by Ted Dekker
A terrible pain bit deeply into my eyes as the world darkened. A throbbing ache spread through my head and down my spine.
My mouth was wide, screaming, but my mind was lost in darkness, begging for death because I feared blindness far more. When I died, I would live a new life, one with Elyon. But blind . . . I couldn’t live my life blind again!
You think you must die to be one with me, daughter?
The soft voice came from far away, whispering through the darkness. I willed myself to move toward it, desperate to be dead and there. Begging to be dead.
Light exploded in my mind’s eye, and suddenly I wasn’t there. Not there in the chamber, not on the table. No longer bound.
All I could see was white. All I could hear was the thumping of my heart. So I couldn’t be dead, I thought. I instinctively lifted a hand up and stared at it, but I couldn’t see it.
I’d long ago learned that contrast is needed for sight. If everything in the world were pure white, without a single shift in hue or a single shadow, no sight would be possible. All would be white, but even that whiteness could not be sight. All of the senses worked on a system of polarity. Without contrast, no human could hear, taste, smell, touch, or see. We wouldn’t be able to experience ourselves or the world.
Now you know, daughter. Death is only a shadow.
Meaning erupted in my mind. Without polarity, there could be no experience in the world. My body was as much an experience vessel as an earthen vessel. In the same way shadows allowed the eyes to see, death was playing its part by providing a contrast to life in the world of polarity.
My body was dead, but I wasn’t dead, because death was only a shadow experienced while in a body. Life was eternal, before and after the death of the body.
The moment that awareness filled me, wind roared through my ears, and the white world blinked off. I immediately found myself standing on a grassy hill, overlooking a gathering of people—a few hundred—dressed in ancient clothing. They were from the lowest reaches of society, mostly in tatters. Outcasts, I thought, many of them prostituted and diseased. The worst of offenders, the rejected, the hopeless.
They were seated and looking up at a man with long hair who stood on a boulder, teaching them. His voice carried to me across the valley.
“You are the light of the world,” he said. “Do you light a lamp and put it under a basket?”
He was speaking to them, but he was speaking to me, and his meaning was clear. I, like the outcasts he spoke to, was the light of the world, but I was hiding that light in another identity, so it could not be seen by me or by the world.
“The kingdom of heaven is already within you. It does not come from here or there with signs . . .”1 His voice began to fade away, replaced by the crunching of gravel under feet behind me.
I twisted my head and saw that same teacher walking toward me, only five paces away. I spun around, staring into knowing eyes that seemed to absorb me. Jesus, whom Talya called Yeshua. I knew it by the images from the sanctuary in Eden. The paintings had missed the love and deep knowing in his eyes.
“Always remember,” he said, voice gentle, “you have been made complete, a new creature, risen with me. It’s not who you think you are as an earthen vessel who lives, but I who live in you, joined as one. I am in you; you are in me. In the same way I am in the world now, so are you. Do you understand these things, daughter?”2
I was so stunned that I didn’t know what to say, so I said the only thing that came to me in that moment.
“Is . . . Is that the way you really look?”
A glint filled his eye and he smiled. “No. But how else would you recognize me?” A wink.
Then he lifted his hands to the crown of his head and made the motion of one peeling off a costume that was fastened at the top. His flesh fell from him, replaced by a blinding light.
It happened in the space of a single heartbeat, and what had been a man dressed in a long garment was suddenly light that engulfed me with a crackling hum. The light streamed to the right, to the left, high above and far below. I knew immediately that it was infinite. That it had no end.
In that light, I was consumed by an overwhelming love that my body could barely contain. Any more and I knew that my flesh and bone would be scattered to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.
I don’t know how long I was in that light, because there was no time in that space. I was in eternal life itself, and that eternal life had no beginning or end, no up or down, no destination, no place. There was no judgment, no darkness, no knowledge of good or evil, no opposites at all.
It was beyond polarity.
Then the light collapsed in on itself, sucked back into a body. I stood gasping for air, stunned.
Only now it wasn’t the body called Yeshua who stood before me.
It was Justin, who was Yeshua. And we were no longer in that ancient land, we were on the sands of a white desert. Only Justin and me. His eyes were a bright green and he was smiling like an exuberant child.
“Now,” he said with a nod. “You try it.”
I blinked. “Me?”
“Is it not written, ‘You are glorified’? Show me your glory. Be perfect, as your Father is perfect.”3
“My glory? But I’m not perfect.” And then I spoke my deepest fear—a belief drilled into me by Shadow Man. “I’m wretched.”
He dipped his head. “If you insist. But know that how you see yourself doesn’t define you. How I see you defines you. How you see yourself only defines your experience in the world. Do you want to know how I see you? Try it.”
I hesitated, then tentatively lifted my arms and set my fingers on the crown of my head as if to peel off my body. But the thought of doing so terrified me. More, it felt obscene. Something in me was resisting on a level so fundamental that I could hardly move my fingers. My earthen vessel, I realized. It was clinging to itself, a god of its own making. But that wasn’t me.
