All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

San Joaquin River Gorge

MAGIC WINDOW

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

Open music in a new window.

We've spent thirty years together, gazing
through our windows. Before it's too late, I
want us to peek into a deep pool bordered
by flowers, where a snake glides, eyes

above water, and frogs, face down, cling
to stone, where wings flash around us,
where a deer peers a long time at us,
and a wildcat crouches in the grass.

A golden palace looms on a far-off cliff,
but the treasure we seek abides here:
a golden equal-armed cross; golden cups
and plates on a brilliant white cloth;

a glittering diamond rooted in the depths.
This window is too deep to fathom.
We have witnessed strife and sickness,
tawdriness and horror, reflections

and extinctions, yet in this pool, our souls,
like birds and trees and rocks, sink
into exaltations of the sun. If some day
I am gone, seemingly nowhere to be found,

remember, I will be there, waiting for you.

MAGIC WINDOW

     In the film Cold Souls, Paul Giamatti plays an actor burdened by nameless anxieties who arranges to have his soul extracted by the “Soul Storage Company.” His soul resembles a chickpea. Unlike Giamatti’s character in the movie, for many years I remained certain that I didn’t have a soul, extractable or otherwise.  My spiritual emergence occurred unexpectedly: I began meditating purely to relieve stress. I had no interest in ideas of God or the soul and no desire to have visions or to expand consciousness.

     Surprise! I followed a suggestion in a book on meditation to mentally purify my chakras, and I began having visions of spiritual symbols. One afternoon, after meditating for over an hour, I had a vision of a gray, horizontal figure-eight floating above my head. I could also clearly see the walls of my room, so I thought for a moment that I had opened my eyes. I blinked and the figure-eight disappeared. I had no idea what the vision signified, so I mused for a while and forgot about it.  

     A few days later at a bookstore, I felt a totally uncharacteristic desire to buy a pack of Tarot cards. Normally I would hang out in the Literature section of the bookstore, but that day I browsed the New Age section and found a book on the Tarot and an attractive pack, the Universal Waite Tarot deck. As the cashier was ringing up the items, he confided that he had been thinking about "getting back into" the Tarot himself. Not knowing quite how to respond, I paused, and then suddenly the word "synchronicity" popped out of my mouth. I confess that I wasn't even sure what the word meant. The cashier smiled as he handed me my purchase, and I then drove to another store on a different errand. Before I got out of the car, I flipped through the book and stopped at a page that contained a striking photo of a man named Carl Jung. I read the text below and discovered that Carl Jung had coined the term synchronicity to suggest how events in the external world can significantly mirror the symbolic world of the subconscious mind. In other words, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning.

Tarot Cards with the Infinity Symbol

(Plus The Fool)

     I then opened the pack of Tarot cards. The second card I encountered, called “The Magician,” contains an image of a man with a gray, horizontal figure-eight floating above his head. I flipped through the book to a description of "The Magician" and discovered that the gray figure-eight is known as the infinity symbol and represents, on one level, the knowledge of the infinitude within.

    During meditation, I had tuned to another dimension and had envisioned a symbol that a few days later surfaced in "real" life, and I soon found out that the symbol system of the Tarot dovetails in every way with the great mystic symbol system known as the Tree of Life. I had envisioned other symbols from the Tarot and the Tree of Life before I opened the Tarot deck, which makes perfect sense: the Tree of Life is an expanded version of the primary chakra system, and by that point I had spent many hours in meditation mentally purifying my chakras. My higher self, no longer blocked by veils of negativity, was communicating with my conscious mind through spiritual symbols. Through the symbols of the Tarot and the Tree of Life, I am now often keenly aware of the infinitude within, which has an extremely positive effect on me and everyone around me. Before that I was pessimistic, cynical, and generally a real chore to be around.
     I eventually understood that the symbols represent spiritual principles. The first in a series was a golden, equal-armed cross with an angel at each end. The second was a golden plate and cup on a pure white tablecloth—floating in the cup a large pearl turned ceaselessly around and around. The pearl confused me, but one day I read the parable about the pearl of great price: the pearl represents soul consciousness, one part in Air (the conscious mind), the other in Water (the subconscious mind). The third vision consisted of a plain, golden crown. Since at the time I was still an agnostic, my conscious mind took a long time to process what my higher self, which had been buried so long in my subconscious mind, was showing me.

Strength: Leo

   By my early forties, I had experienced enough treachery and deceit to make anyone cynical for several lifetimes. I did not have any reason to feel hopeful about the human condition. I was pessimistic to the point of despair—if I had fallen asleep during meditation, my subconscious mind was more likely to manufacture nightmares than glowing, golden symbols. During my meditations, however, I was totally awake, but in a state of consciousness that I had never experienced before. My conscious mind in the visionary state tapped into a realm that transcended my limited personality, presenting symbols of what to me at the time was an inscrutable optimism about our essence, what many over the centuries have labeled the “soul.” The golden symbols reveal the harmony, abundance, and magnificence of the human spirit.

Two of Pentacles

   Often when I am in the wild, I feel a shift in consciousness. My brain waves tune to a vibration conducive to contact with the higher self and with the spirits of nature personified throughout the ages as deities. In places where I might encounter a mountain lion or a snake or a frog, I sometimes hear a wise voice or see a vision in my mind’s eye.
   My wife and I found a creek with more snakes and newts and turtles and frogs than we had ever encountered anywhere else. We called it “Frog Creek.” If you hike back far enough, you can find a deep pool beneath a waterfall.
   In the song “Magic Window,” I describe peering into the deep pool and seeing spiritual symbols that I envisioned during meditation or while in nature. Treasures of the spirit.
   At the time I wrote the lyrics, I was dying from heart disease. After my wife left me, I eliminated gluten completely from my diet and no longer experienced atrial fibrillation. I no longer fear that I am dying, but my wife and I will never be together at Frog Creek again.