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“Wait!” Larry exclaimed. “I want to tell you something.” But Junie had withdrawn completely, and Larry found himself very much alone among a clutter of boulders playing court to a beautiful juniper tree. Its upper branches were barely catching the diminishing rays of the late afternoon sun. His heart knew a void that his mind could not fill. Walking despondently over to the tree, he hugged it tightly, as if begging Junie to return. He loved her and appreciated her priceless gifts and wanted her to know it. Suddenly, wave after wave of rapture struck him. His knees gave way and his body sank slowly to the ground, his heart fusing with the tree’s essence. His beloved juniper seemed to send out tendrils of Consciousness connecting all the trees within a five-mile radius, then a hundred, a thousand, until every tree on Earth seemed joined in a vast, loving energetic grid welcoming Larry’s presence. Nothing in the forty-one years of his life had remotely prepared him for the magnificence of this homecoming. It was several minutes before Larry was able to right himself. His fingers reached out, gently tracing the intricate ridges and hollows of the rough bark. “I love you, Junie.”
He arose and wandered aimlessly among the boulders that a few moments earlier had been seats for his personalities. A joy- ous tingle radiated from the pit of his stomach. “I know you,” Larry said, laughing out loud. “Hi, Kichi, what’s up?”
“Judging by the way you’re glowing, I’d say you were. But such a toomel I’m hearing. Can you ask your mind to put a lid on all the mishegas, already?”
“That was unbelievable!” Larry blurted. “I felt Junie connect me to every tree on the planet. We were linked. Each of them was inside me and I merged with every one them—an absolute para- dox. I lost my identity and fused into a great collective, yet I felt more purely me than I ever have before. And what’s with this
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Yiddish thing? My mind’s blown quite enough already, thank you.”
“Ah, the eternal question posed by linguists throughout the ages: does language form culture or does culture form language? Use a little seychel and you’ll work it out—the chicken comes from the egg and the egg comes from the chicken, and in the end, all you have is a bird that escaped being an omelet. If you could tune into the worldwide consciousness web, you’d hear your fel- low humans conversing in over six thousand languages. Think how dull this world would be if everyone spoke the same lan- guage!”
“Are you suggesting that I’m dull because I speak only English?” Larry asked somewhat defensively.
“Oy! Heaven forbid. I would never suggest any such thing. On the other hand,” Kichi giggled, “in the face of such profound wisdom, who am I to argue?”
“Cut it out, Kichi. I’m trying to work out what just happened when Junie connected me to all the trees on the planet. Does any of that make any sense to you?”
“Does it ever,” Kichi said, dropping all traces of her Yiddish accent. “You’ve just described my reality, being part of universal Consciousness. It felt like home to you because, in a very real sense, it is. Only a small fraction of you is in fact invested in this earthbound adventure. You knew, when you agreed to enter the Grand Experiment to assist at this crucial time, you would be stripped of the conscious knowledge of who you really are. Now you’re being given the opportunity to remember.”
“But the thought of giving up everything I believe—it’s like committing some sort of mental suicide!”
Kichi found this comparison comical. “I don’t think the Phoenix’s flight into the ashes is motivated by ego. Do you?”
“I don’t know. Absolutely nothing makes sense.” “Aha, now you’ve got it!”
“Oh stop it, Kichi, you’re beginning to sound like Zeus. What have I got?”
“Just because the egoic mind disconnects from its source doesn’t mean the rest of you does. Listen to yourself carefully— especially to those offhand, unconscious words that suddenly pop out. You’d be astonished at the wisdom you possess. What are the exact words you just used?”
“Absolutely nothing makes sense?” “Go on,” Kichi urged.
“Oh my God! Absolutely nothing makes sense! Of course!” Larry said, slapping his forehead as if to shake out cobwebs. “I remember now. The proposition: surrender everything I believe and I will receive absolutely nothing in return. Part of me actu- ally said it makes sense to accept absolutely nothing. . . . Do you suppose I should take the deal?”
“No, Larry, I’m not supposing anything. Besides, the deci- sion to ‘take the deal,’ as you so offhandedly called the most momentous choice of your current incarnation, is not mine to make. Nor can it be made by rational thought or for reasons appealing to your ego. At this fork in the road, only your heart can choose the path. But I will gladly help in any way you ask.” “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be flippant. I guess I said it that way to cover up my fear.”
“To hide it from me? Larry, you forget who I am. Nothing can be hidden from me. I’m aware of things concealed even from yourself, thoughts buried long before you took your first breath in this body. I’m aware of the rhythms of your pulses, the com- plex of chemical and electrical signals that keeps your physical form functioning. I know your innermost desires and aversions. It’s I who, each night as you sleep, unravels the emotional entan-
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glements your conflicting voices create. I am the spinner of your dreams. But most important, I am your conscious link to your Higher Self. It’s through me that you can contact your own greater intelligence—should you wish.”
