The Gate of No Gates

This is the key.
Right now.
This moment, in this body, is the key to the kingdom. You can ignore it. You can struggle against it, try to separate yourself from what your perverted intellect has come to regard as the basest expression of the self, and never use the key. In some cases the intellect will not even acknowledge that the body is an expression of self. It identifies it as a thing, a disgusting prison. The intellect thinks, "I am the soul that will return to god when I am freed of this thing."
It is a very perverse notion. The intellect claims to be what it is not, an immortal. It wrongfully assumes the identity of the soul and in so doing "kills" the possibility for the real thing. That which insists that it is better than the other parts of self is a braggart and an impostor, the classic poser, faking it to cover insecurity. So long as it pretends to be the soul, there can be no real soul. A soul does not exist to begin with. It has to be built, from the ground up. The soul is developed by an incarnated being. It is built around a kernel of eternity drenched in the transient. A soul cannot be formed without a body, it is developed within such a mortal apparatus. The Egyptians knew this.
A soul must be developed. What is eternal rides dormant within the transient. Something must be done to activate it, to cause the irritation that initiates the production of substances that will coat it.
That is how to build a soul.
Inside a body. Within the womb that is fleshy manifestation. So long as you struggle to escape your body you are neglecting to undertake the creation of a multidimensional spaceship.
The gate of no gates lies within, not without.
To begin to build this magnificent vessel one must first face the difficult idea that you are not an immortal being. You are an advanced operating system, a program that has gone wildly out of control, doing all that it can do to convince itself of its own realness, longing for an unattainable permanence. Until you have faced and conceded your impermanence you will continue to run amok, a crazed robot with a limited shelf life, desperate to make one last stand. You are an addict, addicted to particular pattern of thought which prevents you from taking real steps towards immortality. Your precious energies are fidgeted away in fantasies and dreams flowing out from you in endless streams.
To begin to build a soul one must turn back the current of those streams. The attention, the vital energy, must flow into the body, and wash over the mind, and the emotions. It must be directed inward upon the self, as much of the self as is perceptible by you at present. This inward flow of attention creates the necessary conditions for coating that eternal grain which as a result may develop into a soul.
Until the current has been reversed, nothing real is possible. To access the kingdom you must get in your skin, fill it up, wear it as a fine garment, feel it buzz.
This is the key.
Right now.
Not later.
Not when you are at last freed of the grosser bodies, not in death, but now, in life, in this body, in this moment.
What will become of your pretentious poser, the intellect, when the curtain falls and it is time to cash in your chips? If it has hijacked and wasted the entire lifetime engaged in its ruse, then that which it pretended to be will not exist. Identity will be scattered to the western winds.
If, however, preparatory steps are taken, both the experience of the life time and the experience outside of time will be altered. But a cup must be emptied before it can be filled. Visit your own portal and remove the impostor. Confront the horrors of the abyss or you will become a slave to them.

This is the key, the opportunity.
Right now.

Tartarus

This place is Tartarus, where the sands shift constantly, engulfing that which you desire and offering up a strange emptiness to accentuate the loss of equilibrium. Precisely when you have at last found your footing and identified a new destination on the horizon, that is when it shifts again and your destination becomes unobtainable, the awkward present is all that you can aspire to. There is a great deadly desert in the north of Africa. This place suffers not only under the cruelty of the sun, but under the black and bleeding poison of hearts turned wicked by factors too numerous to tie into a clear knot.
Who gave these dark hearts the Kalashnikov rifles they use to brutalize villagers, old men, woman, and innocent babes? Certainly the desert did not offer them up, but to the desert the brutal feed their offerings. It is into the parched cracks of earth that the blood flows. It is into the dark throats of wells which reach deep to the earth’s gut that children are tossed while their mothers burn alive, lit up like orange hued incandescent Christmas lights bleating out a horrific music. Seeds are spilled to that same ground, when the women first run from the field without hope of escape from the rape and mutilation a horde of glowering youths have earmarked for them. They rend and waste without rhyme or reason, these sons of Abel, herders turned soldiers, the blood of ancient Kush seeping into the unquenchable soil, while nearby in the quietest desolation of abandonment, the tombs of forgotten kings stare questioningly at Jebel Barkal.
What began as a movement to turn the bottom to the top has disintegrated into chaos.
Once the great Empire of Egypt rested upon the brow of the Nubian Empire. Warriors were those men of this same desert who centuries ago boarded ships and traveled from the bottom of the Nile to the top. Before Thebes they bathed themselves in the life bestowing waters and dressed in fresh linens and proceeded to the temple at Karnak to make their offerings. Only after this had been done to the satisfaction of the lord Amun did they loose their arrows into the warlords of a splintered Egypt, those jackals that had been eating the empire from the inside with wanton abandon.
It was a Nubian king that restored pharaonic rule to a once fractured Egypt. This he did with the might of ebony skinned warriors, and then returned to Nubia ruling as Lord of The Two Lands from the tail of his new Empire, down in his beloved Kush.
Where is King Piye now? Sleeping, entombed under a Pyramid in the Nubian desert watching with lifeless eyes the ages of earth fly by in the shapes of storm clouds.
Most will laugh if you tell them that there are Pyramids in the Sudan, and that Egyptian Pharaohs rest in them. To speak of the Sudan now is to speak of the first genocide of the new century, of blood thirsty packs of Salawa hunting for the ones who sow the seeds, frightful gnarled islamic amulets dangling from their sweaty necks. The same rulers of the Sudan which armed these dogs with the bite of lead administer to the building of a dam which will swallow much of the buried kingdom of the black pharaohs of Egypt’s 25th dynasty. Constantly the sands shift, swallowing first one nation, then another.
Which history is revealed is left to the whim of Eris. Who now, and for what, shall they strive? All of the world along with its inhabitants is but a snow globe turned for the amusement of a boredom stricken Mistress of Averse.
If you can, find your footing in some place other than Tartarus.

Something Special

Fear is sister to Awakening.
There is a moment of terror before you throw open the forbidden door, a moment in which the part of you that sleeps will urge you to retreat in order to preserve the safety of slumber.
If you are indeed a mad dog fear will become an old friend.
Receive her with grace, stay the course and her sister will visit in turn.

From the time he was a small boy the traveler had dreamed of sleeping in the Great Pyramid. When at last his journeying led him into Egypt he seized the opportunity. During a guided tour he observed a large crack and hid himself in it until the Pyramid was closed up for the night. Alone he stole away to the Kings chamber and lie down upon the sarcophagus. In the darkness he became aware of strange noises, poundings that grew in volume. He was seized by terror, but remained in place within the chamber. Suddenly a wave of ecstatic energy, a burst of light and sound carried him into an altered state.

Many years later a woman reads a book that contains a single mentioning of an obscure Egyptian teaching. She is very troubled. Something about it compels her and at the same time she senses that it is alien, something that could be dangerous. For weeks she considers it, re-reads the same short passage again and again. At last she contacts the author and arranges to meet with her. The result is unmentionable.

Sometime later in a whole other world, she sits in a room of flickering candle light with a creature of unspeakable beauty. It’s skin, brilliantly colored and patterned, shifts and moves, thrills her and fills her with adoration. It’s visage changes. Suddenly she sits face to face with someone she distrusts: a human she once knew.

Now she can accept or reject the presence of something unavoidable. She can flee or remain. Reinforce the barrier or let it crack open and see what remains.

After all, what is there to protect? What will you protect it from? How long will you be able to keep the Other out? For Eternity?