Upon the cracked desert floor, wrinkled old and aged face of a tired and weary earth, in the distance, like some twisted hallucination or psychedelic mirage, opens a path to another world. An escape from the desolation left by the great Common Movement of the first years of our new millenium - the Soul Drought as some dissidents have come to call it.

The hands make the sign of the Diamond Heart, a symbol which still used to have meaning way back in the age of individual imaginings. Now the sign is forgotten and forsaken, just as the individual was sold into slavery for the price of convenience and the comfort of collective guilt, a burden easily shared amongst the uncountable ones guilty of the destruction of the art of life. The ones who would favour merely existing over paying the price for the adventure of being alive.

But there is a sanctuary where the thoughts of one are still held higher than the thoughts of the many, where the risk of being is greater than the guarantee of continuing to be.

It is to this place that you are headed. It is to this place that you are drawn. For it is there that you shall learn of the caged and shackled spirit that lies buried deep in the embers of your mind's smouldering fire. The hands approach. They seem to reach out to touch you as you apprehesively pass through the archway and proceed down the Path of the Palms.

Towards what appears to be an entrance at the end of the path. Can't quite make it out but it appears almost like a statue, rising from the bowels of the mother's chapped crust. It is a head that ascends from beneath, the gate keeper of the Mysterious Land of Kiydieng. The sun descends, fleeing in fear of elusive night to become no more than a frightened halow hiding behind the Head of Kiydieng. The sky is turbulent. As an omen of the inner journey on which you are about to embark, it becomes violent and disturbed. Unsettled by the powerful and mystical forces which are about to be unleashed and which will shake the very foundation upon which reality itself is forged.

"Lost voyager, what purpose have you in this abode?", comes a stern inquisition from the head.

The eyes pierce through you. They see right into the darkest inner reaches of your mind, as if you were standing in a deathly cold blizzard, naked and exposed. The unforgiving stare. The forceful beams which, like inescapable spotlights, reveal all the darkest secrets and the most private thoughts. The desert floor becomes deformed and contorted and, like a giant whirlpool pulling you below, swirls violently around its epicenter, this gateway into the netherworld.

Your flesh is consumed and your mind is liberated as you step in through the mouth towards an unknown fate. But as you pass into this imaginary realm, great wonders greet you. Your spirit is caressed by a peculiar coolness which at first feels emptying, and then proceeds to fill you with an exhilirating chill. This is the parallel world - the desert above but just inverted in all senses. You have journeyed from the seen and explained into the unseen and unexplained, from the dry and dusty day into the moist and tantilising night.

Just as there was a sun setting above, below there is a sun rising. And its shape is blurred by an aqua-coloured sky, wet with mist and succulent clouds. This sacred place bears a flag flying proud in the gently crisp cool breeze. And a silent and non-reflective moon hangs just above, like some fossilized pineapple with a chapped skin reminiscent of the desert from which you came. A symbol, perhaps?

The sun rises further. You move on forward. Long shadows cast by the frosty spire-like peaks adorning the horizon. Candy-coloured ice mountains span as far as the eye can see. But there is a strange and puzzling incongruity in the scene. A lonely orange-coloured sphere hovers in the air above, as if in some form of suspended levitation. What is it and what undiscovered force holds it there? It maintains its position right above one of the mountain's peaks, as if there were some relationship.

Then, out of the corner of your eye, like glitter sparkling as it catches the sun's first rays, is revealed a multitude of these curious spherical beings, coloured with a veritable rainbow of different tones. Like a shy colony of blossoms, they have been dwelling unspoken in the darker corners of the land, as though they might be popped like fragile bubbles by the sharp fresh rays of the morning sun.

These are the spheres of End-Ever and like a floating carpet of colour they carry all the imaginable worlds, each one containing and protecting its own unique universe. So delicate and yet they hover so dangerously close to the sharp needle-like peaks of the candy-ice mountains. And the mysterious force that holds them their, and keeps them from falling to be mercilessly impaled, is the strength of the single seed of a dream. It is you.

Then, right before you, a doorway appears from the seathing blackness. Mystery has opened herself to you. She has seduced you to this place so that she can taste of your soul's flesh, the sweet and forbidden fruit of your soul's desires. Your heart beats faster as you cast aside the constraints of your perception of reality and give in to the fantasies of your mind. Anything that you wish to be shall be. This place is fashioned of the magic dust of the First Thought, floating remnants of the very creation of all that which is.

Mystery yearns for you. You enter her. You surrender, and travel deeper still into the nucleus of your being, along a winding path that has been lit to guide your way. The Valley of the Glowing Souls is the name of this place. The air is filled with a sharpness which bites your vulnerable skin with a delectable pain which is only almost painful and only almost pleasurable. It is the feeling of The Glow. It tingles upon your senses and teazes your composure.

It appears as though you are not the only one to have made this pilgrimage to the inner ream. Standing just outside what looks like a sacred shrine there is another dissident who has come this far....and this deep. And he too has The Glow.

Still further in. Towards a tree, the sacred tree. It is enclosed in a circle which it seems must have some grave religious significance. This is undoubtedly a sacred place where many have travelled before you. The tree is an altar where one is to make offerings and receive of the bounty of ideas and thoughts that radiate from this source. It is marked with a golden plaque.

You are close within this space and you can feel the soothing low vibrations of the tree's energy surging through your substance. Is it The Glow which has grown ever stronger, such that it now hums like electricity through your body? Looking down you can see how The Glow is upon you. You have become a willing victim of its infectious presence. Your hands are lit like candles and emit a delicious warm red cloud of iridescence. And looking towards the sky you see how the tree reaches almost infinitely into the cosmos where it seems to finally touch the benificent source of all this energy.

Your curiosity drives you further towards the tree until, heralded upon the tree like an ancient script, you can read the golden plaque which holds the key to this bewildering mystery. The truth that you have been travelling so deep to find now stands right before you and casts its writings as a metallic reflection upon the glassy surface of your eyes. It speaks in colour and light and you listen as it whispers within your mind.

"He who so touches upon this sacred tree shall be transported to a land of unknown qualities.", Jean Allessandro-Guittane.

So, do you heed these words of caution?