I WANT TO SAVOR IT, compartmentalize it, treasure all the details. I'm a writer at heart, so I have to capture it to sort for understanding later. I can't help watching myself have this experience. But part of me wants to just let go and fall. How else does the truth happen? How can it happen if I'm always on guard against it?
For some of the time, despite my vigilance, I do lose track of myself and time, just closing my eyes and going mindless. I feel myself lose size and shape and substance and morph into a nameless, faceless falling. I'm falling with the air around me, one with it. I have no more being than that. Yet my own presence, my own awareness, never leaves me, remaining undiminished, strong, purposeful. This is beyond understanding, because I feel miniscule at the same time, tinier than tiny. I laugh. Then I laugh at my laughing. How can I be laughing? I'm still falling. I'm giddy. I haven't even stopped to notice my surroundings. I'm not much of an Alice in Wonderland.
This situation calls for my awareness to be at the forefront. I'm falling pretty fast, but I can see there are some sort of hieroglyphics on the walls. Pictographs, sort of, some maybe of people. I try to study them but can only hold onto glimpses. I might be able to reproduce some of them later on paper. I close my eyes and can't be sure I don't doze or even dream.
I feel a bump and instantly open my eyes. I have landed, right side up, almost sitting. I feel all in one piece, not bruised or broken. Quite the opposite—I couldn't be more excited. I know from Duncan Robert that this is how his adventure in the Void began. I stand up and look around. I see that I have landed on a flat rocky surface, a few feet back from the reach of the Void, and I can't help going to the edge to look over. To see the Void from this angle is mind blowing. I'm in it! Finally. I hold on to the rocky wall to my right as I look up and then down. It's dark, and a little windy. There is a dim glow, as if light emanates from the rocks themselves. When I look up again, I don't see even a pinprick of light to mark the opening where Miles and I jumped. I wonder how many miles I have fallen. I look down again, glad to have something to hold on to, and feel the bottomlessness, a vast openness that goes on and on. I don't want to stand here too long because, crazily, I can feel the urge to jump rising in me. It's stronger down here than at the edge of the meadow. I'm not ready for another jump! I have to see where I've landed first. I look around my rocky room. I've been buffeted into a side cave that's bigger than my whole studio apartment. Higher ceilings, too.
After a few minutes of wandering around, I can see that it has a back opening. I go into it, figuring that if anyone was going to come out and meet me, they already would have. I'm a little disappointed. I find myself in a winding tunnel with a faint light at the end, which gets brighter and brighter as I walk. All of a sudden, as I round a curve in the tunnel it opens out onto a large, beautiful beach, on a stunning day. The beach extends into the distance in front of me to the edge of the water, which is clear turquoise-blue and gently rippled with small waves. The beach is strewn with gigantic rocks, some grouped, some separate. They're as big as buildings, and they have all kinds of interesting crevices and formations where the wind and the water have been at them in artful ways. Gulls wheel in the sky, calling, and some are scattered on the beach in the far distance.
It's a moment before I realize those are people in the distance, not gulls! People! I start to run. “Who are they?” I'm wondering. “And why am I running?” But I can't stop myself. I'm so happy to be running to these strangers on the beach! I feel as if my heart is pulling me and will leave me behind if I resist. I'm glad I've been exercising, because I don't think I've ever run this fast. I can't seem to run fast enough!
The people ahead of me haven't noticed me coming, so I have a chance to try to look at them as I get closer. But as I approach the group I realize it's only one person I'm really looking at and running towards—a tall, thin man in long, flowing white robes.
“It's Philip!” I think, wondering who Philip is. I run through the small gatherings of other people, not even looking at them, until I'm only a short distance away. Suddenly, I'm so overwhelmed at seeing him that I drop to my knees, unable to go further, and I sob with the abandon of a broken-hearted child. I can't seem to understand or control my own behavior. I've never felt so vulnerable and without defense. I know how Duncan Robert felt about the people he met in the Void and how hard it had been to leave them, but what I'm feeling seems beyond that. This man is my heart. The feelings I'm having for him transcend any I've ever felt for anyone on Earth. They transcend any notion of love or soul mate I've ever had, making any other connection seem paltry, stingy, limited, fearful. I couldn't hold this back if I tried.
