Spiritual Living

2009-05-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

The Found Child
(Chapters 1- 13 are below or to the left._

Chapter 14
Phillip’s Philosophy and Seven Strategies for Living Life

“Would you like tea?” Phillip asked. “Let’s see, chai, isn’t it? With soy milk.” Phillip busied himself ordering tea from a young man behind a counter, and I looked around. We were in a coffee house, and we weren’t alone. Other patrons sat at round tables or in groups in soft chairs. Some of the people read books, others worked on laptops, while others chatted in small groups. “You seem surprised,” Phillip said as he handed me a cup of chai tea, steam rising from it like mist from a farm pond.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Did you think spirit world would be so different from the human world?”
“I never expected harp music and streets of gold.” I sighed. “I guess I don’t know what I expected, but not this, a coffee house.”
“Where do you think all those ideas for the coffee houses came from?” he asked playfully. “Life here is created much in the same manner as life on planet Earth, or should I say life on Earth is created much the same as here?”
“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
“That is easy” he said as he smiled. “The chicken, of course.” Phillip took a sip of his own tea, looked over the mug rim directly at me, and then said, “This is a good place to have a conversation. You do that with your friends, have conversations in coffee houses.”
“Yes,” I said, all the while wondering what conversation we were about to have.
“You have questions. I have answers,” Phillip said.
I took a sip of chai. It was exceptionally good, rich, creamy, with just the perfect mix of spices. I took another sip, and then I returned Phillip’s stare over the rim of my mug. “I can ask any question I want and you’ll answer?”
“Of course.”
“All right then, is this a near-death experience?”
“No. It’s a memory.”
“A memory?”
“Yes, a memory. The motorcycle mishap was merely a means of jogging your memory to information you already know. Of course there is more to the mishap than this, some of which we have already discussed and some of which you will soon learn.”
“There must be easier ways of remembering.”
“Oh, for others that is true, but then some people will not remember at all in this lifetime. Plus, as I said, there are a couple other reasons you are to have the MM.”
“The MM? Ah, the motorcycle mishap.” I had to smile at that. I wasn’t so sure in the future I would see the accident . . . the MM quite so cavalierly.
“It’s all memory? Are you telling me that everything I've learned on this journey is something I already knew?”
“Precisely, my dear. Time is created for organizational purposes. Without a need for time, everything is always available to everyone.”
“So everyone knows everything.”
“Precisely.”
“Except we don’t know that we know.”
“Alas,” he sighed. “That is true, at least not until development reaches a level where the mind can comprehend.”
“And remember.”
“And remember,” he said.
“Will I remember any of this when I return to my life?”
Phillip thought for awhile before answering. Finally he said, “Eventually.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“No need to, my dear. You will remember when you remember. Next question.”
It would do no good to keep asking more on the same question. I had learned that much on this journey with Phillip. I would only get more of the same answer. This thought made me smile. I noticed Phillip too was smiling.
“You just gave yourself a gift,” he said.
“A gift?”
“Yes, a gift. You told yourself that if you ask the same question, you are going to receive the same answer.”
“Sort of like if I think the same thoughts today that I had yesterday, I’m going to get the same results.”
He smiled.
“You said gift, not lesson.”
“Yes.” He wrapped long, slender fingers around the oversized tea cup and looked at me carefully before continuing. “Tell me how you feel if I say to you that Earth is a large school and you are there to learn your lessons?”
I thought for awhile before answering, and then I said, “Like I’m still a child who has to learn something when in truth, you’re telling me all I have to do is remember.”
“Precisely,” Phillip said with a smile. “Now tell me how you felt earlier when I said you had just given yourself a gift.”
“That’s easy to answer. I didn’t have to think about it. I felt good about myself. I did learn something, but it came as a gift, not as something I had to work at to learn. All I had to do was what comes naturally to me.” I saw Phillip smile, so I continued to clarify the distinction between the two words and how each made me feel about myself.
“Receiving gifts is fun,” I said. “I like that; it makes me feel loved, like I've done something good and I’m being rewarded. Lessons make me feel like I have to buckle down and work hard and learn nonstop. I feel frustrated, like I did something wrong and have to learn how to do it right.” I leaned forward, closer to Phillip like we were coconspirators. “I like gifts much better,” I whispered as loud as I could like a child telling her best friend a secret she wanted everyone around her to hear.
Phillip winked playfully. “I thought you would. Gifts are more in keeping with the idea of being on an adventure.”
“Is that what human life is, an adventure?”
“Only if you make it so. Sadly many people sincerely believe they are students in a giant school and if they could only learn the lesson they are suppose to get, their lives would be so much better.”
“But that’s not it, is it?”
Phillip merely raised an eyebrow, the dark facets of his eyes danced with light.
“Why are we on Earth? What is the purpose of human life, Phillip?”
He seemed surprised by the question as though the answer were self-evident. “Why for the experience itself, my dear,” he said.
“The experience itself? That’s it?”
“I believe that is quite a lot. Do you not agree the experience itself is enough?”
“Yes, I suppose it is.” I sat back against the plushness of the chair back. We go through all we go through as humans to experience what we experience? Just for the experience itself?”
“Yes.”
“Do we choose what we experience?”
“Why of course,” Phillip said, and then reminded me of one of our first stops on this journey where I witnessed a soul reviewing different lives before entering Earth life. “Each soul chooses the type of life experiences Earth life will provide.”
“If our lives are chosen before we come into Earth, are our lives predestined?”
“No, no. The life is predetermined only in so far as the soul has a predisposition for that type of life. It is the moment-by-moment choices every human makes that determines how the life unfolds. Life evolves, or changes in some way, with every choice.” He took a long sip of his tea, and then continued. “Actually life changes with every thought, but you humans are notoriously poor about keeping track of your thoughts. On the other hand, you eventually understand how you alone are responsible for the choices you make and how these choices have led you to where you are now in your life.
“The life path your soul chose creates a predisposition for certain choices; however, you may at any time make different choices.” I see you are puzzled, so let me give you an example. “Let’s say that your soul chose a life that brings with it a predisposition for an addiction or a predisposition for playing the violin. All the stars and planets will line up perfectly at the moment of your birth to help you become an addict or a violin player. However, the choice to be either is entirely up to the individual. The human may choose to avoid any circumstances that trigger the addiction, or to experience the addiction and heal it or not. The violin player may choose to become a maestro, or may chose to not play the instrument but instead enjoy the music of others. The choices are endless regardless of the predisposition. It is up to the human to make the choices. That is free will.”
“Then the gift is in understanding we have free will regardless of what we choose to experience in this life or how the stars are aligned or whatever our life circumstances are. We are responsible for our own lives.”
“Yes, and what a marvelous gift it is. It is a gift that sets you free.”
“How so?”
“Once you begin to understand you are responsible for your life, you begin to realize you have created your life and at some level—either human or soul—you have agreed to every experience. This realization leads to the understanding that if you have created your life experiences up to now that you have the power to create whatever experiences you want for your future.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Yes. And no.” For awhile Phillip said nothing. I became impatient. “Um, I’m waiting.”
He looked at me as though he had to draw himself back from somewhere. “I was checking to see where you are in Earth time. We need to return you to your body soon. Staying away too long will make it much more difficult to return you fully, and it is our intention to do so. We do not want your human body to deteriorate.” He shook his head as though to clear it, and then he continued. “Now where was I?” Oh yes, certainly you create your life—either purposely or without purpose. It really does not matter if you are creating with awareness or creating willy-nilly. You are creating your life by your choices, which are a product of your thoughts, which are a product of how well you know yourself.
