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| Milling |
Justin woke at two-thirty in the morning, but he came very close to drifting off again by three-thirty. By then his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the streetlight casting thin bars of light on the walls seemed so bright that he began to realize that attempting to sleep was probably just an exercise in futility. At that moment, he had the sense, as perhaps most people do when approaching old age, that he hadn’t accomplished much with his life, and he knew then with regretful certainty that he wouldn’t sleep anymore, thanks to that thought. Oddly, though, Justin suspected that even if he had become emperor, he would still feel the same lack of satisfaction, a thought which, though giving him a strange and unexpected sense of liberation, did not help him get back to sleep.
As these thoughts were whirling around in his head, Justin heard a woman screaming and cursing as if from deep inside a cave, and he believed for a moment, irrationally of course, that his thoughts had somehow caused her to despair. Like attracts like, and Justin suspected that he felt comfortable around people who cannot hide the damage that life has done to them. That was no doubt one reason that he had ended up in Sin City, a place where the damaged, one step away from homelessness or jail, came to hide or die, or in rare cases, recover. Originally known as the El Dorado District, Sin City had the highest poverty rate in the state. Celia, the drunk in Apt. 105, occasionally howled and screamed her regrets in the early morning hours until the police or an ambulance arrived, so Justin knew he wasn't dreaming. The people in his apartment complex just couldn't hide their strangeness, which was strangely comforting to him. Shirley, downstairs, a housewife, was anorexic, a living skeleton who always had a friendly smile, as if no one could see her condition. Kevin next door would take half a bottle of baby aspirin for a rush if he didn’t have any crank. Albert, who was terribly obese, had boasted that he had dodged the police once already for credit card fraud--Albert had loaded what little furniture he owned into his station wagon and disappeared one night. His rent three months over due, Jackson, a small, sickly man, loaded over twenty rifles into his van at two in the morning and drove off, never to be seen again.
Justin shared an interest in music with his next-door neighbor Tom, the wildest-looking man Justin had ever encountered, and they jammed together occasionally in Tom’s living room--Tom's entire apartment containing only a mattress, two chairs, and a motorcycle. Justin had the urge to offer something that might help them in some way, but he was always afraid that he would look presumptuous if he tried to help, so he usually just remained polite.
And in the early morning hours, he would sometimes hear what seemed to be a howl from one apartment which then morphed into pained, ecstatic groans from another, so that he wasn’t quite sure how to react. The voices would fade away or stop before he could tell where they were coming from. Even though they might have been coming from next door, the voices seemed far off, from another world, like the voices in his head that sometimes told him what would happen that day or decades later. Justin suddenly recalled the time he was lounging next to a remote mountain stream with a friend when he heard a man close by singing in another language. Justin exclaimed, “Wow, that’s incredible,” and ran down the stream to find the singer, leaving his friend behind. Justin couldn’t find anyone else even though the singer seemed to be right on the other side the creek, belting out one perfect song after another. A few months later, Justin mentioned the singer to his friend, and his friend looked at him and asked, “Are you crazy? What the hell are you talking about?” Justin secretly concluded that he had heard an angel, but he didn't mention it to anyone else. Other people in the apartment complex were like Justin, in a way. They weren’t sure what they were hearing, if anything at all, so they didn’t get involved, even if a stranger ran naked and screaming down the stairs in broad daylight right in front of them.
At first light, moans and curses turned into blood-curdling screams. Justin peered out his window to see an old woman strapped down to a stretcher, clawing the air, weeping and groaning as she was wheeled out to an ambulance.
Peter had stepped out into the courtyard to observe. Justin stepped out of the door behind Peter. "The most vulnerable are already starting to lose it. That’s what happens when the owner raises the rent thirty percent. Most people here, I suspect, are already a month or two behind."
"May dad says she's just a crazy old drunk. Is that true?" Peter asked.
"Yep, but that old gal has suffered a lot in her time. She was once a music teacher who lost her job after slapping an incorrigible child--at least that's the story she told me. Other people have told me that after she lost her job she started drinking heavily and neglected her own child, who was eventually taken away from her. Then she started drinking even more and resorting to prostitution. I once invited her to my apartment for dinner because she looked like she needed a decent meal. She didn’t touch a thing I served, and later she started asking me what I really wanted. I told her that I just wanted her to feel better, and she started weeping bitterly and insisted that I wanted something from her. She finally just went home."
Peter dashed over to the woman and grabbed her hand. The old woman, who had been screaming and moaning, suddenly relaxed and closed her eyes as Peter comforted her.
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| Vision |
"Sure, come on over," Cashing motioned to his apartment.
