For some reason the snake story that follows reminds me of this one.
It was told by a woman in her eighties. She was still beautiful. Elegantly dressed and graceful in spite of her arthritis. We had been talking about depression and the impact it can have on a life. She remembered that after her husband left her for a younger woman in her fifties,she withdrew from the world into an alternate world of pain and misery.
It was as if the spiritual and mental pain manifested itself in her body and she developed one of those chronic pain filled diseases that seem designed to make suffering the entire world. It was a terrible time filled with loss and no hope for a different future.
She found a little comfort in church service, and the spiritual community that she belonged to ...and one day she had what she believed to be a vision.
She found herself at the edge of a great lake, sitting on the sand watching the waves come in gently, peacefully. All at once the feeling came over her that she could end it all by just wading into that beautiful peaceful landscape and let the waves take her. Somehow she felt that if she did that there would be no more pain.
As she glanced to her left she saw a man about her age, sitting on what seemed to be a throne of some kind. He was tall, handsome and very elegantly dressed. Perfectly poised, he was smiling very gently at her. He told her that if she did what she was thinking there would be no pain. That there would be nothing. That nothingness would claim her and that would be the end.
The end of suffering.
It was tempting. He seemed to have all the right reasons to go ahead and let the waves claim her, to sink into nothingness. He was very convincing.
Somehow she realized that he was the Devil, which surprised her because she never expected him to be so elegantly dressed, or so seemingly caring.
She pulled back, knowing that the nothingness was a trap of some kind. That the pain had its purpose, that it needed to be worked through. She decided not to enter the waves, but to go on with whatever lay before her. And then he disappeared and she was left alone on the beach.
I have never forgotten the picture she drew of the Devil being an elegant, seemingly graceful person who offers an easy way forward towards nothingness, towards a vast emptiness.
Oddly her vision of the Devil has stayed with me through my own battles.
