Which way the miracle: within, without, or maybe all around?

Which way to here? – Look,

All meanings have amassed!

from the story of Duur of Amigail, Planet XO-7, the Hexor Galaxy, lower galactic ring

"It might help us to know ourselves," said Sla, "if we look within who we are and within who Íma is."

Uiio answered, "But Íma is a wholeness that comprises many song-lines. We can't be all of those."

"Maybe not," retorted Sla. "But maybe, in its answer, Íma mirrors our within, as Meknáni said. So let us think expansive thoughts that reach its own and explore the range of feelings that complete the picture. We've been using logic predominantly. Let us now weld it with emotion."

The group agreed.

"So let us feel," Meknáni said, and turned to Umbe and Maýla-i. "You're the feelings board. Your insights will be most useful, as will our own."

Umbe looked as though he was about to retort, but refrained from doing so, seeing Meknáni turn to the reasoning board.

"You've said something interesting just now, Sla," the way-maker said. "Think expansive thoughts. Can you explain what you meant by that?"

Sla searched for words. "Go beyond the level of thinking customary to our lines of song."

"Expand your personal power of reason into an overarching one," said Gre. "Be fluid enough in your thinking so that it may encompass even the unknown." It was meant as an explaining and an intuitive guidance all at once, seconding Meknáni as he made a way.

Umbe shuddered. "By that logic, I have to get in touch with the very paralysing pieces I've kept away from."

Sakna-Sa intervened. "The crater is benevolent. Commit to a gradual self inquiry, always sure that reason and emotion work best together, not apart. For fear to persist there must be something it can cling to, but look around: our team is always on your side, and on the side of each of us. Let us not hurry into action. The doorway comes when we are ready. We can warp time and space through illusion, but fail to reach it. Or we can examine our thoughts and emotions at ease while observing Íma's counterparts to those. That way, we'll find ourselves and be opened the way."

"Sounds logical and clear," Menior said.

They all agreed.

"So, now," Meknáni said, looking at Maýla-i encouragingly.

He knew that the "lighter" side of the spectrum of emotions – if their guess had been correct – was easier to deal with and that Umbe would find it easier to intervene along Maýla-i's line of song, and not theirs.

Maýla-i nodded. She drew a deep breath in and closed her eyes. Regrouping, she pondered, What do I feel? In what way is it alike what Íma feels? Were I to perceive its feelings as reflecting mine, what line of song would that be?

An image formed, and a perception of being trapped. It was a memory from long ago, when the whole village had been confined to the indoors for a whole week due to a prolonged meteor storm back in the Boor colony near the border. Earth quaking, wisps of dust permeating the underground, excavated city. Helplessness and hope divided by a thin line.

Eyes back open, Maýla-i looked around. Was Íma feeling the same way? She waited for a feeling of confirmation or for its opposite. Moments passed. No, Íma was not trapped within itself. No helplessness in their surroundings.

"Helplessness is misalignment," Maýla-i said.

They all turned.

"Explain," asked Menior.

"I've detected I feel helpless and hopeful, paradoxical as it sounds," Maýla-i explained. "Then I paid attention to see if I can find mirror images of the two in Íma."

"Very clever," encouraged Sakna-Sa.

"And I could not identify helplessness in Íma," Maýla-i continued. "Thus I assumed that it is a matter of misalignment: if Íma feels no helplessness, then maybe it is one of the ways in which its emotional world and mine are not a match."

Sla offered a thought. "This misalignment can only be corrected from within yourself, not from the crater. So maybe if we could provide reassurance enough that helplessness is a limiting belief, we could discard it."

"Excellent thought," said Menior, "and an excellent input from our emotions board. Now how do we do that?"

Gre said, "It's not a matter of doing something, but rather of undoing."

"What does that mean?" said Sla.

"Easy," responded Gre. "If looking at the sea, you ask me, What is that liquid? and I begin to enumerate all that it is not, I would be prolonging the time it takes to answer; but if I say what it is, simply and directly, it takes almost no time at all."

Menior retorted, "You mean to say that we could be enumerating reasons against helplessness all we want, this course of action would not be as effective as simply disproving the validity of the feeling by offering reason why it is valid. By finding none, the validity disproves itself."

"Exactly," Gre said. "So why would we be helpless?"

A few moments of silence passed, then Sakna-Sa played along and said, "We're between dimension-doors for an indefinite period of time."

"Counterargument:" said Gre, "those doorways exist. It's a matter of alignment to one."

Menior added, "All we need to do is return our attention to ourselves."

Silence. Then Sla joined the disproving helplessness game and said, "We're vulnerable in the midst of this unknown."

"There's nothing to fear," Menior brought the counterargument. "All things known are pebble-size compared to the universe. The unknown is observable and definable at our ability's pace. All things known are not harmless, whereas the unknown are not necessarily harmful. Only through experience can we correctly label what we've found, therefore the unknown would be unjustifiably feared."

"Vulnerability derives from our eagerness to discover too much in too little time," completed Sakna-Sa.

"Thus vulnerability is one of the faces of anxiety," Sla added to the disproving of her own suggestion, "there being nothing to fear preemtively. It's an example of fearing an illusion."

"Helplessness connects with anxiety," observed Arít.

