Accidental mystic, p.7
Accidental Mystic, page 7
Michael didn’t let Rose know how funny he found it that she—a woman who, just a couple of days ago was, in his mind, a total lunatic—thought that her friends were the crazy ones.
“I returned home from New Mexico discouraged. I had hoped that my life would have immediately shifted back to something I recognized. But, as I said, I’ve never become quite ‘normal’ again. Wouldn’t you agree?” she asked, looking into his eyes with a twinkle in her own as she chuckled.
“I did eventually become functional. It was a slow process in which Life simply took over and I grew more self-actualized than I could ever have imagined or accomplished out of my own little ego.
When I still was having trouble with speech, if I wanted to say something and couldn’t, the blood rushed to my head and I felt like I was falling into a pit. I was still in telepathic mode and was continually confused in the presence of adults who ‘spoke with forked tongue’—their words saying one thing and their thoughts something else. I heard both their words and thoughts with equal clarity and had to guess at an appropriate response. Even if I guessed correctly—my odds being fifty/fifty—there was no guarantee that I could remember how to reply. You can’t imagine the expressions on people’s faces when I occasionally successfully responded to their thoughts instead of their statements.”
She laughed mildly. “I didn’t find it funny at the time and it kept me away from almost everyone except children. When I was with young children, their honesty and the freedom of their play and movement helped heal me. I grew up a second time. I was twenty-seven in body years, but I was a newborn in other ways.”
Michael’s stomach turned just a little at the recent memory of being unable to control what was happening to him and of the split between his much larger and objective observer-self and his intimately involved in what was happening to him personal-self.
“That was many years ago and now I have attained the joy I was promised.” She stopped speaking briefly, and looked at him tenderly. Michael,” she added, using a gentle voice, “…it won’t take nearly as long for you.” Her eyes were soft with liquid compassion. “But what is important now is not that we remember the past. For us both, the urgency is who we really are and, especially, to remember the future.”
Michael still hadn’t a clue what she meant when she said things like that, but he no longer doubted her sincerity.
“It has been thirty years since my NDE and I have learned to live with the paradoxes. I accept that all is well at the same time that I carry some unwelcome messages for our planet. I accept that my experiences have separated me from the mainstream; but as much as they have taken from me, they have given me so much more—so many riches—in return.
Will you acknowledge your own experiences? Will you trust them? You have been chosen for this. Will you accept the responsibility? No one can compel you to accept. Destiny only works with those who cooperate with it.”
She added with uncharacteristic solemnity, “Be aware, Michael, that your answers also determine how the world’s future unfolds.”
Her tone of voice with the unexpected, rapid-fire series of questions and the implied burden they placed on him loosed something hidden deep within him and it exploded in his chest. Tears streamed down his face as his consciousness flew out of his body.
The sun was bearing down on him. A medicine man in full regalia, a single dark-tipped white feather protruding straight up from the top of his head, held a fold of Michael’s breast skin in one hand and a sharp knife in the other. He pierced the skin and inserted a sharp spike of bone as thick around as a man’s pinky and tied that with leather strands to a pole.
Michael wasn’t really Michael. He had an observer self again. He saw that his features were different, his skin and longer hair were darker. Even so, his participator-self felt the excruciating pain sear through him. As the bone slowly tore his skin, an eagle circled above him. It seemed to be dancing.
He endured what seemed like hours of suffering until his skin tore through completely and released him from his fetters. He fell to his knees and something in his mind blew open. A beautiful golden light poured into him.
Immediately, he was Michael again, in the presence of Rose; and he was on his knees, transfixed, his arms stretched outward in an open gesture of surrender not unlike Christ on the cross. He looked down at where he expected to see his raw bare chest, but his cotton shirt—though spattered with a few small, dried splotches of mud—was not torn; and when he touched the breast area, it was normal. The residual sensation of pain gradually subsided.
His soul had answered Rose. He gazed at her, unblinking, until his eyes grew dry. It was as if he could see through her. She was there but not solid. She stood in the center of something bigger, greater, more colorful and more radiant. Layers nested inside of layers. The ones closest to her kept a somewhat human shape, although each one was less defined as they moved further from her body. The outer bodies lost the form and morphed into roundness and then indistinct fields of light raying out into infinity.
She was an individual woman and she was the representative of all women. She was all people. She was all of creation. Her countenance turned into that of an eagle, then a buffalo, a lion, a human that was neither male nor female and yet both male and female, and finally, she became herself again. Looking at her, he fell in love with all life. He was certain that through her, in a way he could not define, he also fell in love with everything that women represent in the world, even his indifferent mother, whom he instantly forgave.
As he regained ordinary vision, he heard her talking about something else.
“It is said that the hallmark of a great prophet is that the prophecies never come true because the prophet successfully prevents them from happening. Prophecies always have an either/or quality. They don’t have to happen.
Nearly ten years ago, on the front porch of a four-story house in an upscale neighborhood on Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, on a blustery day, snowflakes whipping by, the visions just came to me. Time stopped. Even though I continued to chat—apparently nonchalantly—with my friend, part of my awareness was someplace else. I was shown a possible future history of the world. A female voice interpreted the visions for me as they unfolded.