So I did what he’d done. The moment my fingers entered the crown of my head, my body fell off of me like a loosened garment.
What emerged was a pillar of the exact same light. Not infinite and extending forever, but humming with the same ferocious power. I stood there trembling with love as the light, facing Justin, who smiled and spoke in a voice that reached to the end of the world.
“I am in you and you are in me. One, in the same way I am one with Elyon.”
And then I collapsed back into the earthen vessel called Rachelle.
Justin chuckled, face beaming. “You like?”
I was too struck with wonder to form words.
“This is eternal life, to know the Father and the One he sent,” Justin said. “Now you see what it means to know eternal life while in your earthen vessel. It cannot be adequately explained, only experienced. And in that knowing, there is no darkness. No fear.”
My brain was only now coming back to its self-identification. The teachings crystalized for me. I was experiencing myself beyond polarity. I had known the unseen. And in that unseen, I was already complete.
“Are you a part of all?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Inchristi is all,” Justin breathed. “Inchristi is in all. You aren’t the one Inchristi any more than you are the Albino or the woman. But as you see who you are as Inchristi, as an aspect of Elyon, your experience in the world is full of light and you are saved from darkness. Do you want to be saved?”4
What is known that cannot be named?
“To believe in your name,” I said, breathless, “is to see myself complete in you, because I’m joined with you. One with you. Inchristi means ‘one with Christ.’” My words were true, and they shook me to the core. “We are the light.”
“Look to the light and you will see me. And when you see me, you will see yourself in me. I am the vine of light and love. Remain in that identity and you will see that there is no problem, because I have overcome the world of problems, as have you, already raised with me. It is finished.”
&
nbsp; “You are the Light . . .”
“I am.”
“You are my Father . . .”
“I am.”
“You are the Holy Spirit, like a mother . . .”
“I am.”
“You are the Son. Three as One . . .”
“I am.”
“Inchristi is me,” I said. “And as one, we are in my earthen vessel. That’s how Inchristi is me and in me.”
He nodded once, slowly, delighted. His next words were softly spoken, barely more than a whisper, but they shook the universe.
“I am.”
With those words, white wiped out the world, and I found myself curled up on a hard surface, breathing hard. I could hear fire crackling. Maybe the light I’d just experienced. But no, this was a flame. Like a torch.
I opened my eyes with a gasp. But it was still dark. Black. I felt the pain behind my eyes and sat up, gasping.
“Rachelle . . .”
Jacob’s voice.
Confusion swarmed me. My eyes were open but it was pitch-dark. Was I still in a dream? Or a near-death experience? But I could feel the cold stone under me and smell Jacob’s scent. A torch’s flame popped on the wall to my right.
Jacob was by me, arms now pulling me close. “Please forgive me.”
“What’s happening?” I croaked.
“You don’t remember?”
“I . . .”
It came back to me like a flood. The death of Cirrus. The black hooded snake they called the shadow.
They’d blinded me.
29
I STARTED CLICKING. Immediately the dungeon cell took shape, emerging with the familiar definitions of shapes and density that echolocation offered. The wonder of the world I’d just seen was replaced by the realization of my worst fears.
“I’m blind.” My voice was thin, barely a voice at all.
Jacob breathed heavily beside me, one arm around my shoulders. “It’s my doing,” he said. “You must forgive me, I beg you.”
I felt myself tempted to curl up and hide. From myself. From Jacob, who held me, punished by his guilt.
He muttered a curse. “When I see him next, I’ll tear his head from his shoulders.”
Aaron.
Who are you, dear daughter?
A wretched blind girl who will blind the world, a small part of my mind said. I struggled to keep from sinking into that shadow of shame.
“I am the light,” I whispered, but in that darkness I was having a hard time believing it.
“The light?” Jacob said.
“I am complete.”
It was a desperate cry of denial from a girl who was far from complete. But I dared not believe that lie, so I recited what I had known.
“For me to live is Justin.”
The torch’s flame whooshed. My eyes were open, but I could see nothing. And I knew that when I woke in Eden, I would be blind as well. The thought terrified me.
“If Justin lives, I beg him to save his daughter and slay the son who allowed her to fall into such evil hands,” Jacob muttered.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, staring blindly at the wall. “If not for you and Samuel, I would probably be dead.”
“But blindness . . . For you, it’s worse than death.”
He knew my story and joined my pain. For this I loved him.
“I thought you were dead,” he said. “But you never stopped breathing.”
How long had it been? Strange that I hadn’t woken in Eden. No, because I had woken in another place. In that light with Yeshua and Justin, who were greater than me and yet of the same fabric.
“They only just left.” His voice was still riddled with anguish.
“Aaron had me blinded because I said he was blind. That’s all. So if there is fault, it’s mine. And it’s only part of my journey.” I felt numb. “And yours is to be here with me, not to condemn yourself or feel sorry for me.”
I was struggling to believe my own words, though I knew they were true.
“He forced you to watch,” I said. “Why didn’t they . . .”
