180_Chapter Four – Day 20 part three

There is a passageway between jutting rocks. It winds and climbs its way up the mountain. It is reminiscent of hell’s version of the narrows in Southern Utah. The walls are black, and the path is gray, tiny rocks ground from the slick walls. This is the journey Amber took with him. This is the rock she climbed before finally leaping from the top. TIt was there she found her wings and her cabin and her freedom from his tyranny. She took him with her as she jumped, but he did not have wings. He crashed upon his own mountain, trapped here now, waiting for an opportunity to return to our Earth. I am his opportunity.

I can see it all now, her leap, holding firm to him. She realized after she jumped, she would not survive. She regretted it, but her death would not be in vain. She held him tight, assuring he would not be able to continue back to the Earth without her. They became caught in flight. They lived in the void. She was desperate to contact her family and warn them, but she could not break away from him long enough to deliver a clear message. He pursued her relentlessly, knowing she was his only path back to this world, knowing she would eventually lead him to someone like me.

IEO went and asked her to come and meet with me. He told her I would help her, and I did. We met, and we talked in this very bedroom, and I led him to my cave, to my coal room, where we captured him. Two Feathers held him while I helped Amber find her way home. Two Feathers helped to retrieve the shattered pieces of the monster and returned them to his mountain, while I gathered the scattered pieces of Amber and returned them to the cabin.

Now, I am here, deep inside the core of my being, passing from Amber’s experience to my own. I climb the mountain I have climbed so many times, trying to find my freedom from self-recrimination, and finally, I am here. I have come to a place which is both mine and his. It is no longer Amber’s. She is free of this black canker. This cancer has left her being. This mountain is solely representative of my own self-loathing now. It is my mountain to conquer. It is my fear to face.

Motivated by my craving for freedom, I begin the climb, but he does not walk with me. He guides me from the top. He is the crow, and this time, he will not make mistakes. He will not let me pull him from his perch. As I felt crow pass from the back of the cabin to land on the trail before me, I felt a twinge of fear, but I wasn’t sure. It makes sense he would be a crow in this story. 

In crow’s story, crow stands before a mirror, seeing a reflection of himself. He scratches at the reflection, the way we peck at ourselves, often seeing only the flaws. Crow scratches until the reflection comes to life and eats him. I am the reflection here, and the self-loather scratches at me, the way I once scratched at myself. He does not realize I will come to life and I will eat him. Then I will be dead crow, and he will be no more. I know where we’re going, but I do not know how I will get there. I doubt the wisdom of becoming a reflection of him to defeat him, but I cast the doubt aside and continue into the mountain.

In my realization of becoming his reflection, I understand how this fear and self-loathing did not ever belong to Amber, and it does not belong to me. It is his. The realization is so apparent I feel stunned I didn’t realize it before. Of course, he does not project this pain upon us. We are simply feeling his presence in our bodies. We’re connecting with years of consciousness passed down to us after generations of pain.

He kept insisting Amber take her life, but only as he told himself to take his own. He is the self-loather, and we allow him to walk within us, accepting his self-loathing as our own. He does not stalk and kill. He relives his torture and death, over and over. Like any entity who has passed unsettled, he is reliving his story. Still, after all of this time, Amber finally changed the rules of his story with a narrative of her own. 

The black man she saw on the motorcycle spoke to him, telling him to kill himself, not her. He was just looking through her eyes. She was his witness. This black man was the devil she saw, not the man I flushed from my cellar. I don’t know if Amber had any self-loathing of her own before his presence in her life. However, he has finally found his bounty with me. I come laden with self-loathing, and now he thinks I can take his place. Now he knows the rules have changed and has a plan on how to end his story. It ends with his freedom from oppression and the beginning of my life sentence.

“Is the black man was another part of him?”

“No.” The answer rises, almost stepping over the question.”Was this the black man I saw crouched in the coal room sucked into the vortex with our vampire?”

“No, it was another inhuman belonging to your life. He was already ‘dealt with’ and is unrelated to this story.”

“Thank you, Two Feathers.” I speak aloud, and the crow at the top of the mountain caws in response.

So, if I now understand this picture correctly. The vampire/crow is a man full of self-loathing who possessed Amber and now calls to me. The man Amber saw in the canyon is a man pursuing our self-loather, constantly reminding him he is not worthy of love. I sense pursuer is like a father figure in the self-loather’s life. This pursuer is the man who chased Monica in her dream. In her dream, she was not Amber, as I initially thought. She was the self-loather running from the pursuer. She was trying to explain why she had to kill Amber but could not. She/He just knew he must.

Of course, knowing this ignites my compassion, but what of the pursuer when I eat his favorite prize? I don’t imagine he will be happy with me, and I don’t like the idea of an unknown in my equation. I suppose it is here I must lay aside my doubt and have faith in my guidance. To be cautious, using my body signal, I stop and ask my Spirit Guides, “Am I myself now, or am I the pursuer? Is the pursuer guiding my steps without my knowledge?”

‘No.’

“Is he influencing me in any way?”

‘No.’

“Is he aware of my presence here?”

‘No… Not yet.’