December 17, 2024

 The Four Angels: The Pi, the Xiao, the Pixiu and the Human


I hope you realize that I hold all of these visions with a grain of salt. Most of the time, like yesterday, they appear to be a calling to help a fellow soul in need. Sometimes, though, they appear to be teachings personal to me. Whatever they are, I don’t hold them to deeply prophetic and realize they could just be my extra vivid imagination. The feelings they bring out in me, though, are real. What the feelings mean…well, that’s up for debate.


Today as yesterday, I held out until the last five minutes of my meditation. At that time, I realized I was standing in a rather ugly place. It was fiery red but the red was the pulsing color of blood, not of fire. It wasn’t hell per se but it was definitely an underworld location. Even though the place pulsed with the red of blood, it didn’t feel fleshy but was sharp and rocky. The overwhelming feeling was one of suffering. A tunnel appeared in the pulsing rock and, staying put, the scene pulled me into the heart of the mountain where at first I thought I was looking at a red, glowing boulder. I slowly realized it was a petrified figure. Its rocky prison shattered as soon as I was in its proximity and I perceived the crouched figure of a humanlike being. He appeared to be a silver fox with wings but his face shifted back and forth between human and vulpine.


I hugged him, feeling both his fur and feathers. Instantly, the creature came alive and bolted forward, rending a hole in the fabric of reality and pulling me along with it. We emerged from the bloody prison in a beautiful winter world. It was nighttime and snowing heavily. The creature towered above me, fox and human and angel. His face was both silver and black and his eyes were otherworldly.


I could tell he was grateful that I had found and freed him. He led me through the winter forest to an ice wall that loomed above us. As he approached, the wall split down the center and we walked through the resulting crevice. On the other side it was blizzarding but I could still perceive an ethereal silver light before us. In the distance was another and another and then another. It was a long chain of beacons, I realized, and the beacons clearly led somewhere.


The fox angel handed me off an enormous winged ape or monkey. His coloration was similar to the fox’s, silver and blue and black, and he had the same otherworldly eyes. He took me up in his long, hairy arms and flew aloft, following the chain of silver lights. They led up into the sky where I spotted a familiar temple. I had been here several times before; it’s the place I associate with the winged lion that I sometimes encounter during these journeys.


This temple was in the clouds and is basically a large, round platform made of white marble. Braziers burned on its southern rim, marking a launch pad of sorts. The ape deposited me on the platform where the white, winged lion awaited. I jumped on its back and then it bunched up on its haunches and pushed off, soaring toward the south. Above the white, roiling clouds, the sun broke through, illuminating a golden city.


The gold city was likewise familiar. I’d visited it several times before. This time, the lion landed on a street lined with ornate golden buildings and paved with golden flagstones. There was a tower before me that I knew. It was the library filled with heavenly scholars who tend to living wisdom. The wisdom takes the form of golden tomes that line a myriad of shelves spiraling upward.


I entered the library and a scholar led me over to a table with an open book. Its pages glowed golden yellow, just like everything else in this library. I laid a hand on the book and it came alive, taking the form of an immense, golden angel. The angel smiled and drew me against “his” chest (gender doesn’t seem to matter here so he really had no gender).


“This,” he said, tracing a finger over my heart. “Is your most precious gift.”


He had put his finger on the very place that causes me the most pain and conflict. He knew it, too. “How?” I asked. I could feel my heart aching in my chest. There is so much there, so much of everything. Sometimes it feels overwhelming.


Using modern lingo, his next words were something like, “That’s a feature, not a bug. It is your heart that allows you to access everything. You can go anywhere, be anything, see and experience anything.” He pressed his finger into my chest. “Because of this. Don’t try to get rid of the pain and suffering because it is what opens you to all. Allow it to change you, to teach you. Only that way will you be free. But, you know what? It’s not just you who will be free. You will be helping all beings.


“There is an imbalance,” he concluded. I knew he meant the vast amount of ‘negative karma’ humanity has accumulated. “This,” he pointed to my heart, “is the only way to bring balance. It is the hope of humanity, the possibility for all souls. Cherish the gift and use it for what it is intended.”


***

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