“Sheh sheh den vi, sheh sheh Lin, sheh ter fa de lon”

Chan spoke the words over his cooking pot. The brew he had tended for a full cycle of Tana, the largest of the forty moons, was finally ready.

Chan was a gifted medicine maker. Over a lifetime he had come to know the songs and spirits of the herbs, animals and stones that availed him, and he was renowned for serving cures to the people for fevers and for pain. But this was Mind Medicine, and Chan had made it for himself. 

So many cycles Chan had lived through, and he’d begun to feel the pull of something greater than himself. His plans and goals no longer held the same importance. Was it depression? Or was his spirit outgrowing this plane? 

Many he loved had already moved on, and he had met each loss with resignation. But when his truest love had suddenly crossed into the Unknown, Chan had found himself becoming unmoored. They’d been bonded since they were not much more than children, and life without her made less sense than he could ever have imagined. It was once she had gone that he realized she meant everything to him. His mind was a marsh of sadness, flooded by his own tears.  And so he turned his attention to the things he knew best—to the plants, the cycles of the moon, and to his cooking pot—in search of the Great Mother, in need of her mercy. 

It was the season of storms, and the water started rising. Chan felt a great flood wash him out of his temple and into the River of Ghosts, where someone was waiting to show him safe passage onward.”

(The Beloved Spirit appears as the ghost of his partner, holding a lantern. The fabric river recedes. They embrace and she leads him to the waterfall. They watch )

They stood together beside a beautiful waterfall while Chan prepared for a momentous descent.

Chan was drawn through the mouth of the river and into an ice choked sea. He saw majestic icebergs and realized they were now melting. At the same time he noticed parts of his ego that had seemed so solid were beginning to change form.

Chan was swept further into the ocean. There is life hiding in the deeper layers, and each twilight marks the start of a great Vertical Migration of those gentler creatures who only feel safe to come out in the dark.

Chan had a sudden realization—he was a whale, and he was dying.”

(Vision of the Egg Tender commences)

Chan found himself in his body once again, but it did not feel the same. His consciousness had acquired a new fluidity, and a memory from somewhere out of time.

“Reverence… A new world is being formed and the virtue of Reverence is the last seed that is needed. The power of your devotion to another has drawn us to ask this of you. Form a vessel fit to hold this adoration, and fill it as you see fit.

Chan looked around and realized he was seated in a decomposing carcass, which both was and wasn’t his own. Already it had become a feast for a multitude, and new life was forming all around. With gratitude, he formed an egg shaped vessel from pieces of still spongy bone. He found forty pearls, like tiny luminous moons, and put them into the vessel. And he placed a nautilus shell within, a spiraling symbol of growth and renewal. And after that he filled it with a tiny ocean of his own salty tears. But the more he cried, the more the egg began to glow, until he finally felt at peace, and the egg was a beautiful indigo blue, the color of the abyss.

Bubbles rising from the carcass captured his attention, and he realized it was time to ascend.

Chan now saw the bubbles were in his own cooking pot. He was safe in his temple. Was his journey even real?