Where will you lead me?

Copyright 2009 by Stefan Bolz

I'm lying on Julie's (my therapist's) table in her practice in Accord, NY and think about her question: "Where in your body do you feel the fear?" "I can feel pressure in my upper lungs just below my colar bones," I answer. At this moment an image comes to me that seems too violent and too painful to even mention to her. But with Julie, I decided a long time ago not to edit what comes up and to just tell her. Whatever it is, it is in very good hands with her. "I hang from two butcher hooks that are driven through my body just below the colar bones," I tell her. She asks me to, if possible, stay with the image, as painful as it might be, to see where it leads me. "Maybe you can find out why you hang there and what and who brought you there."

I was at my writing group earlier that morning with my friend Jenny. I had been working on a synopsis for a script I had written some five years back that almost got optioned but never sold. It recently came back into my awareness and I thought I'd give it another shot. After I read the synopsis to Jenny she asked me when I would start writing the script. I told her that it had been finished years ago. "I will call my very good friend in the city (NYC) right now. She is a talent agent and she'll read it if I ask her to." That was all it took for me to experience my spine being dipped into ice water and hot coals at the same time. I started to feel anxious almost immediately and got up to walk around her store: "Can you wait till I'm gone and call her afterwards?" I ask her. "You are nervous! Why are you nervous? You are making ME nervous," she replied. For years I thought of ways to get my script in front of the right people but never really went all out with it. I never asked Jenny and she of course never told me about her friend of 20 years who is a major agent.

Jenny - God bless her - called anyway while I was there and talked to her friend and I sent the script to her that same day. My next stop of the day was Julie. After I told her of two other instances when one of my scripts was almost optioned and I somehow couldn't take it, we agreed to do some table work. So, here I am, in my mind hanging from two butcher hooks somewhere in a medieval castle. After Julie's question how I got there in the first place I suddenly see a large dining hall filled with people. They are mostly peasants and farmers. Very poor people. I am handing out some sort of flyers and then get up on a table to tell them that they have to fight for their rights and that they should not take it anymore and that they should stand up for themselves. "I think I am not one of them," I tell Julie. I realize that I am about 18 years old and probably either the King's son or the Duke's son. I am also fully aware that the guards will come in in a minute or so and even though I am very fearful, I keep doing what I'm doing, talking to the people and trying to get them to stand up and fight for themselves.

Next thing I see is guards rushing into the room and taking me. I am being pulled through a long hallway while a couple of the guards beat me. Then I am thrown into a large room and onto the hard stone floor.

In the next scene I hang from the butcher hooks from the ceiling. Then someone comes into the room. Must be the Duke or the King and probably my father. He looks at me in disgust, spits at me, turns and leaves without a word.

Next thing I know is I lie on the stone floor of some sort of a prison cell. The holes where the butcher hooks penetrated my body are healed and overgrown with deformed flesh. From where I lie, I can see the outline of the cell. There is an indentation in the dirt floor around the perimeter of the cell as if I - or somebody - had walked there for a long time and the path was actually lower than the rest of the cell floor. I look down on myself. I am very thin, naked and very old with a long beard and thin legs and arms. I have been in here for 60 years minimum. For some strange reason I am at peace with the situation. I don't feel any fear or hatred or anger at all. Just very peaceful.

At that moment, I can actually feel that the table I'm lying on in Julie's practice, is the stone floor of my cell. The strangest sensation of the two 'scenes' happening simultaneously creeps into my awareness. I can't put my finger on it but it feels as if both are happening right now. Then I see stairs, made of stone, above my head leading upward into the darkness. As I sit up from the stone floor, I can see that the stairs reach very far. "Almost to the heavens," I think to myself. At that moment a light appears all the way up at the other end of the stairs. It is soft and inviting and my first thought is that I am probably supposed to walk towards it and that this is somehow how I am going to die. But none of this happens. Instead, the light seems to move downward towards me. With the light, I see a figure coming closer. I know that this is Jesus. I have had images before where Jesus appeared in one way or another. This one must be one of the strongest ones so far. He comes down the stairs, together with the light and as it touches my head, he arrives next to me. He goes down on one knee and smiles at me while helping me up.

I feel such relief at that moment, it is indescribable. My chest seems to extend manyfold and my breathing becomes light and easy. My body seems to weigh nothing. "Come on, old friend," he says. I stand next to him as he puts his arms around me in an embrace. Tears stream down my cheeks - both in the vision and on the table. The love coming from him is overwhelming. At some point we let go and he slowly starts going up the steps. As I follow, a question comes to me: "Where will you lead me?" I ask. "To our Father's house," he answers.