Exploring Cassy

by Margaret Guthrie

This time we were taken to a ‘place’ that looked like a farm where men, women and children were all working together on some project. It reminded me of a co-operative community, maybe like the Amish, or a retreat type operation. We could see some people were in the gardens, either weeding, or picking the product. Others were in the house, working in a kitchen, and other rooms. Some were in outer fields tending to animals. And then, there was a group working together sawing and hammering, fitting pieces of wood together, like the part of a big building. Like a barn raising! It all looked so...co-operative. So harmonious. So happy. So ideal.

  “What are you trying to show us?” Salvador asked, in a suspicious manner.

  “People working harmoniously together,” Ruth stated.

  “Why not show us a band? That was working together,” Salvador replied.

   “We could do that, too,” Counselor said. Immediately the scene changed. Now we looked down upon an orchestra, as if we were high up in an auditorium. The conductor was vigorously waving his arms, putting his whole body into his work. And the players followed his direction and produced beautiful music.

   “A small band is better,” Salvador insisted. “With songs. Just music is no good. Ya gotta have rhythm that makes you want to dance. Classical stuff, like that,” he pointed down to the orchestra, “is no good.” He shook his head in disgust.

  Suddenly the image changed, and there was a stage with a small band, standing behind a young woman at the microphone, singing. But Salvador objected again.

  “It’s gotta be a guy with a guitar,” he emphasized. But the image he wanted did not materialize. He looked over to Counselor. “Why didn’t you show it right?” he demanded.

  “Is there a ‘right’?” she asked him. This exchange intrigued me. Salvador obviously didn’t recognize authority. I could see Gail and Ruth smiling with mutual amusement at his obnoxious unawareness.

  “Well,” he hedged. “Sure there is.”

  “I see,” Counselor said, nodding a kind of patient tolerance. “Sometimes it takes a lot to learn the right from the wrong, the truth from the false.” Salvador looked confused, and shrugged.

  I wondered what kind of lesson situations Counselor would be cooking up for him.

   “I used to be a part of a quilting group,” Gail volunteered, in a kind of wistful way. This remark brought another scene. This time it was a small room, filled with women working around a quilt frame, concentrating on the tiny stitches they made with their needles, in and out of the fabric in front of them. Without much looking at each other a conversation took place, and the comradery was percipient.

  “What’re you showing us this stuff for,” David snorted. “You trying to get us to be all good little humans, all gloriously harmonious, just forgetting our individual differences and...and...” he threw up his ‘hands’ all purplish, bruised looking and sad.

  “Didn’t you ever work in a group?” Gail asked, sympathetically. “When you were little, what was your most favorite thing to do?” I could see she was a bit wary of those ‘hands,’ that seemed to want to fly out, reach out, and grab...something.

  “When I was little,” David said, then frowned, looking confused. “We moved a lot. Dad was in the military and sometimes we lived near where he was stationed, and sometimes we didn’t. My older sister had asthma and Mom thought we needed to be near a doctor and hospital because she had these allergies, and you never knew when she’d have to be rushed in for emergency care. That’s why Mom didn’t want to go to foreign countries. I didn’t mind.” Then he shrugged, his aura doing a little lift and fall. “Seeing those kids...back there...kind of reminded me of something. It was probably nursery school. There was a doll. My sister’s doll that I used to carry around. And a cat. I remember the cat squirming. They told me I was going to choke it, ’cause I held it around its neck.” David gave a little, short laugh. “Well, wasn’t that the easiest?” Then he looked down, away from the ‘eyes’ that waited for his story.

   “I bet you got teased for that,” Salvador said. “The doll, I mean.” His expression was like a human grin full of mischief, as if Salvador was glad that someone else was the brunt of teasing.

  “Yeah,” David admitted. “Guess it went with the territory.”

  “But did you play with other kids?” Gail asked.

  “Don’t remember,” David said.

  “Well, that’s sad,” I said. “If you were in nursery school, you must have had playmates. And surely there were kids on the military base to play with.”

  “Kids can be cruel,” Salvador said. “If they decide you’re too small, or have buck teeth, or aren’t the right color, or don’t wear the right clothing, they can just be the meanest...meanest....” he stopped, as if the words were too raw to be expressed in this place.

  “We’ve noticed that,” Counselor said. No one responded. Things just stood still, as if we were all waiting for someone else to say something. Then Salvador’s aura began to dance, little wavelets jumping about around him. Finally, he got the courage to speak.

