“I’m not trying to piss you off,” answered Obie gently.
Linda wiped at her eyes. “I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge here, you know? Like I’m being dragged around the universe in my nightshirt and being shown how things really are. But I’m not sure what I understand at this point. And all I really want right now is a good night’s sleep.”
Obie tugged at his beard. “Yeah, I got that. Hopefully the spirits will manage to do it all in one night.”
“I need to feel like there’s some reason you’re telling me all of this. Okay? I need to trust that, when we get done, I’ll understand what I most need to understand, so that I can act with wisdom.” She glanced up at Obie. “Can you promise me that?”
Obie nodded. “My best sense of things is that you’re going to need what I’m telling you in the days and years ahead, Mrs. President,” he said. “I wish we had the years I’ve had, but we don’t. I promise you that I’m doing my best.”
Linda closed her eyes and relaxed. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for slowing me down,” said Obie. He placed his right hand on her temple.
Linda reached up and squeezed his hand, then settled back in. “So, where were we?”
Obie took a moment to think before he spoke. “We were talking about cataclysms. I was explaining that the Earth had been functioning just as it was designed to: it was evolving consciousness. But then I took a side street, to fill in a piece of background. I was saying that, as we lost our spiritual connection to, and understanding of, the Cosmos, our understanding of evolution got twisted. Decoupled from the sacred, our inflated, collective egos used evolution as just another justification for the destruction and exploitation of the life of this planet.”
“So you’re saying that we’re in the mess we’re in because we’ve lost our religion.”
“Well, I’d say that what we lost is our sense of the sacred nature of creation, rather than our religion. But, yeah, I think that’s a huge part of it. I mean, not everybody has ‘lost their religion.’ There are indigenous folk and spiritual peoples, and again not just humans, who have stayed the course, so to speak. And certainly there are mystics in our midst who have managed the same. But for the most part, the people of the dominant worldwide culture, even if they worship some version of ‘God in heaven,’ operate in what they experience to be a mechanistic and dispirited world, a bleak landscape of so-called ‘resources,’ with no epic story, no truly-satisfying meaning or purpose, and no felt connection to the larger Universe.”
Obie leaned forward, his voice almost a whisper. “And because we’re inherently miserable without the sacred, and because we believe ourselves somehow ‘at the top of the heap,’ we claim the whole planet as our own, grasping sadly for the only thing we think exists: material comfort and wealth. We’ve forgotten that the whole of creation comprises and informs the mind of God, that it’s all a part of the same amazing process. Our own unique experience, and especially our experience of our own uniqueness, does not give us the right to exploit or destroy anything and everything we wish. Everything is moving toward the Absolute, Linda. That’s my best sense of things. Every last bit of creation is walking a sacred path towards God. Imagine that. Everything. And yet we think we know otherwise, and destroy our fellow unique members of creation without a backward glance.”
“I gotta say,” said Linda, clearing her throat to break the quiet atmosphere, “I’m feeling lost again.” She put a hand on Obie’s arm as if to steady herself. Or him. “I’m not really religious, you know? Despite what my Press Secretary would have you believe. And you’re making some pretty big claims here.” Linda sighed and curled back in on herself. “All this talk of God…”
“Understood. The dominant culture – call it materialist or naturalist or whatever – has relegated the sacred and spiritual to the fringes of what so-called ‘thinking people’ can even think about, let alone talk about, just as it has forced the indigenous and the unusable and the other to the margins and edges of the planet. Religion itself has often proven to be a powerful tool in that work of marginalizing, or even extinguishing.” Obie straightened his back, stretched his shoulders and arms, then brought both hands to rest on Linda’s velvety scalp, as if he were reading a crystal ball. His face tightened at what he saw and heard and felt. “But cultural beliefs, no matter how powerful they appear to be, cannot cancel out what’s so. We can call it Reality, or the Universe. We can call it the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Godhead, the Source. There’re lots of words available to us. I use the word God in a provocative way, to challenge the culture, to reclaim the word, and the reality behind the word. I say we’re miserable without our connection to the sacred. I could just as easily say we’re miserable without our connection to the Universe. But if I say ‘Universe,’ the materialists will think I’m just poetically referring to the same thing they’re talking about. And I’m not.”
“But you’re not—”
“I’ve yet to find a human religious system that really satisfies, Linda,” said Obie, interrupting and shaking his head. “I’m not even convinced there was a historical Jesus, let alone the whole ‘Son of God’ thing. So, no, I’m not selling a belief system. I’m just trying to see the ‘what’s so’ of reality as clearly as I can. For me, that’s what spirituality is all about, and why true spirituality and true science are, in my mind, just two aspects of the same endeavor. The Universe I perceive feels sacred to me. It feels alive and conscious and full of meaning and purpose. It feels wild beyond any imagining. And it feels worthy of my awe, my humility, my deep respect and regard, worthy of my striving to manifest the vast potential inherent in my humanity, worthy of my gaining mastery and clarity and ever-more-expanded consciousness. The Strangers saw the potential in our species long ago, and have been working to encourage and guide us ever since. I feel compelled to do my part in meeting them halfway, and in helping to bridge the seeming chasm that stretches between us and them.”
