by Michael Priv
“That’s the key mystery of the universe?” I asked, incredulous. First, it didn’t even make sense. Second, I didn’t get it anyway. Create energy out of what? “How do we create energy by thought? Out of what?” I asked.
“Well, Norman, you tell me. Close your eyes.” I closed my eyes. “Look at Linda in your mind.” I imagined Linda. “Yes, I see her.”
“Out of what did you create that picture of Linda?” “That’s silly. It’s just a memory.”
“You mean you didn’t create it?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay, do you still see Linda?” I nodded. “What’s she wearing?” “A business suit.”
“What color?”
“Dark blue.”
“Turn it pink.” I turned it pink. “Good. See Linda in the pink business suit? That picture is energy. You created it. Out of what? Don’t tell me you remember ever seeing Linda in a pink business suit. This isn’t a memory—not that a memory picture is not created out of the same thought energy.”
“Well, I don’t…” “Okay. Now sprinkle white polka dots on that pink suit and turn Linda’s skin green, except for her nose, which should be large and bright red now with lots of long whiskers like a cat, please.”
Linda giggled.
“Done. Ha-ha-ha, a gremlin!”
“Now hang Linda upside down.”
“And the skirt? Would the skirt stay down or go up? What about the underwear? You didn’t mention the underwear.”
“Norman!” Linda snapped.
“Oh, you had her in a skirt? I get it. You’re right,” I heard Bob’s voice. “Replace that skirt with pink tight-fitting slacks.” “Like skinny jeans?”
“Sure, a pink pair of jeans will do.”
I opened my eyes and stared at Bob. “But that’s just imagination.” I shrugged, no longer sure. “ Imagination, thoughts, memories—same energy. You think, you create. You created Linda wearing pink jeans in your mind. You create always. Nonstop. Obsessively. Everything you’ve got and don’t, everything you are and aren’t, everything you consider good or bad about you, you brought it all into being, you created it all. ALL of it. Good things in life, bad things, successes, failures, love, fear, divorces, injustice, upsets, happiness, misery, accidents, death, pain, pleasure, luck—create, create, create—all by thought.”
I scratched the back of my head, feeling uncomfortable. General Brell noticed. “ Listen and understand what I’m saying. No need to agree or disagree. Just hear me out. ‘Life is a mirror,’ remember, Ernest Holmes?”
I shook my head.
“I remember,” Linda raised her hand. “He was a philosopher, died a long time ago.” “ Yes, Ernest is one of my brightest Assistants.”
“Is he still around? Linda said he died,” I interjected.
“He’s here in this compound. Not as Ernest Holmes, mind you. He died as Ernest Holmes many years ago. And he is now a she. But she is alive and well and is still one of my Assistants. You know how that goes.” Yes, indeed, I knew how that went. “In any case,” Bob continued, “you throw a thought vibration out there, and the universe, which is 100 percent energetic and has absolutely nothing else in it but energy, matches that vibration and throws it back at you. That’s how you create your life. Vibrations always do that, kind of like a tuning fork. You know? You strike a tuning fork and it creates a sound, a vibration. M-m-m-m-m. Another tuning fork in its vicinity will start vibrating all by itself, exactly matching and returning the originally emitted frequency, m-m-m-m-m. See?”
Holy cow. “So, we’re pulling into our lives everything we want?” “ You pull into your life whatever you vibrate—whatever you think.Want or don’t want is irrelevant. You might be really worried about getting something, like a disease or an accident, or loss of a job or some other circumstance in life truly objectionable to you, and so you keep thinking about how much you don’twant it—bam, you got it. You pull in what you think. You trust people, you think how honest they are and people in your life are honest and trustworthy. You love people are you’re surrounded by love. You’re always worried about getting stung by bees, and you get stung by bees. You are worried about paying your bills, and you never have enough money to pay your bills. It’s not what you want, it’s what you keep thinking about, what vibrations you emit. Got it?”
