For a change of scene

I send a telepathic signal to Sophia, indicating that I feel ready to resume our conversation, and wait patiently for her reply.

As I mentioned before, I could not help but feel that our love of power had been kept a secret for a reason. I knew well that the shame associated with the dark side of that love, in tandem with the pride associated with the bright side of that love, kept it secret and alive.

I gaze upon the cityscape, watching millions of lights twinkle in the night, my mind caught inside a delicious reverie.

"Christos."

Sophia whispers my name and I smile, sensing her divine presence behind me. I turn around to greet her with my sacred presence, thinking that it is so like her to show up before she replies to my signals of readiness.

"Sophia, let us dive yonder."

"Let us dive yonder" is my way of saying, "Let us have a change of scene".

As much as I enjoy the cityscape scenario in our simulated reality, what with its balcony and its city lights at night, I sometimes need a change of pace when I wish to discuss a question in depth, which is what I wanted to do now. We tend to be creative with our scenic transitions in virtual reality.

Sophia and I levitate to the top of the balcony railing with our backs to the cityscape. I take her hand. We look at each other and smile.

We dive off the balcony into empty space. The rush of sound is deafening, and the freefall is deliriously terrifying, at least for me. In the midst of our dive, our perception of time all but disappears into the space around us.

When our backs hit a fabric at bottom, our sense of time returns with a jolt, and the fabric stretches for what seems like an eternity until it can stretch no more, catapulting us back up into our next scene: the top of a mountain on a spring-like evening with a commanding but gorgeous and panoramic view.

We land on the summit feet first, touching down in a feather-like motion.

"You had a question, Christos."

I raise my hand to caress her cheek. "Yes."

Our secret love of power

"I would be alone to consider your question."

Sophia touches my temple with sacred intent and blesses my third eye with a tender kiss, cutting our telepathic link and leaving me alone with my thoughts. She walks away with a knowing smile.

Her question resounds: "Do we stop the world with our love of presence or do we engage it fully with our secret love of power?" I knew it contained essential clues to my purpose.

Our love of presence and our secret love of power. I knew enough that she did not mean our love of presence or our secret love of power. She spoke from, and for, the perspective of humanity at a juncture in its evolution when it was evolving beyond its biological limits.

Sophia is well aware of our schizophrenic relationship with power: the power to manipulate, deceive, and exploit with one hand and the power to persuade, enlighten, and create with the other. Abusive power and authentic power. As we evolve away from abusive power toward authentic power, a very fine line was being drawn between them. I could not help but feel that our love of power had been kept a secret for a reason.

But what might this reason have to do with my purpose?

I release my question to the Universe, allowing myself the pleasure of a cool and caressing breeze in the bosom of a separate peace.

Do we stop the world?

Out of a peace so profound rises an inkling of purpose from the depths of this presence to the moment in which we find ourselves. “This presence is pregnant with life,” I tell Sophia soundlessly, in the silence of our peace.

She half turns her head. “This presence is pregnant with life, Christos, but also with law, and with mind, and with spirit.”

“With law, with life, with mind, and with spirit,” I say, adding continuity. “This presence is forever giving birth to an evolutionary disclosure of matter, life, mind, and spirit – an ever-widening circle that promises to reveal more of itself with the passage of time from within the depths of space.”

Sophia turns around inside my embrace to face me. “Until the circle is whole.”

“And complete,” I add, after a pause.

“In the meantime, Christos, with bodies as vessels, we might dwell in the peace of this presence from time to time, to contemplate the objects of this world with sacred intent through sacred encounter.”

“And with bodies as vehicles, Sophia, we can soar on the updrafts of this presence, and celebrate the objects of this world with divine intent through divine experience.”

“And remember, too, where a sacred encounter is a religious encounter, a divine experience is a …” Sophia pauses to reflect. Or was she playing with me?

I smile knowingly. “A spiritual experience.”

“And so, a person fit to live in this world is a person who …”

I laugh away my delight. “Is a person who … celebrates the divine dimensions of mind and spirit without neglecting to cultivate the sacred dimensions of law and life.”

Sophia embraces me, and as I experience a rush of pleasure inside her embrace, I am pleased to know that we have come to harmony through yet another act of intercourse.

I rest content, happy to feel the love of Sophia, until our everlasting embrace gives way to a rather potent query from Sophia: “Do we stop the world with our love of presence or do we engage it fully with our secret love of power?”

A pervasive presence

"At the moment of creation?"

"No, Christos. At the beginning. At the moment before creation."

I frown. "Before?"

Sophia sighs inside my mind. "At the moment before creation, which is now and forever, is a presence, contained and complete, changeless and formless."

"I understand."

"A presence, Christos. A presence that pervades all that you presently see and hear, taste and touch, sense and feel – a presence that pervades and a presence that pervades itself, not unlike a motherhood without end."

Sophia steps through the doorway onto the balcony and parks herself in front of me, backing into me gently. Her body is soft and pliant and I catch my breath, wrapping my arms around her waist; the feeling I experience with her is exquisite beyond belief.

Her words sound in my mind – warm, soft, steady, and resolute: "though there can be no name for it, this presence is, in potential, the sum and source of all, by which the fill of life becomes manifest and by which the spirit of life becomes obvious."

"Sophia, please stop. I need a moment ... I need a moment to absorb your words of wisdom."

She remains silent, and her silence becomes an all-pervasive silence that rises from within us, spreads out between us, and envelops us both. A profound peace pervades every part of us, a peace so profound that it makes further communication momentarily impossible.