For the next few mornings I saw Billy's blue light as I woke up, but it vanished quickly. Finally the light lingered, and when I focused on it, I could hear Billy's voice. It was barely audible and even more distorted than before, but through intense concentration I was able to make out his words.
We haven't spoken in a while—or have we? It's not easy to speak in my new state. My thoughts have so much space between them it's an effort to string them together, but I'm doing it for you. What's a gift without a little effort? Don't be scared, honey, because of the difference in my voice. It's still me, I think. I'm laughing; can you hear it?
With all this space between my thoughts, the past has become unimportant to me. If the past was different, would it matter? Would I still be where I am now, talking to you and having the greatest experience of my life, I mean death? I don't know.
What's important now is that I have been delivered to this bliss that is beyond pleasure, beyond joy, beyond anything that can be imagined. My present bliss factor is four hundred million times the potency of the healing chamber I was in right after I died.
I have to get used to talking to you from this new stratosphere. I'll try to dial into my previous state of consciousness. Wow! From this dimension memories are psychedelic, stereo-symphonic—what's that word I'm searching for that has to do with computers?—virtual, virtually enhanced. But I can't hold onto the memories. They come and go, and there's no landing or impact. Death is really amazing.
I'm alone, but I'm everything. It's difficult to explain things when there isn't thought. There's nothing that I socalled want or need. Satisfied is much too small a word because it implies fulfillment of some lack, and lack is an earth thing. I know that at this moment you're able to feel a fraction of a fraction of my bliss, something inside you that's luminous and healing.
Remember this, my darling—remember this. What you achieve on earth is only a small part of the deal. If there's a secret I could whisper, and that you could keep, it would be that it's all inside you already. Every single thing you need. Earth is just a stopover. A kind of game. Make it a star game. If I could give you a gift, it would be to teach you how to stay free inside that game, to find the glory inside yourself, beyond the roles and the drama, so you can dance the dance of the game of life with a little more rhythm, a little more abandon, a little more shaking-those-hips.
Billy was dictating so slowly it took almost an hour for me to transcribe his words. But it didn't bother me. Nothing bothered me. I was ready to make my life a star game, whatever that was.
That evening, around seven, Billy interrupted my dinner with an unusual invitation.
Meet . . . me . . . at . . . the . . . ocean.
I put my food in the fridge, slipped on a heavy sweater, threw a blanket in my car, and drove to the ocean. The air was soft, the stars bright, a yellow crescent moon hung in the sky.
“How do I make my life a star game?”
Become . . . the . . . Universe.
I tossed my blanket aside and lay down in the sand. In the endless expanse of sky above me, stars sparkled like diamonds. Soon, Billy's presence pulled me up and up and up and whirled me around, as if I was falling up a hole instead of down. I fell upwards into the starlight, faster and faster, becoming lighter and lighter, dissolving into space. Then, my fear kicked in and landed me back in my body lying in the sand.
All the things I usually take so seriously suddenly seemed insignificant—specks against the vastness of the Universe. Billy was teaching me a star game.