I nodded. “So, if I worry about getting something, I’m going to get it?” “A definite yes on that—in a nutshell. There are also other factors at play. For example, some of your thoughts are contradictory and cancel out each other. Some are unreal and contradict the vibrations of billions of other spirits. For example, uprooting the Empire State Building and turning it upside down will never happen no matter how long you think about it. Other valid factors are how often you think about something and with what emotional intensity. You get it? How much energy do you invest in your energy output? So, there is a bit more to all this.” Bob peered intently into my eyes. “You understand now?”
“Yes, sir… Bob. I get it.” It occurred to me that that ’s how Linda and I find each other in this great universe despite all odds. That was the intention that was King. Linda glanced at me with misty eyes and cradled my hand in both of hers. I guess she had the same thought.
Bob continued, “One’s ability to create and exert control over the process of creation can be improved through a form of spiritual therapy I developed and by drilling, like any other skill. And, of course, creation and un-creation is basically the same process of harnessing energy. Get it?”
Bob turned around and with an open hand made a slight throwing motion at the farthest wall. A ball of crackling electricity about the size of a baseball suddenly materialized in the air and splattered against the wall with a pop. The lightning vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving a gray smudge on the stark whiteness of the wall.
42
“How was your lesson?” I asked Linda a couple of days later. She’d received several lessons by then.
“Wonderful!” Linda ran up to me and hung on my neck, covering my face with kisses. “I feel so wonderful, Picky.” I pressed her body to mine, melting in delight. I felt pretty damn awesome myself. Bob assigned an Assistant to me, a middle-aged bespectacled lady by the name Grace with short brown hair, always dressed in jeans and colored t-shirts. She supervised me through some fun drills.
“Why is Linda getting the lessons and I’m getting drills?” I asked Grace. “Linda is addressing her artificial memory blocks. There is nothing wrong with your memory. Bob just wanted to help you gain a foothold in the basics of being truly you, a thought-based energy unit, a spirit.”
If Bob wanted me to do these drills, I sure as hell wasn’t going to object. The idiotically simple first drill blew my mind. I was supposed to find one hundred similarities and one hundred differences between two identical five-riel Cambodian coins. And let me tell you, it was rough at first to find differences. The damn coins looked exactly alike. Grace kept me at it calmly but insistently. By the time I crested about eighty similarities and differences, I could crank them out ra-ta-tatat. I could’ve kept going even after the hundred. So many tiny nicks and scratches and minute discolorations. What do you know, these two coins were really very, very similar and very, very different at the same time.
Grace congratulated me on completing my first drill and told me to go enjoy the new world. I strolled around the place with my eyes wide open, noticing for the first time the myriad of similarities, differences and peculiarities of things. The world acquired a whole new depth and dimension. I welcomed differences now, as they and they alone, not the similarities, gave texture to the world, making it a rich and interesting place. Like differences between people, for example, all the different appearances, shapes and sizes and different viewpoints. Cool!
The next drill Bob wanted me to do was simply observing people, which I ended up doing for many hours, running occasionally back to the Assistants, yelling, “I got it! I got it! People are all similar but different.” Or, “People
are good. They’re all good people deep down. They all want the same thing, they all want to be happy and make somebody else happy, right?”
“Great,” Grace would reply. “Excellent! Please continue the drill just a little bit longer.” Frustrated, I hung around the dining room, the library and the various promenades, observing people. I even ventured outside and walked around town, mingling with the busy and always happy locals and the rubber-necking tourists. I couldn’t get the point of this drill. People were doing what they did, being what they were—similar and different, and good.
And then it struck me. I loved these people. I loved their similarities and their differences; I loved them all. Tall, short, young, old, fat, skinny, dressed in many different ways, good looking and not so much—I loved them. They were allmy people. I felt unity with all the people in the entire world and beyond. Every single person anywhere was truly one of mypeople, and I was, always had been, and always would be one of theirs.
