In your darkest hour, a flicker of light—
The imperishable void comes alive in a flash and you squint to find equilibrium, pupils recoiling violently. As your focus deepens, you can see the ephemeral glimmer before you is illuminating something previously unseen, something beautiful and real. It is a fleeting glimpse, bestowed upon you—God knows why—like a sun ray piercing the darkness and awakening some ancient seed buried deep in the coffers of your heart. Time bends to your breath as you are held there basking in the warmth of this vision, just long enough for the light of its enchanting picture to imprint upon your memory card; for the seed of desire to germinate. At last, there’s hope. Birds sing. Is that a halo? You walk the halls of the cancer ward grinning like a shot fox, drunk on cheap dopamine from the glimpse lighting up your phone. It’s all going to be okay.
And then, most abruptly, the light is gone.
The glimpse fades and despair descends. Time flies in the void. Your life, a perennial buffet of absurdities borne of agita and boredom, is peppered with the occasional moment of ecstatic belief in a fairytale ending and the self-loathing that accompanies it. Multitasking the usual soup of meaningless conversations, you unsuccessfully attempt to ignore the inner dialogue. How do you reconcile the absence of something you couldn’t admit was missing until it finally made itself known, only to be lost again? Why is life a game you just can’t win? Why is God a sadist? You fling your stolen Yeezy’s across the floor and curl up on the air mattress of disbelief. Signs come to defend the whispers of your intuition but you dismiss them as coincidence. Now is not the time to fuck with the control group, you insist. We need cold hard facts. In a moment of weakness you cry out to God, “why give me something just to take it away?! What kind of joke is this?” God doesn’t answer. Doesn’t care? Reason turns over in your mind, laundered to the point of ruin. Nights become sleepless obsession. Somewhere in this dome of chaos, a familiar voice ironically opines the lyrics to “Comfortably Numb” while the obviousness of what is alchemizing within you registers as little more than an inconvenience in front of your chronic compulsive addiction to distraction.
And for all the hours you spend trying to discern the mystery of this thing, and trying to convince yourself that it was just a lie in your head, you fail to recognize that it was the truth—you just saw it too soon.
Didn’t we begin our story in the winter of your discontent? So you’re a shell of a person, your heart is broken, you are deeply unfulfilled, and you have no direction. You’ve reached the end of your faith. In order for life to move you, it has to inspire movement, so it parts the veil and gives you a glimpse—just a peak in the peep show of existence. Life opens the curtain of time, granting you the ability to see the future in the present, and it reminds you what there is to live for. It imparts a vision that wakes you from your disillusionment and shows you the destination. A fleeting glimpse is all it takes to boil the blood into action.
The Great Spirit, The Creative, God, whatever—this force moves through us as the element of fire. This holy fire acts on the blood and manifests in us as desire—the energy behind all pursuits. Nothing moves in creation without the catalytic electricity to take action, to achieve, possess, to become, or to fuck. When you ask for change, when you’re swimming in the depths of hell and your spirit inevitably harkens with a plea to existence for something else, life will initiate that change within you in the form of a new desire, and it instills that desire with a glimpse. And then you find yourself inside a dream, a moment, and life is giving you proof that what lives in the deepest dark garden of your heart is real. This isn’t a tease. It’s a promise. It’s a guaranteed outcome in exchange for a necessary income. The question is, what are you coming into it with? All dreams have a price. They cost us the old self. You can’t call out for change and expect to stay the same.
Here’s the thing about glimpses: they’re temporary. The spell is over at midnight, Cinderella. Why? Because the pain that inevitably follows the loss of a glimpse catalyzes the change necessary to make it a permanent reality. While a glimpse will deliver hope, the loss of it will inspire determination, and you need both to get where you’re going. But keep this in mind: by dwelling on the loss of it, on what’s not here right now, you push the future so far ahead that it begins to feel like the past. Then regret sets in and you think you’ve missed it. Don’t do that. The fleeting glimpse is the fuel to get you from here to there. It’s all the proof you need. The seeds were planted. Tend to their inevitability! Transformation happens over time so flow with the season that you’re in. What are you doing with the time you’re given right now to make sure the glimpse becomes realized? What are you carrying into this moment that needs to be left in the past? Where are you leaking power by needing validation? How can you strengthen the mind so that doubt does not undermine what you already know instinctively? How can you establish a more consistent understanding of your intuition?
This is the process of learning faith, of seeing the truth and learning to release obsession. Desire is life’s way of putting the moves on you. Literally! The glimpse delivers exactly that. If you trust the destination, you can give yourself permission to enjoy the journey of getting there. It might not always be amusing and it definitely won’t be without its fair share of difficulties, but it will be worth it.
Do you believe in the perfection of life? Do you believe in intuition? The divine spirit will never call us to something that will defeat us.
Have faith.
Life works in mysterious ways.
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Thank you to my friend Natalie Nipper for editing this piece.