I sit there collapsed on the beach and cry without will, without desire, feeling as if I've always cried, that crying is my natural state, like breathing. I can't imagine stopping. Yet I've never been happier. His presence surrounds me and the essence of me moves in and out of it. I don't know how else to express it. He is not man, I am not woman, we are filaments of the same strand of soul. I feel him move closer, and I look up. He bends down and takes my hands in his, and I stand, feeling weak as a kitten. We embrace, and I can hardly breathe. Every question I have ever had has been answered, every need tended to, every prayer acknowledged. I'm complete. I'm home.
He laughs. He knows what I'm thinking and feeling. He tells me that this is how we all feel about each other, all of the time, when we're not Earth bound. And we always forget that when we leave here.
“A great thing to return to, yes?” he says, with a slight British accent. I'm still incapable of stringing two coherent words together. I want to ask where I am, why I am, but it's hard to care in his presence. It doesn't matter.
I feel so vulnerable, but I know, at the same time, we're meant to be living vulnerable—that's our natural state. How else can we change and grow and progress? It's the only attitude that makes real learning possible. You have to be open. A plant doesn't grow clenched, protected; it hurtles itself into growing. It may seem slow to us, but it has the plant's utmost commitment and attention. “It has no fear,” he says to me, hearing my careening thoughts. This stops me in my tracks. It so resonates with the feelings I had on jumping with Miles into the Void. I just hadn't known what having no fear felt like.
Now, in this moment, in this place, I know it's the most natural thing in the world for me to love Miles. And I do. I'm filled with an absolute certainty and an absolute happiness. At the same time, I can't help but realize we love so much bigger than that, so much bigger than the love of one person. Here with Philip, I can understand how we do it—how it's possible for us to hold so much love.
Philip shares my thoughts as I have them. He tells me this is the meaning and purpose of life for everyone, all of the time—to be open in love. When I feel drawn to another, like Miles, it is to build structure with him—routines, habits, patterns—to ensure time and place for our spirits to co-exist, to learn from and work with each other, as well as sustain each other. I know we are together due to a pre-contract or agreement to do this, in this place and time. In between lives, we agreed to help each other, and we've probably done it before, in different roles in other lives. We do it until we don't have to do it anymore.
As I look up into his face, I know Phillip's energy lifts mine to a level beyond what I can ever achieve on my own, on Earth. You can't be in a bad mood here, I realize. You can't not like yourself or anyone else.
He takes my hand and says, “Let's meet the others, shall we? They've been waiting.”
I look around. The others are focused on us, though it hadn't looked like that initially.
“Who are they?” I ask, though I instantly know what he's going to say.
“They're your cohort, along with members of a few other cohorts who have shared lives with you. They want to celebrate your being here. It's a huge step, you understand. They've not seen anyone else do it.”
“What exactly have I done?”
Philip looks at me with seriousness. “You have bet your life, my dear. By jumping, you have bet your life that you can make change for yourself. It's why you jumped. It takes such courage because everything in your lives is so programmed to prevent change, to maintain the status quo at all costs.” He smiles now.
“You're their hero,” he says.
I have to laugh.
“Well, I've never been accused of that before!” He laughs, too, and I wonder if I have.
I turn to meet my cohort—the parts of my original entity who are all living lives on Earth now, too, when not between lives. Some of them are on the beach, and I meet them face to face, maybe a dozen of them. Young, old, men, women—not like Duncan Robert's group, who seemed all to be around his age. I can tell from their faces they have had different kinds of experiences and have different kinds of knowing. Or maybe that's just part of the telepathy that seems always in operation here.
One of them is a woman I saw once, in Tasmania. I'm surprised to see a woman with whom I have had only one encounter, and we never even spoke. I remember being in Launceston, the second largest city in Tasmania, for a conference where I was invited to speak. I believe everyone else they asked had turned them down—it was so far, so expensive, and no one was exactly sure where Tasmania even was. Africa, they thought? Even I had to look it up, not realizing it was an island off the southeast coast of Australia, one of Australia's five provinces, just adjacent to New Zealand. I loved it, and will always remember the magic of seeing wallabies spar with each other, like miniature boxers, in the twilight on the grounds of the Cataract Gorge Reserve, a wild place just minutes from the heart of the city.
I look at the woman, who looks strikingly like me, and remember seeing her in the crowd of evening strollers along the pier one night, on the Tamar River. People were checking out the restaurants and each other, wandering into the shops, thinking about taking rides on the water taxi. I felt so strangely drawn to follow this woman, knowing there was some sort of connection, and hoping the woman knew it, too. She was older, and walked with a younger couple, who looked like a daughter and son-in-law. She had put herself under their protection and seemed fragile somehow.