“Certainly you can create from a place of thought alone, and once you are aware of being able to do so, you begin to attract to you those things you want to make your life easier.”
“Parking places, new cars, money.”
“Yes, all of these and more,” Phillip said. “And this is good. You are to have a good life, if this is your choice to do so.”
“Why do I have the feeling it’s only the beginning?”
Phillip smiled. He knew I was starting to awaken a bit. “When you first begin to create from a place of thought, you realize how powerful you are and how magical life is.”
“Then?”
“The magic fades and you begin to receive the opposite of what you are trying to create.”
“The dark night of the soul.”
“Precisely. You may feel you have lost your ability to create the life you want in spite of all your best efforts to be positive and monitor your thoughts, clear any old patterns, and visualize with great emotion and clarity.”
“What’s a girl to do?” I asked trying to lighten the mood a bit. I wasn’t so sure I was ready to hear more of what Phillip had to say. I liked the idea of creating a new car and plenty of money. Maybe I could even uncreate the motorcycle wreck. I knew I was trying to buy time, but Phillip took me seriously and wasn’t flippant like I was being.
“Why, you create from your soul self of course,” he said.
I sat up straight. “From my soul self? We’re back to what we chose to experience before we enter life?”
“Yes and not exactly.”
“Then we can change direction. We can rewrite the script.”
“As I have already explained you have free will to do so.”
“If we have free will and can divert from what we chose before we came into Earth, why then would anyone choose to have any experience other than joyful and fun ones? Why would anyone suffer? Why would I choose to have a motorcycle wreck for heaven’s sake? I like my body just the way it is.”
Phillip smiled his wise old sage’s smile.
“But I don’t KNOW that I KNOW,” I whined. “So why don’t you just tell me.”
“When you make choices from a soul level, you make choices for the healing of your soul and the collective soul.”
“Let me make sure I understand this. From a soul perspective I agreed to have a motorcycle accident so I could heal myself and in doing so I help to heal other people?”
“Yes. This is evolution at its highest order,” Phillip said. “No one lives in a vacuum. Humans are all made of much of the same matter, the same atoms and neutrons that the rest of the universe is made of. Any action you take vibrates throughout the universe and changes everything.
“In your particular case, your prayer has been to help others. The motorcycle accident¬—if you care to call it that although something planned and agreed to is hardly an accident—will help you to do just that.”
“How?”
“There are two factors at work here. One, you have had two women in your family who had motorcar accidents in which they did not live. One was your mother, another an aunt who died before you were born. You have broken that pattern for your family, something you willingly agreed to do.”
“Something my soul agreed to, not something I the human agreed to,” I said stubbornly. Phillip gave me time to think about this for a few minutes. “You know, Phillip, it sort of sounds crazy, and yet it makes sense too. If I thought I could save the younger women in my family from harm, I would take that on, but from a human perspective that sounds crazy, and I certainly would not set out to have a motorcycle accident, er, motorcycle mishap.”
“Nor could you from a human perspective. It just would not work from such a shallow place. It must come from the deeper soul level.”
“How do we know the difference?”
“I do not suppose most do, at lease until after the fact.”
Phillip sat quiet while I thought about what he had said. It all seems so preposterous, and yet it all seemed so right. “Phillip, you said there were a couple reasons for the MM.”
“Yes, well, three actually if you count the energy opening and cleansing that takes place whenever the body goes through a serious trauma. If properly arranged, a serious trauma or illness can make the necessary changes at a cellular level and rearrangements in your DNA that are called for. It is a system shock that allows you to then be taken to new levels of existence.
“So I will better understand life and be able to help myself and more people?”
“Yes, I think you will, plus now you will have the energy of the experience of being injured and spending time in the medical community. You will be able to teach in the medical community, and they will listen to you. They will understand you are coming from a truth and experience.”
“I don’t like the medical community.”
Phillip chuckled. “You may like them even less after your experience, but you will learn from them and you will feel gratitude for them. You will find many good people in the health care community who will be eager to hear what you have to say.”
“What am I to teach them?” As soon as I asked the question I knew Phillip was only going to tell me that was for me to choose, so I smiled and said nothing more for awhile. Finally, I spoke, “There is so much to learn, so much to know. It’s endless.”
“Yes, it is endless,” Phillip said.
“Do you know everything?”
“Me? On my goodness no. I learn as you learn. You see you help me as much as I help you. That is our purpose for one another.”
“Does everyone have a spirit guide like you?”
“Why yes, dear.”
“And angels and teachers and loved ones and that whole entourage thing we talked about earlier.”
“That whole entourage thing we talked about earlier. No one is alone. As humans you need to believe there are those who do watch over you, who do care about you, and who are helping to create the magic in your lives and helping you through the tough times.”
“Some people call that God.”
“Yes, and others use other names. The name is less important than the relationship.”
“We need something greater than ourselves to believe in.”
“Most definitely. You need a personal relationship with something greater than your human self, to be fully aware of your own greatness. You are powerful beyond imagination if you align yourself with the powers of the universe. Heaven and Earth move to give you every desire. You only need to express that desire.”
“And get out of our own way.”
“Yes.”
“And if we express our desire from our deepest self, from our soul self, then everything we can dream of is ours.”
“More than you can imagine.”
“Let me make sure I understand all this. As a soul we choose our experiences, but free will allows us to change our mind and experience anything we want.”
“So far you are correct.”
“If we make choices that allow us to have the experiences our soul ask of us then we will have all we want and be happy.”
“You will certainly have all you need, if not all you want, and you will know a profound contentment and deep joy, both of which are much greater than happiness. Happiness tends to be situational, whereas contentment and joy are everlasting and permeate all areas of your life.”
“Sounds heavenly.”
Phillip smiled. “Heaven on Earth, shall we say?” He studied me for several minutes, leaning back in his chair and looking at me down the long length of his rather large nose. “You doubt what I say?”
“It’s not that I doubt you, Phillip,” I said with hesitation. “It’s that I’m still trying to make sense of it all.”
He pulled closer, crossed his long, thin legs one over the other. He cupped his chin in his hand and rested his arm on his one knee. “Go on.”
“On one hand I understand everything you are saying and certainly want it to be true. That would be the part that I can have everything I want.”
“Everything you need.”
“Everything I need. Maybe that’s where I’m getting caught. I see so much inequity in the world. Certainly no one wants pain, but why would anyone need pain? It’s hard for me to accept that even from a soul level we would choose a life of pain. Why doesn’t everyone choose to be a millionaire and live a life of luxury and ease?”
“Is that the type of life everyone wants?”
“No, but a lot of people do.”
“Then a lot of people shall have that life if it suits them to do so.”
“But what about the people who want that type of life and never seem to be able to have it? What about the people who are always struggling with money?”
“They may have to give up the struggle.”
“They may be working against themselves?”
“They may and then again, they may not.” Phillip smiled at me before continuing. “They may not yet have reached the consciousness of millionairness, which is a prerequisite. Consciousness comes before manifestation.”
“It’s like what you told me earlier about the MM, that I’d have the energy of the experience and having the experience gives me the consciousness of it?”
“Precisely.”