  “I had an ugly little dog once,” he stated. Counselor nodded for him to go on. “It was actually a neighbor’s dog, and not very friendly. It was always tied up behind an iron fence which I had to pass when I was sent to get things at the corner store. And just as I got to that fence he’d start barking and growling and jumping and I just knew he’d bite if he ever got loose. The first time that happened I rushed past as fast as I could. Then, the next time I stopped. He made me mad. I started bawling him out. Like ‘dumb dog, what’s wrong with you’ or ‘you trying to protect those rich creeps?’ and stuff. I noticed that when I talked long enough he’d stop barking and just growl, deep in his throat, like he really wanted to make me go away. And that made me mad, too. So I started going over there just to tease him. But before long I started telling him all the things that bothered me. I’d tell him about my foster parents and all the chores they dumped on me. And the kids that kept picking on me. And school. Teachers that marked up my papers like they were all wrong. In big  red letters. This kept going on like every day. And then I noticed he wasn’t on a leash any longer and he’d run right up to the fence and growl. Didn’t even bother to bark. Then one day I put my hands around the fence rails and held them there to see what he would do. Well, that stopped him. I scrunched down and stayed still, kind of daring him to check me out. Well, he did. He came up and sniffed my hands and his nose was all wet, and then he slobbered and began licking them and it felt all rough and made these tinglies go up my arm. That’s the first time I ever saw him wag his tail.” Salvador’s aura brightened like a proud smile.

   “What a great story,” Gail said. She looked truly impressed.

   “But you said you had an ugly little dog,” I reminded  him. “So far it’s the neighbor’s dog.” I found myself softening a bit toward Salvador, but still not forgiving his behavior as I had experienced it.

   “Well, yeah. One time when we were having our little talk, this woman opened her door and asked if I wanted to come into the yard and meet Guy. Guy was the dog. I wasn’t that eager, but I said yes, anyway.  So the lady began asking about where I lived and whether I’d ever had a dog, and if I knew how to take care of one, and a bunch of other questions. Then she wanted to know if I’d ever walked a dog. I didn’t know what she was talking about. She meant on a leash, down the street and around, to give it some exercise. But he was in a yard and didn’t need to be walked, I thought. She was just leading up to making me his owner and testing me out about whether I could really take care of it.”

   Salvador’s aura settled down as he told us this story and he looked more peaceful than I’d ever seen him. But he’d mentioned foster parents and kids that were cruel. “So did you take the dog home?” I asked.

   “Eventually,” he said. “But he was always an outdoor dog. He was never allowed in the house. He had his own house. I fed him out there. And kept his water pan filled. He never took much to the other kids. They were too rough.
He snipped at their feet, or hands if they got too close. Then one day this boy, Doug, kicked him and Guy grabbed his leg and nobody liked that. Well, Guy was just defending himself. But that made him a bad dog and had to go. I didn’t see any fairness in that. Doug was the one that should have gone.” Salvador gave a long sigh, his aura shrinking like a balloon that had lost its air, and he looked thin and small, almost like the little boy he once was.

  “What a bummer,” Gail said. “So what happened?” I could see she was taking on a role of encourager. Was that what she was to my mother? Her confidante and encourager? I had never thought of my mother as needing one. But then, I guess I had never fully considered my mother as a person. And with that thought, I felt jolted, like was that really true? Could I have been that ignorant, or even hurtful? I was beginning to see I did have some things to redo. I looked over at Counselor to see if she was picking this up. Well, of course. She smiled at me. I turned my attention back to Salvador, who was talking again.

  “I think he got poisoned. At least, he was dead a few days later. Stiff and cold in his house.” Salvador said it matter-of-factly but you could tell he was really affected. He could hardly keep back the tears.

  “That’s terrible,” Ruth chimed in. She had been watching us all as Salvador told his story. Her aura was always taller than the rest, and it gave her an appearance of strength. “Did they find any left-over food and test it?”

  “Naw,” Salvador said. “Who would do that? They just took Guy and drove out to the country and threw him in the ditch one night. Doug said it was just as well. Dogs were a dime a dozen.”

  “Who were ‘they’?” Ruth asked, as if it were  important to identify those who were cruel so something could be done about it. She had, after all, been an activist for human rights.

   “Doug and Mr. Spencer.”

     “Mr. Spencer was the foster father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old was this Doug?” she asked next. “And you?”

  “Fifteen maybe. I was about ten.”