I tell Philip, “I think she was afraid of me—she noticed me, but only peripherally, and wouldn't look at me head-on. I was a little freaked out—I kept thinking, knowing, she was me somehow, some other version of me. I wanted to see her and have her see me, as validation of something. At the same time, I felt as if something irrevocable would change, and I didn't know if I was ready for that. I think she felt the same way.”
He says nothing because the woman approaches.
“Babe, this is Hardin,” Philip says, just as I'm thinking the name in my head.
“I know.”
Hardin and I hug. And Hardin, laughing, says, with a distinct Australian accent, “Of course, I did see you. I'm an aspect of you and you of me. It was my first time to ever see such a thing. I wasn't well at the time, and I thought seeing you meant immanent death!” She laughs again, “I know now that's not the case. And I'm sorry to have missed the opportunity, but I was a frightened little thing in that life. Not like you!”
“Oh, I was scared, too!” I assure her. “It feels so good to meet you now!”
We hug again, and I turn with Philip, Hardin following, to meet some of the others on the beach.
Another older woman comes up to me and takes my hands in hers. She is shorter than I am, with long dark hair flowing in the wind. Her face is deeply lined and darkly tanned. She has on what I think of as gypsy jewelry, large hoop earrings, lots of bangles, and long strands of small gold beads around her neck. She's a strong and handsome woman. Her deeply set dark eyes exude confidence and good will. Her white teeth flash in her tanned face as she smiles broadly at me, waiting for me to know her.
I look down at her, into her eyes, and gasp. “I do know you!”
In half a second, both of us are crying. I look at the woman, keeping hold of her hands. “What I know is that we killed each other. We've died together, too, when someone else killed us. We've had intense relationships. I know, too, that only people who really love each other would do these things for and with each other. It takes planning and synchronization of everything from our births, to a shared geography, to a million other things, and a deep understanding of what it means for each of us, and for everyone else these acts touch, in terms of advancement.” I'm out of breath.
Laughing and nodding, the woman pulls me to sit with her on the sand, and I do.
“We burned at the stake together, our stakes near each other. Part of the Inquisition? We committed heresy?” I look at her for confirmation. The woman nods her head. “We were completely present to each other through the burning,” I continue, “joined in supporting each other. We rose together from that life, with the smoke of the fire.”
I look at the woman again, who nods and bows her head. I look up at Philip. “She beheaded me in another life. She was the axe man, or headman, as they were called, much hated and feared by everyone, near and far. The King's administration did their best to keep the axe men unknown, but people knew, and the men were ostracized, as if the evil they did was somehow contagious, so even casual association with them would pull you into a dark brotherhood. I had committed some sort of usury—making loans with high interest rates that pretty much no one could have paid. The King had made charging interest on lent money legal, within certain limits, despite the church's opposition. But this was what all the money lenders did, or they couldn't have made a living, what with the King's heavy taxation of all of them. I had been caught, though, in part because I was a Jew and Jews were generally hated, and in part because one family I was over-charging had some connections in high places.
“When I knelt to the axe man, I knew we had a bond stronger than life! It was just as Duncan Robert said—we'd played all sorts of roles with each other—mother, father, friend, now executioner.” I look at the woman again. “Until we know we're one.”
“I am Nika. But you've known me by so many other names, we hardly need names anymore. I use Nika because that was one of my favorite lives with you. It was in Russia. Do you remember? We lived in the city of Kiev, in the Ukraine, before it declared its independence. We were sisters, living with our parents, who ran a small tobacco shop, with our lodgings above it.
“One day our parents went off to a big buyers' market in St. Petersburg, something they'd never done before, about a two-day train trip each way. They never returned. We never learned what happened to them. We were about fourteen and fifteen, you were still in school. We just kept going—we ordered tobacco, forging our father's signature, we managed the books, we closed the shop for holidays and took ourselves on trips out into the countryside. We'd latch onto whatever group of adults seemed handy and were never questioned.
“Finally we were found out, by an unscrupulous man who wanted to buy the shop out, to curtail the competition. Once he found out, he wanted us to do whatever unsavory thing he said, or he'd report us to the authorities and we'd be put in prison for all that we'd done. We believed him about the prison, and saw it as a prison either way.
