Memories of Truth

In our tiny corner of the labyrinth, where we store all the memories and the thoughts of times that have passed, where our small collection of recurring chambers is worked through over and over, shifting emphasis and color but remaining essentially the same, like a set of motifs in a minimalist symphony… here we find ourselves alone. Here we imagine we determine what happens, much like a kid in a movie theater might jump up and ask the character on the screen to do something else, to change, to save themselves… and much like the kid, no matter how much we scream and call out, the action will continue, the movie remains the same. In this corner we are and from this corner we look out. And frames follow each other, one by one, engraved eternal pictures that we have seen a million times before.
Into this space there may come a disruption, a shift, a touch of blinding light and burning radiation. It may come in the form of a man, a woman, a group of people… it will hurt as it twists the very fabric of reality around you, turning things upside down, bringing a real change, introducing scenes into the movie that have never happened… scenes that were never seen before. Such a disruption is shattering, the "I" that was previously alone is now forced to realize that there is something else out there, some real "other" that stands outside the theater, something that can reach in and touch… it can caress and it can hurt… but its ultimate shock resides in its very existence. That initial encounter with an Other Intelligence… with real Being outside the boundaries of our small cinema of illusions…will burn like cosmic fire that incinerates your most secret assumptions, your most closely held beliefs. And it will echo through time, like a deep gong that never stops vibrating, that resonates loudly though every scene even if the movie has now started again and its finding its way back to where it left off.
The form that this encounter took is ultimately irrelevant. It is the form it had to take in order to come into contact with you. You were in the right place at the right time… and the right place and the right time was the form that the Other took. The encounter is True beyond any other truth and it will always be true and it has always been true… it cannot be otherwise.
It is a mistake to then assume that this True moment comes only in that one form. As we rise from our slumber we may hold on to that one belief, that one shred of ego identification that will bind us to the theater and to our history: the form of the True encounter. We may review it endlessly, ever so gradually shifting it and changing it in our minds, and with each pass, the identification will become more solid and our attention will become more hopelessly bound.
Being so bound, we will predetermine, measure and define the validity of the experience of others based on the Form that we experienced. "If they are not doing what I am doing, then what they are doing cannot be True… it cannot be Real. I know what Real is like." As time passes, and the moment of life that disrupted your dreams becomes a dream memory in itself, as we rewrite it in our minds and it becomes another fixture along with an old photo album and some dusty mementos, this thought becomes stronger and it forms an iron lock that prevents any new intrusion from the Other. How can the Other intrude? The eternal and infinite Intelligence that is forever changing and alive, the Chaotic maelstrom that extends beyond any hope of comprehension, beyond the outer reaches of your most fragmented nightmares and dreams… how can this touch you when you now believe that you know what form it will come in? How can a door be opened that has been sealed shut forever with a Real Memory of Truth?