“Sure, religions have served as powerful tools for the culture of exploitation and control. But so has every other aspect of our existence. Sex has been distorted by this culture, but we don’t say we have to give up on sex. Food and eating and agriculture have all been twisted by this culture, but we don’t say we have to stop eating. So why must we give up our spiritual connection to the sacred Universe, which I would consider as fundamental to our existence as food and sex, just because of the excesses and mistakes of religion? I understand that people have been wounded by the extreme abuses of this culture, rendered unable or unwilling to do the work of teasing apart spirituality from religion, or real science from the culture-bound scientific orthodoxy that too often prevails these days. I’m sorry that this is so. But I’ve found that it’s possible to do that work, and that when I strip away the cultural filters, either path - the truly spiritual or the truly scientific – will take me to God.”
Linda tensed, craning her neck to look up at Obie. “But again, I don’t know how you expect people to ‘get this.’ It still seems like you just risk putting people off unnecessarily.”
Obie shrugged. “‘If you like it or not,’ says Meister Eckhart, ‘if you know it or not: secretly, from inside, the whole of nature reaches after God.’” Obie held Linda with his fierce gaze. “If we can’t come to grips with what is, Mrs. President, then maybe we shouldn’t be here.”
Linda sighed, closed her eyes, buried her face in her hands, unsure if it was worth it to argue the point, wondering whether she even could. A gust of wind rattled the windows and she pulled the comforter tighter. She did not want to think of such things.
“Okay,” said Obie with dark determination. “Let’s do this.”
Linda moaned. “Do what?”
“Rice has imprinted a Specter onto you,” said Obie. “Let’s get that black bastard out of your soul.”
Linda shuddered.
14.5
“So how does this relate to these cataclysms?” asked Linda, waking, dreamily plucking a lost strand from
the air. The memory of Rice’s “exorcism” was fading quickly, for which she was thankful. Obie had reached right inside her and yanked him out, pushing her through the hidden memories, encouraging her to relive the experience of her torture and imprisonment, calling and coaxing and holding her as she sobbed and railed and screamed. His hands had felt scalding hot on her scalp, but Linda had not resisted their power.
At last she’d collapsed. It was as if a cancer had crumbled to dust, or as if a horde of black, furious bees, swarming in her heart, had suddenly changed into butterflies and scattered to the stars. Whatever Rice had left lodged in her psyche had fled. Now she could sleep. So she had. And when she awakened, there sat Obie beside her.
Obie flashed his eyebrows and grinned, pushing a stray lock of long, sandy hair from his face. “I haven’t forgotten,” he said with a wink. “How are you feeling?”
Obie had stretched Linda out on her back while she’d slept, covered her with the blankets and comforter. She reached up now, ran her good hand over her head and face. Her scalp was smooth. Her eyes felt normal. “Is it gone?” she asked.
“What?”
“The hand print.”
Obie nodded. “It’s gone,” he said. “And the Specter’s gone too. That memory field might have eventually killed you, had we not forced it out. Pretty handy for long-term control of a subject: give them a psychic poison for which only you have the antidote. One of Rice’s many nasty tricks. Too bad for him I have tricks of my own.”
“Good. I’m glad.” Linda closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. “I feel pretty good.”
“That just leaves your broken fingers,” said Obie.
Linda sighed. “Just talk to me for a bit,” she said. “Okay? Let me rest for a while longer.”
“You got it, Mrs. President.”
Linda pulled the comforter up underneath her chin. “So … the cataclysms?”
“Right,” said Obie. He took a moment to remember where they’d been. “The point to remember is that we were on track. We’d reached a place in the evolution of our consciousness where other beings, other Cosmic citizens, had become intensely interested in us. But then a rather unfortunate series of catastrophes occurred that left us confused and traumatized, from a succession of ice age freezes, superstorms, and catastrophic floods to the Toba supervolcano of 75,000 years ago that reduced humanity to maybe a couple of thousand individuals, from the rise and fall of various complex societies, some fairly intertwined with upper-dimensional races, to the interplanetary conflicts that left Mars in ruins.”
Linda couldn’t help but laugh. “You know, I must have slept through history class, ‘cause I don’t remember a bit of this.”
Obie laughed as well. “Yeah, I do know. This stuff stretches so far back into our antiquity that we’ve largely forgotten who we are and where we came from. And, of course, very few in this culture have any interest in learning any of this, as it would give the lie to our current paradigm.”
“So how come you know it?”
Obie shrugged. “The truth is out there,” he said.
“Cute.”
“To the extent that I know anything, we could say the Strangers helped me sort it out. There’s tons of material out there. People looking at the evidence that got left behind in the rocks and the ancient texts, looking at the new evidence uncovered by more paranormal means, through channelers and travelers and such. It’s largely a minefield, as various proponents tout the claims of their own interpretations. When Spud showed me that it was all-of-the-above, it resonated. That’s been my working hypothesis since: there’s truth in everything.”
“You know Spud?” said Linda with a shiver.
“Yeah. I told you. I met him in ‘02. I’ve since encountered him dozens of times.”
“I hate that little fucker.”
“Understood.”