“One night shortly after we were found out, we slipped out of the house and went to the Nicholas Chain Bridge, the only stationary bridge across the Dnieper River that ran through Kiev and the countryside, all the way to the Black Sea. Bridges in Kiev, for hundreds of years, had been floating bridges, primitive affairs removed when the winter's ice began to set in. We considered the bridge one of the wonders of the world. It was known for its beauty all over Europe. ‘It civilized Kiev,’ we used to say, believing it somehow civilized us, too. We loved that river and knew its ancient history. Cossacks lived along it! It had been part of the Amber Road, a main trade route coming in from the Middle East. We thought the river was the most beautiful thing in the city, and the bridge was the second most beautiful. It felt good to become a part of that flow of history.”
She's beaming as she tells this story, holding onto my arm as we sit in the sand. I look over at Philip, who has joined us on the sand.
“You mean we jumped from the bridge into the river that night?”
“Yes. We wrapped our arms around each other and jumped from the railing, which was the highest point we could reach. Do you remember?”
“I don't think so. Why is it one of your favorite lives? It ended in tragedy, when we were still young.”
“We accomplished many goals in that life. We didn't see ourselves as helpless. We believed we could take care of ourselves. We had fun doing it. We discovered we had strengths and we relied on them. We didn't turn our lives over to anyone else. We did our best, and we were happy.”
“But it was suicide. Isn't that wrong?”
“We had gone as far as we could go in that life on our terms, and we knew it. We weren't leaving in defeat and despair. We were making a stand, refusing to bow to someone else's plans for us. That was our intent,” she says calmly, “and that was our choice.”
I look at Philip. He looks at me. “How do you feel about it?” he asks.
I shouldn't be surprised to see I have suicide in a past life. And this death seems much better than beheadings and battles.
“I feel okay about it. And I'm kind of in awe of the courage those two had.” I look at Nika. “That's why you felt like a sister to me when I first saw you.” Looking at her, I think of my own sisters, trying to imagine them doing half these things.
“A sister, but closer. I'm so glad I'm here to see you,” I tell her.
“And I you,” Nika says, smiling. “You know, you still have the courage we had then. You've just jumped again!” And she laughs, causing me to laugh, too.
“This advances us?” I ask, interested to know, wanting that for me and for her. “To have jumped?”
“You'll have a better balance of the spiritual and the physical in life now. You've allowed the infusion of spirit into this vehicle,” Nika says, tapping my chest, “for earthly expression, which is what it's all about. You'll find it easier to stay on your purpose.”
“How does it help you?”
“A change in your vibration changes mine, by association, because our energies are so connected. It helps everyone in your cohort. Jumping raises your vibration because you've cleared fear in order to do it. Any time we get rid of some of our fear, our vibration is raised because it's no longer as constrained as it was.”
“Well! Maybe that's why I feel so wonderful here.”
“Everyone feels better here!” Nika says.
“We need to go,” Philip says. “There's a man in town for you to meet.”
Another woman comes through the small crowd around Philip and me, and I begin to wonder if my whole cohort is women. She has grey hair pulled back in a double bun on the back of her head. She's dressed in a mid-calf length skirt, with blouse belted over it. She wears soft moccasin boots.
She's Navajo, I think, because I've seen women like this when I've visited my sister Kelly in New Mexico. I feel an immense love for this woman, just as I do for Nika.
“I was your husband in our last life together,” the woman says, taking my hands in hers. “I'm someone else's granny in this life that we share. But I'm there for you, too.”
My mind is reeling. This woman is in my life now!
“We live within each other—that's what a cohort is. You can see that now?” the woman asks. “We had a deep kind of experience together—a life and death one. In that existence we successfully piloted a group project to a kind of cosmic completion. That's rare. Things like that get planned often but seldom completed. So many things have to come together—people have to hold firm in their resolve to maintain authenticity of self and purpose. When we succeed, it's like every holiday and celebration rolled into one, like finding your lost parents, or reaching the top of a mountain you never expected to be able to climb. The success is felt by your whole cohort, and beyond. It's an extreme exercise in service, so it produces an extreme euphoria. You and I worked hard to do that. Do you remember?”
