The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision

by James Redfield

  Then, as I began to walk north again, someone suddenly grabbed me from behind.

  “What—” I yelled.

  “Shssssssss,” a voice whispered. “Be quiet. It’s David.”

  HOLDING THE VISION

  I turned and looked at him in the moonlight, observing the long hair, the scarred face.

  “Where are the others?” he whispered.

  “We were separated,” I replied. “Did you see what happened?”

  He moved his face closer. “Yes, I was watching from the hill. Where do you think they’ll go?”

  I thought for a moment. “They’ll head toward the falls.”

  He motioned for me to follow and we started in that direction. After several minutes had passed, he glanced back as he walked and said, “When you were sitting together at the entrance back there, your energy pooled, and then swelled far out into the valley. What were you doing?”

  In an attempt to explain, I summarized the whole story: finding Wil and entering the other dimension; seeing Williams and running into Joel and Maya; and especially meeting Curtis and trying to bring in the World Vision to defeat Feyman.

  “Curtis was back there with you at the mouth of the canyon?” David asked.

  “Yes, and Maya and Charlene, although I think there are supposed to be seven of us…”

  He gave me another quick glance, almost chuckling. All of the tense, pent-up anger he had displayed in town seemed to have completely disappeared. “So you found the ancestors too, didn’t you?”

  I hurried up to walk beside him. “You reached the other dimension?”

  “Yes, I saw my soul group and witnessed my Birth Vision, and just as you, I remembered what happened before, that we’ve all come back to bring in the World Vision. And then—I don’t know how—when I was watching all of you back there in the moonlight, it was as if I was with you, was part of your group. I saw the World Vision around me.” He had stopped in the shadow of a large tree that blocked the moon, his face rigid and cast back.

  I turned to face him. “David, when the group of us were together back there, and we brought in the World Vision, why didn’t it stop Feyman?”

  He moved forward into the light and immediately I recognized him as the angry chief who had rebuked Maya. Then his rock-hard expression shifted and he burst out laughing.

  “The key aspect of this Vision,” he said, “is not the mere experience of it, although that’s hard enough. It’s, how we project this Vision of the future; how we hold it for the rest of humanity. That’s what the Tenth Insight is really all about. You didn’t hold the Vision for Feyman and the others in a way that would help them wake up.” He looked at me a moment longer, then said, “Come on, we have to hurry.”

  After we had traveled perhaps half a mile, a bird of some kind cried out toward our right, and David stopped abruptly.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  He cocked his head as the cry again filled the night. “That’s a screech owl, signaling the others that we are here.”

  I gave him a blank expression, remembering how strange the animals had been acting ever since I arrived in the valley.

  “Does anyone in that group know the animal signs?” he asked.

  “I don’t know; maybe Curtis?”

  “No, he’s too scientific.”

  I then remembered that Maya had mentioned following the sounds of birds when she had found us in the cave. “Perhaps Maya!”

  He looked at me questioningly. “The physician you mentioned, who uses visualization in her work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s perfect. Let’s do what she does and pray.”

  I turned and looked at him as the owl cried out again. “What?”

  “Let’s… visualize… that she remembers the gift of the animals.”

  “What is the gift of the animals?”

  A trace of anger flashed across his face, and he paused for a moment, closing his eyes, obviously trying to shake off the emotion. “Haven’t you understood that when an animal shows up in our lives, it is a coincidence of the highest order?”

  I told him about the rabbit and the flock of crows and the hawk, which had shown up as I had first entered the valley, and then about the bobcat cub, the eagle, and the young wolf that had appeared later. “Some of them even showed up when we saw the World Vision.”

  He nodded expectantly.

  “I knew something significant was happening,” I said, “but I didn’t know exactly what to do except to follow some of them. Are you saying that all these animals had a message for me?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “How do I know what the message is?”

  “It’s easy. You know because of the particular kind of animal you are attracting at any one time. Each species that crosses our paths tells us something about our situation, what part of ourselves we must call upon to handle the circumstances we face.”

  “Even after everything that’s happened,” I said, “that’s hard to believe. A biologist would say animals are primarily robots, operating on dumb instinct.”

  “Only because animals reflect our own level of consciousness and expectation. If our level of vibration is low, the animals will merely be there with us, performing their usual ecological functions. When a skeptical biologist reduces animal behavior to mindless instinct, he sees the restriction that he himself has put upon the animal. But as our vibration shifts, the actions of the animals that come to us become ever more synchronistic, mysterious, and instructional.”

  I just stared.

  Squinting, he said, “The hare that you saw was pointing out a direction for you both physically and emotionally. When I talked to you in town, you seemed depressed and fearful, as though you were losing faith in the Insights. If you watch a wild rabbit for a long time, you can perceive that it models how to really face our fear, so that we can later move past it into creativity and abundance. A rabbit lives in close proximity to animals that feed on it, but it handles the fear and stays there and is still very fertile and productive and upbeat. When a rabbit appears in our lives, it is a signal to find the same attitude within ourselves. This was the message to you; its presence meant you had the opportunity to remember the medicine of rabbit and to fully look at your own fear and move beyond. And because it occurred during the beginning of your trip, it set the tone of your whole adventure. Hasn’t your trip been both fearful and abundant?”