“But how can you have the consciousness of millioinaireness if you’re never around millionaires and you are striving just to put food on the table for your kids.?”
“Perhaps they may never gain the consciousness of great sums of money in this life. Perhaps they do not actually want the responsibility of that energy. After all, ever consciousness does carry a responsibility with it.”
Phillip drifted away momentarily, and then he said, “My dear, I know you have more questions, but for now we must conclude our conversation and allow you to return fully your body. First though, I want to give you seven strategies for living.
• Every choice you make reverberates throughout your life and throughout the universe; therefore, it behooves you to make the wisest choices you are capable of in each moment.
• You came to Earth to receive the gifts life brings. Receive them. You have every right to a full and joy filled life. Claim it; live it.
• You have no control over another person nor does another person have control over you. Nor do you have control over life. You are, however, in charge of your life and how you act and react within the experiences given to you.
• While you were in spirit world, you raised your hand and asked to be allowed to come experience Earth life. It is a privilege and honor. Treat your life as such. You may have forgotten to read the small print that warned you life can feel harsh at times. However, even when life feels at its hardest you can still find joy if you look for it.
• You have an entire universe seeking to help you achieve that which you desire. It is your responsibility to seek within to figure out what you desire, and then ask for it, wait for the answers, and take the action required.
• Live in gratitude for it is in giving the thanks that that which you wish for comes to you.
• You have come to Earth to experience the experience. You are the one having the experience, not the experience itself. Experience the emotion of the experience, but do not get caught up in neither the experience nor the emotion. Just experience all whether the experience brings joy, sadness, happiness, grief, sweetness, fear, hate or another emotion. Experience all emotion as just that—emotion, except for love. This alone is true.”
“Remember these seven strategies for living,” Phillip said, “and all will be well . . .” His voice trailed off, and he too began to fade. I blinked my eyes, and then grabbed hold of the table to steady me, but it did no good. “Phillip,” I cried. “Phillip.” I have so many questions. I can’t leave you yet. Too many questions. I can’t leave. Why is there war? Why is there illness? Why do we suffer? What is happening in the world today? Why is there so much turmoil in the world? How will life change after 2012?” A siren screamed inside my head. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with heat and oppressiveness. I couldn’t open my eyes. The light was no longer ethereal. Instead it was harsh and blindingly bright. “Phillip. Phillip,” I whispered to myself.” My heart hurt with more heaviness than I had ever known, a heaviness I couldn’t imagine any human heart could bear.
“I am here,” Phillip said, a voice within my head. I felt the energy of him, felt his presence within me and yet as an entity separate from me. I could access him though my inner world, and like others in my outer world, he was his own being. And he was just as real. “Phillip, are you really here?” I asked within my own thought.
“Of course.”
Sharp pain sliced through my shoulder. I heard someone scream. It was a terrible scream, like an injured animal lost in the woods.
“Are you with me, Diana? Stay with me, Diana. Stay with me.”
I heard someone talking to me. I didn’t know who it was. I only knew it wasn’t Phillip. “Phillip, are you here?”
“I’m here.”
“I want to be with you.”
“Not yet. You have things to complete on Earth.”
“Phillip?”
“Yes.”
“Why do we die?”
“To experience,” Phillip said.
“Diana, can you hear me. Stay with me, Diana,” I heard the voice say. “Do you know what happened to you?”
I didn’t want to listen to that voice. I wanted to listen to Phillip, but something kept pulling at me. Someone kept pushing at me. Then I heard someone scream again. An awful, searing pain that cut my body in half, and I knew I was the one screaming.

2009-03-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

The Found Child

Chapter 13
Jeremy

Chapters 1 - 12 are below

“I suppose it would be wise to prepare you a bit first,” Phillip said more to himself than to me, although I knew he was talking to me, and I must admit I was shaken by his words and wondering what else could possibly happen that I needed to be prepared for. I never would have guessed.
“When a human dies,” he began, and I felt a shiver run up my spine. “There are different ways of making the transition into the spirit world. A soul may make an easy and quick transition. This occurs when the human is ready to let go of life and be welcomed into this new passage. People who are highly developed spiritually experience this transition. People, regardless of age, who have had long illnesses and have had time to prepare are usually in this category, as are people who have lived a long and productive life and are ready for their next experience.
I thought of my beloved grandmother who took years of illness to prepare. From my perspective, it was horrible to see someone once so vibrant ragged with poor health. “Phillip, are you saying that we stay alive because we are preparing for death?”
“Yes, my dear,” he said patiently. “However, that is not the full story. As a human, you are given different times within a lifetime that you may transition. As a person nears the end of a long life, or a prolonged illness, they may realize all that they have not completed in this life experience that they had chosen to complete when they agreed to come into body. Or, a person may be so full of fear of death that they cling to life. A third reason is that the ill person is allowing others to come to terms with their death. That’s a sacrifice some are willing to make. A prolonged illness before transitioning allows the human to work with guides, angels, teachers, and the whole of their team who will aid with the transition from human life to spirit life. The time in illness also allows the human to become familiar with the new energy, which alleviates any fear of the passage. Often, during the illness, the soul prepares itself to communicate with humans still in this plane, so when the passage is complete, the communication begins to take place almost immediately.
“Can everyone communicate with people who pass over?”
“Certainly, but not everyone does. There are those, such as yourself, who are naturally sensitive to the energy of different planes. For people less sensitive to the energy, all it takes is love, desire, and release.”
“Release?”
“Yes, release of the person they love. Often humans hold loved ones to this plane through emotion.”
“Do you mean we hold someone we love here through our grief?”
“That is possible, but also anger or fear are strong holds. A natural grief that wanes with time is healthy and allows for healing of the grieving person without causing harm to the one who has transitioned. It is an unhealthy grief that holds a soul to the Earth plane.”
“How do we know the difference?”
“Ah, my dear, that’s simple. If a grieving person can still add laughter to the world; if a grieving person can still find joy in their life, even while missing the person who has left, then grief does not hold the soul behind. If, however, the grief is mixed with unfinished business, or the ones left behind cannot grow in their own lives, then the grief holds both of them hostage in this plane.”
“What happens to the person who died? Do they not make their transition?”
“Eventually they do. It just makes it harder for them and takes longer.” Phillip smiled and added, “But of course as you know, there is no time in spirit world, so it does not matter how much time it takes.”
“Are these people what we call ghosts?”
Phillip looked at me seriously. “Some are, some are not,” he said. “There are other reasons someone does not make an immediate transition. A ghost, as you call these souls, is someone who just has not yet made a successful transition.”
“We hold them here because we are afraid if we let go they will be gone from us forever.”
“Yes, but you know that it is not true.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “It seems easier to communicate with people after they have made a transition. It’s like I see their spirit, not their human self, and yet they can tell me things about their human life.”
“You have stated it quite well. To communicate with a human who has not fully made the transition, a ghost if you will, is communicating with the human energy. Once the transition is complete, that human energy is transmuted into spirit form. The sprit form can remember all life experiences, and communicate with those of you still in human body while they also continue their journey in spirit form.”
“I think I’m getting it,” I said. “It’s really all so complicated.”
Phillip rocked back on his heels. His white robe fluttered as he did so. He folded his hands into themselves before him, and took a second or two before continuing. “There are many levels of existence that we will not touch on,” he said. “It is much more complicated than you can imagine, or perhaps that even I can imagine. Existence is infinite.”