I stop to think, and the memory starts to surface. We didn't intervene in something—someone died. I remember. It's a small story, really, so I would never have realized the size of its effect. We were children, not more than eight or nine. We let our friend drown. We could have saved him, but we didn't. Somehow, we knew we weren't supposed to. He had to die in order for his family to learn compassion. He was supposed to be here for only a short while, and he knew this. If we intervened, all of the plans everyone had for this life would be put to waste, and some of those plans were important for the country and the world. So we let him drown and then we took his body home to his parents, after getting it onto our sled. Back then, I only knew I was confused and paralyzed by fear the whole time.
“It's the not intervening,” the woman says. “It's almost impossible for us when we're on Earth, especially in life-and-death situations. We tend to follow rote behaviors for any given situation, but especially those. In truth, all situations are different and require our intuition. But usually we can't see that when we're on Earth. When it's life or death, we think we're supposed to intervene on the side of life. But that time, seeing death approaching for the first time in our young lives, we still listened to our own intuitive knowing and watched him die. We cried, but we held on to each other and stood firm, supported by every ounce of energy our cohort could send our way. And then we still had to witness his parents' grief, knowing that on some level they did blame us, even though they said they didn't. It was quite traumatic for everyone concerned, and it followed us for the rest of those lives. But there was a way we did have peace on it, and we helped each other maintain that.”
“What are we to each other in this present life?” I have to ask.
“That's still to unfold,” the woman says, “though not intervening is still a theme for me, as are lost children.” She looks down for a moment. “I just wanted to plant this awareness for you, for you to know I'm there for you, whether or not we ever meet.”
We hug, and I feel this woman's power and again feel the sensation of being one. “Go and finish your journeying,” the woman says, smiling. “We're proud of you. You're clearing the path for so many others.”
I blow her a kiss as I move up the beach again with Philip. I think about how different my journey is from Duncan Robert's. He met one group of people and stayed in one place, listening to stories that told him of his larger identity. He was transformed by hearing what he had done in other lives and learning what he could do in this life. Maybe I'm learning the same things in a different way. Philip is quiet while I ruminate.
Two people are walking next to me, on my left, and suddenly I'm aware they are my mother and father from my current life. I am face-to-face with my abuser, a man I have always feared. As we walk, I feel my father's courage, and it's an incredible realization to me. I resist, but the information comes to me (as it does in the Void) with its heightened energy, and I can't avoid the knowledge of what made the abuse possible. Because I'm in the Void, this knowledge neither outrages nor sickens me. My name is on the things that led to the abuse, too.
First thing I know?
Only someone as close to you as your cohort would engage in this kind of advancement with you. I've had a buried idea that I was experiencing abuse in retribution—because I had engaged in it in another life. Engaged in it maybe with the entity who is now my father. We took on something incredibly difficult, together. We were partners in it. Now I realize that just wasn't the case. The three of us—my mother, too—agreed to take this on out of love, to help each other through a complicated skein of generational relationships that had gone from bad to worse.
This is the second thing I know: we can carry wounds of the spirit from lifetime to lifetime. Times when we were made to feel less than or others were, times we tried to right a wrong and failed. Times we failed in some way—failed ourselves or others. We want to keep trying until we've righted it, so we carry it along.
In our cohort, we had occupied various roles over various lives—first helping to create grudges and resentments that had become deeply embedded, and then trying to work to alleviate them. We created this situation as a group and we had to resolve it as a group. These grudges and resentments had constrained all of us, dooming us to life after life in which we strove to ease them, heal them. It was slow, laborious work. Progress was incremental, and it kept us from other pursuits.
So, my father proposed the most courageous resolution—it called for something beyond everything we had been trying. He wanted to settle it once and for all. It required something transcendent, that we wouldn't be able to deny had changed us profoundly. Incest.
He proposed this scenario to give everyone a chance for a purge of the negative energy that constrained us all. It was a drastic proposal, extremely difficult for everyone involved and could only be carried off by those with impeccable motivation and dedication. His courage and love had inspired me to offer my partnership in the scenario.
The third thing I know is that lives are for trying things, taking risks, for the right reasons, under the right conditions, so progress can be made. Because I did, my mother did. My mother and I had had many other lives together. We all trusted each other to stay true to purpose, in order to achieve the larger healing.
We stand face-to-face now. No one takes anyone's hands.