Now, please understand, Michael, that, personally, I don’t particularly like prophecy. I figure that being and doing the best you can today is the best investment in the future. Spending time worrying about what might happen, or, for that matter, dwelling in the past, seems like an incredible waste of time and energy. But my personal desires and opinions seem not to matter much of the time; I’m stuck with the knowledge of what is to come or what might not come if we change it. I saw decades of events for the entire planet in a fraction of a second, between the time that I stepped out onto the doorstep and the time that my friend and I said our farewells and she wished me a good trip.”
She asked him directly, “Are you ready, Michael?” It was rhetorical. They silently acknowledged each other’s glory before he slipped into a deep sleep.
Chapter 7: Four Directions
Michael awakened late the next morning. He didn’t know how long it had been since he looked at his watch. But some time must have passed because most of the snow and ice had melted and the ground refrozen into a crunchy carpet. On the way to the outhouse, he had stepped on hard, dry patches of ground where the snow had completely disappeared. He could now take the long walk back to town, but getting home didn’t seem as important as it had.
They had enjoyed a leisurely breakfast together, chatting easily about the change in the weather; and, now, instead of going home, he was walking with Rose in the opposite direction, going deeper into the wilderness, convinced it was important that he do this. He knew that he and Rose had unfinished business. Their footsteps on the icy ground made staccato sounds like small bits of glass or crystal breaking. Those sounds blended with the melodic burbling of Minnesota Creek flowing beneath the topmost layer of thinning ice. To their right, the meandering creek approached and receded repeatedly like a shy animal, its water-purr growing louder when it tumbled by close and muted as it slipped away. In places, the water broke through the ice, allowing it to eddy and pool on the surface. The day was cool, the sun was bright and the sky a typical Colorado turquoise. The air was so fresh, Michael could taste it.
Michael listened intently to the sounds of nature. It felt great to be moving. He wanted to run but matched his stride to that of Rose. It was the first time in his memory that he had accommodated his pace for someone else, and it felt good. He didn’t feel entirely altruistic. His shoes were stiff, reshaped in a way that pinched and rubbed in several places. Fortunately, Rose had the foresight to bring Band Aids. She pulled them out of the small black pouch she wore around her waist. The water bottle in the holder by her left hip was full. She could have been a Girl Scout, he thought, she was so well prepared. He used seven of the Band Aids, stopping to put them on whenever a new blister started to form.
Despite the discomfort of his shoes, he was enjoying the trek and stretching his leg muscles. It was so unlike the first time they had walked together. He was thinking about their meeting when suddenly a change in the air brought him to attention. It wasn’t a weather change. It was as if the air itself had stopped to notice something. It seemed both still and electric. Just as suddenly, a flock of magpies appeared and flew towards them, all the while squawking a trumpet-like call, stopping them both in their tracks. Next a flock of crows—twelve of them; and no, they were too big to be crows, these had to be ravens, black as a dark tunnel—formed a circle closing in tighter and tighter around them. When the ravens had nearly engulfed them, the birds suddenly broke rank and quickly departed. Michael heard Rose let out a long breath simultaneously with his own and then, without a word passing between them, each took the same-size step forward.
He saw that a wall of mountain to their left had given way to a natural opening, to a field like an amphitheater. Boulders of all sizes strewn about gave evidence to the landslide long ago that had carved out the area. Trees that had once grown to their full stature were brittle stumps. The female bald eagle stood on one of those craggy stumps about three feet high only fifteen feet away. The combination of stump and her own height put her eye to eye with Michael. The male, only slightly smaller than his mate, stood beside her on the ground.
Michael, a well-educated Coloradoan, knew perfectly well that bald eagles can focus forward even though their almost-human-sized eyes are positioned on the sides of their heads. He, Rose, and the two eagles made direct eye contact. The four stood in silent communion for what could have been minutes or hours. Michael, a quick learner, now already knew better than to assume that time can be measured by a watch.
When the right moment came, the female, her hard, sharp golden beak and white head leading her off the stump, spread her massive wings and flew over the two humans. Her talons brushed their hair. Her wingspan easily extended another three feet or so on each side beyond both of them. The male followed, repeating the ceremony. Though he was slightly smaller, his flight seemed to catch the power of the first and amplify it and because his take-off started lower, he passed over their heads with even less clearance. Michael’s body wanted to reflexively recoil, but something stronger than a reflex stopped him, informing him it would be a mistake.
“That,” said Rose with authority, “was a test and you passed it.”
Michael remained speechless. They walked in silence for many miles, giving Michael the necessary time to absorb the full strength of the experience. He was overcome by another wave of gratitude, and he knew that somehow Rose was responsible for at least part of it.
After a while, Rose mentioned, rather offhandedly, that eagles mate for life; and then she fell quiet again. A few moments later, she informed him that his life would no longer be predictable and that, certainly, from that point on, unusual and unexpected events would become commonplace. Michael still did not know how to respond to her pronouncements, so she filled the time with examples from her own life.
