IN BETWEEN, WE DANCE

A Desert Vision in Two Parts

I had this vision in two episodes, months apart. It wasn’t a dream. The first came through sleep, yes, and the second through deep meditation. Both carried the weight of a visitation. A knowing.

I was in a desert. The air was thick with heat, the scent of fire and night-blooming flowers stirring in the dark. Music pulsed, maybe a drum, maybe the land itself.

And there she was: a woman of flame, spinning in crimson robes, ankles, waist and wrists alight with gold. She moved like a wild dervish, luminous and unshaken. Her skin was impossibly pale, moonlight wrapped in firelight.

I watched through the eyes of a girl, a young initiate. Then I became her.

We danced in the fevered night, in the memory of something ancient returning. Everything spun: light, body, scent, time.

Then my knees met the earth. Not a fall, but a yielding. A grounded surrender. Hands to soil. Breath drawn deep from the belly. Stillness after the turning.

When I looked up, the dancer was crouched beside someone, her hands alive with the work of healing.

And then it came, a wave like gravity, an ache of truth:

This is not just beauty.
This is responsibility.
This is life and death.

That was where the first episode ended.

Months later, I was sitting in the extension of a semi-detached house in a housing estate. It was the facilitator’s home, and we had gathered for a cacao ceremony.

The drum filled the small room. As I entered stillness, it carried me back to the desert.

The same heat.
The same scent.
The same knowing.

And in that hush, a voice rose, calm and certain:

Yes, this work is serious.

But in between, we dance.