Time Zero
You were in the beginning, though you might not remember, when the All lay within her mirror womb and smiled upon her own reflection. She hummed and ran her fingers over her body, combed her hair, and patted her belly. As she did so, the ceiling over her room bent in, for she was pregnant with herself.
In admiration, she called herself "Cosmos." Her reflection took on a youth's aspect, with long green hair flowing as if under water and smooth skin the color of a clear summer sky. Her flawless forehead bore the perfect circle of the golden zero, sun of life.
"I am Ama," she said. "Everything on your side is matter and law, everything on mine thought and freedom. Time spirals in TWO directions: infinitely in and infinitely out. At our very Now, I make time flow both ways."
"This purple spiral of time is my belly mark," said Cosmos.
"Yes, and you are Mattria, Cosmos of material," said Ama.
Mattria looked down upon her body and then up at her reflection. She realized all that exists is part of her. Every atom of her body was a person and owned a Name and mind — we each of us within her eternal body. She shorn some of her black hair, and as she sewed it into a robe, she sang a song, wove it with her love, making each of us a poem for a Soul.
**
What happens in Ama's dreams comes to happen through other means in the material world. Our Now is a radius reaching inwards through successive recurrences of time, inwards towards the infinite center; and also reaching outwards through successive recurrences of time, outwards towards the infinitely distant circumference.
**
Mattria ran her fingers over her bowl-shaped belly, feeling the life of the infant within. She called her belly Earth as she set five fingers upon it, blessing Mother Earth as the locus of her joy. Earth, in turn, put her five fingers on her own belly and said, "May humankind become wonderful, and the best of them gods."
In her womb lived Man and Wife. Man said to Wife, "We are humankind. Let us join hand in hand and touch fingertip to fingertip and bless all of humankind as worthy of life and happiness." As the man blessed his wife's pregnant belly, Ama flew down as a monarch butterfly and visited those five places.
In the east, Ama created humanity from her kiss and a ray of heaven's dawn, and they were Yellow People; in the middle, she created humanity out of clay and breathed in her breath of life, and they were Brown People; in the north, she created humanity out of frost, in the form of a cow she licked them free from a glacier, and they were White People; in the south, she made people out of the night sky and a tear from the darkness of her eyes, and they were Black People; in the west, she formed humanity out of a clot of her blood, and in the form of a rabbit bumped it around till it arose, and they were Red People.
Then, she said to each of them simultaneously (though the priests thought their own God spoke) that humankind is blessed to adore the divine. She is the Divine. When humankind worships any divine above, they thereby create a divine within.
Finally, Ama fell from her work and felt to die and give birth simultaneously. She did die, as we all do many times, even within a single lifetime, and her flesh spread out over the ocean, for she became America, the full continent.
Ama, when she came to know herself here, cried a silvery tear, and it fell upon her palm. She kissed it, and the words of her tongue became a fire in the tear, like boiling mercury. This was the sixth person, silver softness and golden shell, and they were the Golden People, the unity of the five preceding People. She made them two, Abíth and You who have managed to read this. She said to Abíth, "You are my own and we are the same." When she kissed him, their tongues came together, and a pendant dropped forth. This was the phoenix Holy Ghost of divine inspiration. She put it over his heart. Then, she gave him her breast, which became a sunset peach. He ate, and his eyes opened, and his mind opened, and his heart opened to all that is beautiful, and he was perfect and beautiful, and he gave it to You in the form of this writing, so you could be like him: naked and proud.
**
Then, she built up America with a green goddess of Liberty and with a honey hive in Utah to spread some of her religious forms. She had further plans for the sixth Person, who came from a mixture of the previous five. She would lift a country, Hypertia, out from the western sea. This a land created from the melting pot of the previous five Peoples and all the spiritual ideas and divine gifts they brought with them.
Ama came to Abíth in the person of Seraphé, and he begat Emerson. She tucked him earlier in history and instructed him on how to become the Soul of a nation. Upon his death, he became America's Oversoul.
"Why have you put a crack in my brow?" asked Abíth.
"You will discover that," she replied, and added, "I manifest myself through those you love."
She brought his lips to her creative soft and handed him a cup with milk and honey comingled. He said, I accept this wisdom from you, my love, as a dancer's joy, as a poet's thirst, as a butterfly's ambrosia; sweet to taste, but sweeter to be, the flow and swallow of the flux. For she had given him a creative womb.
She put a drop of her blood in his pen, and he wrote down on paper the virtues he wished to develop. Then, like a caterpillar, he ate the leaf, swallowing the paper down with milk, honey, and chai spices — the allmead.
**
This was in the within of the within of the within, but such matters go on infinitely and in every direction. Mattria, meanwhile, began drawing on the walls. Her drawings became Ama's worlds. Then, she painted, and these became other worlds. Mattria danced and with her lithe limbs she created ever moreworlds upon worlds. Those moments were sacred and private; all her creativity made worlds and domains, which in her dreams, she inhabited and blessed. She tasted the pleasure of each poem she created, becoming a cook and a chef, digesting and gestating those souls, and such ones became the ultimate beings themselves, and this happens over all time and always. You too are there.
**
Ama descends in the form of a monarch in the mythic world and gives you the Kiss of Decision. This moment, which you might not recognize at the time, is the knock on the door of your apotheosis. You will either belong to another god or, if you return the kiss in innocence, you will become a divine of your own. That monarch egg on your brow will either eat you up or grow into your wings.
**
Mattria expanded her Mirror Womb into a study and wrote books and poems. She visited the many worlds; she talked with different aspects of herself, with mortals on earth, herself always disguised, for none but an equal can see her. She masks herself behind Ama, and Ama masks herself behind countless gods, and those gods mask themselves behind angels, and those angels mask themselves behind people, animals, and even plants and things, for every atom is a person and also a mind.
Mattria ached when her cramps put her in a swoon, and the infant within felt alarmed and called them "Evil."
"Just wait," she sighed, for necessity bares an edge. Tension and release are necessary for music, even in these our wars and diseases. This, too, is part of life.
She turned the Mirror Womb of her study into a lush garden. Each tree stood as a World Tree for some universe. She learned how to tend each with skill and care.
When Mattria snapped her fingers, the outer reaches of her garden burst into the wide material universe. All the art she had created stretched out through galaxies and planets. She is eternally in that mirror of time, creating, speaking indirectly through each and all.
Each of her cells is infinitely complex, with smaller parts containing worlds of their own, and those smaller parts containing more worlds, still. Her melody and the music of her creating are infinitely nuanced, and some of it resonates with this part of her, and some resonates with that.
She smiles upon her belly, with her forehead the sun. "I am you and love you," she says. She sends herself as Ama.
**
Ama is the clever giver to all the world. She has given each of us a gift. She puts it into a humble form so that we can only take it if we are willing to use our weakness. In this way can we gain the great pride of having made ourselves into gods. She left a rag for that man, but he felt envious over his neighbor's silk and burned his own cloth, not knowing that it was knit from her very hair, and would have spiritually grown into loves, powers, worlds, and heavens. She gives each of us a gift, and the man who creatively develops this can make it do many things. That gift is ours forever, if we have it, and never, if we lose it. It alone can make us conscious of our own poetry.
With each Kiss of Decision, she would hear no complaint. "It is the decisions you make in weakness, not the decisions you make in strength, which determine your fate," she says. Your choice and your gift determine the expansion of your soul and how widely your Name will resonate. The doings of our days make the way of our heaven.
As we do, so we become.
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