Through the Looking-Glass Darkly: A True Tale of Awakening by Joshua Dylan Roberts - HTML preview

He was sent from God.

And the awed expression and questions his friends were asking him seemed to verify this assumption.  Teachings and understandings from the powers and principalities of the earthly realm started becoming clear to him, and he saw the role of the law and justice systems in human society.  Then alien revelations started coming to him in flashes of numbers that seemed to assemble one digit at a time.  Kai felt like he was traveling at lightning speed through evolutionary lifetimes. 

The boys managed to convince Kai that it was time to go home.  While Kai bounced in the backseat, abuzz with pulsating energy, a text message came through.  “Let’s meet up some time,” it read.  Kai thought it was from a girl, which excited him.  He was really enjoying the South African meisies!  He didn’t reply ‘cos he wanted to be loyal to Bella by telling her about it first.  He had every intention of replying though, ‘cos he had no idea who the text could be from.  He hadn’t given his number to any girls.  And this could very well be another white rabbit synchronistic set up that the Universe was delivering to him, leading him to his soul mate.  His newfound openness was clear that he needed to follow his destiny wherever it led him.  So he sent Bella a text telling her that he was going to pursue whatever signs God told him to follow, even if God introduced him to other girls.  “Not to worry though,” he told her reassuringly, “if we’re meant to be, which I really think we are, then God will keep sending me signs that you’re the One.”  He wouldn’t hook up with anyone while he was with Bella, but he had an open mind.

In the backseat, JP became a manifestation of Bella, and Kai was overjoyed to sense her energy next to him.  He held her hand firmly, squeezing his fingers between JP’s clinched ones.  Again, JP went with it and obliged by squeezing back hard and maintaining the hold. 

Kai had a powerful sense that they were all going to crash and felt like there was nothing they could do to avoid it, so they might as well enjoy the ride.  He playfully stuck his feet up into the driver’s side of the car.  Dropped his flip flop, he stuck his big toe in the driver’s ear.  He was hilarious as ever!  The boys were just going with it, and responsibly interjecting only when everyone’s safety was at stake.  Presently, Kai thought that the driver was his dead dad, and suddenly Kai felt like his destiny was to fight him.  He persistently taunted Jezray, who he had just met that day, trying to press his buttons by highlighting that he was black and a Muslim.  Jezray brushed it off repeatedly in noble meekness. 

“We’re angels boet, we don’t fight,” he chuckled as he navigated the M5 back to the Southern Suburbs.  The extent to which Kai was willing to go seemed unrelenting.  It peaked just before 5am.

As the gang sat watching the sun rise over Table Mountain, Kai got hungry.  Lying on the floor of the car was an empty box of crackers with a picture of an old man on it.  The cartoon image came alive and protruded its animated hand out of the box and slapped Kai! 

Who did he think he was?! 

He didn’t have time to follow the thought.

Memories that Kai had never had access to flooded his consciousness.  Trivial things:

brown and yellow striped shirts

a reflective glass fishtank

his Papa.

Everything went quiet – internal and external. 

That’s when it made sense to him. 

Or not sense so much, but firm

direction from a higher place.

 

Overpoweringly, Kai knew now that his destiny, and what would begin the path of setting things right in the world, was to chop his grandfather up and then eat his flesh.  Yes, eat his flesh! 

“Off with his head!”  screeched JP in a woman’s voice.

He looked back at JP.  He hadn’t moved.  Had he really heard that?

The gruesomeness of the message registered in the logical centers of his brain, but the insistence persisted til he found his mind rationalizing.  This was his chance to prove how far he was willing to go to advance in the spiritual realm.  He had to trust these forces, they had shown him so much and now they were offering to take him in powerful directions, control him. 

In his mind’s eye he saw himself knocking on his grandfather’s door, axe in hand.  Unsuspecting slaughter…  Where could he buy an axe now?  Were any hardware stores open? How could he…

Another voice tried to break through: “You could sacrifice yourself rather.  Why do you think that…”

No, since the generational cycle, the alcoholism, the addiction, had all started with his grandfather, it had to end with him too. 

Then he remembered that Papa’s axe was still in the trunk from that camping trip they made last year.  He’d shoved it to the back to make room for new things in the trunk.  It was time to bring those old skeletons out of their darkened hiding places.  And to create new ones.  He didn’t say anything to the guys.  What was he going to say?  “Off with his head?”  He let out a grim chuckle to himself.  Booming thumps enveloped his chest as he dropped them off and hid the sick excitement behind smiles and a rigid body posture.

He didn’t experience the drive.  He had zoned out whilst driving in the past, but only for a minute max.  Now he came to himself briefly as he negotiated the parallel parking outside his Grandfather’s duplex.  Rain gently pitter patted on his crusted-up windscreen, and then broke through its timidity to release a dark veil of water on the dawn.  He found himself immersed in it, and reveling in the increased madness it served to create.

