The Empty Place - I

The mountain was magnificent.

It stood head and shoulders above all the other mountains as if it reached straight into Heaven.

And it did!

It pierced the clouds and reached beyond them, so that it seemed like a pathway along which the beauty of Heaven travelled down the mountain to the Earth below. 

The mountain was my home, and I loved my Life in this picturesque painting displaying the wildest array of abundant colors known to Man.

The colors adorned not only the sweet flowers sacrificing their fragrance as a pleasing offering to their Creator, the colors abounded in even the smallest things, such as the wings of the many butterflies fluttering against the perfect blue sky, or the petals of the exotic flowers growing out of the soil of this magnanimous giant.

Never did the warmth feel oppressive and become the solid weight of heat pressing down upon the Souls of those living on the mountain, nor did the cold chill us down to the bone.

The cold was refreshing, and the warmth kindled our hearts with the joy it brought us.

All of us loved to dwell on this mountain.

It was there that we felt at home in our own habitat given to us by our Heavenly Father.

In the complete absence of even the slightest animosity we all lived in perfect harmony, enjoying our carefree rich and abundant life on the mountain.

Well, almost everybody did.

My eyes travelled to the vacant spot on the side of the mountain where he used to dwell.

Like all of us he had his own patch on this magnificent mountain, and his patch was even more radiant than ours.

And what a multitude of talents were given to him!

He left us with the rich legacy of a great multitude of different instruments, and he wrote music of such beauty and intensity that even the birds of the air were silent when he played his instrument and sang with the voice that touched the hearts of Angels.

One day he left the mountain, and he was gone for quite a while..

He left us guessing where he might have gone, since he had not told anybody of his plans.

We often wondered where he went and why it took him so long to return, but finally the moment arrived that he came back from his voyage, a day I will never forget.

Because, where a brother had left the mountain, a stranger wearing his face had returned.

The moment our eyes met I saw an alien cold glare staring back at me.

Prior to that moment I had never experienced that strange and unpleasant sensation which I came to know all too well whenever I was sent down the mountain into the valley, the feeling of the negative obstruction of Evil, yet now the time had come for me to have my first direct confrontation with pure Evil when I looked into the eyes of the one all of us would come to know as the Evil One, the Adversary.

When I asked him what had happened he did not even bother to give me any explanation, knowing all too well that upon his return we found ourselves standing on opposite sides of a great divide of the heart where before we used to be brothers, united in our joy and love for the One Who gave us our place on the mountain.

Only, the mountain and his presence suddenly seemed two incongruous elements unable to be joined together unless one of them would radically change.

Before he left, his pleasant voice was a blessing to our hearts.

Yet now, when he opened his mouth to speak, the air itself was filled with a sound carrying the most excruciating dissonance my Soul had ever experienced.

He had changed, and the man I saw was not the man I knew.

The stranger began to explain how he desired to leave the mountain driven by a desire to achieve the impossible, that he wanted to carry out the plan he had conceived to venture into the forbidden zone, AND return from it unscathed.

He needed adventure and a challenge to bring him that which his heart longed for, and he found it in the challenge beckoning him from the heart of the dangerous zone.

But, that was not all.

He had gone into the dangerous zone to see the mysterious Box of No with his own eyes.

Our Father had given us very strict instructions never to venture into the zone and look inside the Box of No, and so none of us had ever contemplated the ludicrous idea of going on a quest for this item in the most dangerous zone in all Creation.

Except for the stranger who used to be my brother.

He proceeded to tell me that he not only found the Box, but that he had done the inconceivable: he had opened the Box to look inside it.

"What!?" I shouted.

"You went into the forbidden zone knowing all too well that it is the most dangerous place in all of Creation?

You know very well that our Father warned us not to go there, since reality changes in that zone to such a degree you might get lost in it forever, and yet you ignored His words and took that risk just to open the Box our Father instructed us never to open?

Have you lost your mind?

Have you forgotten how He warned us for the consequences?

You KNOW that He always tells us the Truth, and yet you STILL went ahead with your folly and deliberately ventured into the forbidden zone!?"

An icy smile of contempt formed on his face, one which I never had seen before.

"You know, that always has been your problem, hasn't it?

Your tunes lack the inventiveness, the originality and ingenuity of my music, and that is why you have remained stuck in the paradigm of the same old tune and why you never really progressed."

"What do you mean", I replied.