“Congratulations on completing this drill, Norman,” the Assistant acknowledged my achievement with a look of satisfaction after my ecstatic outpouring subsided to a dull roar. “So, if you feel depressed and alone and find the world to be a cynical and dangerous place where no one has your back, what does that tell you?”
“That I strayed too far off the track?”
“Exactly. First, you’d have to realize that youhave strayed off the track. Not them,not the Republicans or Democrats, not God, not your boss, your parents, or your wife. No. You.That realization is the vital first step. Without it, there is no hope of ever finding the way back. So, what would that first step call for? Give me an idea.”
“I guess I’d stop committing whatever misdeeds, get honest, stop explaining my transgressions away, get my butt on the straight and narrow first, right?”
“You tell me.”
“That rings true to me.”
“Excellent. Yes, get a handle on your responsibility for your own actions. Otherwise, the world around you will continue being a lonely, menacing, and hateful place. You are a thought-based entity, so when you improve, the whole world improves. Okay?”
“Yes, I got it.” “ Good. The subsequent steps will become clear as you progress. Very good then. Ready for the next drill or would you like some time to enjoy your realizations?”
“ No-no, thanks, let’s keep going.” I was eager to learn now. I had already understood that this type of learning couldn’t have been done by instruction. It could only be learned from personal experience and contemplation. What I was learning here was priceless—and timeless.
“All right. See if you could get this exercise done today. Find a quiet space and contemplate the notion of unconditional love.” Unconditional love? That was easy. I already felt love for everybody. Wait, everybody? Like General Roberts? Or Lt. Adams? What about the vicious ignorants, the white supremacists and other fascists, KKK, the pseudo-Christians who hate everything Christ ever tought, Muslim extremists, terrorists? What about robbers, murderers, corrupt politicians, drug pushers, child molesters, ruthless corporate thugs, perverts, rapists, drug dealers? What about con men and swindlers? What about the tyrants, government opportunists murdering the environment, communists? What about the most heinous creatures of them all—slow drivers in the left lane?
I had just thought I loved everybody. That “everybody” turned out to be an amorphous, nonexistent, imaginary, and even hallucinatory entity, kind of like a billion-headed octopus exuding love. It simply didn’t exist. I actually hated billions of people— possibly as much as half of humanity or at least a significant portion.
How did Jesus manage to love everybody?Didn’t he wash some homeless guy’s feet? Didn’t he attend to the thief dying next to him on the cross? Didn’t he make a point of living the life of unconditional love? How did he do it? He knew something I didn’t. Would I have to be a Christian to see it? No, that didn’t ring true at all. Bob never mentioned Christianity or any other religion.
Well, since we, the spirits, are immortal and life is a drama, what if we looked at life from the viewpoint of it being a conflict, like a war or a contest? That could possibly help shed some light on the mystery. We choose sides in a multitude of conflicts, which is a different way of saying that we define ourselves, we hone down an identity, or one is handed to us by the society, mama, papa, or the community, and having put that mask on, we jump onto the battle field swinging. Social acceptance, friends, sex and family, financial success or, at least, some financial security, could all be the prizes we fight for. The conflicts are made-up, and, remarkably, the ideas of winning and losing are also made-up. Why is a surfing bum sleeping on the beach with not a worry in the world and all the sex he can handle is a loser but some obese desk stiff with a huge mortgage, a flat butt and an erectile disfunction is a winner? In any case, if attitudes and actions are skin-deep, then we could potentially see past some of these identities and stop disliking people on the basis of the persona they adopted for this instant in eternity. In a blink of an eye, in fifty or sixty years, they will drop this mask and start wearing a completely different mask. They won’t even remember who they were.
From that viewpoint, we could adopt a tolerant attitude toward the identities people choose and the masks they wear in the theatre of life. Could this be the secret that Jesus knew when he loved all people equally? Could it be that understanding the transient nature of identities, he simply didn’t take himself or anybody else too seriously?