Malakai’s sweaty hand clung to the orange plastic of the axe handle, unable to let go.  It was the axe that had the grip on him, and the spirit that had the grip on the axe.  Cold Cape Town rain relentlessly dampened Kai’s now matted hair as it stuck to his head like a failed film of protection.  He knew all too well that it wasn’t him who needed the protection. 

 

CHAPTER 19: Reinventing the Wheel

His wet hand automatically stretched itself out into the darkened doorway to ring the bell of his grandfather’s house.  He could picture Papa’s droopy cheeks quiver into a surprised smile when he would creak open the door to discover his drenched grandson on the porch at 4:30am.  He wouldn’t have a chance to see the axe.  Kai knew that what he had come to do, he had to do quickly.  He would have to go out of himself temporarily and launch into the first hack.  It would be the only way that he’d be able to get through the gruesome process and finally eat his life organ.  He wished with clenched teeth that he didn’t have to go through with this.  But it was blatantly the will of god, and Kai was his servant.

Ping…pong.  The muffled doorbell was unobtrusive in the sleeping night.  Look, he’d pressed it, he’d come this far.  Surely God knew that he did intend to follow through and that was enough?  He could leave now if…

Dim light burst through the door cracks, and Kai heard the shuffle of footsteps down the wooden stairs.  Papa had woken up!  Ok this was his last chance to bolt, this was ridiculous.  But yet…how would he ever know what God had intended.  “The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to Him.”  No, fortune favors the bold.  Kai stepped back and swung the axe above his shoulder, reveling under its weight. 

Pfff.  The seal of the door was broken as it began to swing inwards.  Kai’s fingers that were locked into the orange plastic squeezed so hard that the blood ran out of them.  Did he want to see his Papa’s face first?  He chose to.

And that’s when the blackness hit him.

As he fell limp to the floor, his body a gelatinous mound of flesh, the image that had greeted him burned onto the screen of his mind.  He had seen himself looking back at him from inside the house!  His very own irises locked onto each other, creating a feedback loop with his soul.  How could this be…

He heard the voice of his mom’s friend telling him how, when he had his near-death experience, he saw every kind of demon imaginable, and they all had his own face! 

The axe tumbled out of his hand and bounced off the pavement back onto his open palm.  It sliced through his flesh like a spoon through jelly.  He felt nothing but bewilderment, acquiescence; he saw nothing but enveloping blackness.

The next sensation Kai experienced was the wet concrete on the palms of his hands.  The rain fell like heavy nails against a metal chalkboard. 

“Son.”  Kai kept his eyes closed.  The voice was familiar but not his own.  He wasn’t even sure in this moment who he was.  “Son it’s me.”

Dad!!

“Malakai!”

Kai’s eyes shot open to see his dad’s handle-bar mustache upturned into a smile.  His weathered skin was inches away from his own face, his heated breath instantly animated Kai’s limp body.  But his eyes!  It was still Kai’s own eyes looking back at him.  He saw the mirror-image specks of yellow gleam off their counter-part.  Flashes of twisting rope from the brown ceiling shot into his consciousness; his dad kissing him on the beach; the two of them in the swimming pool. 

“Son I want you to see.  Come with me.”

Blackness once again embraced Kai.

When the world faded back in, he was standing at the entrance to a theme park.  It hung with the profundity of an archaic archetype.  Was this a dream?  He felt his own hands, pinched himself.  There was nothing to differentiate between this and reality.  He went to look at his watch, but got distracted by the music.  It was familiar.  It’s boppings seemed to be animating a wooden Ferris wheel at the epicentre of the park. 

Suddenly, he spotted his dad’s blue jeans swiftly making their way through deserted pathways to the entrance of the Ferris wheel.  Dad!  Kai’s own jeans chased in his footsteps.  He was now close enough to see the back of his old man’s leather brown ears, and he was closing the distance.  He had tinges of homesickness as he watched his father’s familiarly-structured arm reaching to steady himself while mounting a passenger car of the Ferris wheel. 

The wheel creaked in its perpetual spin, pushing his father away from him.  But not far.  Kai clambered into the clanking chair.  It felt familiar.  Almost like a portion of his life was spent riding that wheel.  Other characters began to make their presence know; they seemed familiar too.  He felt tinges of recognition as his eyes fell on a decrepit old man in the passenger car ahead of his dad, a dehydrated prune staring blankly ahead.  Behind Kai, two young children waggled their way into the car, vision locked on him, a nervous apprehension lurking behind their pure white eyes.  Kai assumed that their interest in him was because he was one step ahead of them on the ride and they were about to follow in his tracks. 

