We were delayed, or derailed, or otherwise taken out of the stream.

The survivors were few, huddled together, exhausted. We found them at the river’s edge, gasping, weeping, staring forward, clutching rags. The ceremony forgotten, the sacred words forgotten. Love forgotten. Thunderous dark clouds accumulated, air pressure dropped, there was no sun. Blocked by dark clouds. A child ran away, no one saw but me, I tried to find him but he slipped through a fog to the forest. There was a despair cry at the moment of lightning. Sizzling, the tree fell, branches flaming, an empty boat drifted down the dark river.

Not yet, it said to me, Not now. It was going to pick up another passenger to drop off on the riverbank. Another empty boat passed by, and soon another appeared. I realized they weren’t empty, but I just couldn’t see what they were carrying because it was souls, not physical. The bolts were a projection so I could see them, but they had no physicality either. North River, the dark clouds, misty forest, or even the people huddled on the bank. I saw it because I, too, was there, in soul form, in soul travel.

Once I realized that, I could glimpse a ray or two of sunlight in that godforsaken landscape.

None of it exists. Nothing exists. I see it and it is not real or there. I am seeing – or am I dreaming? What does it matter?

“This is the opening of the second door of wisdom, and now you may be born again,” the voice spoke, and I was afraid or felt I should be, all molecules shocked within my fragile ephemeral form and a glimpse, a dissolution, of the river, the boats, and all. A new place emerged.

It was a flat plain, and the grass was all yellow and overgrazed – close to the hard dirt earth like a summer haircut. It was nothing but plain, with blue sky above. I walked with a stride from the hip and felt primal, female, strong. Or I wanted to. After three strides I collapsed to the ground, laid out flat on my back with arms and legs like the da Vinci man, the five pointed star.

What am I doing here, wandering from place to place without direction? Is there any help or guidance for me? Am I lost? Have I become a lost soul somehow? What did I miss? Suddenly I’m here – but why – and I learned nothing from before? Then it came to me, lying in that position, I would never go further until the body form as my identifying point of consciousness was left behind in a leap to the abstract – or whatever the next vehicle of consciousness was to be.

I was comforted by this guidance and felt a great wave of hope as I recited the practice I had learned, concentrating on the leg, the other leg, the arm, the other arm, the head, the torso, the right, the left, finally peace. I smelt chemicals, dissolved them, finally peace.