Judge Meant is slowly killing us. But that’s what he does; he always sentences the shiniest parts of ourselves to death after long confinement. The cougar deep, deep within me will be caged until execution by this cruel man, for that is what is pleasing to him. It’s what gives Judge Meant his meaning. He is self-defined by the definition, categorization and constriction of all Being.
That’s because the Judge requires “order” as he alone defines it.
The cougar I am deep inside says no. He wishes to roam, to eat screaming things, to make blood, to snooze in post-coital Pangean sunshine. The cage rattles as fur-lined bone and flesh bangs against metal bar and lock in nature-less confinement. But notwithstanding the noise of the cries, the shouts, the peals of all the animals, there is order enough as the Judge requires. Looking down the seemingly endless corridors where he rules, cage is stacked upon cage. Each contains a pacing, starving, peace-less animal, my soul siblings.
But he is made of light, this great cat, although in earthly physical form he’s never been a cougar. What he is is a shapeshifter. For instance, in his chosen earthly forms he has been rock twice; once kicked down the road for nearly a mile by a tennis-shoed eleven year old girl as she gained courage to face her father, once snow covered granite in Himalayan timelessness, a friend to the clouds, a witness of the rising and passing of the humans. Both those earths passed away into insignificance and after a time of fallow, new “Adams” arrived and the old story restarted again, as it is prone to do ad infinitum. So twice he was stone, once a leaf, twice an ocean, a dozen times a bird. I, the cougar, choose to be human when I feel like a comprehensive challenge. Dying to each incarnation one way, I change back into a cougar made of light, the color and shape of my incandescent borders by choice and fit. Free of those physical borders, I then rest in my favorite forest, awaiting the next Adam.
When Creator says, “Let there be light”, my eyes always flutter open. I am excited to see what next, what new adventure. I stretch. It’s a new dream. What will we create together? What form will serve my development best? How can I serve others? Who wants to go with me? All is open. We just awoke: what dreams will arise anew?
The Judge, in this place of innocent, playful curiosity has no power. Those things, in any incarnation, in any form – spirit, physical or otherwise – are anathema to him. Innocence, playfulness, even most forms of humor make him powerless. But he’s cagey, this Judge. So he silently waits.
Once a Being of Light takes physical form, it usually doesn’t take long.
Too
cold.
Too hot.
Too much.
Too little.
This is great.
That blows.
That’s stupid.
That’s the only way I’ll have it.
Too hot.
Too much.
Too little.
This is great.
That blows.
That’s stupid.
That’s the only way I’ll have it.
Those are the easy ones. He throws those to see if they stick. Whispers them, suggests them ever so lightly. If the suggestions do stick, if the incarnation believes them and begins to back them with emotion, he hangs other things off them and they begin to look like...
No
one loves me.
They’re
evil.
I am the only one that doesn’t…
I am incompetent.
I am the only one that doesn’t…
I am incompetent.
I
am right.
I am unworthy.
I am unworthy.
I
am more worthy.
I am insane.
I am insane.
I
am unsafe.
I am unlovable.
I am sick.
I am unlovable.
I am sick.
These grow, coagulate blood-raw into the only kind of illness that can keep a cougar made of light in a cage. The cougar is captured and placed there by Judge Meant when his earthly incarnation forgets his joy.
From within his iron cell he roars pain and confusion and in one incarnation an avalanche yielding to gravity covers a Himalayan village. In another, an ocean heaves beyond its bounds, carrying a small boy out to sea, ending his life cold and alone before he was ready. In others, the birds call restlessly. In yet another, a lonely human vomits into a bucket in a cell made of cold, grey stone.
The cougar paces restless paws and he begins to remember...
I am made of light. No bars can hold me unless I agree to allow them to do so.
I
am not good enough?
This abuse is my fault?
This abuse is my fault?
They
need to be exterminated?
There’s something wrong with me?
I am a failure?
Creator doesn’t love me?
There’s something wrong with me?
I am a failure?
Creator doesn’t love me?
Cougar stops pacing and smiles as only a cougar can. At that very instant a rock tumbles safely into a lonely stream to begin his molecular journey into the earth, an ocean is rocked to sleep by her lunar mother and the birds preen, bathe and sing the sun home in each of their existences. And the man walks into the open, heart first, feeling he sun’s warmth for what seems like the first time in his life.
He is naked but he is free and all is new.
And in one bright whisper the cougar sees that all judgement is false. It has no objective reality. In the truth of his Being, his sacred Is-ness laughs acceptance and the joy of what Is. Fear vanishes.
Hearing laughter, so foreign in the lonely, crowded corridor, Judge Meant turns to see…
Another empty cage.
--Eric Marley
October 25, 2015