"You see, I’ve had other visions too," Peter mentioned when they got inside.
"I should have known! Go on."
"Well, once I had a vision of a golden, equal-armed cross. Then I had a vision of a golden crown on my head. Another time I had a vision of a golden plate and chalice on a brilliant white tablecloth. They all seemed to go together. When I had these visions, I felt like these things were not just for me but for everybody. What do you think they mean?"
"What do you think they mean? That’s what’s important," Cashing insisted.
"I think they are all good things that we all have inside us," Peter said.
"Very good things indeed," Cashing replied.
"Why do you think everything was golden?"
"Well, gold, because it is incorruptible, is often a symbol of the spirit. White, by the way, not only symbolizes purity--it also suggests unity since white is a combination of all the colors."
Peter continued, "Last night I started imagining the people I know with a golden crown on their head, a golden cross in their heart, all seated at a table with a white tablecloth, covered with golden plates and chalices. I felt like I was helping them somehow."
Cashing looked Peter in the eye, "Well, maybe you did help them in one way. It seems to me that you were seeing them all as magnificent spiritual beings with divine harmony in their hearts, seated at a banquet of spiritual abundance. Just looking at other people that way helps you to have more reverence for them."
Peter looked seriously at Cashing. "But it seemed like more than that. Like these symbols were magical and were actually helping them. I don’t know how to explain it."
"You mean that concentrating on these symbols was actually affecting those people somehow, as if we are all connected to each other on some level?"
"Yeah. Let me tell you about something else," Peter paused for a moment. "I’ve had a vision of a black cross too, a real cross, the kind you see everywhere, not an equal-armed cross."
Cashing smiled, "You mean a Calvary cross?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I imagined giving all of my pain and all of the bad things I’ve done to it. I could see all the blackness leaving me and going into this cross, and then I felt much better. It was like magic."
Cashing looked surprised. "Okay, wait a second. You’re suggesting that these symbols exist in some other dimension but that we can use them here in our lives? I have to confess that I’ve never thought of using archetypes in quite that way before. In other words, the black cross exists on a different plane to take away our sin and suffering and create harmony in our lives. It would have to be the astral plane, by the way, because that is where the archetypes and symbols appear in picture form for our subconscious mind. According to our occult friends, the higher spiritual planes are formless."
Peter looked puzzled.
"Okay, wait a minute," Cashing blurted out. "I’ll be right back." Cashing trotted to a closet in his bedroom and came back with a book.
Cashing held up the book. "This is a picture of the Tree of Life, a very ancient glyph, or composite symbol. Legend has it that an angel gave it to humanity. Notice that in the center of the Tree there is a yellow sun, and in the center of the sun is a black Calvary cross. This central sphere with the cross is the Christ center, the center of equilibrium. I think I understand what you're saying--by God, the black cross is literally a magical symbol. If you’re right, savior figures have experienced the archetypal sacrifice to establish the black cross in the center of equilibrium, the sphere of balance, and it remains there for all of humanity. In other words, we can give our negative energy to the cross in order to re-establish balance and harmony in our lives. I had considered it as essentially a symbol of the transmutation of force into form, or vice versa, depending on which way you are travelling, up or down on the Tree. The sun is not only a symbol of life--it is a symbol of purification, the cross within the sun symbolizing the cleansing of the soul. Why, this is, at least, a wonderful idea!"
"Anyway I was thinking that we could use it to help other people. I don’t mean your average person who is doing all right. I mean like that old woman who might die or go crazy or something."
"You mean we shouldn’t try to help a person unless the person can’t help herself?"
"Yeah, something like that. I mean maybe you only have the right to use it without asking if somebody is really in trouble. You might also have the right to use it without asking if somebody is going to harm you or a lot of other people, you know, someone like the landlord."
"We have to respect free will, in other words? We shouldn’t interfere with someone else’s karma unless we can keep something really terrible from happening?"
"Yeah, something like that."
Cashing wiped his eyes. "You know, some people believe that interfering with another person's karma has bad consequences, even if you're trying to help that person, so we need to be careful. What do you propose that we do?"
"I don't know if that's true, but there is one thing that I would like to try. Maybe we could meditate together, and we could ask the Christ force to take the blackness away from the old woman. Then we could imagine the blackness leaving her body and going into the cross and her whole being filling with light. Then maybe we could do the same for the landlord."
"That is a beautiful idea. I’m willing to try it. Unfortunately, right now I have a few things to take care of. Can you come back in an hour or so?"
Peter nodded.
"Great," Cashing said. "Why not try it--you know, it couldn't hoit."
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