"Does a dove lack inventiveness because it  does not sing like a mocking bird, does a cat lack inventiveness because it does not roar like a lion?

Each of them has its own unique sound and place on the mountain.

A cat which tries to roar like a lion would turn itself into a bad copycat, because it never was created to make the sound of a lion.

The tunes I write are unique and a sincere expression of my character and Soul, so of course I do not sound like you.

Because I was not made to be you, but be myself and make my own sound."

"But you could be so much more if you did not bow down and slavishly accept the role He assigned to you.

That's your problem: you think too much inside the prison box of your Creator", he replied.

It did not escape my attention how he came to refer to our Father as 'my' Creator and how he spoke with a tone of contempt in his voice when he mentioned Him.

"Why don't you take the next step and learn to think outside the box", he continued.

"You could be so much more than what you are now if only you would open your mind and conceive of the endless possibilities."

"You know what I brought with me?" he asked while pointing at a box.

Intuitively I knew it was the Box our Father had instructed us not to open, because once we would open it and look inside it, the Box would devour us.

"Of course He does not want you to open the Box" he said as if he could read my mind.

"He knows all too well that the day you dare to open the forbidden Box is the day He can no longer hold you captive in His paradigm, His deception, because that will be the day you will know the Truth of what really is inside the Box, and you will learn new tunes you could never conceive of as long as you remain a slave to His instructions."

"I always had confidence in you that you have the potential to grow beyond your confinement on this mountain.

Yes, it's pleasant to be here, but wait until you have experienced the leap in consciousness when you have the courage to stand up and see inside this Box for yourself!

Or...would you rather remain a good, trusting fool duped by something the Creator wants to hide from your eyes?

Why would He hide it from you, why would He try to keep it out of our reach by placing it in the heart of a zone where He reversed reality, like an impenetrable minefield which traps Souls forever?

Did He do that just for our own good, or could it be that He fears the day when your consciousness grows beyond the confines of the prison He put you in?

Think about it.

How did He become the almighty Creator?

Could it be that He looked inside the Box and transformed into what He is now?

And if that is so, perhaps He is threatened by the existence of other beings having the same consciousness and the same power He has?"

"I know you feel awkward at my return and observing the change in me, but could it be that you feel this way because the change in me threatens your comfort zone where you live securely within the confines of the paradigm your Creator placed you in?

Could it be that you project your fear of the unknown unto me?

I am still your brother, and you will know that I am telling you the Truth once you look inside this Box and know the Truth about that which was hidden from you.

So, are you ready to take the next step and break the bars of your own cage, are you ready to embrace true freedom?"

As I listened to his speech and looked at the Box I began to wonder.

What if he is right, what if I am projecting my own fear of the unknown on him, what if I have been too content with a comfortable life on the mountain, trading in the potential of freedom for security within a fixed paradigm?

But then I remembered my Father and His character.

This was not the character of a deceiver, nor was it within His ability to deviate from Truth.

And if His heart was Good and He always told the Truth, then His warning concerning the Box and the danger Zone was true, and my brother, or, my former brother, had turned into a promoter of un-Truth.

Such a change could only happen if he truly had been altered by the Box.

Didn't our Father warn us that if we would look inside the Box it would devour us?

If then the Box had devoured my brother it would make sense I felt as if a stranger wearing the face of my brother had come to the mountain.

And if he tried to seduce us to look inside the Box, it would mean that it was the intention of the masked stranger to devour us as well.

It's impossible that the Box created itself.

If our Father created everything, then He must have created the Box, as well as the impenetrable minefield of a reversed reality surrounding it.

Why would He have done that, unless there is a specific purpose He had in mind when He created the Box of No and the reversed reality field?

How is it that I trusted our Father and felt repelled by even the idea of trying to open the Box of No, while apparently it held a long cherished attraction in the heart and mind of my former brother?

How could anyone in his right mind go against his own nature and reject Truth and embrace the folly of the Box of No?

Could it be that the Box was created to force us into making a choice between loving and trusting our Father, or loving the idea of the Box of No?

It's really a choice of love, isn't it?

It serves to draw out the choice which shows the true fiber of what we are deep inside.

The Box offers us a choice which reality we desire to be part of, the reality which rejects the love of our Father, or the reality which accepts and submits to our Father's love.

It was obvious to me that my brother had made his choice and how sought to find allies joining him in his wrong choice.

But I still could not comprehend why one would voluntarily choose to believe in a fantasy which contradicts reality and flips it around.