  I nodded.

  He added, “Sometimes it means that the abundance can be of a romantic nature too. Have you met anyone?”

  I shrugged, remembering the new energy I had felt with Charlene. “Maybe, in a way. What about the crows I saw and the hawk that I followed when I found Wil?”

  “Crows are the holders of the laws of spirit. Spend time with crows and they will do amazing things that always increase our perception of spiritual reality. Their message was to open up, to remember the spiritual laws that were presenting themselves to you in this valley. Seeing them should have prepared you for what was to come.”

  “And the hawk?”

  “Hawks are alert, and observant, ever vigilant for the next bit of information, the next message. Their presence means that it is important at that time to increase our alertness. Often they signal that a messenger is close.” He cocked his head.

  “You mean, it was foretelling the presence of Wil?”

  “Yes.”

  David went on to explain why the other animals I had seen had been drawn my way. Cats, he told me, implore us to remember our ability to intuit and to self-heal. The bobcat cub’s message, arriving as it did, just before meeting Maya, was to signal that an opportunity to heal was near. Similarly an eagle soars to great heights, and represents an opportunity to actually venture into the higher realms of the spirit world. When I saw the eagle on the ridge, David said, I should have prepared for seeing my soul group and for understanding more of my own destiny. Lastly, he told me, the young wolf was there to en
ergize and awaken my latent instinct for courage and my ability to teach, so that I might find the words to help bring together the other members of the group.

  “So the animals represent,” I said, “parts of ourselves we need to get in touch with.”

  “Yes, aspects of ourselves that we developed when we were those animals during the course of evolution, but have lost.”

  I thought of the vision of evolution I had witnessed at the canyon entrance with the group. “You’re speaking of the way life progressed forward, species by species?”

  “We were there,” David continued. “Our consciousness moved through each animal as it represented the end point of life’s development and then leaped to the next. We experienced the way each species views the world, which is an important aspect of the complete spiritual consciousness. When a particular animal comes around, that means we’re ready to integrate its consciousness into our waking awareness again. And I’ll tell you something: there are some species that we aren’t even close to catching up with. That’s why it’s so important to preserve every life-form on this Earth. We want them to endure not just because they are a part of the balanced ecosphere, but because they represent aspects of ourselves that we’re still trying to remember.”

  He paused for a moment, looking out into the night.

  “This is also true of the rich diversity of human thought, represented by the various cultures around the planet. None of us knows exactly where the current truth of human evolution resides. Each culture around the world has a slightly different worldview, a particular mode of awareness, and it takes the best of all cultures, integrated together, to make a more ideal whole.”

  An expression of sadness crossed his face. “It’s too bad that four hundred years had to pass before the real integration of the European and Native cultures could begin. Think of what has happened. The Western mind lost touch with the mystery and reduced the magic of the deep woods to lumber and the mystery of wildlife to pretty animals. Urbanization has isolated the great majority of people, so we now think a journey into nature is a stroll on the golf course. Do you realize how few of us have experienced the mysteries of the wilderness?

  “Our National Parks represent all that is left of the great cathedral forests and rich plains and high deserts that once characterized this continent. There are too many of us now for the wild areas that still exist. In many parks there are waiting lists over a year long. And still, the politicians seem bent on selling off more and more of the public lands. Most of us are forced to draw from decks of animal cards to see what animal signs are coming into our lives, instead of being able to take quests into the truly wild areas of the world to experience the real thing.”

  Suddenly the screech owl’s cry erupted so close that the sound made me jump involuntarily.

  David was squinting impatiently. “Can we pray now?”

  “Listen,” I said, “I don’t know what you mean. Do you want to pray or visualize?”

  He tried to calm his voice. “Yes, I’m sorry. Impatience seems to be a residual emotion I have with you.” He took a breath. “The Tenth Insight—learning to have faith in our intuitions, remembering our birth intention, holding the World Vision—all of it is about understanding the essence of real prayer.

  “Why does every religious tradition assume a form of prayer? If God is the one, all-knowing, all-powerful God, then why would we have to beseech his help or impel him to do something? Why wouldn’t he just set up commandments and covenants and judge us accordingly, taking direct action when he wanted to, not us? Why would we have to ask for his special intervention? The answer is that when we pray in the correct fashion, we are not asking God to do something. God is inspiring us to act in his place to enact his will on the Earth. We are the emissaries of the divine on this planet. True prayer is the method, the visualization, that God expects us to use in discerning his will and implementing it in the physical dimension. His kingdom come, his will be done, on Earth, as it is in heaven.

