EMERGING FROM THE CAVE

By Chris-James Melchizedek

What does it mean to be multi-dimensional in the modern world?

Elias Lindholm is about to find out.

Follow the story of a young recluse awakening to a parallel existence. Through lucid dreams, visionary visitations from a mysterious owl, and an astral journey

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris-James Melchizedek
• Release date: Jan 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645503814

Chris-James Melchizedek

Chris-James Melchizedek is an author, musician and new age practitioner of meditation and Astrology. He loves to explore spiritual themes in his writing: past-lives, healing, multi-dimensionality, gods, goddesses and beings from other planes and the purpose and meaning of human existence.

Book preview

Emerging from the Cave

Chris-James Melchizedek

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Chris-James Melchizedek

Copyright © 2022 Chris-James Melchizedek

This is a work of fiction. With the exception of public figures (musicians and a comedian in this case), any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely co-incidental. The opinions expressed in this work are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s. Much of the setting of this story takes place around lake Vanern in Sweden. This setting and the corresponding land and people (including the ancient Vanern tribes) are all employed fictitiously.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher/author, except as permitted by copyright law.

All artwork by Phillip Spinks, Copyright © 2022.

Typesetting/layout by Chris-James Melchizedek.

Contents

Author's Note

The Scandanavian

Ancestral Dreaming Currents

Owls and Fire

Homecoming

Reunion

Epilogue

Afterword /Acknowledgements

About Author

Author's Note

In this story indigenous, tribal people appear as a part of the narrative. The reason for this is that my own experiences of growing up in Australia was one of being deeply impacted by the memories residing in the land from the ongoing presence and connection of the indigenous people in those areas (the Dja Dja Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of central Victoria). Me and those closest to me were left irrevocably changed in the most positive ways by being touched by the power, integrity and respect of these people toward the land, each other, and life itself.

Over the two and half decades of my healing journey I’ve come to regard indigenous and tribal people as models for our collective human potential, in that they embody a way of being which holds the potency of who we are and honors the interconnectivity of all life.

Even though the fictional experiences of this story are cast in the form of ancient Swedish people, who may have been some of the Sami tribes (the indigenous people of Scandanavia: Sweden, Norway and Finland), the inspiration for writing this comes from my own personal story and a spirit of deep respect.

The Scandanavian

Sweden, 9303BCE

They were coming soon.

The adulthood initiations. That which his parents had begged him to wait patiently for. After such things were settled, marriage could be planned.

That day he saw Melania off just after waking time, holding her hand and stroking her light fur as she began to tread off through the snow. Melania turned and looked him in the eyes with wild determination. When she turned again he poked his tongue out and blew hard, creating a bellowing childish noise. They both laughed. He waved goodbye and moved back toward the tent.

The lightness of his mood didn’t last.

Melania and Elias, as with all members of the tribes who were not yet adult, were kept in the dark about life beyond the first rite. As was the case in many tribal cultures, these secrets were held as sacred as life itself.

He could sense it.

Their time was coming.

Melbourne, Present Day

Twilight had overcome the world.

A cigarette fell from the hand of a man sprawled out in a chair of walnut wood, unconscious to all but his dreams. The large room surrounding him was filled with the artefacts of his habit and routines. Paintings filled the walls at odd angles, the simply coloured works shining in the dim burn of candlelight. He was dreaming inside a fresh reality, completely awake to its vividness; a snow-covered landscape of ancient heights, cold but nourishing. It was a strangely familiar space he embodied, one he wasn't entirely sure was human. The dreamer became the dreamed; snowdrift falling around him, it was cold, bone cold. Walking on he strengthened his balance, steadying the three spears on both shoulders and checking the sheaths of his two gutting knives. Continuing to pace for warmth, he moved in a short, small circle. His sense of waiting becoming stillness, a patient poise to receive his comrades.

The light grew greater still until it became a burn, dwarfing the reality of the dreamer. Worlds away, dawn broke through the curtains, flooding his waking life with light. Inside his dream, the circling steps ended, replaced with a shocking wonder. Snow-melting flames of light splayed over him as he shielded his dream-eyes, overcome with a profound sense of freedom.

He was dreaming!

In an instant all care and concern left. He rose from the snow-covered earth and began to fly—hurtling at great speed through the skies. Clattering to the ground the spears left his shoulders, and the gutting knives fell back away from his form. Brightened snowscapes became ocean, became green-brown earth, then ocean once again. A familiar freedom of dawning joy, until brightness became too much. A point on the horizon becoming a blaze of fiery intensity, filling his whole world. The dream faded.

