Iglesia ………………………………… Episode 13

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(Last week’s episode……and you can read the entire series by clicking on the tag!)

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Time slowed.

He actually heard the hammer of the handgun falling through the air on its way to make contact with the bullet that was about to end his life. Something funny happened to his vision and he was looking down a long tube of light as the darkness closed in from the edges of his vision like a black iris.

He fell down the tunnel……and into the past, at least part of him did. Part of him now, was also floating above his body, observing. And part of him was still kneeling naked on the cold steel floor of the gently rocking train, listening to the hammer fall and concentrating wildly on keeping his sphincters closed. The last two weren’t very appealing right now, so he decided to concentrate on the part that was falling down the tunnel, as it seemed to be by far his best option at the moment.

And his life began to flash before his eyes….though since his eyes were squeezed shut as tightly as possible in a full facial grimace of anticipation back on the train, he knew it wasn’t his eyes that his life was flashing in front of.

It was very nice here. In fact, considering the alternative, it was very fucking nice infuckingdeed, and he tried to make his life unfold as slowly as possible. He was floating above again, the same sensation as he had had back when he was on the train and it had seemed as if he risen out of his body, even though his whole life through he had identified the he, himself, his identity, almost exclusively as his body. His body enjoying all of the pleasant sensations of his youthful life in the jungle, only rarely troubled by emotion or angst or much deep thought in his simple existence….and then later, his body passing through, experiencing, and surviving all of the not pleasant sensations that had made him into who he was today. That time was also untroubled by emotion or angst or much deep thought, as he had been plunged into the world of The Center, against his will. There was not time or space for those things then, emotion or angst or deep thought, there was only space for work, for training…and for the pain…. that went with the work of being transformed into a pure killing machine. He had no time or space to be himself, in fact it was actively discouraged. Incredibly actively discouraged. His peers slowly but steadily disappeared through the years, and always suddenly. It was not until much later in his years of training that he would lay on his bed and have the room inside of himself to be anything but a trainee. At that point he felt like he was coming out of a trance, or coming off of powerful drugs….which, he found out later….he was.

Those times, lying on his bunk when he first started to have room inside of himself for himself, just beginning to wake up from a long, long trauma, were like a second birth.

And suddenly he was back floating and realized that he had just been actually reliving that time, those sensations, he had been back in that body, his body as it had been then, still a gangly late teenager. Except, evidently, he wasn’t completely who he thought he was anymore, since he was now somehow separate from his body. And his body had always been who he was….since he had been born the first time.

And then suddenly the iris closed again…..and he was sucked down from above and into his body through the top of his own head. But wait, it wasn’t his head, it was the head of a tiny baby, just born. But then it was his head….and he was completely disoriented within and as part of this new orientation. He felt nothing like himself, his self was now gone and incredibly powerful sensations were running over him and through him. He was blind, and bathed in unmuffled noise, and crying, and so filling his 9 month old but brand new lungs with air, a completely new and totally incomprehensible experience. He was still attached to his mother ….but separate too, for the first time ever. And then the cord was cut. If his senses had not been completely overwhelmed by new sensations on every inch of…and inside of…his body, this would have scared the crap out of him. As it was he barely registered it. And by the time he did…he was back at his mothers warm belly, but this time, on top instead of inside. And just as those feelings were sorting themselves out and just as he was again on the edge of experiencing an empty terrible yawning fear at being alone, separate, independent, isolated, loose, sundered, unnourished, unnurtured, disconnected,…………….removed………….. from his old world, into this new and strange and beyond comprehension new experience…just as he for the very first time felt the grip of the terrible gaping well of fear that comes with being a being in this world….

………..a most wonderful thing happened.