  “No wonder you were all messed up.” David piped up. His effervescent aura rays shimmered in a steady, unexcited way as if David were listening carefully.

  “How come you were in a foster home?” Gail asked. We were all getting into Salvador’s story now. Guess that had to be. It occurred to  me, though, that Salvador had become a bit like that growling, snippy dog when he came after me. He had really wanted to hang on. I guess he was attention deprived in a bad way. And the more he tried for attention the more I pushed him away. But it wasn’t just me doing that. It was the motorcycle gang, the club gang, almost anyone he came in contact with.

  Salvador said, “Guess my mom couldn’t handle things very well. She’d get nervous and shaky and walk around in circles like she didn’t know what she was doing. And then my dad had to take her to the hospital. But he worked and couldn’t take time off so we were either on our own, or put in some home. I don’t know why people are made that way.”

   “What way do you mean?” I asked. I had not experienced people on Earth with mental illness, which I took to be the problem with Salvador’s mom. I was genuinely interested to hear more about it.

  “Like my mom. She didn’t choose that did she? I mean, maybe she didn’t know how to love cause she’d never had a model. But you’re making it sound like she had something to do with the way she was, before she was ever born. And that doesn’t seem right to me.”

  Counselor’s bright aura reached out to Salvador but kept shy of touching. “Would you like to explore that?” she asked. “It’s probably one of the most important things we’re going to need to understand before you can make any decisions.”

  “People come into birth with difficulties because they have lessons to learn!” Ruth said emphatically. “Maybe your mother needed to learn tolerance, and compassion. Maybe she’d been one of those healthy, wealthy, individuals that blame others for being sick and poor. That would be one good way to learn, coming back and being that very person one ridiculed in a former life.”

  “You don’t know that!” Salvador said. “You’re just supposing.”

   “Oh, do I hear some sympathy coming from you for your mother? That’s progress, I would say.” Ruth’s aura smile was radiant. “And it’s true, I was just guessing. But you want to know how the principle works, don’t you? Isn’t that what you are asking?” Her aura seemed to melt into a vivid blue that stretched out to Salvador, but just as Counselor didn’t touch, neither did she.

  I was coming to understand that blue often was the color of Love. And Ruth was steeped in blue all the time. It was as if blue was her trademark. It made me grateful for her presence, and a bit awed that she was. It surely meant something good ahead for me.

  “Mothers are strange,” David said. We all looked at him. He was going to have to explain that one!

  “I mean,” he added, “they hold all the cards. You’re totally dependent on them. For food, warmth, everything you need to live. And if they don’t give it you’re doomed.”

  “That doesn’t give much credit to fathers,” I said. I remembered how it was my dad that I followed around.

  “It doesn’t give credit to men who have to be the lone nurturers, either,” Gail said. “My mother died when I was 13 and it was my Dad who became mother and father to my two younger sisters and myself. True, I sort of took her place in lots of ways. But Dad was in charge. He looked at our school assignments, went to teacher’s conferences, attended some basketball games when I was on the team, went to recitals for Patty and Heather. He didn’t ever remarry, either. He was committed to us. A real hero.” Gail’s aura turned various colors as she talked, from light greens to blues to violets, a constant array of light, subdued colors. I thought that must have indicated a rather well-balanced, harmonious family experience, for her, even without a mother.

  I noticed David watching her, and it seemed that the very calmness of Gail’s colors had a good effect on his own. “So what kind of mother were you able to be?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Gail replied. “I loved my babies. I loved to see them grow and become nice adults. I got to do that. It was a privilege.”

  “And they were there for you in the end,” Ruth said. “I saw how comforting they were for you. We watched, you know, from the window up here.”

  “You can do that?” David’s aura shot upright like a soldier coming to attention and turned a bright shimmering red for a few seconds, before settling down to his usual darker color.

  “Sometimes, when we arrange it right,” Ruth said.

   Salvador was showing agitation again. I think he didn’t get his question answered about why his mother was the way she was. Counselor picked up on that also.

  “A couple of things here,” she said. “The separation of this astral life and those living in physical bodies is not as great as you might think. Ruth is talking about a viewing window that is available as we put our consciousness into that mode of interest. Ruth has taken an interest in the people she knew on Earth and has found a way to send them positive, loving, encouraging thought-rays. An energy, if you will, that has no gravity bounds, no physical limits. She, you might say, is a helper from on high. But it also works better when the human sets his or her consciousness to asking for help and being open to receiving that help. Because if they don’t ask, there’s no clear channel for Ruth’s love energy to move through. Do you understand?” Counselor concentrated on Salvador and David, who seemed like two little children awed by their teacher.