No longer did he identify with either the dreamer or the dreamed. All light, indeed all space left him, ebbing out, fading to nothing. At last there was void, a black so deep, an absolute emptiness which filled him to the brim. For it was then, when he could no longer tell if he was dreaming within dreams, awake or somewhere in between where he no longer cared, that the Scandinavian felt most at home within himself.

His eyes shot open. The waking world greeted him.

Sturdy and bulky but not overweight, he was over six foot tall. He had pale blue eyes and his hair and profuse stubble were pale red. Slowly, sleepily, he motioned sideways to pick up the cigarette, thankfully it had gone out before it hit the floor. The old chair creaked with his weight as he stood and turned squinting at the window. Nodding at the dawn, he closed the shutters, placing his burnt cigarette into a bronze ash tray. Removing the needle from the finished record, he slowly but surely moved towards bed.

In rhythm he avoided the culture that sought him out.

As was his habit he slept through until the afternoon. Later in the backyard he smoked his first cigarette for the day, before moving inside. Lighting some incense, he contemplated the canvas thrown against the wall.

It was coming together, somehow.

Seven paintings came into view now, all of them on the wall, and only one of them was truly finished. Yet it was this, his latest work, which beckoned him on toward action and inspiration.

After midnight he took his customary walk around the neighbourhood, seeking out and lapping the spaces with the most trees. He was on his way homeward when an owl flew in a wave across his path, shocking him into focus. In that instant something came over him, a familiar inhuman current that he wanted to swim in. A permeating deja vu hit him—as if he'd not only known this moment before but had known that he'd known. Now he experienced himself as an ancient being, treading through snow on a hunting party, clutching his spear tightly, strategically away from his four comrades, sensing the motions of that which they followed rumbling deep through the land. Just as the memory left him, he saw the owl again. It looked at him with the full force of its mysterious, fearless eyes, flying off over the burgeoning rooftops of the suburban landscape.

Forgetting his homeward trajectory, he sat alongside the path and faced the direction that the owl had flown. Then he did something he mustn’t have done for a decade.

He meditated.

Breath became his only knowing. Depth filled him.

Eventually, he opened his eyes. About to turn homeward, he looked by instinct toward the trunk of the owl’s tree. Standing, he moved closer and saw it was a tall silver gum, bearing a moderately sized cut in its side. The dried blood was abundant, and at its base were several chunks of hardened sap. Smiling, he moved forward and picked them up, placing the pale red fragments into the pocket of his jacket.

Painting was impossible.

He couldn't get over the feeling of the owl. And those memories. When he tried to penetrate them, he could only see what he'd seen already—his ancient, hairy body moving forward through snow, so quiet as to be a seamless part of the landscape, spear poised with purpose, hunting that which would feed so many. It was a thread he yearned to unravel, but there was no way to force such subtleties; he'd learned this lesson over a decade before.

Recalling the sap, he stood and switched on the bedside lamp he sometimes used instead of candlelight. He emptied his pocket onto the table, taking care to avoid screws, nails and tools. Taking out some charcoal, he placed and lit it within his ashtray, swiftly flicking a few fragments of the sap on top, so that they burned like incense.

As the scent permeated the room, it gave him a warm feeling. A clear but empty focus.

It reminded him of how before this modern world, there were ancient realities. Tribal settings where primal unity reigned. Places like the vision of his déjà vu.

He laughed out loud.

The closest he'd ever come to that was playing rhythm guitar in mediocre black metal bands. Instinctively he picked up the sap and his lighter, moving into the back yard. The moon was bright despite being only half-full, and the sky was open and clear. It was moving deeper into autumn now, the coolness of the night a clarifying inspiration. He lit the sap again and inhaled deeply. A vapour like steam entered his lungs, noticeably milder than smoke. It warmed him, so he took another…and another. Moving around the yard, he glanced back at the moon. His vision of the night brightened and sharpened. The sky, the stars and moonlight seemed to descend into the top of his head, emptying the sentience of his strong body deep into the ground. With the mind’s obsessive chattering foregone, the peace and silence of the land filled him.

As the minutes stretched out, primal unity became his reality. Looking from the stars to the roof of his family home, in sudden wonder he considered where he'd come from; not