“I can’t comprehend infinite.”
He merely smiled at me as though indulging a child. “Well, there are things you can comprehend. Shall we continue?
“A second way to transition is when a life ends abruptly. Often people in this category make a quick and easy transition, but there are others who do not yet realize they no longer have use of their physical bodies. For these people the transition may take longer and be a bit more difficult.”
“Jeremy’s in this category,” Davey spoke up.
“Yes, yes, he is,” Phillip agreed. “Let me continue now.” He looked at Davey who was not at all phased by Phillip’s gentle reprimand.
“These souls are still held to the earth plane, because they may be unaware they no longer have use of their bodies, or because they left so quickly they have unfinished business that continues to hold them. The purpose of ritual, such as prayer, is to help these souls move into the next dimension of their existence.”
“We’ve lost those elaborate rituals in our culture, rituals like the ancient Egyptians had,” I said.
“Current cultures on Earth still follow many of the ancient rituals. The Tibetans, Hindus, even some of the Native American nations within the country of your birth. In some cultures, it is necessary for the dying person to have others around and to stay with the body for some time after the body dies to give the soul time to adjust. For other cultures the dying person goes into nature after saying good by. The community is part of the person’s transition through ritual, chanting, prayer, and such.”
“What happens if the person is alone?”
“Are you wondering of your mother?”
I nodded. Phillip brushed his arm across my vision, and I saw the accident that had taken my mother’s life. She rose above the car, as did two friends of hers. Their bodies stayed strapped in the car. Then I saw their angels and guides come to greet them. I saw my grandparents and other relatives I had only known through family stories. They greeted Mother, and she them, with warmth and joy. She had no fear. She didn’t even look back. Gracefully she went with them as a child goes with a trusted parent. I had to shield my eyes against the brightness of the light they all became, and then they were gone. I felt none of the grief I did when Mother died. Here I felt the rightness and beauty. Here in this space I felt the joy of her ecstasy.
Angels and spirit folk surrounded Mother’s husband, who sat slumped behind the wheel of the car. I felt his fear like a black pitchfork, each tine twisting deeper into my heart. “He doesn’t see them,” I said. “He doesn’t see his angels.”
“Not yet,” Phillip said.
“Will he see them when it comes time for his transition?” I asked Phillip. “You know, Phillip. You know don’t you?”
“Yes,” Phillip said gently.
My stomach tightened, gutting itself against what I might hear. Still I had to ask. “What happened to him? What happens to people who do what he did?”
“You mean people who take their own human life?” Phillip cast his eyes down and waited for a second or two before answering. When he did speak, his voice was serious, lowered, and he spoke in a monotone. “Let there be no mistake,” he said. “The human has free will and can make the choice to end the human existence at any time. However, doing so keeps the energy trapped in the place of suffering. It takes the good will and prayers of others to help release the person from that suffering. Of course their guides and angels are always helping them, so eventually they will be able to move on.
“Was he able to move on?”
Again Phillip swept his arm across my vision. Mother sat beside her husband on a white wrought iron bench aside a pond overflowing with reflections of red maples and lime green-leafed oak trees and purple fields of flowering lavender. Two swans floated by so quietly they barely rippled the reflected trees.
“How? Why?” I couldn’t complete my thoughts? What was I expecting? To see him in misery? Is that really what I wanted to see? No, I had long ago forgiven him for the harm he caused my family. What really puzzled me was that mother apparently had.
“Does she know he remarried?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know how much he took from our family? He and his children. They even pawned my grandmother’s wedding ring. We had to buy our own things that were at Mother’s house.” I though of my brother David’s Boy Scout outfit and my dance costumes, of games we played as children. “At the time the things seemed so important. After awhile none of it mattered. I think I was holding onto the things as a way to hold onto Mother.”
“That is common of many humans,” Phillip said.
“Does she, does she know how he died? Does she know what he did? I didn’t even know he had a gun. He must have been so desperate.”
“Yes, she knows,” Phillip said. “It surprises you that she forgave him?”
“This means she’s not angry. She loves him. That’s good, isn’t it, Phillip?”
“Yes, it is good. You helped,” Phillip said gently.
“I don’t understand.”
“Think, think.”
“I spent a lot of time and energy after the accident trying to reconcile why he treated our family so cruelly when we had been so kind to him. Finally I gave up. It seemed useless to try to understand another person’s craziness.” I looked over at Mother and her husband on the bench by the still pond, felt the love between them. It warmed me.
“This is why they are together,” Phillip said.
“I don’t understand.”
“It seems to me you forgave him.”
“It was self preservation to do so. I couldn’t live with all that grief.”
“Perhaps. Consider the possibilities that in your forgiveness, greater miracles came into being.”
“Ah, that connection thing.”
Phillip smiled, the proud teacher. “Yes. Every emotion is quite real. The forgiveness—that incidentally you worked very hard to achieve and we acknowledge the difficulty for you-—is something tangible that others can grab hold of so to speak and use to help them achieve forgiveness. The more love you have for a person, the easier it is for them to ride on the current of forgiveness you transmute.
“Your mother had her own wave of forgiveness going as well, so you rode her wave. The love you had for one another only made the connection stronger and the forgiveness easier, just as her love for him helped her, and that wave helped him recover. Eventually you realize there is nothing to forgive. Life is unfolding on a larger scale than the human mind can understand. Everyone is playing a divine role in a divine play.”
“They were simple playing the parts they chose. Now she can live in eternity with him.”
“Or until she chooses to return to this life.”
“What if in spirit world one of them wants to go elsewhere, other than sitting on this bench.”
“The energy simply bifurcates.”
“Bifor . . . what?”
Phillip laughed. “The energy splits. The energy of one soul can be in more than one place at a time.”
“That’s what happened to Jeremy,” Davey piped up.
“Yes, in a way, but in cases like Jeremy it is a bit different,” Phillip said.
“I don’t understand, Phillip.”
“Jeremy’s energy split, part of him reaching for life, part of him caught in the human condition.”
“I’m even more confused, Phillip.”
“Here, let me show you.” Before he had finished breathing the last word, a horrible red din covered my vision and clawed at my eardrums. Suddenly blasting into me was a horrid clamor of wind whipping, people shouting in a tumultuous uproar, and the retching violence of the rat-a-tat-tat of guns. I slammed my eyes shut and covered my ears with my hands. It did no good.
Helicopters flew overhead. Two wide ballooning streams of white billowed smoke in sharp contrast to the rotor racket. I watched in horror as agent orange fell over and into the ground. Before my eyes a plush, dense jungle shriveled into a graveyard of skeletal fingers of withered trees and dried up mud-caked earth. Where rice and vegetables once grew, thin Vietnamese people grasped together, holding onto one another as they ran from American soldiers, their backs and waists heavy with war supplies and their mission’s burden.
“Why are we here?” I shouted to Phillip. “I was against the war!”
As quickly as the noise began, it stopped, replaced by an eerie silence. I looked away from Phillip, toward the dead jungle. My heart clutched at itself. Jeremy. In the midst of the ravaged land he knelt, a man without a weapon, a medic, a CO, a conscientious objector, often despised by both soldiers who carried guns and pacifists who migrated to Canada or accepted prison terms rather than go to Vietnam. Jeremy. My beautiful Jeremy. I started to go to him. Phillip held me back.
“Jeremy is still caught in the war,” Phillip said.
“He doesn’t know he’s dead,” Davey said.