  Salvador nodded, and looked at Ruth. “I never met you down there, but you were talked about, at the cabin. Mostly, though, we bikers stayed outside, in our own tents and trailers. I did appreciate being able to do that.” He seemed genuinely humble. Maybe, I thought, this little group was fulfilling its purpose. I was actually beginning to have some warm feelings toward them all.

   “The other thing,” Counselor said, “is to answer your question, Salvador, about your
mother. It’s true; she did have her own prescription to fill. She did indeed need to learn to give to others, for she had been selfish and privileged in other lives. She was resistant to that and gave into nervousness and disability to escape those lessons. So, yes, on the one hand she chose to be that way. But being mentally ill is not a satisfying role. It makes for a lot of confusion and wasted time. She lost out on being the mother she also had chosen to be. So now, she’s here in another group, trying to determine how to get past that resistance which is holding her back. Your father showed a lot of patience, doing the cooking when you and your brothers were small. Trying to teach  you all how to do laundry, and household cleaning. Do you remember that?”

  “I guess so,” Salvador said, looking guilty now, his aura sagging around him like a rain-soaked chicken, with rays sort of puddling around his ‘feet.’ “Do you think he misses me?”

  It was the first time I got any glimpse that he cared about those he had left behind. At the same time I  felt something slipping off my back, as if Salvador had pulled back a heavy hand from  my shoulder. 

  “He surely does,” Ruth said. Counselor smiled.

  “But Ray and the others don’t miss me at all, do they?”

  “Not right now,” Counselor agreed, bluntly. “Do you know why that is?”

  “Because I was trying to be what I could not be, I guess,” he admitted.

  “Gosh, man, join the club,” David said.  “My dad wanted me to be a soldier, wear a uniform, be a proud service man. And I actually tried, for a time. But it didn’t work out. I didn’t even get through basic training. And then, these religious people took an interest in me. Sort of took me under their wing for a while, and that didn’t work out either. So I guess what my role down there was, was to be a failure. What was I supposed to learn from that?” He looked at Counselor, his aura flowing smoothly in a grey-green pattern around his center, circulating up and down and around as if waiting for the revelation he needed.

   “Maybe we’re all failures,” I put in, for it occurred to me that I was more like Salvador and David than I wanted to be. I hadn’t thought much about how those I left behind might feel. I hadn’t accomplished anything in that life, hadn’t made the world any better for my existence there. But what was the alternative? Was that the purpose of existence on Earth?

  They were all staring at me and there was this big silence. It was really uncomfortable. “What?” I asked. “What are you all thinking?”

  “If we’re all failures, what are we doing here? It’s not as if we’re being excluded from anything. We’re not being told we’re bad, or ugly, or insane, or wrong, or no good,” Salvador said.  He looked right at Counselor and then said, “Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s a good way to feel,” she commented.

  “Well, those girls I killed didn’t want me over there,” David said. “But maybe they were scared I’d kill them again.”

  “Which you can’t do, right?” Salvador said, laughing. “No matter how much you’d like to, you can’t terminate them.” His laughing continued, getting more and more intense, just as his aura brightened like a light bulb increasing in intensity. “And we can’t be killed again either,” he said. “That’s kind of a relief.” He twirled himself around, lifting his arm-auras, his leg-auras, in a kind of frenzied dance.

  “We can’t be hurt physically,” I said. “Can’t be drowned, burned, knocked unconscious, don’t have any bones to break, can’t bleed, don’t have a body to get sick. We don’t get tired, don’t need sleep, and still...” I paused because even though we weren’t physical beings, we still  had feelings, and I’d noticed how often auras changed colors and shapes, as if something like hurt and sadness was going on. And love. Yes, that was something that we all seemed to be attracted to. I still didn’t know why the five of us were together, but we certainly were getting to know each other. We all had our stories, and the more we got to know them, the more reasonable it seemed that we cared about each other.  “But still,” I continued, “what is the purpose of going to Earth?”

  “Lessons,” Gail said. “And I’m not ready to go back. I’m not saying I don’t have any more lessons to learn, but when you see all that Earth people are doing to each other, it’s just nothing I want to be involved in. How many wars are there, Ruth, when we last looked?”

