The Double on the Balcony

Higher Self, Greater Self., Oversoul. Divine Double, religious scholar Charles Stang calls the Self above the regular self, the one that is not even partially confined to a physical body. These are very big words. I want something smaller and more colloquial for a personality I have come to know rather well. There may be many levels to the Higher Self, ten that I know, others beyond counting. He lives on a level just above the level I am on.

    When I set out to meet him, I follow the road of dreams to a terrace above the world. Sometimes it is the rooftop of a tall building, twenty stories up, or more. Often the terrace has the air of a civilized café, operating just for us. I find him seated at a table, perhaps with a glass of wine the color of moonlight. He is usually impeccably dressed, in a perfectly tailored white suit or a dinner jacket. Occasionally I have the impression that he has a female companion; once she seemed to be an opera singer. But she is never part of our conversation.
    He is impossibly beautiful. He looks like a man in the prime of life, maybe thirty years old, yet carrying the knowledge of millennia. He does not judge me. He is my witness. He knows all of my life. It is as open to him as the contents of a doll house when you remove the back and the roof. More than this, he remembers my other lives.
    I should say, rather, our other lives. Something I have remembered, through our conversations, is that we have a twining relationship across time. When I am in the body, in a life on Earth, he is up here, on his balcony above the world. He still enjoys pleasures and creature comforts, but he is not enmeshed in the confusion and clutter of the physical world. He can sample delights that we associate with a physical body without being confined to one. The babalawo in me, the African diviner he calls my witchdoctor, says it has always been like this. While one of us is down in the marketplace of the world, the other observes as a “double in heaven”.
     I like that phrase, but his is a near heaven, rather than a remote one. So how shall I describe him? I could call him my Free Self. He is not bound by the conditions of physical life.  I also think of him as my Double on the Balcony. From his terrace, he can see the big picture. When I join him up there, I can see the crossroads and forking paths of my life from an aerial perspective.
    He shows me some navigational challenges that lie ahead. There’s a spaghetti junction with whirling stands of traffic going off in all direction like an exploding bowl of pasta. It’s dizzying to look at. Inspecting this with his mildly humorous detachment, I see the scene lift to reveal a manageable locale, the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Now I can survey, one by one, the possible roads I can take from that place of decision. He reminds me that when life on the ground poses difficult choices – when I run into blockages or risk making a turn without reflecting on where that direction will take me – I should come up here, look at things from the higher perspective, and freeze the action while I observe myself traveling more than one of the possible roads in order to clarify and compare the probable outcomes.
    From such encounters comes daily practice, one I can share with others. I picture myself in the thick of a situation where I am facing a choice or conflict or dilemma. I see myself pausing from acting or worrying, placing myself in a quiet mental space whatever is going on around me. I feel light coming down around me, until I am within a column or pillar of light. This brings the sense of blessing and protection. I sense benign energies and intelligence reaching down to me within the pillar of light. Then there is the sense of traction, of being carried up within the pillar. I could be carried up many levels, as if on an elevator. But it is sufficient, for everyday navigation, to go up just one level, to that terrace above the world.
     Here I find again the Free Self. From his table, I can see a relief map of my life, and of other lives and situations that will concern me. When the traffic patterns are hard to read, I can have everything slow down or stop so I can study it at my leisure.
   

I wrote a poem in honor of my long relationship with my Free Self:

The Double on the Balcony

You are not my shadow.

You stand closer to the sun.

Of all my doubles, you are the most interesting.

You are watching when I forget you.

You are with me when I don’t notice.

You are not my judge, or my guardian angel.

You are the one who remembers.

You are my witness on the balcony above the world.

My friend the witchdoctor calls you

My “double in heaven”. You smile at this,

Reminding me the African lives are mine, not yours.

You saw all of it, from your balcony,

But did not drink the blood or savage joy.

It’s the other way round in other lives, you say:

From life to life, we change places.

When you come down to Earth

I take your seat on the terrace above.

We are together now, for a moment.

I’ve slipped out of the body

That neither confines nor delights you

To join you on your balcony above the world.

The wine in the cup is the color of moonlight.

Below us are all the roads of the world,

The casts and dramas of the many lives

Laid out in dioramas, as manageable from here

As toy soldier sets, or tea-party dolls.

You chide me gently (since humans are forgetful animals)

For forgetting you. I have been a serial amnesiac,

Losing bright nights when we roamed together,

And an ingrate – not seeing your hand in everyday miracles,

Not hearing your voice in the still sure moments of knowing,

Not feeling the breeze of your wing when you come,

In reluctant extremity, to restrain or release me.

When my road was blocked, you were the one

Who reminded me we can fly.

You love to travel in disguise

And I often missed you behind your masks.

When I mislaid my sense of humor

You burst in as a stand-up comic

And shocked me alive with belly-bawdy farce.

It’s easy for you to bring light, and lighten things up:

You stand closer to the sun.

RM journal drawing: "My Radiant Double as a Guide through Death". From a dream.

My poem "The Double on the Balcony"is in my collection Here, Everything Is Dreaming: Poems and Stories. Published by Excelsior Editions/State University of New York Press.

Photo: "Big Sur balcony" by RM