Chapter 10 – When the World Turned Gray
I still couldn't speak.
Silence enveloped me, like darkness engulfing the forest a quiet, heavy, complete silence. Yet, something immense was expanding within me, pushing beyond the confines of this small body.
The first thing I noticed was the heat.
As the sun climbed to its zenith, its rays penetrating the dense branches, the air became unbearable. My skin burned. My breath grew shallow. The heat wasn't comforting it was crushing, like the weight of the sky pressing down.
Then
The world tore open.
Not violently.
Gently.
A small void opened above me, smooth and circular, darker than shadow, yet serene. From it poured cool, deep seawater, spreading slowly over my body. The salt stung for a moment, then completely soothed me. The heat vanished without a trace.
The void closed.
The silence returned.
This didn't happen just once.
It happened whenever the heat crossed a threshold that only my body could perceive. The void never flooded the forest. It never harmed the land. It poured out only what was needed.
I understood instinctively
This was not the Mother Tree.
This was the Mist.
The Mist Mother had responded to my distress.
A little later, I sensed something else.
Everything around me seemed within reach.
Leaves stirred when my awareness touched them. Roots beneath the soil tightened or loosened. Insects froze in mid-movement or scattered silently. The forest did not obey me.
It responded.
Not to command.
To presence.
Without knowing when it began, I started to cultivate.
Not through form or through breath.
Through being.
Aanmegam unfolded first.
Aanmegam is a spiritual cultivation technique.
Aanmegam taught me stillness not emptiness, but undisturbed awareness. In that stillness, I felt life everywhere. The pulse of the sap. The slow patience of the stone. The quiet breathing of the forest.
Spirituality showed what lives.
Then came the Lotus Path.
The Lotus Path did not reveal life.
It revealed darkness.
Not fear.
Not evil.
A weight.
An immeasurable pressure pressing from all directions. Ancient. Endless. Absolute.
The Lotus Path did not ask me to run from it.
It demanded that I enter it. That is when the trouble began.
My vision began to fade.
First, the colors dimmed.
Then the forms softened.
Then
Everything turned gray.
Not darkness.
Not blindness.
Grayness.
The forest lost its colors. The leaves became pale streaks. The shadows deepened and spread into a uniform haze. The very concept of the sky ceased to exist.
Yet I could still see.
Not with my eyes.
With threads of life.
Every living thing revealed itself as flowing lines pulses of being coursing through the gray world. The roots glowed faintly beneath the soil. The animals moved as energetic silhouettes. The humans shone too brightly as fragile, flickering, complicated beings.
The world hadn't ended.
It had been reduced to its essence.
Fear arose.
Not panic but a realization.
My attraction to the darkness was overwhelming.
This world was far more than anything ordinary could bear.
The Lotus Path was drawing me in deeper and faster than my body and senses could adapt. The darkness wasn't surrounding me.
I was becoming a part of it.
No one else could endure this.
I felt that clearly.
If any other soul touched this darkness, it would instantly crush them—erasing identity, drowning consciousness, and shattering existence into inertia.
I could bear it.
Only because of the Mother Tree.
Its presence anchored me. Its roots stabilized my soul, preventing the darkness from completely consuming me. Without it, I would have already been lost in this gray world.
Yet, enduring wasn't mastery.
I went inward.
Not toward the tree.
Not toward the forest.
Toward the mist.
The Mist Mother responded.
Her presence descended not gently, nor cruelly, but with an unbearable density. Darkness layered upon darkness, heavier than anything I had ever felt before.
Yet she did me no harm.
She encompassed me.
Understanding flowed without words.
My darkness wasn't wrong.
It was unbalanced.
Darkness alone leads to stagnation. To the gray world where consciousness persists, but movement ceases. Where life becomes detached observation. To grasp the vision
To grasp reality
I needed the pull of water.
Water did not resist the darkness.
It shaped it.
Where the darkness was heavy, the water flowed.
Darkness
The water shifted where I pressed.
It allowed the change.
That void that poured seawater over me was not merely protection. It was a guide.
If I failed to water my crop, this world would forever remain gray—lines of a colorless life, a shallow existence.
Then I understood.
Darkness is my nature.
Water is my balance.
From that moment, I stopped resisting the gray.
I allowed it.
I allowed the darkness to fully envelop me—and guided it with stillness, cooled it with water, shaped it with patience.
My physical sight dimmed.
But my perception expanded.
I could see the currents beneath the stone. I could see the flow within the shadow, the movement within the stillness.
The forest was no longer dark.
It was clear.
It was alive.
And it listened.
I still did not speak.
But the silence spoke.
It was no longer empty.
Silence became my language.