I realize how long I've been carrying buried hatred, fear, and confusion about my father. I see the harm that does to my current life—this is the stuff of illness, how it starts, where it starts, how it gains hold. It takes up residence in a corner of an essential organ in your body and eats away at it—the unresolved anxiety of it always with you, like a piece of leather rubbing at your skin until it reaches bone. It can do this because you have weakened your own spirit enough by this negativity to create a permanent home for it. I know I have worked hard on Earth to be able to manage my understanding of the abuse and make a kind of peace with it. I realize now only my father can heal me or help me heal myself at the level of spirit. But it's for me to do, to allow, not him.
I have to love him, and my mother, the way I love Philip.
This would have seemed impossible, unthinkable before. I can do it now because I know this is how the healing of the whole cohort happens—they find their way to love, out of the place of grudges and resentment and pain. If I permit the healing, they can all heal and move forward. We all play a very real part.
Healing is an action, a choice, a stepping out of the old and into a new way of seeing the situation. What has made me hold onto the old? To prefer it over healing? Well, you have to be ready or letting go to heal can feel like further victimization, creating more resentment. It's such a worn-out platitude to say “you have to be ready” to let go. But it had been so hard to get hold of an awareness and even limited understanding of the abuse, that letting go of it seemed wrong at first. My understanding of it had seemed so hard won that I thought letting go of it meant I would lose that part of myself again, would lose all that understanding, and go back to being that unprotected child.
If you're ready, it feels like becoming whole, reclaiming every piece of yourself ever given up to damage. And I find I'm ready because I've looked at it, as completely as I could. I went back and looked at it as the adult I am, putting it on the playing field of adults. So it has become integrated into who I am, a permanent part of myself.
Being here, in the Void, has allowed me to then move it into the realm of the spiritual, where such acts usually originate, for the deepest understanding of it—of why anyone would do it, how they could, and what they would achieve through the doing of it. I didn't know it at the time, but engaging in therapy, entering the world of counseling, as I had done in self-defense for a number of years, was a spiritual act that put me on the path to a spiritual understanding. These things are not separate. Each works to make you whole, through an understanding of yourself. Each works to give you yourself back.
I look at them both as they stand facing me, my mother and my father. Almost immediately I know I can do this. Not only am I ready; I am able. In fact, none of this would have happened if everyone here hadn't known I was ready. They knew it before I did. I shake my head in awe at it all. We are all equals now. We have come full circle and can thank each other for the partnership. We have been able to accomplish our healing. I had been the only piece holding it back.
Now we hold hands, looking into each other's faces. I feel that we are finished. We have done what we needed to do. We will part now, with much love and respect for each other, and we will probably not have any more lives together. They will move on to other challenges, able to do that because of the help we have provided each other. I hold their hands tightly now, feeling the largeness of the moment, thanking them. My father says, “It's a wonderful thing we have done. Harder to do than most things, but with a greater reward, too. I thank you, always.” Tears come to my eyes. “I thank you,” I say, having difficulty speaking.
My mother says, “You always were my favorite!” And we both laugh. “You kept me going through it, Babe. It was so hard for all of us. I am so glad not to have to do that again.”
“Me, too,” I say and I kiss their hands in gratitude. We part, my parents walking off to the east, away from the water. I stand there crying, feeling the warmth of their hands lingering on mine.
Philip takes my hand and asks me how I'm doing. I give him a reflective smile. “Never better.” I wipe the tears on my sleeve. “I guess I'm healing from the inside out.” He puts his arm around me. “Some lives run deeper than others.” I lean into him, and we continue up the beach. Though emotionally depleted, I feel capable of anything. Which is a good thing, since I know we're not done yet.
We go up the beach to the town we see in the distance, with high adobe-like walls, huge windowless expanses of them beneath a blue, blue cloudless sky. I know there has just been the call to morning prayer and some part of someone within these walls is present to me, someone who has opened to prayer. I suddenly realize he might be thinking of me as God! I mean Mohammad, peace be upon him, because this man is Muslim. We're going to visit him.
I turn to Philip. “This experience tells me that the veil that separates all our worlds is rapidly shredding. We can have access to each other, through conscious contact, such as I'm getting ready to have with this man. It's not something invasive or intrusive, but presence, as if I was sitting there next to or across from him, quietly, respectfully waiting for him to join me with his attention, extending my positive regard to him. Is this right?”
Philip nods. “Yes, access, to see each other as gods. Because that's what we are. It's important that we see that now, for the well-being of the world.”
I look at him with a sudden realization of the significance of what I'm doing.