“One time when I was still young and lived in town, I wanted a particular book for my friend David’s birthday. I drove to Delta and was browsing the thrift store’s bookshelves, minding my own business, when I was approached by a middle-aged, short, plump lady with a round, flushed face that stood out against short, straight, snow-white hair. She spoke quickly, ‘There’s a book on the top shelf that you really need to read. The one that you want for your friend I have in hardcover out in my truck; and I’ll take you later to a store that has a sale on the shoes you want. But first, we need to talk.’
At this point, I was vaguely aware of some kind of nebulous circle of white light that surrounded us. I felt insubstantial, as if I were ever-so-slightly floating. The people in the store seemed to be unaware of us, walking around us. I think we must have been invisible but exuding some kind of field that kept people from bumping into us. The woman explained that her skin was so flushed because she had been ‘on fire’ for two years, ‘burning away the dross’. She had, she said, ‘been sent’ to me by Paramahansa Yogananda, whom I later learned was a Hindu guru who had moved to America.
Time ceased to have any meaning. I don’t know if we were in that bubble of white light for minutes or hours. I don’t remember much of what she said to me, although I have the sense that it changed me somehow and still remains with me today. I do recall that at the end she said, ‘Whatever you choose, this door will always be open to you.’ Then she said, ‘Follow me.’
Now, given that this woman was considerably older than I was, shorter than I was, and how she had behaved up until then, you’d think I would have been fairly reassured about her. I followed her out the door, but as we turned the corner to a deserted alley where her truck was supposedly parked, I felt a wave of distrust and the thought that I could be walking into a trap of some kind.”
Michael acknowledged pensively that at various points in the past couple of days he had been afraid of Rose, much in the same way. He understood why Rose, small and female, would have been hesitant even under—or perhaps because of—the extraordinary circumstances.
“Still, I overcame my doubts and followed her. We went to an old, fairly beat up and rusty, pale blue pickup truck. She opened the door, leaned in and stretched to reach the center of the dashboard, then grabbed a book that was lying there beneath a cluster of talismans that dangled from the rearview mirror. It was a hardcover copy of the rare book I had come looking for on the very slim chance that it would appear. (I’m usually pretty good at manifesting small things). But even I thought that the scenario in which it presented itself was unbelievably bizarre.
She thrust it in my direction without looking at me and without a word. Then she commanded, ‘Follow me.’ She turned and quickly walked away before I could respond and I hurriedly tracked her across the street and down several blocks to a store at the far end of town. Without looking back, she went inside. I followed. She led me to a display table teeming with pairs of tennis shoes. There, for a ridiculously low price, was the exact pair of shoes that I had been visualizing for myself. I turned to thank her. She was gone—and I don’t mean just from the table. She was gone from the store, so I ran outside to find her and she was nowhere in sight. I mean she was completely gone!
But that’s not the only thing about her. She was part of a lineage that became known to me in what you might think was an even odder manner. It happened when I was working as a ‘juggie’—that’s a geophone placement and recovery technician for an oil exploration crew. A group of us were assigned to a crew in the wilds of Wyoming. Each new probe required that the engineers give the juggies a diagram showing us how to lay out a pattern of geophone placement along the ground. We carried two heavy clips—like oversized safety pins—each loaded with wires and phones. Often there was nowhere to put the phones except in rock, so we just adapted as best we could. Sometimes the patterns took us down the sides of steep cliffs. Then the winds would start blowing….”
Turning to him, in the manner of an old friend speaking and not that of a teacher, she asked, “Are you familiar with the winds of Evanston, Wyoming?”
He shook his head.
“Never mind. What I mean to say is that it was a tough job. We placed the geophones alongside a trench dug by a ditch witch—a machine something like either a jack hammer or chain saw on a plow. The ditch was then filled with explosives, which were eventually detonated. The geophones picked up the seismic waves that traveled through the ground. Equipment inside another truck took measurements that indicated whether oil shale could be present or not.”
Michael wondered how any of this had to do with the red-faced woman Rose had been talking about earlier, waiting to find out if she would get back to the point. He had learned that she eventually did meander around to where she had begun. Only a few days earlier her tangents would have driven him crazy. He was impressed with himself because waiting patiently had never been one of his strengths. Rose, meanwhile, went off on another tangent.
“I hated destroying the environment, and it was ironic that I had agreed to take this job in order to help pay off the debt on the fruit farm that my friends and I were transitioning to organic here in western Colorado. We saw so many beautiful animals there in the wilds of Wyoming. During a lunch break, my friend Link and I had some unexpected excitement. We had been sitting placidly side by side, quietly listening to the sounds of frogs on a small lake in a small forest.”
Here she started laughing so hard at a private memory that she couldn’t move. Michael had to stop with her and wait several minutes to find out what was so funny.
“It was the noise that first alerted us. I turned and saw this really large animal running straight at us. It was actually chasing Link’s dog. The dog, of course, was running at full speed towards Link. (She guffawed.) Link was standing immediately behind me, making it likely that I’d be the first to be trampled by the rampaging animal chasing the dog.”