   “Countless,” she answered. “Every continent had wars. And it wasn’t that there wasn’t enough for them to eat, if they’d learn to share. But some humans wanted control of everything around them. So the more they had the more they wanted. They didn’t care a hoot for those who had less. In fact, sometimes they told themselves that those who had not were to blame for their own poverty. They took some kind of pride in all the things they possessed. As if possessions made them better than anyone else. What foolishness. Where are they now?” Ruth swept her aura arm over the field of cloud-like space around us, where other astral groups were engaged in various activities. Some appeared to be building things, or attempting to, but  no one was able to keep anything material for very long.

  “You see how they are trying to make what was familiar to them on Earth? But look how long they last! They can’t keep them together. It’s funny, really. See that guy over there?” Ruth pointed to an older man-being, his flimsy aura so transparent you simply looked right through him. It seemed he was working on a small boat with large sails, but it was hard to tell exactly. He’d get one part of the boat put together and then as soon as he looked away, the finished part started to disintegrate. It was as if he had to keep it all together in his mind or it just wouldn’t stay together. 

  “He’s never going to make it,” Salvador said, watching the stranger closely. “Why does he keep trying?”

  “It was something he did on Earth,” Counselor explained. “He loved racing his sailboat over the water. That is what he said he lived for. At least in his mid-life, before his body began to age too much. He took to modeling boats as a hobby in his latter years. He’s having a hard time here letting go the delusion that he can make matter stay put.”

   “So will that delusion take him back to Earth?” I asked. The poor guy didn’t seem to realize that all his efforts were in vain. Pretty soon we saw another being come over to him and lead him away, out of our sight.

   “He’ll soon be choosing his next life companions,” Counselor said.

  “But we don’t have to go back right away if we don’t want to,” Ruth said. She seemed to be quite positive about that. “Personally, I’m going to wait for a couple thousand Earth years, to let the world settle itself into another higher age. Right now, it’s in transition from the lowest, darkest age to the next higher age, and humans are suspicious of new knowledge. They are competitive and selfish, seldom thinking that what is good for themselves is good for all humans. They are inclined to keep secret their discoveries, so that they will have an edge on the market where their discoveries will be sold and from which they will profit. In a higher consciousness age, people will have no fear of new knowledge. There will be no need for profit.  They will be able to see that technology does not overpower the mind.” She paused as if waiting for us to come up with questions. And I certainly had some.

  “Mind power,” I blurted out. “Like the New Age Earth people kept talking about? How one could bring prosperity their way by positive thinking and all that? Or manifesting a boat from thought power alone?” I laughed, because we had just seen that it couldn’t be done here.

  “That’s because our ‘friend’ over there didn’t have that higher consciousness I’m referring to.” Ruth pointed into the distance. “He knew nothing about the truly concentrated mind that is able to pull itself into a relationship with the One.” She looked at me and smiled. “You’re still thinking like a child, my dear. You’ve barely let yourself consider what possibilities there are. You haven’t begun to open your mind. The One is just waiting for you to let It in.”

  I felt like I’d been struck, whipped. And for what
? I’d not expected such disparaging comments from Ruth. It totally blew me off my pedestal, if that’s where I was. “Oh,” was all I managed to say for a while. Then, noting that everyone seemed to be waiting for me to go on, I said, “So, if we somehow make ourselves concentrate on The One, we get a benefit from that intelligence, or whatever The One is?” I was puzzled. I had never considered when I was on Earth, a relationship with anything that wasn’t alive, or that is, seen and heard. I had always scoffed at those who wore a cross or other religious jewelry, or set up an altar with icons to which they prayed. It seemed too much like wishing for magic.

  “You never uttered a prayer when you felt danger?” Ruth’s gaze was intense and the blue around her was almost fierce.  And then I remembered, like a flash from my last moments, that I had let something slip out of my mouth. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I’d said, not thinking, really. It was just a reaction. ‘Oh, Jesus, what have I done?’ Was that a prayer? A recognition of Someone that was there to be addressed. In that last finality of life, I spoke those words. And then, I woke up Here.

  “Prayer comes quite naturally to humans,” Ruth said. “Even to those who wouldn’t be caught dead...” She stopped to let out a short sweet laugh. “letting someone hear them.” She came over, with her blue aura floating out from her centers, and wrapped them around me in a gesture that was such love that I started shaking. I felt the drop of tears from my ‘eyes’ and saw them as silver streams falling into my lap. I was too embarrassed to look at the others, but felt a kind of sympathy, or kind acknowledgment reaching out and touching me.