“Kill me? Aaron would use me to leverage my father. I’m far more valuable to him alive than dead.”
“He’s afraid of us.”
“How so?”
“Right now they’re probably pacing before their priests, terrified that your interpretation of the prophecy confirms their own. That the Horde will crush all Albinos.” I felt half dead, slogging through confused emotions.
“You realize I had to play with their minds,” Jacob said. “It was the only way—”
“I know, Jacob. It is as it should be.”
“And yet . . .”
“And yet I’m blind.” I pushed myself up. Clicked. Again the room came into dull view. At least I had that.
“How do my eyes look?” I asked, facing him.
I could feel his breath on my cheek. “Red, but otherwise the same. When the poison clears your eyes will appear normal.”
“You know this snake?”
“It’s called the shadow because it can blind its prey from three paces. They come from the deep south and live in the red cliffs. One bite will kill even the strongest warrior.”
“So Aaron wants me to betray the prophecy, not kill me.”
“Yes. Again, please forgive me.”
What is known that cannot be named?
Did I know myself? Was I re-cognizing my true self, the one I’d known with Justin?
I had to know that me again. To experience myself seeing beyond the world of polarity. Nothing else mattered anymore, because here I was nothing. I started to rise but dizziness swept over me.
“Easy, you must rest.”
“Help me up.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m fine, just help me up.”
He took my arm and pulled me to my feet. I stood still until my head cleared. My exchange with Justin returned to my thoughts, and I crossed the cell, clicking, getting my bearings.
“What is this sound you keep making?” he asked.
“Echolocation, remember? It allows me to see in the dark. Shapes mostly. Edges.”
“And they don’t know you have this skill.”
“No.” But my mind wasn’t on that advantage. It was on the Second Seal.
What is known that cannot be named?
I placed my hand on the wall, feeling the rough, cool stones below the torch. I imagined Yeshua speaking to the crowd of outcasts, people labeled for their perceived flaws. You are the light of the world. My breathing thickened.
“Who are you, Jacob?”
“I’ve been asking the same question all my life.”
“And?” I asked, turning my head.
He hesitated. “Jacob. A lover and a warrior in the line of Qurong, whose kingdom I will rule when he passes.”
What is known that cannot be named?
“That’s only your earthen vessel.”
He didn’t react.
“Beyond that temporary vessel, you are what is known that cannot be named.”
“I’m not sure what that could mean,” he said.
What is known . . . Experienced.
That cannot be named . . . Reduced to language.
Words were simply symbols of meaning, created by the mind. There were thousands of languages, all with different words that had many definitions. The true Word, as Talya said, wasn’t a thing or any book of theology. It was Justin. The light of the world. Inchristi. An aspect of the Creator in form. Incarnate.
Now you know, Justin had said. I had experienced my identity. And what was that identity?
I stepped toward Jacob, drawn like a moth to a flame. “The page in your hair—you still have it?”
“It’s safe.”
“Give it to me.”
He quickly loosened his locks and handed me the tightly rolled page. Heart beating like a tom drum, I dropped to my knees, unrolled it, and spread it on the stone floor. I clicked.
What I saw stilled m
y breath. The page appeared to me clearly and in color.
I lifted my head and clicked at Jacob. He was only a dimensional shape. But when I clicked again, facing the page, I saw color and words! And I knew those words.
On the page was a new symbol. Like the tattoo on my arm, a white band rimmed the circle, but now a second band lined the white. A brilliant green band.
White: Origin. The Creator, who was infinite.
Green: Life. Me. That aspect of the Creator who was temporarily manifested in the world, in it but not of it. My eternal self was the light of the world. Inchristi is all and in all.
Below the symbol: The words. What is known that cannot be named?
Me.
I lifted my head and clicked at Jacob’s form, now kneeling before me. “I’ve known it,” I said.
Heart hammering in my chest, I opened my hand and lowered it on the page, over the round symbol.
“I am the Light of the World,” I breathed. “Inchristi is me and in me.”
At first nothing happened. So I repeated it: “I am the Light of the . . .”
The white circle under my hand began to glow, and I caught my breath. Brilliance like the sun’s joined a green hue that streamed up between my fingers.
I heard Jacob grunt as he jerked back.
The glowing circle winked out, and a rush of power surged up my arm, then into my mind, where it exploded like a star. I had been here before, earlier that very night while being blinded.
I gasped, numb to the world around me. My body felt like it might disintegrate, too frail to contain the staggering power flowing through me, even though that power was only a thimbleful in an endless ocean made of light.
My Origin, my God, my Father, who was infinite, had created me in his likeness as the light of the world. What was made in infinite power could not be unmade by any finite power. It could only be hidden by darkness.
And then it was gone, as if someone had pulled the cord that powered it.
But it wasn’t gone, was it?
With shaking fingers, I tugged the sleeve of my tunic up over my right arm and stared at the tattoo on my shoulder. This too I could see. A glowing band of emerald green lay inside the white circle.