there is a light and it never goes out

In the mines there is no light. In the mines there is not sound, but the air remembers sound, so that you constantly stop and say What- was that? And cannot hear it well enough to say. In the mines your heart is carried in a wagon red painted and black tarred, along a road that is not a road going somewhere you cannot see and have never heard of. In the mines you believe you felt an earthquake but it was only the roar of your breathing and the furious pistil of your heart. In the mines there is no room for anyone else, or you. In the mines there is not air but something like air, much heavier and more like sludge, moving into your lungs slowly, moving out slowly, with heavy intention and hot fingers. In the mines you call out for someone but no one is there. No one answers. In the mines your body is your prison and your mind your jailer and you realize you are not thinking, but instead that the mind thinks and you listen to what it says. I am alone and the world is black, the mind thinks, and you hear this and believe you have thought it from you. But it is not from you. It is from the machine of your mind, the tape that is pressed play, which you listen to and believe no matter what. I am going to die miserable, the mind tells you, and you think it is your own original thought. When it is a tape, pressed play, in an empty room on a table with only you listening. I am miserable, the mind says again. I am alone, the mind repeats. You respond like this: yes. I've always suspected it was so. In the mines, you can see the empty room. You are seated there, in the mines. You look around at the blackness and you can almost hear- almost audible- the click of the machine of your brain as it begins to attack. You push away from the machine with surprise, both hands forward into the darkness, like a baby against the breast. Wait a minute, you think. That is not me. I am listening to that thought. If I am listening, then who is thinking that? And if I'm not thinking that- then who am I? And for the first time in your life you feel the boundries of your mind and you turn quickly because there it is- what you have wept for all along- the crack that lets the light in.