By contrast, our concern became even more deeply rooted. Her pregnancy meant that Oscar’s darkness was also growing inside her, extending to her body, flowing in her blood, trying to get hold of her heart. A Star Woman isn’t meant to reproduce this way before her powers are fully developed, while her human hormones can still take over her thinking process. If Cassandra managed to bring the gestation to conclusion, and give birth to this baby, she would lose all of her powers forever and forsake the direction of her evolution in favour of raising a child. We should have intervened quicker. Instead, our nemesis in the Dark Side did that for us.
Robert Harker and his sycophants found out that Cassandra had walked out on Oscar. They had always monitored her developments and knew that Oscar was her Achilles’ heel. They seized upon the chance, and shortly after the break-up, they introduced her counter-agent into the equation. With impeccable timing, a reprogrammed Charlotte Le Blanc was sent to cross Oscar’s path, armed with the weapons of seduction and servility.
He chatted her up in a late bar. The world-famous artist was feeling abandoned after Cassandra’s departure, despite the fact that he had both consciously and subconsciously done everything under the sky to sabotage their relationship over the past two years. He felt wounded and emasculated by the way she had reacted. She had had the last word before he could as much as utter half a syllable. She had displayed her characteristic strength. She looked so dignified when she had slammed the door behind her and his self-destructive ways. Now she was gone. The marvellous time they had spent together was no more. As beautiful and as rare as she was, she was no longer his.
A gaping hole in his heart and bed was all that remained of their relationship. Oscar knew at first glance that the girl in the bar could fill it. Although he sensed something sinister lurking behind her pretty appearance, he chose to ignore his intuition. She looked a lot like Cassandra. Well, she looked like a younger, not as sophisticated and knowledgeable, and maybe even a sillier version of Cassandra. Never mind: she would more than do. They talked about art. She was French and had visited all the museums in Paris. She displayed a good grasp of the evolution of modern art. The artist she loved the most was Oscar O’Leary. His ego didn’t mind that. She was far too giddy and eager, but that didn’t matter either. He wanted to have her and he wanted to keep her. He didn’t want to think about his ex anymore. So he took Charlotte to the bedroom that he had shared with Cassandra only three weeks before. He kept her there and fucked her solidly for three days.
Charlotte became pregnant on the second night they spent together. Unbeknown to him, Oscar was the pseudo-father of this embryo, and the real biological father of another embryo that he had fertilised six weeks previously. The latter was cradled in a womb made of Light and love, the former in one made of hurt and ego. The one embryo that survived would determine the shape to come of the Plan. We, the Masters, were gathered in Shambhala for a special session. This was meant to be the last chapter before Cassandra’s final transformation. We didn’t expect it to turn out as it had. We had intended to isolate her from Oscar for a year while she was developing a whole new body. She would suffer, that was true. But this turn of events was too cruel and too sudden to be part of our Plan. Was it a step in the final stage of her growth, or was it a turn for the worse into devolution?
Biological motherhood wasn’t what was planned for Cassandra. Her organism wasn’t intended for biological reproduction. We were taken aback by the news of her pregnancy. What was going to happen? We couldn’t help her now, any more than you can help a butterfly exit its cocoon, lest any external interference damage its newly-formed wings. Our hearts went out to her but there was next to nothing that we could do to alleviate her pain. This was her final struggle, and we were forced to watch it on the sidelines with great anxiety.
There was another unexpected development with respect to Oscar’s reaction to Cassandra’s departure. As time went by from when Cassandra left him, his hatred towards her and all that she had ever stood for increased. Unknown to him, it was Charlotte’s presence that fed his hatred towards his reaction against his ex-girlfriend. Spurred on by his new lover, he had begun to doubt Cassandra’s powers, her vision, even her love for him. He began to see her as a deluded woman, someone too full of herself to be real. His thoughts could undermine her powers. Drugs and alcohol helped him believe that things had turned out for the better, and that Charlotte was heaven-sent. He couldn’t have been any further from the truth.
* * * *
Dublin, November-December 1998
I couldn’t undo it now. I had closed the door behind me trying to lock in your scornful, reproachful gesture against me and my loyalty to you. I felt alone and abandoned. I was forced into that goodbye. For a couple of hours after the shock I couldn’t quite register what had happened. I wandered around aimlessly, going through the motions without even knowing what was going on inside me, let alone around me. I arrived in Ballsbridge on autopilot. My awareness briefly returned to allow me to book myself into the best hotel in the area in the middle of the night. The staff at the reception looked pitifully on me. I checked into my suite and cried myself to sleep in a four-poster bed. I woke up to sun rays stretching their fingers across the room and on my face. For a second I thought I saw you lying next to me. It was a mirage. The thought of what you had done to me came back, and I found myself in hell.
I took a long shower. Then I phoned Polly to tell her where I was and what had happened. I assured her that I was okay but I could hear myself saying words that I didn’t believe. Letizia phoned me shortly afterwards. Polly had got in touch to update her on my heart-wrenching state of affairs. She told me you had called her to see if she’d heard from me. The mention of your name was like an invisible gun to my soul. I started sobbing. All my pretences came crumbling down. Letizia was worried.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m reacting dramatically because I need to get this hurt out of my chest. I’m in control, don’t worry, everything will be fine.”
