[This has been a recurring vision of mine since around August 16 of last month. While visions of the Burning Tower have come to me for many years (as I am sure they have come to many of you), it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that the content of this vision substantially shifted, and grew into the vision I will describe for you below. It is incredibly moving when something that has been repeating itself with little variation for so many years, all of a sudden takes an unexpected turn. The circle becomes a spiral, evolving in a new direction. I cried in ecstasy on the 16th when the vision ended some place other, impossibly more beautiful, than it always had before~] Received 8/16/2023 and regularly since | at various times of the day, night
Listen to the Recitation:
There is a great tower; a residential skyscraper, large enough to house the whole population of the world within it. The tower extends impossibly high up, and is constantly being built higher. You can just barely make out the cranes on top, the sounds of construction ever present far above.
I am living on the second floor, in apartment 2A. It is a decent living, with a bed, table, desk, chair, kitchen counter and appliances, toilet and shower. I am mildly fretting about the day and days prior and days to come when the voice of the Announcer comes on. “We regret to inform you that a fire has broken out on the first floor. The fire has reached the stairwell and the base of the elevator, so going down is no longer an option.”
This announcement caused my sense of worry to grow larger. My mind starts racing with general anxieties and an overarching sense of inevitable doom. The chime of the Announcer goes off again. “You’re in luck! Apartment 10C has just become available. Please make your way to the 10th floor by the stairs or the elevator. This apartment is larger than where you are now, with improved amenities: a lovely view from the balcony, granite countertops, a walk-in white tiled shower, and even an induction cooktop! It comes fully furnished, so you need only bring your essentials and sentimentals. You have plenty of time to move before the fire reaches your floor; worry not, and decide carefully what you would like to take with you. Have a nice day.” The voice of the Announcer was easeful and soothing, and carried such excitement that I genuinely felt like everything was fine and under control. I slowly gathered my things and made my way to the elevator and to my new home 8 floors up.
Not long after I moved into my new apartment, it was reported that the fire had completely overtaken the first and second floors. As new floors were built on top, people were systematically relocated higher and higher. Each higher floor had housing that was even nicer than the floor below it—and of course with more impressive views and vantages—so people were more than happy to make the move. Those on the floors about to be reached by the fire were moved up into the freshly vacated apartments of those whose names had come up for even greater elevation in living arrangements.
We, the inhabitants of the tower, were assured that “The best and brightest minds are currently working on a solution to the fire” and “While you may not be able to go down, there will always be space to go up” and “The structural columns are fireproof and will continue to hold up the whole tower regardless of how many floors get scorched by the encroaching flames”. There was talk of newly discovered reinforced materials to build into the floors that the fire could not penetrate, as well as more advanced and sentient fire-deterrent sprinkler systems. The Announcer regularly provided us with breaking news that the fire was becoming increasingly controlled, and that the Management’s technologies and techniques were successfully slowing the rate of the fire’s advance, all while new top floor construction rates continued to increase. Meanwhile, the number of available new housing units decreased on each higher floor, in order to accommodate larger and more luxurious floorplans to entice those living in already luxurious settings to keep moving up. However, this did not seem to worry people too much.
In 10C, my underlying sense of dread comes back up. I sit on my outdoor balcony and look out over a wide green landscape, which may as well have been a framed moving picture since no one born in the Tower had ever been outside to experience it. I wondered, so high up, how nice it would be, down there. I felt sad because of the fire, which prevented me from leaving the Tower. I went back inside.
Then a voice appeared to me, like the Announcer but different. This voice descended into the room from a place deep inside of me, while also seeming to come from something outside of myself, at once alien and familiar. “If you can’t go down the stairs, you can always use the ladder.” The ladder? Confused, I blinked and looked around me. To my surprise, there was indeed a ladder, standing mysteriously upright at my side, like it had always been there. As if in response, the voice resounded “You are all born with a ladder your own. And it never leaves you.”
A thought came to me then, similarly mysteriously, to take the ladder out onto the balcony and drop it over the side. Without thinking how ridiculous this might be given the ladder’s relatively small size, I carried it out and dropped the front end over the side of the balcony. The bottom rung reached all the way down to the ground, 10 stories below. Despite a light breeze, the ladder felt sturdy and did not wobble as I tested it. And so, again without thinking, I climbed over the balcony, grabbed onto the ladder, and began my descent.
Before I realized it, I was on the ground. I looked up at the tower before me. The fire had reached the 7th floor. Sounds of construction could still be heard from far above, beyond the cloud cover. I turned and began to walk away from the tower I had always known and never left. Without knowing where I was going, or how long it would take for me to get there, I simply kept moving in the direction I was facing.
Before long, or perhaps a long time later, I find myself in a Clearing. The ground is flat, green and lush, open all around. The burning tower is no longer visible. I do not know how I got there. I do not know why I am there. I do not know what I am to do now that I have arrived. I begin to form early-stage opinions about the place, and about what I should do. Each time however, the thoughts fall apart before I become attached to them.
I look around, blinking, vision half-blurry, and begin to notice others arriving at the clearing, like me, blinking and stumbling, half-dead like zombies, though not belligerent. This is where the Village will be built, I think to myself. Yet this thought too falls apart before it can take root. All I know is that I am here, and so are the others, with more arriving all the time from every direction. And we are all the same: none of us know how we got there, none of us know what we are doing, and none of us know what we are to do now that we’ve arrived.