I'd be floating with the swans on that smooth surface between the darkness below and the pale tender sky above. Floating at the same time on that other surface between here and far away, between then and now. Floating, on the surface between the real and the imagined, between what comes to us from the outside and what comes to us from within, from deep, deep down in here. Floating like a white bird on the water. Floating on a great river of life - a great smooth silent river that flows so still, so still, you might almost think it was asleep. A sleeping river. But it flows irresistibly. Life flowing silently and irresistibly into ever fuller life, into a living peace all the more profound, all the richer and stronger and more complete because it knows all your pain and unhappiness, knows them and takes them into itself and makes them one with its own substance. And it's into that peace that you're floating now, floating on this smooth silent river that sleeps and is yet irresistible, and is irresistible precisely because it's sleeping. And I'm floating with it. Effortlessly floating. Not having to do anything at all. Just letting go, just allowing myself to be carried along, just asking this irresistible sleeping river of life to take me where it's going - and knowing all the time that where it's going is where I want to go, where I have to go: into more life, into living peace. Along the sleeping river, irresistibly, into the wholeness of reconciliation.

Island by Aldous Huxley