“That is only partially true, Davey,” Phillip hastened to add.
“I need to go to him. I need to touch him? Jeremy. Jeremy. My beautiful Jeremy. We never said good by.”
“No!” Davey said. “Hold my hand.”
I thought Davey was afraid, that he didn’t understand what was happening, so I held his hand, but it was I who didn’t understand.
“Tell her, Phillip. Tell her, so she sees me,” Davey said.
“I see you, Davey,” I said. “I’m right here. I’ve got your hand.” I thought I was comforting the child. Instead I made him more agitated.
“She doesn’t see! She doesn’t see. You got to make her see.”
“Of course, Davey. We will. There is no need to be upset. Please calm yourself.”
“Would someone please tell me what’s going on,” I shouted. Tears poured out of me. So much I longed to hold Jeremy again as we had in our youth. I tried to reach out, but could not move. Davey’s hand hung heavy in mine.
Jeremy leaned low over a fallen soilder as though to hear the man’s dying whispers. Then Jeremy lifted his head, looked around, and for a moment looked right at me.
“He cannot see us,” Phillip said. “He cannot see on this side of the veil. That is one of the idiosyncrasies of his situation.”
“He looked right at us, Phillip. He can see us. I know he can. I feel it.”
“See with his eyes? No. See with his heart? Yes. That is what you are experiencing. He will not be able to see with his eyes until he fully crosses over.”
“Then he does know we’re here.”
“He senses your presence. Yes. It comforts him for what he is about to experience.”
“Oh, Phillip, no. No! Can’t we stop it. Isn’t there something we can do. If time is not linear, if there is no time, if everything is happening at once, surely we can stop it. Surely we can.” Phillip shock his head, slowly, but definitely. I turned toward Phillip, away from Jeremy, for the slightest of seconds. A white blast came from behind and echoed across my vision. Abruptly I spun back around. My scream was silent, reverberating across the chambers of my heart.
Jeremy stumble from the weight of the man he was carrying, the man he had been kneeling over and attending to. Jeremy’s helmet was missing, and I saw the flaxen-haired youth I knew so well, the boy I grew up with. “I loved him my whole life,” I said. “I don’t remember not knowing him. He was my brother’s best friend.”
“We played together as boys,” little Davey said, and it was the most natural thing in the world to hear. “David wasn’t only your brother. He was mine too.”
“When Jeremy’s body died on the battlefield,” Phillip explained, “his spirit split. Part of him stayed here, locked in an eternal battle. Part of him sought life, rebirth.”
“I had to find you,” Davey said, his voice no longer that of a child. “I took your brother’s name. I thought that would help you recognize me. I even found birth parents near where you had moved to.”
My thoughts tumbled over one another, each fumbling against the other, all rushing to go somewhere, where? I knew not. I looked away. From Davey. From Jeremy. I couldn’t face the grief. I closed my eyes and buried my head into my hands. “Jeremy, oh Jeremy. You didn’t have to go.”
“Yes, I do,” he said, his deep blue eyes solemn just as I remember they were on that day so many years before. “We graduate in a few months. I’m going to get drafted anyway. I should have listened to you, gone into teaching.”
“The country needs teachers more than soldiers.”
“Sure they do,” Jeremy said with a smile. He lifted my chin and held my face in his hands. “It’s the right thing to do. I already talked to a counselor. You know Quakers qualify as COs. I won’t have to carry a gum, won’t hurt anyone, but I can help. I can help, Diana. I know I can. If every soldier in every country put down their guns there’d be no more war. That’s what I want for our kids. No more war.”
I didn’t stop crying after he left. The joy was gone from my life. Jeremy was gone from my life. I knew I would never see him again. When the news came, when his parents came to tell me, I finally stopped crying. Their words only confirmed what I already knew. I was beyond crying. I was numb. I rarely cried ever again. Perhaps we only get so many tears in a lifetime, and I had spent mine. I was just plain cried out.
I pulled myself back from the memories. I took one long breath, and crossed my arms over one another. I looked at Phillip and Davey with a fierce determination. “You brought me here for a reason.” From what you’ve said I gather it’s to help Jeremy, to unite the parts of him left here with the part of him that is Davey.” I softened and knelt down to Davey’s eye level. “Sweet Boy, I will find you and we will be friends. I promise.”
Davey looked away, looked at Phillip who looked at me. “That is not quite possible,” Phillip said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m dead,” Davey said.
“There is a consequence to the energy splitting and a soul jumping back into rebirth too soon, especially when part of the soul is still trapped,” Phillip said. “In Jeremy’s case, his energy carried the toxin of agent orange.”
I don’t know what else Phillip said. I could no longer hear. All I could do was look at Davey in disbelief. This beautiful, sweet child was dead of a chemical that poisoned his body, no, that poisoned his energy when he was in a different body in a different time and place. “Why is life so horrid and hard?”
“Is it?” Phillip asked.
“Yes. Look at what this beautiful child went through. And his parents. What they must have gone through. The horror of loosing their child. I can’t imagine.”
Patiently, but without emotion, Phillip said,” They agreed to be Davey’s parents at soul level.”
“Did they agree to such suffering? To lose a child?”
“Suffering is the human’s choice, not the soul’s.”
“How do we not suffer?” I put my hand up begging Phillip to not answer. I thought I knew what he would say and I just couldn’t bare to hear how humans create their own suffering. I was wrong.
Compassionately and with deep caring, Phillip simply said, “That is why you have a spirit.”
“I can’t do this,” I moaned.
“Can’t do what?” Phillip asked, his voice soft and comforting.
I swept my arms around. “Heal all this. Jeremey. Davey.”
“You mean you cannot heal your own life,” Phillip said as a statement, not a question. He waited until I stopped crying, waited until I pulled myself together, waited until I spoke.
“What do you mean ‘heal my own life’?”
Jeremy and Davey are part of you, part of your life. Healing your life is healing their lives; healing their lives is healing your life.”
“That energetic thing again,” I said and smiled weakly.
“That energetic connection thing again,” Phillip repeated and smiled with a strength that pulled me up and helped me stand straight and strong. “As you heal, you help all beings heal. This is especially strong with bonded soul mate connections.
I sighed. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
“Of course you do, “Phillip said.
“The free will thing.”
“Yes.”
“If I do this will it change anything in the world? Will it stop wars or keep children from dying? Will it take away all the sadness?”
Phillip lowered his head. He placed one hand on my shoulder. “Diana, every thought that a human has changes the world.”
“Just not overnight.”
“Would you want it to? Would you want every thought you have to make changes in the world, or in your life, instantaneously?”
I had to smile at the thought of that. “No.”
“Of course not. Some changes take hundreds, or even thousands of years, but do not question the power of each thought.
“Phillip, if thoughts can heal, they can also destroy.”
“Yes.”
“That responsibility thing again about being careful what we think about.”
Phillip smiled. “Yes,” he said. “One thought bonds itself to a thought of like energy, which in turn bonds itself to another thought with like energy. Emotion, which propels thought into movement, increases as thoughts bond together.”
“Thoughts can create war or peace,” I said. “The more people think about war or famine or other sorrows, the more these occur.”
“Yes. The same is true for healing.”
“The more we think about taking care of Earth and each other, the greater everyone’s life is.”
“Yes. It all begins with one person’s one thought.”
“And grows from there,” I said. “That’s really amazing when you think about it.”