  “In this sense, every thought, every expectation—all of what we visualize happening in the future—is a prayer, and tends to create that very future. But no thought or desire or fear is as strong as a vision that is in alignment with the divine. That’s why bringing in the World Vision, and holding it, is important: so we will know what to pray for, what future to visualize.”

  “I understand,” I said. “How do we help Maya become aware of the owl?”

  “What did she say to do when she talked to you about healing?”

  “She said we should visualize patients remembering what they intended to do with their lives but still hadn’t done. She said that real healing springs from a renewed sense of what one wants to do once health is regained. When they remember, then we can also join them in holding this more specific-plan.”

  “Let’s do the same now,” David said. “Hopefully, her original intention was to follow the sound of this bird.”

  David closed his eyes, and I followed his lead, trying to visualize an image of Maya awakening to what she was supposed to do. After a few minutes I opened my eyes and David was staring at me. The owl screamed again right above our heads.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Twenty minutes later we were standing on the hill above the falls. The owl had followed, calling out periodically, and had stationed itself fifty feet to our right. In front of us, the pool glistened in the moonlight, muted only by wisps of fog that drifted along its surface. We waited for ten or fifteen minutes without speaking.

  “Look! There!” David said, pointing.

  Among the rocks to the right of the pool I could make out several figures. One of them looked up and saw us; it was Charlene. I waved and she recognized me. Then David and I made our way down the rocky slope to where they were standing.

  Curtis was ecstatic at seeing David, grabbing his arm. “We’ll stop these people now.” For a moment they looked at each other in silence, then Curtis introduced Maya and Charlene.

  I met eyes with Maya. “Did you have any trouble finding your way here?”

  “At first, we were confused and lost in the darkness, but then I heard the owl and I knew.”

  “The presence of an owl,” David said, “means that we have the opportunity to see through any possible deception by others, and if we avoid the tendency to harm or lash out, we can, like the owl, cut through the darkness to hold a higher truth.”

  Maya was watching David closely. “You look familiar,” Maya said. “Who are you?”

  He looked at her questioningly. “You were told my name. It’s David.”

  She grabbed his hand gently. “No, I mean who are you to me, to us?”

  “I was there,” he said, “during the wars, but I was so full of hatred for the whites that I didn’t support you; I didn’t even listen to you.”

  “We’re doing it differently now,” I said.

  David glared at me reflexively, then caught himself and softened, as he had before. “Back in that war, I had even less respect for you than the others. You wouldn’t take a stand. You ran away.”

  “It was fear,” I replied.

  “I know.”

  For several more minutes everyone talked with David about the emotions we were feeling, discussing everything we could remember about the tragedy of the war on the Native Americans. David went on to explain that his soul group was made up of mediators and that he had come this time to work through his anger at the European mentality, and then to work for the spiritual recognition of all indigenous cultures and the inclusion of all people.

  Charlene glanced at me, then turned to David. “You’re the fifth member of this group, aren’t you?”

  Before he could answer, we felt a vibration racing through the ground under our feet; it sent irregular ripples across the surface of the pool. Accompanying the tremor was another eerie melodious whine that filled the forest. Out of the corner of my eye I saw flashlights moving on the hill fifty feet above us.

  “They’re here!”
Curtis whispered.

  I turned to see Feyman at the edge of an overhang directly above our heads; he was adjusting a small dish antenna on what looked like a portable computer.

  “They’re going to focus on us and try to fine-tune the generator that way,” Curtis said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Maya reached over and touched his arm. “No, please, Curtis, maybe it will work this time.”

  David moved closer to Curtis, then said lowly, “It can work.”

  Curtis stared at him for a moment, then finally nodded his agreement, and we began to raise our energy again. As in the two previous attempts, I began to see higher-self expressions on every face, and then our soul groups appeared and merged into a circle. around us, including for the first time the members of David’s group. As the memory of the World Vision returned, we were again pulled into the overall intent to transfer energy and knowledge and awareness into the physical dimension.

  Also, as before, we saw the fearful polarization occurring in our time, and the panoramic vision of the positive future that would succeed it once the special groups formed and learned how to intercede, how to hold the Vision.

  Suddenly another tremor shook the ground violently.

  “Stay with the Vision,” Maya shouted. “Hold the image of how the future can be.”

  I heard a fissure tear through the ground to my right, but I kept my concentration. In my mind I again saw the World Vision as a force of energy that was emanating outward from our group in all directions and pushing Feyman back away from us, defeating the energy of his Fear vision. To my left, a huge tree ripped from its roots and crashed to the ground.

  “It’s still not working,” Curtis shouted, jumping to his feet.

  “No, wait,” David said. He had been deep in thought, and now he reached out and grabbed Curtis, pulling him down beside him. “Don’t you see what’s wrong?! We’re treating Feyman and the others as if they are enemies, trying to push them back. Doing that actually strengthens them, because they have something to fight against. Rather than fighting them with the Vision, we have to include Feyman and the operatives in what we’re visualizing. In reality, there are no enemies; we’re all souls in growth, waking up. We have to project the World Vision toward them as though they are just like us.”