All were now locked in their designated cycle, and the ground began shrinking away from Kai.  Only now did it occur to him that it would have been a better move to wait for his dad at the bottom of the wheel and not climb on board; if his dad climbed off after the first rotation there was still a chance he would miss him.

“Daaaaad!!” Kai thundered.  To his delighted surprise, the man twisted his head around.  Yes!  Gradually his father’s face revealed itself like the ancient moon waxing, and his handle-bar moustache raised itself into that closed-mouth smile he had witnessed moments before on the cold ground.  Warmth began to surge Kai’s heart.

“Malakai,” the man said in his father’s raspy voice,  “you should have waited at the bottom of the wheel; there was no need to climb on board with me.”

“But Dad, I’ve been trying to catch up to you for…” Kai let his words fade away as the lyrics to the music that had been bopping in the background finally registered to Kai: it was The Lion King’s “The Circle of Life.”  He finally understood what the wheel was, and what he had been doing.

In triumph he dismounted the archaic circle at the next revolution.  His feet connected with the earth’s firmness; he felt alive.  The children in the car behind him followed his lead and dismounted the ride with relieved jubilance, ditching the stagnation behind them in the dismal dust.  Kai’s father stayed where he was.  He was trapped in his circular course, perpetually watching the earth and his family shrink away from him.  But his closed-mouth smile had now burst forth into white-teeth that radiated starry glory.

            Kai woke up on the beach, the wind tickling his hair.  White noise water rushed onto the shore and was in no hurry to get back.  How did he get here?  Another blackout?  He couldn’t remember what happened after the…wait.  He remembered it all.  Dad!  He shot up, sand falling from the side of his face.  The wind picked up.  The cloud on the horizon told Kai that the prevailing South-Easter wind had shifting – it could now blow where it pleased.  He breathed deep.

 

CHAPTER 20: New Construction Requires Demolition

 “Dude…what the hell was that?!” he asked JP, hoping he hadn’t sabotaged their friendship with his ridiculous antics, including some gay hand holding.  They had gone for a drive to check the surf.

JP was calm and just smiled amusedly.  He gently explained to him that there were lessons to be learned.  “One main lesson,” he said, “was that you should be a mirror instead of a prescription.” 

He couldn’t believe how wise his friend was, and how appropriate his enigmatic responses were.  Why hadn’t he noticed this before?  Kai now realized that JP had pretty much always just gone with Kai’s vibe.  Kai used to assume that it was because they were the same kind of soul deep down, but now he saw that it was just JP’s adaptable nature that allowed their interaction to feel so organic.

“Bru each person that your interact with is a mirror that we see ourselves in, and God through.  We have God in us, they have God in them, but we both just have only partial visions.  It’s by letting the Spirit lead that the bridge between those partial views and Gods infinite view is crossed. 

“Time is a big issue,” he continued.  “It’s almost more accurate to say that time goes backwards.  It’s a process of unburdening our shoulders with these weights we’ve put on ourselves.  We have the choice to die deaths to these individual burdens each day, just like Paul said.  Only then can we be reborn in a more purified, older, more holistic way…” he paused and looked out the car window as the sun’s golden beams gleamed from behind ancient mountains.  “It’s like God confronts us with a choice of instant gratification of the senses, or death to that desire.  Death is always something we don’t want at the time, but we know it will take us somewhere better.  God works in our life to the extent that we choose death to everything that’s not him.   You chose it last night. 

‘Jesus, although being in very nature God…’ (like you realized you are tonight through your like dualistic struggle between good and evil) ‘…did not consider equality with God something to be grasped at, but humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death’. 

“You were willing to die last night, to the extent that you actually believed you had already accomplished it.  All that psychological stuff that goes back to your childhood is just kak that your mind needs to work through.”

How did JP seem to know exactly what Kai had been through?  Kai attributed it to the fact that he was probably narrating the majority of his internal experiences throughout the episode, just like he had with Matt the first time.

JP continued as Kai listened with awed appreciation, “Life’s a riddle, a contradiction, a dualism, a holism, a paradox. Every word that you can think of, life’s the opposite too.”  Kai recognized the echo of Buddhism in that statement.  He started to see that he had been reductionist in his thinking.  The western mindset is a facet of wisdom; so is the African mindset.  But although each of these two are varying reflections of the same eternal truth, they eliminate the other, along with an infinite amount of possibilities, if you solely focus on either.  Labels are really dodgy ‘cos they cause us to focus on differences and only see things through those binoculars.  Binoculars are good for seeing things up close, but eliminate the big picture with their lack of peripheral vision.

Kai didn’t agree with all that JP was explaining to him.  But the newfound wisdom that he could hear humbled him.

