Chapter 5: The Rest of the Illustration

And I remembered the rest of the illustration wherein I imagined being in the place filled with darkness thinking about the Word of God. It was so dark I could not see anything when a voice I thought was the Inspiring One was there and he said, “You are not the first one to go back.”  But I wanted to see what the Word of God was like in that illustration. And, the Inspiring One handed me a rock that was like a blazing solid darker than even the darkness that seemed to me to have no limit in all directions and I took it and put in my mouth. And I was instantly incredibly afraid and begged God to take it away from me, for I couldn't stand being the object of its concern and was deathly afraid of it until it was far enough away I could see it shine like a chunk of bituminous coal shining in the moonlight in the dull coal dust that surrounded it.

I understood that no man could stand the power and the authority of that on their person, but the Word of God himself. And all others were too weak to stand it for even a moment. And there never will be anyone else that can tolerate it, no woman, no man, no devil, no demon, or Angel, just the one called the Word of God could tolerate it in order to know that perfectly what to say when it was given to them; certainly not a man like me.

Then I said to the Inspiring One, “Can you show me what it is like to be taken up to heaven in this context?”

Instantly I saw what I thought was an Angel descending toward me. And when it descended enough for me to reach it, it stretched out its hand as I placed my hand in it. Then the Angel ascended with me higher and higher seeming slowly, in fact it was so slowly that I rose, hanging onto the Angel just gave me time to wonder if it was actually an Angel, thinking it might be some fallen creature that would give me a powerful delusion I would never be free of so I looked up, and it was no longer white put pink like a sheet on an old clothes line in the red light from a setting sun after a storm.

“Are you really an Angel?” I asked doubting it for just a moment. But in that moment the creature released my hand. And I fell and fell, knowing it was because I had doubted the Angel. It was that fall that caused me to pull my own self out of the Inspiring One's illustration. And when I broke free I was in my bed that was completely drenched in my own sweat in the darkness of my hospital bed with a racing heart more afraid than I had ever been or can imagine I ever will be again. And it seems that only recently I really felt like thanking the Inspiring One for his illustration.

If one asks the Inspiring One to show them something even in an illustration they are not permitted to doubt what they see or the illustration is broken. But I understand that does not change the truth the Inspiring One would have shared with me. It only speaks to what I am, a poor creature given to doubting even God not to mention the Inspiring One in person. Glad for my ignorance concerning things too grand for my being to stand to even imagine are real.

It had been too scary for me to remember at the time I lay on my bed for no one can approach the light for the truth will destroy all of their delusions even before they get to the source and they would be completely something true to the light but unable to know what that would be for their brain would be totally unable to know what it was and have to put a more common delusion in its place, and one would be forever ignorant of what they were or what God was forever. But really they would be what they truly had been all along just like God is truly what he really is and has always been and always will be, completely real without any flaw forever.

And I pushed the call button and a nurse arrived in my room after a while thinking I had pushed the call button by accident or it was malfunctioning.

“It's fine,” I said, surprised by how calm my voice was since even the memory of what had happened was so real to me, my bed was damp with sweat.

“You did?” she said skeptically.

“The doctor told me to if I had anymore horrible things happen in my mind that scared me to death,” I said.

“You seem to be alive and well to me?” she said, rushing through what seemed to be some checklist of things I was neither privy to or cared much about for that matter.

“I don't think I'll be able to sleep after what I just experienced,” I said.

She looked around the room before she pulled the gray cord to the call button from under my sheets and asked, “Why? What happened?”

I gave up getting any real assistance out of her and lay back in disappointment.

Then she patted the bed next to me and said, “You're alright now. Just rest. It will be time for breakfast soon. But just try to sleep a while longer, okay?”

Then she hurried out the door before I could tell her I hadn't been sleeping at all and I supposed she was off to some patient with a greater or more urgent need. But possibly, I thought she was headed back to some boyfriend that was under attack by a rival. And dismissed it as that, imagining it was true in my mind, for she was young and beautiful and I had been young once also and knew of nothing that urgent to the young, so I had no way to imagine it, if it was something else.