Echoes of the Infinite

JC Collins

A starving eye opens in the dark.

Birth.

Confusion and sadness.

As a child, I drew your face, yearning pencil on impossible blank paper. It wasn’t the entire face. You know, all the details and features, but the outline. The perfect shape of a face forged in flesh for the pleasure of my longing soul.

Those drawing hands would become many things in later years, but back then, the endless possibility of the shadows inspired them. Shadows of a world weaved from the ocean of illusion. Where were you? Across the sea on a searching shore? Who were you? A mother? A daughter? A wife? A best friend? Someone who has travelled the entirety of existence with me but remains unknown to me in this one life.

Time would pass, such as it does when material shapes take hold of your mind. Childhood things would be pulled back into the ocean, and new obsessions would wash upon those growing shores. Through it all, I could hear your joyous laughter as it moved upon the face of the waters. The shape of your face was everywhere, in the clouds of summer and the drifting snow of winter—an endless echo of your eventual coming.

I loved you before I even knew you.

Innocent sand gave way to jagged rock, and the waves crashed harder against the shore—a shore which once held gentle discourse with the ocean. Now wave and beach held battle with neither giving an inch to the other.

Images flickered upon the waters. Perhaps a projection of motion or emotion. The movement of life through its inevitable karma. There was happiness, anger, love, sadness, loneliness, perseverance, growing discipline, failure, success, all the things that propel a life upon the road of its becoming. And then you appeared.

It was that bar. The place you worked. I came in, and our eyes washed over one another. You were a master composer behind the bar, moving, pouring, and laughing. It was this beautiful dance of madness, and I couldn’t take my eyes from you.

You kept welcoming me back. So I came, again and again. Then there was that night. You remember. The night you came out from behind the bar to fight that girl. It was brilliant, and something moved inside me—that ocean. Before the night was over, I fought those two guys, and our eyes locked once more across the bar. We both knowingly smiled like we had been here before. We loved it, and when you came over and fixed my ripped shirt, I knew you were forever.

We did bad things together and had fun doing it. Your heart stopped one night, I think. But we began to shape one another, grow, and discover ourselves in each other. We loved, fought, and moved within the ocean that brought us together. Eventually, I understood that I could never not love you. In each life, you were there, and I loved you. Eventually, you understood that I would never hurt you. In each life, I was there to catch you. It was a forever love which transcended each individual life. We were companion spirits drifting in the endless ocean, and everyone could see it.

We evolved.

Our spirits brightened in the presence of one another, but our new bodies and minds grew distant, even as our love grew stronger.

There was a space in our lives that we could not share. This space grew larger with each passing year. It wasn’t bad, and neither of us was doing anything wrong. It was just the waters within waters, oceans within oceans, rolling through each other.

You see, my sweetness, there are different waters within that ocean. There are different waters within us. But we are the one ocean.

Everything changed on the day of the spirit tea. We both felt it. We both knew it. It wasn’t the first time we had the spirit tea, but every other time was building up to this one momentous embrace of the infinite.

We drank the tea and settled into the den and waited. It had been a few years, and we were both excited. After a while, I went back into the kitchen and drank some more before joining you again. Now in the chair, I leaned against the side and watched you on the floor. Time moved in a whisper. A hush to stop the flood of secrets.

The ocean pulled me down into its embrace. I did not fight it, but I saw you as an embryo on the floor before letting go. The waters told me you were the egg of the world. You were safe, so I walked upstairs and descended into the cold darkness of the deep.

At some point, I’m at the toilet. Retching. I’m so cold. It’s so dark. It’s so dark that no light can exist. The pressure at the bottom of the ocean is crushing me. It’s my karma, and I feel the weight of endless transgressions.

Then there were a thousand starving eyes in the dark—all opening and watching me. Is that me screaming? It’s crushing, and I think my heart has stopped. Am I dead?

Somewhere off in the black distance, I could hear whales singing. They called to me, bringing me back from the deep darkness. Pushing up to my knees, I gasped a new breath and moved towards the whales. It was beautiful, and I had never heard anything so perfect.

Light began to penetrate the dark. The singing of the whales grew louder. But was it whales? Now I’m not so sure. No, not whales. It was you singing from downstairs. You brought me back from the black coldness of the crushing deep.

“Auummmmmmm.”

“Aaauuuuuuummmmmmmm.”

Sound. Vibration. AUM, the sound of creation.

Stumbling down the stairs, I fall into the den. You were rolling around on the floor laughing and singing AUM as loud as possible. We both laughed, and you encouraged me to sing with you.

“AAAUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.” We both sang and laughed. It was wonderful.

The walls of the world began to shake and vibrate. Everything flickered and moved. It was like lousy tracking on an old VHS tape.

Our singing and laughing just kept intensifying, reaching almost hysterical levels. Reality reached a crescendo. Leaning over you, I held your head in my hands. You looked up at me and grabbed the sides of my face. Our eyes locked. The moment was intense, and then, poof, we transcended time and space. We entered the Absolute, that place from which all of existence is born. It was white and forever. There was silence and stillness. We did not exist as us. Our bodies stopped breathing.

It was the most beautiful experience.

Then we were sucked back into our bodies and rolled away from one another. I was in the ocean again, but only the shallows this time, near the shore. The beautiful dance of existence was visible to me. It was a tapestry of love—all things locked in an endless embrace across the worlds and lives.

Tears rolled down my face as the emotion washed through me. Motion and emotion. The beautiful dance of motion and emotion. We dream of whales singing, and whales dream of us speaking—the beautiful tapestry of existence.

She’s on the shore calling for me to come to her, but I can’t. The ocean wants to keep pulling me back to its depths. The water is whispering things to me. In every life together, I catch her. In every life together, she brings me back. We have manifested together for eternity. In some lives, we are brother and sister. In others, we are best friends. In this life, we are husband and wife. Spirit is sexless, and our sexual orientations are reversed in some lives. None of it matters. What matters is the motion of spirit through matter and back to spirit again.

You see, in this life, I caught her, and in this life, she brought me back from the darkness. In each life, she can jump because I am there to catch her. This makes her strong enough to bring me back. This is the service we provide to one another in each life and in all the variations of form we take in each of those lives. But there is a space in this life that we cannot share, and this space is growing.

The echoes of each previous life reverberate through those yet to come—something like a vibrational karmic force that balances everything. But it only whispers to us like a light wind upon the ear. Sometimes it is gone before you can grab hold of it.

I drew her face as a child because I knew she was coming. She always does.

Now the ocean brings a tsunami to our lives and what it will leave behind is yet to be written. But we both have the opportunity to shape what we want, not based on what others want from us or need from us. But what we want for ourselves. No matter, I will still be there to catch her, and she will be there to bring me back when the dark depths retake me.

A starving eye opens in the dark.

Birth.

Confusion and sadness.

As a child, I draw a face.