Of all the heartstones, betrayal is the blackest and the densest. It sits, impenetrably dark and threateningly brooding, at the very base of the heart. Like a black hole in the universe, everything in its vicinity is inescapably drawn towards it. But, unlike a black hole, instead of being sucked inwards, all is infected with the stone’s poisonous emanations and released to spread the toxins around the body, through the lifeblood, to the brain, and onwards to the life-force.
Other heartstones also sit heavy in the heart, but their presence is neither so menacing, nor so enduring. While the jagged contours of the darkest crimson heartstones of grief and the deepest indigo heartstones of loss tear at the tissue of the heart, they are made of softer stuff and will eventually wear down through the power of life itself. We have, after all, learned to expect loss in its various forms – sudden and violent or drawn out and debilitating. Life has taught us that these stones are essential parts of being. But betrayal by nature is unexpected, alien, not of the world we depend on. We are unprepared.
The brute power of betrayal is in its shocking intensity, not just at the moment of impact, but again and again through its reverberating presence.
Because the heartstone of betrayal destroys all in its cataclysmic wake.
Because betrayal implies that there once was love, friendship, hope, harmony, and, above all, trust. And, at the instant that the unforeseen and sudden stone of betrayal smashes its way into the heart, all those precious and taken-for-granted elements are devastated.
Because betrayal then creates its own dark space in the heart in which to seep out its toxic secretions. And, as other heartstones are drawn towards the black density of betrayal, they too absorb its foul energies, intensifying the sense of loss and escalating the pain of grief.
Because no surgery can remove the heartstone of betrayal from its deep recess. And, while the heartstones of grief and loss may, in time, dissolve and become no more than a heart’s cherished memory, betrayal will live on in its dark crypt, poisoning the body and spirit, maybe even growing in its power.
Unless.
Unless, that is, something totally pure is found – something in which to bathe the black stone of betrayal, as a river courses over rocks, in time rounding them, smoothing them, gradually breaking them down to specks of sand.
So, where can the essence of purity be found? Only in the superior force of that condensed white star, the diamond blue stone of love. With its hard-edge brilliance, the diamond of love can score the surface of the heartstone of betrayal, creating the beginnings of fissures in the density of the blackness. Almost imperceptibly, the untainted emissions of the pure diamond immerse the heartstone, surrounding and overpowering its noxious discharges until the stone is contained and defeated, smoothed and broken into smaller and smaller fragments.
With the black stone no longer a barrier, a cautious hope and, finally, a guarded trust have space in which to return and grow. Inevitably, a residue of dark grains will always remain, hidden away like miniature time-bombs deep in the ocean of the heart, ominous and silent, ready to explode without warning. But slowly, with the hard-blue diamond of love secured and intensifying its brilliance in the heart, the grains of betrayal will diminish in number. Recovery can be almost complete. That’s the most we can hope for as trust returns.