“Existence is rather amazing, is it not?” Phillip said.
“Okay,” I said determined. “What do I have to do?”
“It’s easy,” Davey piped up. “You just have to love.”
I looked at this small child. “Such wisdom you have.”
Suddenly everything began swirling. I held tight to Davey’s hand, but the force of movement pulled him from me. About the time I thought I was going to pass out, the world came to a stop. I was back on the battlefield where I had seen Jeremy, but I was alone. My feet burned from the hot earth, and a stench of rotting flesh assaulted me. The putrid air stung my eyes. I wiped away tears that burned like molten metal. Then I saw Jeremy. This time he saw me too.
“Diana!” Bewildered and stunned, Jeremy looked around him, at the destruction of war, at me.
Bile rose in my throat. My stomach churned. Tears poured forth from my heart into my eyes. How could I let this man go? How could I leave him here? ”Jeremy, I still love you so.” Love, that’s what Davey had said. That’s all I had to remember. Love.
“You can see me?”
“Yes, Jeremy, I see you.”
He looked down at the man in his arms, looked at the sky lit with exploding bombs, looked at the scorched earth. “Why are you here? How did you get here?”
I was rooted to where I stood. Although Jeremy and I could see each other across time and space as clearly as I could see someone next to me in normal space and time, we could not touch one another. We were not solid as flesh, but holograms.
With gentle caring, Jeremy laid down the man he had been carrying, who then melted into the earth, leaving Jeremy standing alone. “Are you an angel?” he asked me.
“No, Jeremy. It’s really me, Diana.”
“Diana. It’s really you?”
“Yes.”
We saw one another through the eyes of love’s bond, a union not diminished by separation of time or space, and I began to suspect, not even by death. I saw Davey then, standing behind Jeremy, on the horizon where the sky met the battlefield. “I've come to help you move on, Jeremy,” I whispered.
He listened, his blue eyes already intense, darkened. “I died here, didn’t I?”
I nodded, waited for my throat to release words caught there.
“You’re so beautiful,” Jeremy said, and love flooded over me. It was then I knew what to say. The grace and elegance of the words and my tone surprise me, and yet this felt the most normal of all conservations.
“Do you see the light, Jeremy?” His face glowed golden with its radiance. “That is the path you are to follow now. Leave the battlefield behind. Go into the light and be welcomed by Love. So many wait for you, angels, guides, so many friends. Your mother is waiting. They all love you, Jeremy, and are here to greet you.”
He turned toward the light.” It’s really something,” he said. He took a few steps, and then turned back toward me. “Are you coming with me?”
I shock my head. “Not just yet,” I said.
“You’ll come soon?”
“Soon. Yes.”
And then he was gone. I felt neither sorrow nor gladness, but a sense of this was right, and in an odd sense that I couldn’t explain, I felt closer to Jeremy and more love for him that ever. I stood content, rested in that deep peace that comes in mystical moments when the world shimmers and the stars are all aligned and everything is in its perfect place. I stood content, and it was enough.
“Jeremy has moved on,” Phillip said, breaking my profound silence.
I breathed and nodded.
“Davey is at rest now as well. He will be able to move on.”
“Will I ever see either of them again?”
“Why of course you will,” Phillip said. He smiled a deep, knowing smile and the dark facets of his eyes sparkled with the mischievousness of a secret he was about to reveal. He swept his white-robed-dressed-arm across the heavens and the world lit up with a blinding blue-bright white light.
“Oh my gosh,” I stammered as the light lessened and I saw Jeremy and I standing in the light. “Then I did go with him?”
“Yes. And no,” Phillip said, then swept his arm once more and I saw Jeremy and I sitting down to a dinner table. We were not young children, but full grown adults who looked much the age I look today. A door opened somewhere and I heard young children scrambling and calls of, “Grandma! Grandpa!”
“Sorry we’re late,” a beautiful and pregnant blond haired, blue eyed woman said. The children—all three of them—crawled onto Jeremy’s lap. I recognized one of the children, the oldest child who about seven, maybe seven-and-three-quarters. It was Davey.
“Phillip, I don’t understand.”
“Why, my dear, I think you do.”
“Did our souls split?”
“Split? No. Think again. You know what you are seeing. You even wrote about it in another book we gave you.”
“New Grange.”
Phillip nodded, and I saw myself in the experience of New Grange, the Irish Stonehenge, and I heard the words from my book 23 Days A Celtic Journey.
I lean against a stone,
It melts into me or I into it
As it transports me to another time, another place,
I stand back,
See myself against the rock fully engaged,
At the same time,
At the same time,
I am in my office, sacred dances’ music takes me into trance
Two months ago,
And still there is more
As I watch all this unfolding,
These simultaneous lives of which I am each one,
Of which I am each one.
On this lawn at New Grange . . .
“And with each breath the world does change,/ Yet it changes not at all,” I said. “TI saw seven lives there in new Grange. Am I now witnessing other lives Jeremy and I lived together?” I asked Phillip.
“Live, not lived,” Phillip said emphasizing the present form of live. “You have experienced simultaneous lives lived in different Earth time frames. Now you are witnessing different lives lived within the same time frame.
“You see, my dear, every choice you make leads to a different circumstance. When the human feels strongly about two choices, then the soul creates both lives for that human. When you released Jeremy, it allowed you to go with him to be in Spirit World together, as well as return to the life you know.”
“The one where I lose the bike in gravel in a curve?”
“Ah, yes, that little incident.”
“So I really am still alive and will return to Earth.”
“Certainly as long as you chose to do so.”
“The Diana and Jeremy who are Davey’s grandparents?”
“You want to know how you can be there and here at the same time, and you want to know if that Davey is whole. First, yes, Davey is whole now and able to live a long life thanks to the work you just completed with Jeremy here in the field.”
“How did that life—the one where Jeremy and I are together and Davey is our grandson—how did that life come into being?
Phillip waved his arm and again the scene before me changed. It was the young couple, Jeremy and Diana, on the college campus one sunlit afternoon. “There’re going to try to draft me,” Jeremy said.
“Don’t go, Jeremy. I can’t stand it if you leave me.” He pulled me into him, held my head against his chest, and I smelled the scent of a fresh soap and a summer afternoon.
“There are options,” he whispered.
I pulled away, looked up at him. “Canada?”
“For one, but there are other options too. I’m a Quaker. I qualify as a CO.”
“Jeremy, that’s even worse. They can still send you to Vietnam, only without a gun.”
He laughed and my world lit up. “We’ll find a way, Diana. We’ll find a way. I promise. We’ll be together. We’ll find a way.”
I looked at Phillip, and I understood. “He went to prison, didn’t he? Jeremy went to prison because he resisted the draft.” Phillip didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I knew the answer. “But he got out and we were together, are together,” I corrected myself.
“You are together, yes that is correct,” Phillip said.
“How did we ever live through the time he was in prison? How did he stand that?”
“Your love sustained him. You also sent him energy from the this life you are familiar with. Humans can do that, you know, send energy to their other selves and to those they love in parallel lives.”
“Because we are connected?”
“It’s more than a connection, my dear. You are one. It’s the same Diana, the same Jeremy, just different expressions living different lives, one not aware of the other.”
“It’s all very complicated, Phillip.”
“Yes, difficult for the human mind to comprehend, which is why humans only remember one life at a time except in rare incidents. The soul is vast and mysterious.”