I ruminate as we walk. I'll be a god to a guy in town, because we all are gods. But this concept of gods shifts from dimension to dimension, and can get tied into worship and dogma. Activities normal to us in one dimension can appear supernatural to those in another dimension—it can freak out anyone who is confused, lost, lonely. Take a few of those people in a hard place, looking to be rescued or led rather than lead themselves, and boom, religions are born.
I'm somehow being filled with knowledge as I walk with Phillip and the group to this town. It's like being in their presence is information. I know that all of this is about being able to see myself as one, with my team and my cohort and everyone and everything else. A tall order, because to do that you have to see yourself as large as you see them, not as small as the world has made you believe you are. There's a real equality, of spirit and self, that requires some stepping up from where I've been living. This is the real key to the thinning of the veil—to see who you are in all of your expansiveness, across all time and space, all Universes.
We get to the town, Philip leading us through the gates in the wall, down a crooked trail of dirt roads, directly to the man's house. It's a narrow house on a narrow winding dirt road. The front door, which is unlocked, opens onto a long narrow hallway. At the back of the hallway is a small room, its floor layered with rugs, its large wooden back door open onto a small green courtyard, to receive the morning sun. A goat grazes peacefully. The man is prostrate on the floor of the room, saying his prayers towards the rising sun. I go to sit on the floor in front of him, wondering what I'll do. He knows I'm there—I can tell by the change in his awareness, the tension in his demeanor. He sits up and we look at each other.
I know immediately that he is of my cohort. Tears begin to course down his face, and I have tears in my eyes. I don't know what he sees, but I imagine he is seeing something greater than me sitting there in my matching outdoor wear, with my hair pulled back in a ponytail. True, I do have everything covered but face and hands, like any good Muslim woman, but I have pants on, which wouldn't be good. I can't imagine he'd be having such a reaction to seeing a woman, period, given his beliefs. True, Mohammad, peace be upon him, was guided by significant relationships with women all his life and even said men and women are equal before God, and things like “Heaven lies at the feet of mothers,” but much of that ideology can be lost in patriarchal or tribal law, as is evidenced by the continuing restrictions on women and their activities in Muslim countries—something else I have reported on for the paper.
What I see is a man, small in stature, looking at me with such genuine love and devotion that I am moved. I take his hands in mine, in that singular gesture of love and acceptance, and begin to talk.
“Rise and be of service to your people, especially the women and children and those of limited physical or economic means. You are to lead the way for the men of this village in that regard. Your existence will be a constant reminder of the Prophet's highest values, of the highest expression of all five pillars of Islam—faith, prayer, charity, the fast, and the pilgrimage. Mohammad, peace be upon him, noted the importance of even a smile, and you are to live your life with a smile for all, those like you as well as those different, whether in faith or appearance or means. Your job is to love all.”
I have to smile at these lofty words coming from my own mouth and watch the effect they have on him. The man touches his forehead to our joined hands, and I hear him, in a choked voice, hardly coherent, pledge his allegiance to my words. I guess I've been his burning bush, and I'm astonished at the whole thing. The man continues to sob and profess his belief in it all. He offers every evidence that the experience has been transformative for him. I look up at Philip, our witness, and he nods at me. It's time to go. I bend my head and kiss the top of the man's still-bent head, removing my hands from his. He stays in the same position, quietly sobbing.
I rise, and Philip and I leave the house. The others wait outside. Morning prayer is over and people are moving into their daily routines. Our group heads back to the beach. As we move through the growing crowds of people on the streets, I am aware that the people don't seem able to see us. Some people do have a limited awareness, moving slightly out of our way without actually looking at us. As we walk, I ask Philip why the meeting was necessary for the man.
“Because he was in need of such a meeting. He has lost his wife, and with her has gone much of his interest for life. He couldn't see his way, his purpose, what he could contribute that had any value. You're his cohort—you had been his wife. He would respond to your words, as he always had in this life. You were the bridge.”
Hardly anything surprises me anymore, I think, shaking my head and laughing. “Why not just have me appear as her?”
“His purpose is greater than that of a husband. We wanted to remind him of that and not have him just think he needed to replace you. This man can do much good in the life he has left, positively directing many others away from greed and meanness and self-service. He can save the lives of others suffering from hunger and ill health. He can become a force for the good in his village. In past lives, he has not stepped up to such a role, leaving it instead for others. In fact, he has often engaged in the reverse.”
