The Bardo and the Space Between Stories

''Bardo'' means ''gap'' — it is a moment between one consciousness and the next where we have the opportunity to make a choice.

This is about the place between the old story of the humans from earth, the one about life is hard, there's not enough and so we must fight it out to see who will survive, and the new one, a golden age of love and light. There is an old map from the dusty corners of Tibetan Buddhism called the Book of the Dead. 

Perhaps it is a guide to not only the space between incarnations, after death and before next birth, but also a guide to the in between spaces in our life as well, when we are neither here nor there, but somewhere in between. Maybe it applies to our collective journey in the present world crisis as well.

The advice is good either way: one is admonished that one is entering a hall of mirrors, a haunting emptiness where only our thoughts, fears, and desires echo, glitter and dance before us. We are tempted with ever more subtle and beautiful distractions to to stray from our intended path. The Book of the Dead points out the self created cloud of confusion we wear, look out of, and believe in fervently. We are advised to remember whatever wisdom teachings we know, and to seek out our spiritual guides, else we would not ever find our way out of the seemingly endless maze of delusions we have built.

Does this not bear more than a little resemblance to the chaos and dilemma of the present world? A world that resounds with the constant amplification of negatives and the millions of ways to to distract, tempt, delude, -anything but actually dealing with the situation. 

But the situation does not go away, and deal we must. The Book of the Dead repeatedly warns that the situation is so confusing that if it were not for guidance, focus, and practice, anyone could lose their way.

It is not the blind leading the blind, no. The way has been marked by the few who have gone before and blazed the trail. There are even a few breadcrumbs that we dropped upon the path as we entered that the birds have not eaten, little clues to find our way back out of this dark forest of the soul. Though nothing is recognizable here in the bardo and even a mountain is not a mountain anymore, rest assured. When we emerge, a mountain will once again be a mountain.

"If you feel that the purpose of life is happiness, enlightenment, understanding, then that's what you'll experience. You become, what you focus on....

You have to go through all the pitfalls one goes through in becoming a Buddha, which are many and varied, various  illusory bardos where you can get hung up for periods of time... You don't get through hell in a hurry." -Ramaquotes on the Tibetan Book of the Dead