It wasn’t fast and it sure didn’t come easy, but I finally realized there was a higher plane for all of us, the plane of the spirit, where it was possible to love allbeings—love them without necessarily condoning, liking, or even judging their actions. All beings were potentially and basically good, clean and loving but, in our current state, confused. We all managed to screw ourselves up so much that we often didn’t behave like the angels that we truly were. However, potentially and in great many aspects of our lives, we were still angels and acted that way. What was that if not a cosmic realization? A whole new beautiful world opened for me, the world of unconditional love, the world worth living in, the world of confused almost-angels.
Did I suddenly sprout wings and turn into Jesus with not a blemish on my entire being? Of course not. But I did evolve and, most importantly, I found out exactly which way was up. The way up was toward unconditional love, acceptance and understanding. The way down was toward blaming, rejecting, and marginalizing groups of people. Not a small thing by any measure.
The next drill was to find the origin of all the emotions that I considered bad or negative, the opposite side of the emotional spectrum from unconditional love. I was supposed to find the basis and the common denominator of all such negative emotions.
What could it be, the common denominator of all negative emotions? Hate, fear, regret, grief, anger, hopelessness, blame, numbness, anxiety, hostility—on and on. Too complicated, too many variables.
Well, to simplify, if unconditional love occupies the extreme point of the spectrum’s positive side, what would be its opposite? Hate, of course. The love-hate dichotomy. Everybody knows that love and hate are the opposites. I ran back to the Assistant with that.
“We are not talking about love here. The assignment referred to unconditional love, not just love,” Grace reiterated. “Is there a big difference?”
“Let’s see. Would you say you loved French fries?”
“Well, kind of. So?”
“Do you love French fries burnt to a crisp, too? What about unsalted or over-salted? What about undercooked French fries? Do you love McDonald’s French fries the same as those from a good restaurant?”
“Not necessarily, no.”
“So, you don’t love French fries unconditionally then.” “Sorry, but that’s a silly example. I don’t really loveFrench fries at all. What about real love, like love for a woman?” “With the fifty percent divorce rate? That love’s about as far from unconditional as it could possibly get. Love between the
sexes is extremely conditional. The margin of acceptance can be razor-thin. Like, ‘honey, I love you dearly, but you leave that toothpaste uncapped one more time and we’re through forever’ kind of razorthin. Marital love is a wonderful example of how far from unconditional love can be and usually is.”
That didn’t particularly resonate with me regarding Linda, but I did see the point. “Love and hate aren’t a dichotomy,” Grace continued patiently. “Or, rather, it depends on the definition of love. You see, we’d have to define love first. The love that some people feel is not actually love at all but a desire to appease and placate, in itself close to hate. It’s complicated. Sometimes they’re right next to each other. Senselessly in love one minute, ready to strangle each other the next. Think. But safe to say that conditional or not, love and hate are a true dichotomy only in poetry, not in real life.”
I thought. It had always been my deep conviction that thinking was overrated. Now I saw that sometimes, seldom, it had to be done and that was okay.
“ That’s not the point, though,” the Assistant kept on. “Let’s get back to the subject. In the case of hate, would you be able to ask ‘why?’ Why does this person hate that person? Why do I hate cottage cheese? Why do some people hate spiders? Or darkness? Or the color blue? Why? Could you pose such a question regarding hate?”
“Sure. I can always ask why.” I didn’t get the point. “What I mean is, are there deeper causes for hate? Can we dig deeper?”
“I see.” “Keep digging. We’ re interested in the irreducible bottom line of all this. Hate is not the extreme lowest emotional point; it’s an intermediate point that has a deeper root. Got it? Go, find the root. Good luck!”
Right. That was true. Hate couldn’t be the lowest common denominator of all negative emotions, if it could be traced even further down to its deeper roots. So much for the love-hate dichotomy.