After the opening prayer of Canto XI Dante briefly describes the overall process of purgation as similar to how one sometimes dreams of the boulders – likely referring to the sense of old distortions disappearing and healing in a sort of dreamlike state.
Così a sé e noi buona ramogna
quell’ombre orando, andavan sotto ‘l pondo,
simile a quel che tal volta si sogna,
Roughly: “Like this to themselves and to us, these shades were singing good prayers, walking under the boulder, similar to that which one sometimes dreams of.”
The “pondo” as stone/boulder thus becomes a symbol of the whole terrace, and the whole central transition in a life as well – removing the distortions, healing, and opening up to fuller reality and a categorically different experience and participation in Being.
The elements within oneself, slowly being crushed, the faculties gradually rebuilding healthy and aligned assumptions and elements of a new cosmology.
This process itself is really something of a miracle.
The image of carrying the pondo while in a dreamlike state speaks to something profound about transformation – we cannot always perceive our own metamorphosis while we are within it, no? What strikes me most is this idea that our distortions must be crushed so slowly, so deliberately, for the faculties to rebuild themselves on truthful ground. Perhaps purgation is less about punishment and more about the patient dismantling of the false self we have constructed, stone by stone, until what remains can finally participate authentically in Being itself.
Profound and true. Perhaps it indeed must take time, slowly, over some years. It is a deep change in the Self.