“In this life, the one I live, the one I know, will I ever see them again—Jeremy and Davey?”
“Why, of course. You just need a little patience. Everything always comes back on itself.”
I started to ask Phillip what he meant, but before I had a chance, his red convertible materialized, his Druid robe disappeared, and suddenly he was again the man in the red suspenders. He opened the door and ushered me into the passenger’s seat. “We must get along now,” he said. “There’s much to prepare you for before your return. We want to give you every advantage to heal rapidly from the motorcycle mishap. You have a mission to fulfill.
“Buckle up!” Phillip shouted, and before I had a chance to do so, we were zooming along a paved highway through white cumulus clouds on our way to my destiny.

2009-02-25T12:29:00.001-08:00

Chapters 1-11 are below, or click on the chapter on the left.

Chapter 12
High Teachers and Teachers-in-Training

As soon as I walked through the door, I began tumbling down, down, down, down, down. I thought I would never stop. I much preferred the sensation of flying I experienced coming off the motorcycle, but here I was falling and had nothing to grab hold of. I didn’t like the feeling at all and was soon fearful I would fall forever. My mind was awhirl conjecturing what evil monsters waited for me at the bottom, if there was a bottom?
Eventually I realized the only way I would stop falling was to stop being afraid. That took some doing. I tried deep breathing. It didn’t work. I tried clearing my mind. It didn’t work. I called out to Phillip, but he didn’t answer, not even inside my head. I screamed for help, but no one answered. Finally, I surrendered to the fear and let it penetrate me. It pulsated all the way to the core of me. And then it left, and I landed.
It wasn’t a hard landing, but neither was it gentle. If I had a body to experience pain, I’d been rubbing my bottom about then, but all I felt was a hard bump. I was in a large hall where my voice echoed back at me as I called out. I saw no one, yet I had the sense of being watched. For a moment I thought I heard Davey. It seemed so long ago when I found that little boy at the end of the lane, and yet it felt like it was only a minute ago. “Davey! Davey! I called, but again the only answer was my own voice echoing back at me. “Davey! Davey!” Still I felt his presence, He was trying to tell me something, to remind me of something I was suppose to know, but I couldn’t remember.
“Hello!”
“Hello!”
“Is anyone there?”
“Is anyone there?”
Yelling at myself seemed rather useless, so I did eventually stop and began to listen as well as look around. At first the walls looked solid, but as I continued to stare at them, I noticed they quiver as though subtle pulses of energy moved through them. The walls looked white, but the longer I focused on them, the more I saw color, subtle hues of whites and creams, tans and beiges, white with ever so slight a yellow tone, and then white with a slight a bluish tone. And then there seemed to be no walls at all. I was simply staring into space, an endless, forever space.
Transfixed, I stood motionless, quiet, and out of the silence I began to hear a hum. As I listened, the hum grew louder and higher in pitch, the tone changing in rhythm to the shifting hues and vibrations of the walls. Excitement pulsated through me, while at the same time I was in a meditative state of profound contentment. I was in the dream state that comes right before and after sleep, and I was also wide awake and alert.
Without warning, out of nowhere a red tail hawk dive-bombed. I ducked. As I did so, he disappeared, and I felt a ripple throughout my body. A black panther roared toward me. I spun around to run, but there no where to go. I didn’t have time to think about whether I could or could not die in this dimension, about whether I could lose my body. Did I even have a body here, or was the body I felt only my imagination? Suddenly the panther was on top of me. I felt her breath, hot and intense. Then she vanished into me, and I felt another ripple run though me. Grey wolf rushed at me next. Teeth snarling, ferocious-snapping yellow eyes, she too transitioned into me, and I felt a third ripple slithered throughout my being.
I turned around, watching for what was coming next. Off to one side there was a deer and her fawn all speckled with young life. As I watched them watching me, they came closer. Our eyes met and I felt the gentleness of this grand creature penetrate me at a cellular level. I began to understand then. These animals were teachers, giving to me the energy they carried in the world, and the energy I could for use in my life.
Deer gave me gentleness. Her fawn came closer, curious about this creature I am, and I learned the wonder of new adventure.
Overheard I heard the voice of Red Tail Hawk again. “Pay attention! Pay attention!” he cried.
Wolf howled, and the air around me vibrated and moved into and through me. “Thank you Great Teacher,” I whispered. I heard her howl in response and knew she gave me the energy of freedom regardless of what circumstances I might find myself in.
Then came the pounding roar of Black Panther. Her power was frightening. I began to retreat in fear. Her roaring increased, and then I saw her stalking toward me, one paw crossing in front of the other as she moved one step at a time closer, closer, closer. She could devour me. She would devour me unless, unless I accepted her power—my power. I stood my ground, faced her with my shoulders held high. She roared and the earth shook. Lifting one long-clawed paw she swiped it against my face, digging deep into my flesh. I stood facing her still. “I refused to be afraid of you,” I said. “I accept the energy you give me. I accept my own power.”
She backed away then and stretching her front legs out before her, she lowered her body, while continuing to hold her head high. Our eyes met, and I knew that although we might never be friends, there was a mutual respect for one another, for the power that ran through her and the power that now ran through me.
Sea gull came to me next. My old friend who reminds me to soar even in the darkest of times. “Hello Jonathan Livingston Seagull!” I yelled. He dipped one wing toward me, and then circled high above, all the while squawking a greeting. As I watched him soar, I saw myself as I was years ago walking the long beaches of the Southern California coast, watching sea gulls, sensing a communication with them. They taught me to look above the earthly plane when the world seemed hopeless to me, when I worried about paying the rent or an illness that slowed me down. They reminded me to let the sunshine warm my face when my heart felt it could break no more from the loss of an ended relationship; and then a book contract fell through, and my heart did break more; and then I loss my job, and my heart did break more. And then, Anne, my dear friend died and there was nothing left of my heart to break. It was then that Sea Gull reminded me to spread my wings and fly.
He came again one dreary winter day shortly after I moved to Ohio. I felt alone that day, wondering what had ever possessed me to sit myself in the middle of a cornfield in the middle of the country. I couldn’t have moved any deeper into self pity when I drove around a long S curve, and there spread across the farmer’s fallow field was a flock of sea gulls. One flew above the rest, soon joined by another, then another, and another. Two flew toward me, coming so close I could have touched them had the Jeep window been open. One of the pair flapped his wings, inviting me to soar, and I did.
And here he was again in this room in this dimension. “Thank you, Sea Gull. Thank you for picking me up when I am down. Thank you for reminding me to fly as high as I can.” I closed my eyes and opened my arms, and I felt flying. And before I could say Sea Gull, I was flying.
Then I landed. I was right back where I had started, but better for the flight, like an escape into good literature, music, or film. I felt refreshed for the flight, renewed, and ready for what came next, or at least I thought so.
The air stiffened, my breathing became labored. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I pulled and pulled on my lungs, gasping air into them, but to no avail. The air was working against me. There was none. Then everything was black.
I must have passed out. When I woke I was sleeping on the swing on my front porch. I was home. Home! Disoriented I tried standing, but my legs wobbled and dropped me back into the swing. I reached out for the railing across the front of the porch to steady myself, but my hand went right through the wood. I pushed my feet against the floor planks, but they too gave way. Only the porch swing where I sat seemed solid, and I could not move from it.
