No form. No shape, no breath, no mind, no thing. Greyed out, and heavily.

You remember when the earth was warm, when you laid on the crust of her earthly mantle and felt like a ghost. You stretched your tired body across a giant rock in the desert and listened to the phosphorescent lichen. A low hum, and then something spoke: “When it is dark, we look for stars.”

In the chaos of the desert landscape, its hugeness made up of millions of grains of sand, the earth swallowed you whole and then there was nothing. No words, no touch, no taste, no tongue, no nothing. Nothing was ever hidden, you think in retrospect, because perhaps the body, in its unfathomable intelligence, knows everything.

And yet. And still. This no form-ness. This no form.

No body, no soul, no past, no future. Only the now, curdling gleefully in its nascent no form. No time, no space, no form. Down, down, down into the darkness. Heavy is just the thing. You moan in delight and leave your body. Velvety nothingness. So smooth, so cold. Everything encapsulated in nothing. In no form.

You remember there is a road: a mountain pass that leads you from the bottom of the Uintah basin past the petroglyph caves and across switchbacks up into the Bookcliff mountains, until finally, you are dumped out onto the high plains of Wyoming. You drive and you drive and you drive. Past the groves of quaking aspen, past the Flaming Gorge, past the Sweetwater Detention Center, past the bearded hunters outfitted in plaid. Flags turn into eagles and this is the place where it happened. It. The thing. The no thing.

This is the place where you heard a voice say “You will only ever be alone” and you returned to no form, for only a brief instant. And you were floating, you were free, you were embryonic. And you were nothing, no thing, no where, no form. And you are haunted by this moment forever. You never forget it—you dream of it every night, caressing it tenderly in the dark. That no thing. That big, dark, flapping, formless no thing on the horizon you swerved to miss. It is now your thing, your telos.

And now? You yawn backwards. You take long walks at night and drink coffee during the day. You sweep floors and pack boxes, you feed hungry animals and petition the gods you once abandoned. You kill time consulting infinite scroll godhead on LCD screens—no—you murder time. Because every minute you annihilate brings you closer to the moment when you will meet with with no form again, and nothing else matters.

And yet. And still. Strange shapes have wings.

You bend gently into the end of all things.
You go back to the beginning.
Whistle in the dark.
Become everything.

And now? Everything overflows. You dig for dinosaur bones. Deep in the earth, they are grand in all their mystery. Colorless, they still hold power. Time’s swift flow is found here underground. Close your eyes and picture the infinite spiral of an etheric golden cord anchoring deeply into core. How deep are your gifts buried?

Immerse yourself in these dark waters, let the night breeze still your mind. Vacant pools, silver-bright sunshine, a hot, invisible net. Out of this dream comes black water and a single thoughtform: if you can see differently, you can live differently.

In the uncanny.
In the stillness.
In a spider’s web, in a coded poem.
In strange shapes and subtle vibrations.

And woven through it all: stillness. Still-ness.

The trick of knowing is found in arching skillfully into letting go. Watching everything shade away like wisps of smoke. And what remains: a vision, a flame, gold and yellow moonlight. An incandescent brightness hangs in the air. Get out under the stars every night, if possible. Because to see differently is to live differently.

An ever-revealing something pulses into existence. Mirror backwards into the mind, bow your head, and prepare for take-off. Animal nature, ripped and pointed like a flowering vine, speaks: “how deep we go down to die”. Write this down and put it under your pillow, knowing that air is a medium.

Now you have died and now you have come into being.¹ Bend gently into it.

* * * * * * *

This dreaming: the memory of yellow-green sea foam, clouds and sails. A milky shard of green kyanite, music in the key of B, the glow of a deep sea jellyfish, the secret history of Zeta Ophiuchi, and the tenacity of quaking aspen.