Neither spoke for quite a while as Larry picked his way around boulders, looking for familiar landmarks pointing the way back to Zeus. He had no clue how to begin letting his heart decide and was trying to sort through the mass of information impressed upon him over the past few hours when Kichi unex- pectedly broke the silence, “How does the Phoenix know when it’s time to build the funeral pyre?”
“Hell, I don’t know. It looks at the calendar and there it is, somewhere between Groundhog Day and President’s Day— Phoenix Day!”
Kichi’s total lack of response conveyed disapproval, and Larry apologized a second time for wisecracking. “Okay, I’ll try that one again. Actually, that’s a pretty fascinating question. For one thing, there is only one Phoenix alive at any time. For another, it lives for five hundred years before immolating itself. That means not only are there no other Phoenixes to talk to or learn from, but at the end of each cycle there is no one alive who has witnessed the cycle and knows the Phoenix will be reborn.
“Perhaps there is only one eternal Phoenix, complete within itself. Maybe there are no external references marking the pas- sage of time. In that case, its cycle isn’t tied to the rotation of the planets or the rise and fall of dynasties. It doesn’t stage its exit to attract attention or make a statement.” Larry soon realized his line of reasoning was taking him nowhere. He fell silent and dis- engaged his mind completely, allowing another part of his being to wrestle with the problem. Suddenly, his head shot up and he smiled. “I’ve got it. “There is no ‘how.’ The Phoenix just knows!”
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“If that’s so,” Kichi said, “then how does the Phoenix deal with the fear of dying?”
“There isn’t any fear. Fear belongs to the world of the egoic self; but if the Phoenix is eternal, it lives in the soul realm of knowing, where there is no fear.”
“Then what, Larry, are you still pretending not to know?” Larry stopped dead in his tracks. The directness of Kichi’s last question stunned him. How perfectly her words unmasked the hidden battle raging in his psyche between the part that coun- seled him to let sleeping dogs lie and the part that urged him on. He felt the panic growing in his Vulnerable Child persona even as a far more powerful force welled within.
Larry dropped into deep thought. He was committed to forg- ing on and would follow the trail wherever it led. “When I look into the I’s of infinity, I see a multiplicity of me’s existing at dif- ferent points along the Awareness continuum, each having a dif- ferent perspective on reality.
“For example, there’s the egoic me, an orchestra of subper- sonalities playing every instrument known to humanity—plus, I suspect, a few we’ve yet to discover. This is the part of me that can’t ‘know,’ for by definition, it deals only in belief and thought. It feeds on duality. It knows nothing of true knowing, so it sim- ply tries to understand, name, and explain everything.
“My soul me, on the other hand, has no need for belief since it deals in the domain of knowing. Whereas the egoic me identi- fies only with my singular presence within the illusion, my soul is linked to a huge collective pool of information—the One Mind—which extends way beyond my ability to comprehend from here.
“So when you ask what I’m pretending not to know, what you’re really asking is who am I pretending not to be!”
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“Bravo!” Kichi exclaimed. “An elegant display of aikido.” “What do you mean by that?” Larry asked.
“Aikido is a peaceful form of martial arts in which you assess the flow of energy in a situation first, before responding. Then you get maximum result with minimum effort.
“What do all successful matadors have in common?” With hardly a pause for breath, Kichi answered her own question. “They know how to stand to the side of a charging bull. In life this translates to keeping oneself out of the line of fire, taking nothing personally. When attacked, don’t defend or justify; sim- ply observe. That’s precisely what you did just now, and I applaud you for it. Instead of allowing one of your subpersonal- ities to take over, as usual, you let your Aware Ego emerge. Then you executed a perfect veronica, distracting the bull with a slight motion of your cape while you held your ground. Well done.”
Larry remained confused by Kichi’s appreciation. “Then why am I still struggling with the decision?”
“Because you are trying to pick up a pomegranate seed with a single chopstick.”
“What? What?” The bird chirped in, right on cue.
“Because you’re going about it in the wrong way,” Kichi said. “Stop trying to use your mind. It’s useless here. This is solely une affair de coeur. You have to learn to love with your mind and think with your heart. Remember Junie’s last gift to you.”
“That was absolutely amazing,” Larry said, dropping into recollection. “Truly an affair of the heart. Junie, all the trees on the planet, me . . . we were linked in a sea of love.”
“Was your thinking mind involved?” “No, not in the slightest.”
“Then how did it happen?”
Larry stopped walking and sat on one of the nearby boul- ders, allowing aikido to guide him. He made no attempt to answer Kichi’s question with his rational mind. Instead, closing his eyes, he went inward and reached out to Junie with strands of Consciousness, just as she had done earlier. The energetic ten- drils extended from him not by purposeful thought but through flows of love radiating from his core. He offered a leader stroke of pure, unconditional love, Junie responded with a matching streamer stroke, and the two met once more in Rumi’s field,
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing. . . . When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other Doesn’t make any sense.
Kichi said nothing to disturb Larry’s reverie. When he was finally centered again in his physical form, he spoke just one word. “Love.”
