Chapter nineteen: judgment.

   What we oppose, we confirm.
   What we avoid, we oppose.
   What we grasp, we violate.
   What we cling to, clings to us. (72)
   What we destroy, destroys us.

The days were becoming longer, trees greening with new leaves, and I was feeling a contented expectancy with the springtime.

Quietly sitting on the porch one morning, listening to the birds sing and the trees rustle in the breeze, I suddenly burst out laughing, recalling the night some years before when I had been awakened by wee people tapping on my bedroom window, demanding that I adjudicate the disputes between them. 1 was amused at how startled I had been by the horde of gnomes and elves and fairies and leprechauns. And, like so many of my experiences, I really didn't know how real it was. But 1 did know, sitting on my porch, that it was immensely comical, although even now somewhat unsettling.

It began to dawn on me that there was an aspect of sanctuary in the experience of those little people, an interlude of refuge, of protection from predators (each other). It seemed contradictory that anyone would feel asylum while being judged. Bringing rationality together with emotionality brings relief by turning off the blaring smoke detector. Children feel secure when they have clear boundaries, and enforcement of established consequences for violations. We all do, much as some of us hate to admit it. Connect the left brain's cause-effect reasoning with the right brain's intense emotion and holistic big-picture thinking. Bring both hemispheres fully online for peace of mind.

Vaguely aware of sitting on the porch that morning, I was much more aware of a presence nearby that felt safe, even protective. That presence seemed to know The Law, and to apply the knowledge of it with balance. I am Crow, the Left-Handed Guardian. I know the unknowable mysteries and 1 am the keeper of all sacred law. I live in the Void, and I merge light and darkness. (73) Crow had whispered the thought about bringing rationality together with emotionality, and now I was beginning, barely, to comprehend the depth of the lesson to be learned from Crow. This information was related in some way to sanctuary, and to judgment, and to what more I could not even guess.

Understand that I am a shadow, and I come to you from the Void. She pacified my fears through telling me her history. Long ago I was fascinated with my own shadow. I kept looking at it, scratching it, pecking at it until my shadow woke up and came to life. Then my shadow ate me, and I became Dead Crow. She was prepared to share all that she knew, yet she was warning me that much of that knowledge was inaccessible to me, unknowable. I felt honored by Crow's presence. That history helped me to glimpse the meaning of her statement about merging light and darkness, for she is shadow, she is both Crow and Dead Crow. I experienced nothing sinister or intimidating about her, yet I was immanently aware of Crow's profound power, the authority bestowed on the keeper of sacred law.

One thing about Crow's message was clear: if we put our energy into our shadow side, it becomes strengthened and eventually it will split off from the whole self and devour us. Energizing the shadow can come from indulging it, or denying and thwarting it, or channeling expression of the shadow into rage, fear, aggression, and arousal. I could see a montage of numerous moments from my life in which I had become possessed by a part of myself intent on sabotaging my highest good. (74) These moments are times when the undead souls escape their confinement in the liver, wreaking their havoc, triggering the alarm of the smoke detector. (75)

I was grateful to Crow for sharing her personal history, because it helped me to understand a little better the relevance of her comments about bringing rationality together with emotionality, and merging light and darkness. What is the connection to sanctuary and to judgment? You must expand your point of view, far beyond this earth and the human law that governs it. My mind began racing to understand. Human law is not the same as Sacred Law. If you obey the Sacred Law, then at death you die a Good Medicine death. I felt so limited in my ability to understand. I wanted to expand my point of view, but talking about Sacred Law and death was incredibly challenging. A Good Medicine death allows you to benefit from the review that is provided, which you call Judgment. I was beginning to grasp her meaning. It was slowly coming into focus for me, as if the message was emerging out of a foggy background. The little people outside my window on that night so long ago had sought out my judgment, accepted it unquestioningly, and quieted their raucous emotional chaos. They needed perspective and discernment--rationality--to augment what was not available within. Surely Crow was telling me that this is identical to what my experience will be when I die.

The judgment that will be provided for me following this life will reflect a perspective and discernment far beyond my own by a great Master who sees simultaneously the three fates: past, present, and future. The Master will assist me in a life review. If I die with rage in my heart, or fear, or aggression, or greed, I probably won't fully embrace the feedback I receive as helpful. The more defensive I am, the more preoccupied with myopic self-indulgances, the less I will benefit. If I die with one of those complexes in charge, hijacked and possessed by a shadow, that shadow will eat me and I will not die a Good Medicine death. I was beginning to feel a growing respect for the little people who had come to me that night, because they had sought judgment, had accepted it openly, and had found sanctuary in it.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Crow interrupted my wandering thoughts. One more thing. You wanted to know how ultradian rhythm is related. Sacred Law provides many opportunities every day to experience a Good Medicine death. Every ebb and flow of the tides is an ending and a new beginning. If I allow one moment to expire with rage in my heart, or fear, or greed, then the new beginning to follow will be limited instead of advanced through the benefit of review, judgment, acceptance and sanctuary.

The Void that I speak of where I live, where infinite light and endless darkness merge and earthly opposites unite, creates sanctuary for humans to step outside time, outside who they think they are, into a pure pleasure of being. Such is Good Medicine death: a breathtaking sunset or defenseless intimacy, experienced from the void.