Okay, I get the picture. “So you believe things will be different for him now?”
“What do you think?” Philip glances at me sideways.
“I think yes,” I say, remembering the man's tears.
“I, too. This is what we do for each other, and when your cohort does it for you, you can hardly remain unchanged by it. After all . . . “
“Yes, I know. A bond stronger than life.”
As we walk, I try to sort what I'm learning here. I can feel that my time is coming to a close, and I really want to consciously capture what I can of its meaning while I'm in this place of heightened energy. What's been the purpose in meeting them all? Further enlightenment about our situation, our greater spiritual situation? Sure. This experience in the Void is what spiritual people refer to as an activation—it activates something in you that was dormant before, brings it to life, and then this thing brought to life serves you and your purpose. This bond that is stronger than life is an activation.
The end of my jump unfolds at night, on the beach, with the stars, the wind, a warm fire. Philip and I sit, talking, a small distance from the others, who are around other small fires on the beach. He wants to make sure I know my purpose, because isn't that what I've come here for? He surprises me by talking of two primary things: first, books. He tells me I have my books to write. And second, he talks about my relationship with Miles, and going wherever that leads me. He shares that it signifies my openness, my willingness to engage with life, which leads to progress for all, not only for me. All of this will help my cohort, because I'll be engaged in being my best self—having courage, to share with them; health, to share with them; happiness, to share with them. All are in hard situations from time to time.
“Your help is necessary,” he tells me. “All of us are starting to do that now—not just help when we're between lives, but help consciously now, within lives,” he tells me. “Seek contact with each other.”
Philip's words hit me deep in my core. I've spent my life avoiding my real purpose—dancing around its edges, skirting it, out of fear, taking small sips of it only. I've been led by my editor, directing my writing topic-by-topic, rather than pursuing my own interests and intuitions. But no more. My purpose is greater than that and won't be denied, Philip tells me. This is what I have felt knocking at my door, shaking me awake at night, leaving me sleepless. I have work to do! I'm to write a book about what has interested me since childhood—the Void—a whole book. Not just an article. I'm to commit to something bigger, with my name on it. I need to take this risk. We all do; we can't be afraid of our own success forever, which I know I have been. So I'm just going to do it.
I realize, too, that part of my job in writing is to keep magic in the world—the same kind of magic that's here on this beach now. Magic has held the truth for the world a long time, Philip tells me. We read magical books to our children, but then we stop. Then our interest in it moves underground, into adolescent fiction. Adults keep a fringe interest going in fantasy and science fiction, interest in astrology, and having their fortunes read. On some level, their deeper truth seeks an outlet in this way. My book, my books, will be part of that tradition. They will reinforce the existence of magic in the world. They'll be categorized as fantasy or fiction, but I'll know them as truth. I'll give them this widest latitude of being.
We cover a lot in this talk. All of my usual faults and foibles are things of the past, he tells me. I have claimed them as my humanness, my lack of perfection, but he tells me that this so-called lack of perfection has no effect whatsoever on the size and scope of my spiritual being, which is as immense as anyone's. Yes, as immense as his, he says, reading my mind. Accepting that puts us in our full energy. Then we're no longer buffeted by the things, events, and people of our lives.
“You'll know when the phone's going to ring and who's on it,” he says with a smile. “You'll remember your dreams more often. You'll trust more. You'll be more open to everything.”
I smile back, thinking, “Okay! I'll be psychic.”
Philip laughs, saying, “Yes, you will.”
Then he's telling me good bye. We embrace by the fire, and again I feel so enveloped by a complete love that I'm lost and renewed at the same time. We start walking toward the tunnel I came in by, just up the beach, in the rocks. The wind refreshes me as we walk, and I see the phosphorescence of the waves as they ripple onto the beach. Countless stars twinkle in the moonless sky. It's a perfect evening. The others leave their fires to walk with us, and I am happy in their companionship.
I know I am coming out of the Void and will wait for Miles. I go back into the tunnel, from the beach, turning around once to raise my arm to the group who's stopped to stand at the tunnel's opening. Tears are streaming down my face again, and I let them. The old ways don't fit me anymore. I'm not the same Babe I was.
Universal energies have been at work.
I go to the edge of the Void, ruminating as I sit, leaning against the rock wall, feeling the murmur of the winds from above and below. I relax into the sound and the Void's constant twilight, lulled into sleep.