“And so it is,” Kichi responded. “You have just experienced the next rung on the ladder. That was the energy of the fourth density. There individuated Consciousness merges, duality and fear begin to fall away, and all life forms—not just the chonic entities recognized by your scientists—consciously join as one. You’ve just had a glimpse of what awaits humankind at the next level of existence.
“Something similar is currently taking place with young chil- dren all around the planet. You might want to ask your Higher Self about it.
“So, boytchik, zay gezunt. Be healthy, live long, and prosper, and above all, don’t be such a stranger.” With these playful words, Kichi exited as suddenly as she had come, leaving Larry
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alone under the single spotlight fixing his presence on the bare stage of his mind. He smiled. What a blessing to have such a wise, powerful, and outrageous ally!
Then, recalling his recent encounter with his Higher Self, he focused as closely as he could on its impeccable energy signature. Repeating the process that had connected him to Junie, he radi- ated a leader stroke of perfect love directed by his intention. There was no mistaking the moment his offering was accepted and the communication channel opened. It was explosive.
His Higher Self spoke soundlessly, yet every word and nuance was crystal clear. It said that for the last sixty years or so, many intelligent life forms had been allowed to incarnate on Earth from the higher densities. “These beings, of which you are one, agreed to take form on Earth at this critical time to assist the transition into the next paradigm. Each came in absolute love, intending only to be of service. Each also came fully know- ing it must go through the Veil of Forgetting, separating its Consciousness from that of its Higher Self to create the illusion that it is fully human, subject to all the physical challenges and emotional vagaries of the space/time continuum.
“More than sixty million entities willingly accepted the assignment. What none of us appreciated, however, was the incredible skill with which the fabric of this Grand Experiment had been woven. The forces dragging Consciousness into the lower, egoic realms are so potent that more than 90 percent of these Wanderers—as they are called—have failed to reconnect with the higher aspects of their I’s and fully believe they are merely third-density humans.
“Now that you are beginning to emerge from your own slumber, you will be able to spot your fellow Light Workers almost instantly. Like you, they are salmon swimming upstream out of season, true strangers in a strange land. Wanderers are
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often plagued by allergies and a gnawing feeling of malaise. As children they typically display vivid imaginations and have make-believe playmates. They often find themselves outside the core of social cliques and are more apt to be loners than joiners. They develop a curiosity that may well get them into hot water— questioning authority at every level, needing to understand before obeying. Wanderers tend to have a highly developed rebel- lious side, intuitively realizing that most of the rules they have to follow are arbitrary and make little sense.
“If they accept religion at all, they tend to gravitate toward Eastern philosophies, like Buddhism and Taoism, or the less orthodox versions of the classical religions into which they were born. They seem to know instinctively that, at some point, they will have to transcend their beliefs to fulfill the purpose for which they came.”
“You’ve just described me to a T,” Larry said. “What’s the secret to awakening fully?”
“The answer is simple. To move past any restrictive con- struct—whether an idea, a relationship, or a full-blown illu- sion—all you need is Awareness. Degree of Awareness is what distinguishes one density from another. It is also what guides all intelligence along the journey back to the infinite One. Every experience, every thought, word, and deed, increases your Awareness. When you experience consciously, it increases more quickly.”
“How do you suggest I experience consciously?” Larry asked.
“Hold one vital question in the forefront of your mind at all times,” the Higher Self replied. “We of the sixth density pos- tulate that this very question first spurred the One Supreme Infinite Creator into action. And we, along with every other aspect of Creation, continue to delve into its mysteries. With its
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help you will break through this illusion’s bonds with surpris- ing ease.
“The question is: ‘Who am I?’ It has a companion question: ‘What is my purpose?’ Whatever your circumstances, align your perception with these two questions and everything changes. All you are required to do is remain conscious.
“For example, should you find yourself in an argument with a friend, turn immediately to the first question, ‘Who am I?’ and add its variant, ‘Who is he, or she?’ If this question reveals that the energy of separation is present, you can be certain you are dealing at the level of the egoic I. Recall the many active subper- sonalities each of you has. Identify the role each of you is play- ing. Are you a reprimanding parent, a faultfinding critic, or some other energetic form prompting an unconscious defensive pos- ture in the other person?
“Then ask the second question, ‘What is my purpose?’ Do I really wish to cause pain? Is it my intention to drive a wedge between us? Why am I really sharing this information? Is there a better way to accomplish my true purpose? Then ask the variant, ‘What is his, or her, purpose?’
“The heart of aikido is knowing the mind of the enemy. When you feel attacked, look past your adversary’s outer trap- pings—no matter how well you feel you know him or her—and ask, ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What is your purpose?’ You’ll find that the process diffuses the negative energies and allows you to expe- rience consciously. If you actually ask the other person these questions out loud, you’ll be amazed at the outcome.
“Asking yourself these questions many times a day, particu- larly when judgmental thoughts arise, pays large rewards in lit-