# [D2:6M] Vision: [[Stare Into Dark until Your Vision Clears]] Hexagram: [[Second Hexagram]] Trials: [[Second Trial]] Symbols: #dreamer #mirror #door #panther #forest #arms #ears #mouth #eye August 21st, 2010 I. Until now, I’ve never met another dreamer inside my dream. He shakes my hand and introduces himself as Pierre.  He tells me his age is ninety.  Pierre wears loose black clothes and is heavily marked by age.  His hair is shock white, but he still has most of it, and his eyes seem only half-open, one eye wandering slightly wall-ward. He looks at me intensely with the one sharp eye and has an almost imperceptible smile. “Welcome to my museum,” he says in a thick French accent. “The funeral is about to begin.” With that, he waves his arm grandly, and I take notice of the baroque gallery in which we stand. Wandering the museum with Pierre, it is comprised of two identical mirrored galleries with about fifty paintings on display in either, every one of them black.  But although they are all black, none are identical, and each one feels somehow different from the next. He tells me that one gallery contains work from the first half of his career, and the other from the second half. If I was at first aware of dreaming, I think I became unaware at about this point.  II. He began painting, he tells me, in 1934, and points to paintings made at that time. Everything in the second gallery, he adds, was made in 1979 and after. “I was born in 1979,” I tell him. That was the year, he tells me, that he got tired of black and tried, with knives and sanders, to scrape it off all the work he was making at the time.  But instead of the black paint coming off the canvases strange lights began emitting from them.  Then he stopped using any paint at all an only tried scraping the paint off all the found black objects and surfaces he could, each time discovering that they began emitting various spectra of light! “The more limited the means,” he says, “the stronger the expression.” III. Only then do I see a black door I hadn’t before noticed, at the back of the second gallery in the far distance behind him. Faint orange and violet lights coruscate up and down the face of it as if inviting me to investigate. I somehow remember that he called this seeming art exhibition a funeral.  I want to ask whose funeral this is, but he seems to have vanished.  I can find Pierre nowhere in the gallery.   As I busy myself looking for him, I notice the museum is filling up with well-dressed society people whose conversations are growing louder and louder until my ears hurt. Covering my ears, I go toward the strange black door again.  But before I can reach it, a liquid-lean black panther strides silently through. Its absolute silence is in stark contrast to the loud voices filling the gallery, and its strident shoulder blades and easy approach contrasts the hurried, pecking gestures of the bystanders.  If they are mourners, they don’t seem to be mourning.  No one else seems to notice the panther making its way toward me. IV. I seem unable to move either toward or away from the panther. I am paralyzed.  It sits before me and licks its lips. It begins to wrinkle between its eyes as if it is about to lunge or roar, but instead, as it opens its mouth wide, a sound similar to chanting emerges. Some of what I hear sounds similar to words, but if it is a human language, it’s none I’ve heard.  Just as I was afraid of the crowd, I am afraid of the panther, but it is a different kind of fear. It’s one mixed with respect and a great swelling of emotion that’s difficult to name. So transfixed am I, by this extraordinary animal, I that I seem not to have noticed the crowd now gathered around us in folding chairs. Still, they seem not to notice the panther, and only stare at me in such a way that I feel as if I’m on trial.   Thinking about how I might escape, I glance at the still-open black door, and notice, for the first time, a lush dark forest behind it. The panther continues to fix its gaze on me with its steady “chant” and, presently, I can hear distinct words: “I run to her in terror, in awe, in delight, through the forest, the woods, and the trees.” V. It’s then I hear myself respond, “I act on the ideas that come to me.” I feel the slightest bit of delight in the rhyme, as if we were acting in a play together, speaking lines from a script.   As the threat of the panther seems to subside, the threat of the crowd grows. They are lurching toward us like zombies.  I stay close to the panther as it seems to guide me toward the open door. As we near the door with the crowd lumbering after us, I can see that it is night in the forest, and the darkness frightens me too.  But the panther seems to protect me as we pass through the door into the dark woods.  I can hear the mob behind us grow more distant as we proceed, as though they can’t pass through the door, but I never look back. Continuing into the darkness, I can’t keep up with the panther.  It looks back at me one last time with glowing green eyes, then turns and disappears into the forest.  As it does so, I feel a sensation behind my eyes, as if something powerful were happening to them.  I become aware that my eyes are the same as the panther’s; my vision begins to clear and I can distinctly make out a trail ahead, as well as all the trees and foliage in the area, just as clearly as if it were daytime, though I know it’s still night. VI. With certain clarity, I sense that I’ve done this before. Ahead, where the panther disappeared between trees, I see a version of myself in that distance.  From where I gaze now, I become  suddenly aware that my vantage is lower than before, closer to the ground.  Looking down, I see my own black paws trotting along the trail, and am happy.