JP continued, “We’ve all been put here to be a vehicle to allow God’s essence to come out. It’s kinda like mediumship of the spirit.  Like here in Africa man, it’s all about community. In community is where religion originated.   It’s a living church; It’s the Word.  Western society started in Europe, and now Europe’s pioneering the religious decline.  Too much logic and left brain analysis, and so-called Enlightenment ek se.  It works sweet with technology, but it microwaves meaning til it’s a ball of gloop.  Isolates people from each other, you know, and so annihilates Ubuntu. 

“We’ve gotta be open to people my bru.  It’s about community, like I said.  Even Jesus right, Jesus travelled from place to place, but He mostly healed people when they came to Him.”

Kai felt the need to be healed.  He was either schizophrenic, a prophet, or both.  Black…white…red…Fire had sparked the whole ignition, and now fire was burning up his life. 

…

            The heat started consuming his world in a carnivorous fire.  It had already devoured his sanity.  Now it took his girlfriend.  It was 7:14am one morning when Bella woke Kai to reveal her infidelity.

She had kissed a friend’s brother…twice, she told him.  An emotional affair had been going on for weeks.  She gaped into his sleepy eyes looking for the reaction.  The expected jealousy never came.  What engulfed Kai instead was a shakiness that stemmed from the core of his body.  He shook at the gravity of her decision, and at the realization of the magnitude his decision that now lay before them. 

Although there had been cracks in the foundation of their relationship from the first day she playfully stood on Kai’s feet in the bar, Kai never thought the building would come crashing down like this.  It was a heavy move to make, at a heavy time.  It was almost like she subconsciously wanted this push, and had gathered the heaviest straw she could find in order to throw it on the back of their humped beast of a relationship.  Kai’s manic texts from South Africa must have been the weighty bails that her heavy straw fell upon the top of.  The camel’s back broke, taking down Kai’s support structure.  Kai could rebuild from scratch, or he could leave. 

Accompanying the weight of the situation though was a now familiar calm assurance that instilled a solid peace to his instantly turbulent world.  It came from somewhere deep down inside of him.   It was the same illogical tranquility that transcended over him as he was watching Rudi’s lifeless body being dragged from the ocean.  It bore with it a profundity that Kai had come to realize was from God Himself.  He wasn’t nearly as surprised by the paradoxical calmness now as he was when he was just a surfer party animal.  Before he even prayed to ask God what he should do, he knew in the depths of his being what the answer would be.

 

PART 3: DIFFERENTIATED UNITY

 

CHAPTER 21: The Necessity of Surgery

A week later Kai had severed his previous life in Cornwall.  Renting a room in a stone monastery called the Rambler’s Rest, Kai wrestled with the split in the road that he had inadvertently meandered his way into.  He had no money, no girlfriend, no home, no spiritual integrity.  He was on the borderline of psychosis.  Jonah was at his lowest – in the belly of the fish, and already cursing the green plant that failed to save him from the heat of the flames when he sparked it. 

But something had changed within him, something to do with that vision of his dad, and the decision he made to dismount the wheel.  He couldn’t quite put his finger on what, but somewhere, from the midst of the fire, a still, small voice called out to him - “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Kai’s path lay not in the windy currents of synchronicity.  It didn’t lie in the earthquake of traveling.  And it definitely did not lie in the passion of fire.  It was simpler than all that, and Kai had missed it all along.  He had been trying hard to attain spiritual maturity, when it was a question of submission of his will, rather than training of his brain, that stood in his way. 

On a more solid level than everyday decision, he felt a call to obedience.  Not glorious splendor.  Like JP had said, even Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.  His paradigm shifted with a humble thud as an elegant Truth dawned on him with the persistence and initial subtlety of a sunrise.  A truth that despite its lack of bells and whistles, resonated echoingly with a profound wisdom that lay at the heart of Reality: Jesus’s path led to Life.  Kai now had the same choice that Jesus had given the rich young man – a choice of loyalty, of foundation.  Kai had tried to love two girls at once in the past.  He had tried to be loyal to two countries.  He had tried to have his magic cake and eat it.  Now it was turning out that you can’t have two masters – if you don’t love the One who loves back, you’ll split your soul in two. 

“Jesus please help me to be more like you,” he prayed.

Once he understood it, the choice was easy.  In the same way as his soul knew that he needed to break up with Bella before he had even prayed to ask God for an answer, Kai knew that the decision had been made already on an other-than-conscious level.  If your hand causes you to slap yourself, cut it off.

He cut off weed…forever.  There was a solidness based in eternity in this final decision. 

He didn’t want to dull the pain of this breakup by using the numbing effect of alcohol and the distraction and ego gratification of chasing after girl’s affection.  He vowed to always maintain control while drinking, keeping his intoxication to the legal driving limit.  It was too slippery of a slope for his alter egos to slide in on. 

And girls?  There were still a lot of them in Cali, and they still loved his accent.  But he made a covenant with his eyes not to lust.  It was an exercise