This post is part of an experiment in which I post a short description of a meditation that I received that morning. I do not attempt an interpretation; instead, I hope that you will be inspired to give meaning the symbols in your own way, for your own life. Find a collection of all these posts here.

A little way from the shore of the ocean is a rocky, sandy island, clothed in wind-beaten pines. It is the Isle of Smoke, the place I go to when I want to meditate on an intention manifestation. Today I’m standing at the far side of the island, where a tumble of rocks stands sentry at the edge of the sea.

But now a ghostly column of stones is rising from the rocky edge, and I can make out stairs carved into them. I hesitantly place a foot on the half-invisible stair… It holds my weight.

I climb. The stairs go almost directly up; sometimes I use my hands, as if it were a ladder. The island shrinks below me; I am far out and above the ocean. Higher and higher, and now I am leaving the very atmosphere behind — the blanket of air is gone, and I am climbing slowly up among the cold stars. I can feel the unbelievable cold, but it is simply there, not unpleasant or painful.

I climb a very long time, and then look down. The world is not round, but flat, small and square, a blue postage stamp almost lost in the black starscape. Still the stairs climb.

At last I stop. I’m not at the top yet, but I can’t climb any further. Somehow hanging here before me is a huge ghostly face, like the ones carved into Mt. Rushmore. Its eyes are half-lidded like a Buddha’s; it half-smiles, like Mona Lisa. A vast presence, so huge, so unchanging, so pervasive that it touches each of us, yet so familiar that we never notice it. Motionless, as if carved from stone.

I look around, and see other ghostly faces among the stars.

Here are the Elemental Powers, spirits of goodwill that bless us with a working world. Gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, chemical bonds…