and so I have some say in how it’s being represented.
And yes as of today my entire life feels like a monumental failure, why that should have such a profound affect upon me is puzzling. Maybe deep down I had expectations. And so my narrative might be somewhat laboured, indeed the process borders upon the tragic, or the pathetic. And so here we are, and it’s feeling very much like the penultimate hour, but of course I am inclined to the over dramatic. Fully acceptable in a story of course, but somewhat troubling if it’s about my own current discomforts and dubious intentions. Who knows, and so with the aid of an old oil lamp that I hid under a tree three decades ago, let’s not get to bogged down in the quicksands of my own melancholic thoughts, and indulge a moment one of yet so many delusional episodes.
,
In the instance of the great solar eclipse I entered into a guided meditation of my own design, where I traced the steps of a luminous being into the darkening sun and beyond, led on by a figment of my imagination, along a pebbled path towards a room lit up with a translucent purple light or haze, that evoked a sublime and subtle frequency of love and peace. In these matters it’s as best to just flow with the energy and not engaged in any prearranged ideas or expectations. In that instance I traced my breath into the bellows of a purple sun, where I drank in its fire, swallowed its nectar in my throat, allowed it to consume me, wherein a lamp was lit inside me, illuminating a vision of who I really am without an assumed biography. No longer a mind, a body or even a soul, no longer even in the realms of consciousness, free even of the bounds of eternity. Led on by an unseen power beyond the differential states of light and darkness. At first I couldn’t believe what was happening, where had Johnnie gone, what indeed remained of all those former lives, the palpable memories that scaled such heights and plummeted down to irrelevance and profound obscurity. Wherein a voice in me said, “ gulp it all down, get drunk on the wine of your deepest longing because it has brought you here. And only then did I begin to stop wrestling with the darkness inside me, find the strength to knock it down, claw at it, rip it to shreds.
In the midst of this chaos I wept and understood how powerfully the world had deceived and entangled me in its spell. Of how desperately I had clung to an idea of myself that was ever and always in a state of slow decomposition, how desperately my thoughts were anchored in steel chains, where not even the shadow of the things I loved could endure when I am dead. Only then did my soul cry out. Awake, and own your true Self ?
My return to peace has been a long and weary journey filled with despair and many disappointment. And yet a moment ago all the agony and loneliness of it began to make sense. For ever we come, for ever we go. For ever, day and night, we are on the move. Back and forth, For ever bound in these rounds of birth and death. From nothingness to nothingness. And yet as “day follows night” Our souls sense that there is something more for us to know, which cannot all be meaningless. And so I’ve decided to listen.
And so here we are, days after the inevitable event, still fully absorbed in the tender warmth of what has happened, profoundly aware that something significant and long standing had shifted, which is somewhat frustrating in terms of my montague manuscript, which I suspect had articulated a somewhat self absorbed and bewildered summary of my life and thoughts.
The eclipse experience, has activated a radical shift on the path to a greater sense of wholeness. It has deconstructed a blind faith in the ego’s offerings. Instead, it’s been the opportunity to place my trust in an inner or higher power. And yet maybe the subliminal seeds of these realisations were always there, unperceived by myself in the broader essay.
fantastic jb its worked perfectly