AKBAL: HOUSE OF MYSTERY

Come down the bank to the river. Step carefully now. One of the Lord's of Life, one of the Lady's of Life may be close by in the long dry grass waiting for you. Do not be afraid of the deep sleep that the serpent brings. She has a wisdom that goes back to the beginning of time, a wisdom that few can understand. For the feminine heart is a heart of darkness. Deep and cavernous. It does not need to know the answer to everything, it is content to swim in the infinite possibilities of creation. It is always awaiting something new, always waiting for someone who just might be born.

There is a place within you where stillness reigns. It is a vast and spacious place, and it is sacred. It is a cave where ancestors gather to speak of ancient things. Only silence can carry you there, to the dreaming realm where the fruit of your inner knowing lies waiting to be plucked.

But remember, there is a gargoyle that protects the entrance to this cave and it will not let you enter easily. A chattering mind awakens the gargoyle and he will feed on your busyness and eat heartily on your unrest and never will he grow tired while the tidbits of your anxious mind are thrown randomly at his feet. No, only your silence will lull him to sleep so that you might slip past and enter therein. Once past, there lies a vista, vast and beautiful. A wind stirs not far away,and if you listen closely you just might hear the murmurings of the hidden ones who dwell within you. You just might hear 'the still small voice that knows'. But you must stop and you must listen. You must listen to the stillness. For hidden in the stillness, in the darkness where death and regeneration dwell, the seed of tomorrow's becoming lies waiting to begin.

Without this dark , this deep womb, nothing new can be born. Be not afraid of venturing into this emptiness within you. Take time to visit yourself here. Where the world as you have come to know it, is lost and is forgotten, where the depth of eternity resonates its song. For to be lost in the void, lost in the darkness, is a blessing beyond compare, although it may not feel like a blessing at all. This is the quests' ending and this is its' beginning. This is the place where possibilities are born.

Do not turn away from those times in your life when you must be still, when you must let go of all that is familiar and 'real'. For you cannot be born again unless first you die to what you believe to be true, and who you believe yourself to be. And you cannot become as vulnerable and full of potential as a new born babe, unless you shed the skin that binds you to your old and worn out self.