  “When people are beyond fear, they will be able to produce what is needed at will, and have no reason to fight over what is produced, “ Ruth said, as if  we were all ready for her little lecture to continue. “There won’t be any secrets because communication will be almost instant and everyone will know what others are thinking. Almost like it is here.” Ruth stopped, let her expanded aura settle again. “And love will be a constant subtle companion,” she added.

  “Then Earth wouldn’t be much different than here?” I asked, trying to follow her line of thought. Ruth seemed so wise, and yet there were times she turned to Counselor. She did that now. It dawned on me that maybe Ruth was something like a counselor in training.

  “Possibly,” Counselor said. “But there are some things you are not ready to know, some questions that can’t be answered in your state of understanding. But do know that Earth doesn’t stay still. It goes through cycles and cycles, so it won’t forever stay in delusion or enlightenment. And I can’t say why. It’s just that’s the way the One wants it to be.”

  “So, there will always be mysteries,” I said, with a note of sarcasm in my ‘voice.’ “And we won’t ever get to know all there is to know,” I added with a sardonic laugh. I was beginning to embarrass  myself, but the thoughts just kept coming. “Unless we could become the One?”

  “Or become one with the One,” Ruth answered with a sweet patient smile. “Isn’t that right?” Ruth had turned to Counselor and received a brief affirmative nod.

   I don’t know what was happening, but my aura mind was processing thoughts quite differently than my mundane Earth mind. “One with the One,” I repeated.  The phrase buzzed around in my astral brain and came up with a thought that flew out of my ‘mouth’ as if on its own.   “Another word for concentrated consciousness on the One?”

  Counselor, Ruth and Gail stared at me. David and Salvador looked puzzled. I was not known for coming up with metaphysical notions when I was on Earth. In fact, I was better known as a skeptic. When my friend Maureen showed me some of the books she was reading, I shoved them away. I wasn’t ready to think about transcending the material world. Angels, miracles, gods, Masters, were not in my vocabulary. But Maureen believed what she read, that there were people who actually walked on water and produced food from thin air. And this was not from the Bible. She got hold of other books. To me, that was magical thinking and trickery.

  “You know,” I said, a bit defensively, “concentration doesn’t have to be a mystical experience. Athletes have to be concentrated. And those illusionists, magicians like David Blaine.” I flung my astral arms up in broad colorful swathes. For a moment I felt like a bird taking wing. “I watched some of those TV programs. He did fantastic things. A lot of it was on the street. He had these card tricks. He’d hold out a deck of cards and ask a passerby to pick one out without him seeing it, have them write their initials on it, and stick it back in the deck. Then he’d shuffle the deck some more and ask the guy, or gal, to look at their shoe. There it’d be. Or someplace else just as unlikely. The young girls, and young men would go into hysterics, laughing and shrieking, calling him the devil. They seemed truly frightened.” My own audience was quite still as if they were not familiar with David Blaine. But I went on to the point I really wanted to make. “What fascinated me most was his levitating trick. What the camera caught looked like he actually lifted himself off the ground a few inches. Later, I ran across a video that showed just how the trick was done. He had to wear baggy pants that came down over his shoes. He had to have his back to his audience. He had to be dramatic and take their attention off his feet to the upper part of his body. Then, he’d step down hard on the ball of one foot, and lift up his heels. To the audience it looked like levitation. Nothing mystical or magical about it. But, he did have to be very concentrated. And very practiced.  He had to keep in good physical shape, so he was disciplined.” I smiled, remembering how Counselor stressed discipline. “So all that energy and concentration made him a very good illusionist and magician, but didn’t lead him to tune his consciousness into the One. Right?” Counselor and Ruth both smiled at me.

  “So you think Jesus’ walking on water and feeding the five thousand were tricks?” Ruth asked. “Or were you really wanting David  Blaine to actually levitate?” Her aura shoulder gave a little uplift, like a  human who is trying to get to the core of a point.

  “I don’t know. I do admire those who have strong minds. Strong wills.  Mind over matter power,” I said, pulling in my aura, letting it settle around me. There seemed to be a lot of energy around me and I wasn’t sure what it wanted.

  “It’s all right to believe in mind over matter,” Counselor said. “That’s the direction you’re meant to go. The One is pulling  you, and you are feeling that. Don’t be afraid of it. Just relax and surrender to it.” Her words were like a comfortable air mattress on which I could lie, quite safely, and gently rock on a peaceful lake.

  * * *