Chapter 2 · Shadows and Mirrors

Strip Down

Cristina do Valle Mirrors of the Infinite

Strip down to your bare bones, A vessel of breath, a scaffold of stones; Lie sprawling, naked, upon the floor, Marble veins like rivers of lore. Close your eyes, Let them wander wide, Beyond the clock, beyond the tide. A knock resounds at the chamber’s door; Is it sorrow come to settle its score? Where does pain retreat when it goes? Into caverns of time where no shadow shows? Or does it seep through this cold white ground, Where secrets slumber and ghosts are bound? Perhaps this floor is a sacred gate, A map of veins through which angels wait; A fountain buried in silent earth, A spiral well of unmeasured worth. Its water glimmers beneath all things, A song of mirrors, a hum of wings. Strip down, oh pilgrim, strip away, The masks, the names, the brittle clay. Step into the fountain, The mountain turned, The abyss where fire and water burn. Dive through silence, where breath is crowned; There, in the stillness, Your peace is found.

Reflection

This poem was born out of a moment when life demanded I face myself without pretense. “Strip down” is not just about removing clothing; it is about surrendering every identity I have ever worn. The marble floor became a mirror—a cold, veined reminder that beneath our layers of stories, achievements, and defenses, there is only raw existence. There, in that emptiness, I found a strange peace, a knowing that nothing could be taken from me because I was already bare.

I had always thought spiritual awakening would feel like soaring, but more often it feels like undoing. This poem captured a time in my life when the undoing was complete enough that I felt hollow, yet strangely weightless. The marble floor felt like a threshold to a hidden fountain; an undercurrent of grace humming beneath the world. I realized that “atonement” was not punishment or guilt; it was the act of returning to this ground of being, the source we have never truly left.

The distortion this dissolved was my belief that pain had to be escaped or destroyed. In truth, pain simply asks to be met in stillness, to be felt fully so it can return to the river beneath all things. Stripping down, I discovered, is not about exposure but about freedom; the kind that comes when you are no longer afraid of losing yourself.

Whenever I return to this poem, I see the marble floor not as cold but as sacred, like an altar of truth. It reminds me that diving into silence is not falling into nothingness but into a peace that has always been waiting for me.

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