You never really get to leave it, the place where they took your mother's heart and your father's land and didn't give a second thought for leaving you all for dead. There are very few days left where the living remember the dead, and the dead need to walk the earth just like you, or just like you their muscles will start to harden like bones, and soon enough no one remembers how to speak to each other. A loss of the chance to speak in this world can mean you speak in dreams or any of the other realms, but no one can sustain it for very long without the occasional contact, and when we are despairing we light candles on both sides of the dirt, and start to say the old prayers that draw us up and down to each other.
That endless tango between the living and the dead, it's a kind of movement that brings dead things to life and makes the tired things crawl back into the ground where they can disintegrate properly. You were entirely correct, sir, in imagining that I had news for you, and that the teeth bones in my jaw bones clack only when I have things that need correcting, beginning with the bones in your spine, and soon enough you will be awake enough to remember the rest of it on your own.
There is a terrible breach of understanding among the ones who are holding the chords to power these days. It's the same awful folly that ever was ever in this shivering, aching world. There are forces in conflict with each other, yes, on a large scale, yes, but it's much deeper that what any single human consciousness is capable of understanding in one lifetime. These forces are indeed in a constant struggle for power, and the old ones always knew well enough to call it Nature, and they could know, because they knew it wasn't begun with them and it would surely not end with them, but was much larger and older than that. Larger than a generation, even, and older than the first human civilizations. But there are those who imagine that they know the reasons behind these struggles between forces, and they are called upon to intercede, some by what they perceive as conscience, and some by an imagination that is entirely born in hunger and greed, and when they participate, they fail to understand that these forces are larger than their egos, and if they never wake up, they are capable of turning this dream into a nightmare for the rest of the living.
It is, at its roots, a question of power, because they interfere so as to make it impossible for anyone to fulfill the very first imperative, and that is to know love. Every soul has the unique capability to enter into the alchemy of the spirit, and the pathway is always through knowing love. The second imperative is to learn how to enter into that same dance of forces, and to know all the forms that discord in harmony can take. But very few ever get to enter into the second stage, because of the way these things are being played out by the ones who think they know. And they are the same ones who have lost the ability to honor the dead, and so learn how to talk to ghosts.
Because you know, you are not only given the opportunity to hear and speak the words that come from somewhere that is not you, not you at all, but the chance to make these things happen in the world you know. But you'll have to be careful, and you'll have to be reckless, and you'll have to let the fire dance your bones for a time, rather than take too many cautious steps, because you say you aren't sure this is the right path for you.
There's always a clue, and it always begins with birds. When they land on the road, or fly into your head, in numbers that seem significant, when it seems as though there is one particular bird who is always looking at you, when they are only coming to you as skeletons or residues of the flesh they used to be, or when you are in times and places where you are always hearing them, then that is the right path. Sometimes they are beautiful and colorful, and sometimes they are skeletons, but they always mark for you that this is indeed the right direction for you.
So there may be times when it is necessary to hold the silence for awhile, and there are times when you will feel like you are saying too much, and leaving the chords of your heart and mouth too exposed, but this is how that unusual dance of speech evolves in these lifetimes. But when you think you have decided that the best thing is to hold the silence indefinitely, then the birds all go soft and dull, and even the bones become soft, because this reminds us of the times when the living stop speaking to the dead, and when this happens, we go away. So that tapping on the walls of caves that makes you so lost, that makes you feel this is endless and impossible, is really a part of your destiny, and the only thing you can do to be sure you are on the road, is to keep tapping, and if you have to tap a hundred times in the course of a season that you still love her and you still think about her, it's not a futile foolish game, for you, it's just your destiny, so walk it with the blessing of your ancestors, and don't assume for a moment that we are not walking with you, because you hear us, and when there are no words, there are birds.
That endless tango between the living and the dead, it's a kind of movement that brings dead things to life and makes the tired things crawl back into the ground where they can disintegrate properly. You were entirely correct, sir, in imagining that I had news for you, and that the teeth bones in my jaw bones clack only when I have things that need correcting, beginning with the bones in your spine, and soon enough you will be awake enough to remember the rest of it on your own.
There is a terrible breach of understanding among the ones who are holding the chords to power these days. It's the same awful folly that ever was ever in this shivering, aching world. There are forces in conflict with each other, yes, on a large scale, yes, but it's much deeper that what any single human consciousness is capable of understanding in one lifetime. These forces are indeed in a constant struggle for power, and the old ones always knew well enough to call it Nature, and they could know, because they knew it wasn't begun with them and it would surely not end with them, but was much larger and older than that. Larger than a generation, even, and older than the first human civilizations. But there are those who imagine that they know the reasons behind these struggles between forces, and they are called upon to intercede, some by what they perceive as conscience, and some by an imagination that is entirely born in hunger and greed, and when they participate, they fail to understand that these forces are larger than their egos, and if they never wake up, they are capable of turning this dream into a nightmare for the rest of the living.
It is, at its roots, a question of power, because they interfere so as to make it impossible for anyone to fulfill the very first imperative, and that is to know love. Every soul has the unique capability to enter into the alchemy of the spirit, and the pathway is always through knowing love. The second imperative is to learn how to enter into that same dance of forces, and to know all the forms that discord in harmony can take. But very few ever get to enter into the second stage, because of the way these things are being played out by the ones who think they know. And they are the same ones who have lost the ability to honor the dead, and so learn how to talk to ghosts.
Because you know, you are not only given the opportunity to hear and speak the words that come from somewhere that is not you, not you at all, but the chance to make these things happen in the world you know. But you'll have to be careful, and you'll have to be reckless, and you'll have to let the fire dance your bones for a time, rather than take too many cautious steps, because you say you aren't sure this is the right path for you.
There's always a clue, and it always begins with birds. When they land on the road, or fly into your head, in numbers that seem significant, when it seems as though there is one particular bird who is always looking at you, when they are only coming to you as skeletons or residues of the flesh they used to be, or when you are in times and places where you are always hearing them, then that is the right path. Sometimes they are beautiful and colorful, and sometimes they are skeletons, but they always mark for you that this is indeed the right direction for you.
So there may be times when it is necessary to hold the silence for awhile, and there are times when you will feel like you are saying too much, and leaving the chords of your heart and mouth too exposed, but this is how that unusual dance of speech evolves in these lifetimes. But when you think you have decided that the best thing is to hold the silence indefinitely, then the birds all go soft and dull, and even the bones become soft, because this reminds us of the times when the living stop speaking to the dead, and when this happens, we go away. So that tapping on the walls of caves that makes you so lost, that makes you feel this is endless and impossible, is really a part of your destiny, and the only thing you can do to be sure you are on the road, is to keep tapping, and if you have to tap a hundred times in the course of a season that you still love her and you still think about her, it's not a futile foolish game, for you, it's just your destiny, so walk it with the blessing of your ancestors, and don't assume for a moment that we are not walking with you, because you hear us, and when there are no words, there are birds.
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