"Lack of tranquillity is linked with the need to control," added Gre. "We cannot control fluidity, thus we've been fearing and fighting and dodging it. Anxiety was our dominant reaction to this new type of physicality. Mé was not anxious. Disprove anxiety." He turned to the team.

"Anxiety," said Sla, attempting to find an argument in its favour, but then stopped and said, "is one of the illusions we've been dealing with. We have been sustained all along."

"I have not felt anxious," Menior said.

"Hopeful, then?" inquired Uiio.

"Calm," he retorted.

"Is there an argument to validate your calm?" asked Gre.

"There is none to invalidate it," retorted Menior. "Respond to reality, not to appearance."

He had quoted from the Architect's Temple's Book of Knowledge again.

"There it is," Gre pointed out. "By imagining things, we were unconsciously responding to the fluidity and potential of this place. But some of our responses were not to our benefit, such as fear, vulnerability, anxiety. Nothing in our surroundings except their fluidity itself plus our imagination caused our responses. We've all been using logic trying to keep away from the fear of what might come if we did not do what was yet to be established."

Umbe and Maýla-i felt closer. Gre knew he was on the right track, thus he continued.

"Fear of emotion," he said, turning around, "has been common among us." He looked at Umbe and Maýla-i. "Reason and emotion are part of the same whole. Integrating emotion, therefore, begins with acknowledging it in ourselves. We've been looking at you two the wrong way: you're not the emotion-bearers of the group, you're the ones who help us make sense of it by mirroring it to ourselves."

"We see in Umbe our own subconscious-level world of feeling," Sla said, "and in Maýla-i our road towards it."

"And we see reason in your responses," Maýla-i said. "We've been playing a role because we've believed it. We're all predominantly a certain way – however, assuming that that is all we are and thus neglecting the rest of ourselves, we feel fragmented, incomplete, and thus uncertain and limited in potential. Our limitations are merely temporary inabilities to see beyond the role we're playing, and see the completeness that we are. What if we're not each lines of song, but songs themselves?"

"At a personal level," Uiio said, "that's what we are. By being complete, we're each a song. Yet when in a group, we match our completeness to the group's wholeness through the roles we allow ourselves to play. Therefore," she said and turned to Sakna-Sa, Menior and Sla, "you three are predominantly the reasoning board: that's the role you've been playing. However, secondarily, you have had an active engagement at emotions' level, because emotions are just as naturally a part of you."

"Agreed," said Sla. "We have all formulated thoughts and feelings simultaneously ever since we've entered."

"The unknown pieces are the unseen pieces," added Uiio.

"And in seeing them, we uncover who we already are," completed Maýla-i. "I cannot operate only at the level of emotions. I don't know how. So maybe, in this fluidity, there's a part of me that knows perfectly well how to function. One part of me, the fragmented – what I see and assume excludes all that I do not see – thought I could only operate with the schematics of a fixed reality. Now I'm given a chance, by being in the fluidity of a greater reality, to discover the other part of me, the one that disproves fragmentation."

Above them, fluid and transparent, began to spread a sky: white clouds along a strip of azure. They all observed it.

"That's it!" exclaimed Meknáni. "Fragmentation through the roles we've been playing in the side of reality we have known so far."

Their surroundings whitened. The sky lowered, expanding to their sides. The white platform beneath their feet glistened.

"And we have come to this side of reality," said Gre, "the fluid one, so that, by failing to put the known in ourselves to our use, we would discover what we assumed was not within us."

A sun was shining across Íma in heights so great.

"We've been offered the chance to acknowledge our fragmentation," completed Gre, "and then to realize the impossibility of the notion."

The platform was expanding.

Umbe's heart was beating hectically. I'm not ready, he thought. This is too much for me. Stop it, please!

The platform appeared to slow down.

"A message from M'alala," Uiio said. "As long as fear remains strong, words alone cannot heal. Fear must be met with trust and safety, and steps taken to its gradual de-escalation and dissolution. Forcing fear away enhances it, and the dimension-door that opens will present you with a challenge meant to help you overcome it – however, uncomfortably. Another option is to sit with fear in a safe environment. Which do you choose?"

The team turned sympathetically to Umbe, who'd gone pale with fear, and placed their hands on his arms reassuringly.

"We choose the safe environment," said Sakna-Sa.

"Very well," M'alala's voice was heard, and a white flight of stairs appeared, going up into a white, fluid, though opaque space. The sky now resembled the floor. Umbe was shaking on the inside and looked uncomfortable in his skin.

"I cannot reach that high, I'm sorry," he uttered. "A new dimension is too much."

Menior asked, "What about Íma so far? Do you fear it now?"

Umbe thought before he answered, "No, not now."

"That's good," said Gre.

Everyone's tone was softer. They'd understood that you cannot force someone who's not ready to any level of readiness.

"It's not important to reach a new dimension soon," Sakna-Sa said. "We'll take as long as it takes."

Umbe's eyes were in tears and tension had grabbed at his stomach and chest.

"I'm sorry for the delay I'm causing."

"No need," said Gre. "It's not by choice." He pointed to the stairway with a slight movement of his head. "I suppose this is the way M'alala wants us to go for our safe environment, right?"

"It is," said Uiio.

Menior's arm reached out around Umbe. "Whenever you are ready."

After a few moments of inner fretting with mild outward expressions, Umbe gave a nod and took a step towards the staircase.