She didn’t believe me. “Do you want me to come over?”
“Yes.”
I needed company. I felt like I was being sucked into a black hole of nothingness. Letizia arrived within an hour and stayed with me for the following week. With hers and Polly’s help, I arranged for most of my stuff to be packed and transferred from our Dun Laoghaire house to the Transformation Centre. Two weeks later I felt centred enough to go out and I bought a penthouse in the area overlooking Herbert Park. I had to start again. I had to find the Light in me even without you.
It was going to be hard. Rejection takes a long time to heal, especially when it comes from the person you hold in the highest regard. I felt humiliated as well, for the way you had cheated on me. I feared that you had lied to me for all the time we had been together, and that my new, loveless life wasn’t worth having.
I had to shake that destructive thought out of my head. It was futile to hope that we could ever return to what we once were. Did we ever love each other the way I thought we did? I couldn’t believe my memories anymore. They hurt. Every time I felt your absence, an invisible whip struck my soul. I was the branded slave, punished for having wanted eternal love and happiness. Could I ever survive such a blow? I had no choice but to make it solo.
In those sorrowful days I fought long and hard to keep my vision. My body was vibrating at a low frequency: the frequency of heartbreak. Feelings are but a lens through which we perceive the world. If we are sad, we see a forlorn world. If we are happy, the world is our best friend. Believing is seeing; that is true for everybody. But in my case, the state of my perception had wider implications at the planetary level. I was the symbol of the Earth’s evolution. I was the embodiment of changes that had been prophesised for millennia. Now I had failed. Did it mean that evolution wouldn’t take place anymore? The ego has many tricks, and sooner or later everyone can fall prey to its temptations. I genuinely believed I was incapable of holding an ego-fuelled vision. What had become of me?
I was a mess.
I had become cynical. Sometimes I would direct my scepticism inward towards myself and my esoteric knowledge. Some other times I would project it onto the outside world. I saw everything and everyone dispassionately, as if they were separate from me. The reason why everything stopped making sense was the fact that I thought I’d missed the last train with you, big time. I had managed to jump on it and catch a fabulous ride. You were such a ride, my dear. But you threw me out like the most unwelcome clandestine passenger. Opportunities like that come only once in a lifetime. Once in many lifetimes, even. My heart had sunk so low that it surely must have made a hole underneath me, in the ground; the Earth had swallowed my heart.
Now I was heartless and I took to roaming the streets of Dublin with this habit I had developed of deconstructing everything and everyone. It was dangerous: my mind still had power over matter, even if it was in its embryonic form in those days. It still meant that my thoughts would attract dangerous situations and encounters. All of the fears you and your subconscious had inflicted upon me were also going to become ruthlessly real.
* * * *
That summer we held many meetings in the White Lodge to discuss the latest developments in Cassandra’s heartbreak and what it would mean to the Plan. Our main concern was her ability to read through people, through their eyes and straight into the darkest recesses of their psyche. The problem was that now she would not be able to raise their frequency and bring them to a state of elation. On the contrary, she made them tune into their lowest instincts and re-enact all the hurts of their egos. It was happening because Oscar’s subconscious was accusing her of doing just that to him. In their Sacred Union, their minds had become one. Now this one-mind was torn in two.
Oscar blamed Cassandra for making him remember how hurt he had been in the past. The wound was as fresh and deep as the day it had been inflicted. He believed that she was as guilty of his anguish as the real perpetrator. In turn, Cassie felt Oscar’s hatred towards her, and resented it. At the start, she couldn’t bring herself to hate him for what had happened. So she turned her hatred outside, to anyone who happened to cross her path. Her Core was no longer following the frequency of love. This was a big deviation from the Plan, and one that we had to observe without intervening, lest we hamper Cassandra’s evolution. We didn’t want to consider it out loud, but we feared her life was no longer pointing towards immortality. Even worse, we thought her life was in danger.
* * * *
I found out I was pregnant with your child three weeks after I left you. When I put my hand on my tummy, I knew it was a girl and that she looked a lot like me. In actual fact she was still no bigger than a sesame seed and looked more like a tadpole. But my vision told me she would be a mini-me with golden brown hair and big green eyes. She had your passionate, artistic temperament and my grace. She was your child and my forever link to your heart. My hands would often rest on my belly: it felt as if I was touching you.
I wanted to keep my pregnancy a secret for as long as possible, lest you find out. I was still hurt and angry with you. But three days on, I decided that that enlightened souls don’t keep secrets, even in their darkest hour. So I conferenced Maria-Carmen and Lydia to ask for some advice on how I should approach my future as the mother of your child. They didn’t react as I hoped. They congratulated me but it was obvious to me that they were trying their best to mask their concern. I could feel that they were upset and I asked them if this were the case. They simply pointed out that the timing of events couldn’t have been any worse. I slammed the phone down and took it off the hook. My reaction amazed me. An angry, pent-up force inhabited my body and was manifesting itself for the first time. You had betrayed me. I didn’t cry this time. I was finally mad at you.
