The City of Heaven

In the dream, I was a man who tended a garden. One of my plants grew very tall, with leaves that shone like stained glass in the sun. One leaf, high above my head, was close to being perfectly lit by the sun and transcendently glorious, but for a shadow across its face. I walked around and around the stalk to get that perfect view, but it was never quite lit the way I knew it could be. I began to climb the plant to see its perfection. As I climbed, I felt some doubt, as the leaf never seemed to be what I thought it could be…I would have to climb further. I began to go back down, only to have my hands pierced with thorns. So I continued to climb.

The stalk of the plant was thin and flexible, and welcoming as long as I climbed upwards. The sun shined more and more brightly as it moved towards setting in the cobalt sky. Once I looked down, and saw the earth as no more than a dim blue mass beneath me. The stem I climbed was gentle and curving, and I slid, more than climbed, further and further along its length.

Ahead, the sky was night, but for a pearlescent glow beyond the clouds. I passed through them, and I saw a city, beautiful beyond words, like a diamond set in mist and black silk. It shone with light pulsing and shimmering in many colors from its walls, rising colors and glory, such glory....The clouds spread like mountains around it and rolled across the silver plain like tumbleweeds in the fields before the entrance. I entered.

The city was filled, but not crowded, with many whom I knew and didn’t know. I saw many of my animals, who greeted me and went on, happy and serene. People there looked like people anywhere, but happy and calm, and mingling with many kinds of animals freely. I looked at my reflection in the glass in front of a small building. I didn’t look like my waking self, I was a man still. I knew that this wasn’t what I was. I asked a passing man for advice. He said, “If you don’t look like yourself yet, it’s because you aren’t ready to be you. Go to the doctor, who can help people who have such problems.”

The doctor had people waiting for her who were conflicted about their lives and who had behaved in ways to make them unready for life in the city. People who had done bad things, or rather things that did not let them develop as their souls should have. While I waited, I watched the others who had come here. They went through a door and returned a little later, some happy, some frustrated, some resigned. Many people were sent back to have further lives to practice the things their souls needed. When my turn came, I was one.

I had a life again, brief as the spark from a flint flying and dying on the rock. I was a woman again, an assassin for a lord in feudal Japan. I needed the keys of an enemy’s fortress. I found the man whose keys I needed. He knew my purpose, but still allowed me to do what I had to do. When I took the key ring from his belt, he was still alive, but somehow I knew something was not completed. I came back to him and looked into his eyes. He looked back at me sadly. I reached into his kimono near his chest, and pulled out a last key that was next to his heart. I kissed him, and the poison in my kiss made him slowly succumb. I took the keys back to my master, but was broken inside at what I had done. Errand accomplished, I ended my life.

The next thing I knew was that my soul was flying towards the sun. It grew larger and more beautiful as I crossed the edge of the world and entered blue gulfs, my sight filling with the orb of the sun glowing ahead. I re-entered the city of heaven. Light flew from all shapes, and fountained from rocky geysers in huge, powerful streams of brilliance, spattering prisms in the air.

Something woke me before I could continue the dream any further.

What is the virtue my soul needed to practice? Obedience, or love?