“I was just a little girl—”
“There is a field…,” said Obie.
Linda’s face tensed. “Excuse me?” she said.
“Sorry. A bit of Rumi. ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. 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.’”
“So, you’re saying he’s not an evil little fuck?”
“I’m saying that our acculturated ideas about good and evil, let alone reality itself, aren’t particularly helpful when it comes to the Strangers. Good and evil too often shift and dance depending on one’s perspective. In a living Universe designed for the evolution of consciousness, we should not be so quick to judge things by our flag-draped, beer gut standards of right and wrong.”
“Ouch.” Linda opened her eyes. “You know, for someone supposedly so ‘conscious,’ you have a fairly wide judgmental streak of your own.”
“Sorry,” said Obie. He sighed. “One of my standard rants.”
“I understand,” said Linda, smiling to show that no harm had been done. “But I’d invite you to look at that. I can see why you didn’t end up in politics.” She closed her eyes again. “Please. Keep going.”
Obie nodded thoughtfully, apparently letting Linda’s rebuke sink in. He inhaled deeply and continued. “So this period of catastrophic events left huge swaths of humanity disoriented and traumatized. And out of that trauma was born the culture in which we now live, the culture of city-building and settlement, of hierarchy and dominion and separation, of progress and competition and the accumulation of wealth, a full-on attempt to wrest control from the hands of the gods and make the world operate the way we think it should, as Daniel Quinn worked so hard to reveal in his Ishmael books. It started in one corner of the world and quickly spread, beguiling or shackling more and more of us to what is considered the ‘holy work’ of domination, exploitation and the growth imperative. Everything we were, everything we had, was eventually enslaved to serve these impulses, from our agriculture to our societal structures to our spiritual, scientific, and educational systems. Save for the few who have managed to escape the worst ravages of this culture, these ancient traumas have turned us into clutching, grasping, confused children, disconnected from the reality of the universe into which we’ve been born and willing to destroy the life of this planet for one last pumpkin latte.”
“Wow,” said the President softly. Obie’s words have been delivered with a different quality from before: a quiet, powerful, articulate tone of both warning and grief. She opened her eyes and rolled onto her right side to face him. The sun had slid further across the room, highlighting Obie’s flaxen hair. The wind had picked up, shaking the trailer and giving the furnace a run for its money. “That’s a pretty grim view of our fellow Americans.”
Obie nodded. “It’s a pretty grim culture, Mrs. President. The people are merely its prisoners.”
“But there are still some aliens who think we’re worth saving?”
“Yeah. I think it’s sort of a rescue operation, as far as they’re concerned. The great irony being that just as more and more of us are beginning to claw our way out of this culture and regain our sanity, we find that we’re about to kill ourselves off from our own excesses. Our sciences have brought us full circle to our lost ancient wisdoms and face to face with extinction at the same time. Not really ironic, I guess, as it’s the coming catastrophe that’s waking us up. But once awake, we find that we’re like children holding a gun to our own heads. We’re like passengers on the decks of the Titanic and the Strangers are nearby with lifeboats, calling to us to jump in and swim.”
Linda shook her head. “Yeah. I don’t get that. I mean, if they’re so advanced and smart and capable and all that, why don’t they just help us? Can’t they just make machines that’ll take the CO2 out of the air? Don’t they have sources of energy that we don’t have?”
Obie sighed. “You want to give the child a bigger gun?” he asked quietly.
“I want to help people!”
�
�Of course you do. I know that. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. But you’ve got your own insanities to face, your own acculturation inside of an insane system, your own mistaken assumptions and unquestioned beliefs. If all you’ve got to give is more of the same, then I don’t think you’ll be much help at all. We don’t need more of the same. We need something so different that we can barely begin to imagine it.”
“Where were you when I was choosing my cabinet?” said Linda, laughing at Obie’s audacity and vision.
“Freezing my ass off on the streets of Duluth.”
“Jesus. Right.”
Obie waited for a moment, giving Linda time to integrate what he’d said. Then he rose and stretched his arms over his head. “You ready for a break?” he asked. “I need some water. Then we should get to those broken fingers.”
Linda looked at her bandaged hand with a grimace, as if Obie’s words had reminded her of the pain. She looked up at her Musketeer. “Yeah. I guess it’s time.”
14.6
Obie filled two large glasses from the tap and returned to the living room, handing one to Linda, who sat cross-legged on the futon. He took his seat on the ottoman, facing her.
“Thanks.” Linda drank half her glass and placed the rest on the floor. “So tell me why they don’t just help us.”
Obie shrugged. “For the Strangers, or God for that matter, to just step in and somehow ‘fix’ everything would go against the evolutionary nature of the Universe. It would thwart the path to maturity. Remember how I said this was an initiation? You don’t initiate adolescents into adulthood by making it easy for them, by doing everything for them and making sure it’s all sterile and safe. That would just keep them small and immature and dependent. You get adults when adolescents have to prove their adulthood. When they grab it, take it, demand it, earn it. When they face their tests and show their worth. The universe is selecting for higher levels of consciousness. If we can’t muster the awareness to not kill ourselves off, then the Universe will let us sink back into oblivion and start over.”
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