I took the letters you had written to me over the years out of the music box where I’d been storing them. I held them in my hands as disgust rose from my stomach to my throat. I spat on them. Then I went to the terrace and burned them all. Temporary relief filled my chest, as if something stuck had lifted in me. I retired to my bed where I stayed for the following twenty-four hours. When I woke up, I was refreshed and ready to start a war: Cassandra against the world.
I met Polly and Letizia in town. They suspected something odd going was on. My mood had improved dramatically from the previous day.
“I beg you to promise me you’ve not spoken to Oscar,” Letizia said.
Polly took off her glasses, like she did every time she meant business. “I hope it didn’t dawn on you that you want to take him back...”
“I’m pregnant with Oscar’s child,” I said, “and I need your help.”
Lettie breathed a sigh of relief and came over to hug me. “That’s beautiful, sweetie. As long as you’re not letting him near you...”
Everything was okay. Polly was delighted that even in the face of such an event I had resolved to not let you know. My friends seemed happy at the prospect of becoming ‘aunties.’ They began extolling the virtues of single parenthood, in the case of kids being raised by single mothers, in particular. They didn’t appreciate that the baby was my bridge to you, and the reason for my happiness. I felt that it didn’t make much sense without you. My ‘solo’ life seemed like a joke. The Plan had gone wrong and I had to make it right by myself. My pregnancy had to be the quick fix the Universe had sent me. Life would be bearable and meaningful again. I was getting used to the idea of my new condition. I even started window-shopping for baby clothes. This break from hurt was most necessary.
But it wasn’t to last. A couple of weeks later, I was having lunch in a restaurant with Polly and Matt. A strange, sharp seizure paralyzed my womb with pain of the most excruciating kind. I started to sweat. Then I turned white and fainted. My friends rushed me back home in a taxi. As soon as I got there, I began haemorrhaging profusely. I had miscarried. Our teeny weenie little creature was no more. The bleeding continued for ten days as if my body had to purge itself of every single cell of that tiny baby who was my lifeline to you.
I died inside, along with our child. I couldn’t sleep, eat or talk much for the following month. I was devastated at first. Then I became numb and aboulic. I was a non-entity, someone who barely existed without any real purpose. I understood the tragedy of human existence now that I was suffering. I wanted to die. Or just sleep forever. I had no appetite; I was wasting away like a faded flower.
The activities at the Transformation Centre no longer interested me. I continued to finance them, but that was all. I hid from media attention now that our split had become big news. You and I had once represented the epitome of perfect romantic bliss in the eyes of the world. I couldn’t care less about its opinion of us now. To me, it was as if we had almost never existed as lovers. My past with you was a beautiful dream which now haunted the desert landscape of my life. I don’t know how I survived that time. Perhaps the Masters helped me with their energy. Perhaps the Universe took pity of a fool in love.
As time drove an ever wider, inexorable wedge between us, I became angrier. Anyone would be the victim of my revenge. I had become a hurt-generating machine, just like you. I would read people’s souls and show them the ugly faces of their egos. I was startled by the amount of rage of which I was capable. When I least expected it, this rage would send my kundalini spiralling up my spine and into the centre of my forehead, the seat of imagination. It made me want to strike where it would hurt the most, and spurred me on to touch long-forgotten wounds in people, until I could bring them back to life. I struggled to stop this surge many times, telling myself I could choose analysis over action. I tried to keep my focus on figuring out the reasons why humans choose to hurt their kind, and why they allow others to hurt them. But I reached no conclusions; I had not wanted to be hurt and here I was.
I wasn’t that love-filled, that Light-filled, after all. I, too, was capable of jealousy and lowly feelings just like any other human being. My body was no longer part of the equation of my evolution and was no longer in th
e Plan because my heart was faltering. Not one miracle was left in me or for me, but all that remained was a growing sense of void and isolation. I had been cut out, cut off, left behind, abandoned, rejected, forgotten. How could you have feigned love and affection so well, only to turn your back to me in a second, lured by your compulsive lack of self-love? You shattered my vision with one single act of contempt. Now my mind was set on looking at the world you had created around me with disgust and scorn. I cursed that world.
As a consequence of our violent split, I lost the love for my environment. I saw Dublin in a different light: it was ugly, and as too its inhabitants. Everything and everybody looked dirty, unhealthy, aging, rotting. No signs of beauty and harmony of form were anywhere in sight. Only walking zombies. Even the smiling ones looked stupid, oblivious as they were of such things as choice, improvement and evolution. Blessed by their stupidity, like a drunken spider the city dwellers wove their lives around me. Many different reflections presented but they were all the same; random existences lived out of biological needs gone astray. No seasons, no cycles, no tides. Just a denial of the flow of life that moves us, a contorted version of what humanity was meant to be. Worn out faces, worn out clothes, worn out lives. Alcohol and drugs insinuating their evil way into their skulls, to the high seat that was once the realm of imagination. I was becoming one of them. No one recognised me as Cassandra Morgante anymore. I was a ghost.
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