I knew then I was home, but not home. Everything was the same, and totally different. Where was Phillip? And Davey? Was I in a completely new dimension? No, I reasoned. This is just part of the journey, and all I could do was what I had been doing—go along. There seemed no other choice.
And then Red Tail Hawk presented one. He rose high out of the bog, screeched across the North woods, and came to rest on the wooden railing in front of me. He was so close that if I dared I could reach out my hand and touch him. I did not dare. He screeched again, looked directly at me, his deep brown eyes piercing. I could not look away. Red Tail Hawk tilted his head to his left, commanding me to look in that direction. There in the east woods on the other side of the yard, perched on a high tree branch in the east woods, was the grandest bald eagle imaginable.
Spring grass glistened with fresh dew and yellow daffodils, hanging with moisture, sprouted up among trees not yet ripe with leaves. A morning sun was breaking over the horizon, spilling rays across the fallow fields and the eagle’s outstretched wings. Everything glimmered with a depth richer than I had ever seen. Everything had its own life, breathing in harmony with everything else. It felt more real than anything I had every experienced.
Red Tail Hawk caught my attention, signaled me to turn around, look behind me. I could see through the house, not as though it were invisible, but as though the house itself was part of the landscape and I could see through and beyond its walls where a midday sun hung strong over the land. The wood’s tall trees cast thin shadows into the pond and branches with leaves full dipped toward the waters as though to drink of its refreshment. On the other side of the meadow near the salt block in the south woods was a porcupine. The moment I saw her, my heart warmed and I felt a flood of emotion. I wanted to dance with delight and joy, throw my arms up in sheer wonderment and giggle. Sunlight glinted over her, each furry spike twinkling with color. I could have watched her forever, but Red Tail Hawk had other ideas.
He screeched again. I didn’t need to look at him to know he wanted me to look to my left, beyond the dog run to the west woods. There stood a black bear, his forepaws scratching at the air, grunting it away from him. I caught my breath and started to run toward the fenced-in dog area to gather my four-legged kids into safety, but my legs would not, could not, move. The bear gave a great roar, and I tried again to rise, completely forgetting the pleasure of porcupine. I’d crawl if I had to reach the animals. I would not let this bear hurt them. I had heard stories of a bear family living in this part of Ohio, but I never expected to see one so close. I had to get to the dogs. I willed myself to move, but could not.
I screamed for Paco. No sound came, but suddenly Paco appeared. Then I saw the Sheltie girls and Lady Luna and Freddie. I scrambled about, scraping myself across the wooded planks of the porch. I screamed at the dogs. They barked. I did not know if they could see me, but surely they could sense me. “Paco! Get everyone inside! Get everyone inside!” He nosed Lady and nipped at Freddie’s flank. Lacey and Sienna began herding everyone together and chasing them in through the doggy door at the back of the garage. The black bear seemed not to even notice. Either he did not see them or did not care. I didn’t care which. I just wanted them to be safe from this bear, and they were.
He went up on his hind legs, reached a paw out for a tree branch, and I began to wonder why I was so frightened of him. He seemed gentle enough. I looked deeper into myself, into my fear. As I did, Bear scooped up a handful of snow. He looked like a big child at play. I watched him as he brought the snow to his face. He buried his nose into the icy white fluff, and then shock his head, sending snow flakes flying off the tip of his nose. Next he put a pink tongue into the snow, tilted up his head and took a great sniff of air.
A frosted sun broaden across the western sky and shone on the snow sending sparks of color across the yard, its warmth welcomed like butter melting onto freshly baked bread. The air was moist and for the slightest of moments I felt the earth’s aroma weeping up from the soil unearthing itself from winter’s ice in the promise of a spring to come. All my fear faded and gave way to gratitude for being able to see this beauty, and then I felt something more. I felt a deep respect and sense of wanting to praise Prime Source for the creation of this moment and all it brought forth in me. Watching this great bear, the sun flicking against his dark coat, I was brought to my knees in gratitude for this moment and I was lifted up by the honor I felt for being in his presence. A line from a song my mother sang when I was young drifted through my consciousness:
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. . .
Phillip had said we humans make our god too small. I was beginning to glimpse an understanding of what he meant. If we make our God too small, we also make our miracles too small. Everything deserves praise, including ourselves. I wanted to sing and dance and celebrate and praise all that is, praising the God, Prime Source, Prime Creator, Universe, Spirit, Energy; the name did not matter; praising that which created all for creating all and for creating such a magnificent creation as this bear; this bear who helped me hibernate within myself to find a greater truth. A warm wave washed over me and every cell seemed to awaken as though a thousand tiny light bulbs lit up within me with the knowledge of me. Gratitude poured forth from me, from the deepest parts of me: Praise me, the miracle I am and praise the miracle of this body that Prime Source gave me. I am so grateful.
Red Tail Hawk move his head. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and I knew before he screeched that I was to look to the north where on the other side of the tree row a white buffalo stood in the wheat field, her head lowered toward the ground, hidden along with her legs amongst the green and gold stalks. Ever so slowly, she lifted her head, her eyes met mine, and I saw the wisdom of the elders who had walked across this land for thousands of years within those eyes. I stood, rising higher than I knew I could, buoyed by White Buffalo, honored by her, and called to the legacy she imparted.
A buzz whizzed through my head then and caught my attention. From the other side of a fog, I heard Red Tail Hawk screech. My arms and legs grew out from me and spread across the lawn into the woods and over the fields. My body became the soil of the earth as my limbs continued to spread themselves around the planet. I smelled of the dank richness of humus, a pungent earthiness of lifetimes lived and ended. My heart beat loud and strong, the rhythmic beat of thousands of drums and the dance of millions of feet singing praise to Mother Gaia. Stretched against gravity, Mother Earth pulled me across the plains and deserts, the grasslands and mountains.
My skin tapped to the cadence of crickets chirping and the hum of millions of human voices rising in rhythm. My veins flowed with the sway of trees branches and watery waves over oceans, and my heart chanted with grasses growing and new buds blooming. Cities rose in my arteries and each muscle streamed with the seas. I was Earth, flowing, breathing, evolving with every human thought and deed.
My hands oozed red, sticky. Blood sprang from between my fingers and in the blood I saw the bodies of wars. My arms ached, burned, and I was the polar bear slipping away from the safety of ice-land. My heart cracked, and then exploded over the graves of millions of grieving hearts. I fought against the anguish of homes lost, businesses buried, dreams destroyed, against the devastation of ravaging diseases and hunger, crops ruined, and lives wasted in anger or torment. My body became the dumping ground for every stress, every fear, every worry, every concern. My every cell dove deeper into despair. There was no way out. No hope. Misery seeped into every pore.
I tried to climb through my mind’s mud, but had no energy to do so. So I lay down and let what come what may. I did not, could not even care. The pain was too great.
And then I fell, falling all the way to the center of the earth where I was burned to a crisp, and out of the ashes I was reformed. Song rose from within and around me, song that lifted me upward, spiraling, spinning, raising me all the way to the sky where I floated on a cloud on a sun-lit summer’s day. Below me I saw the land where I lived, even saw myself sitting on the porch swing. The cloud on which I rested moved, the sun revolved, and night came. Millions of stars breathed across the heavens, each an old friend. They sang in unity, a hum that vibrated across the eons, and strummed the fibers of my being.
Again I heart the red tail hawk, and I knew another experience awaited. Abruptly I felt pulled back into myself, a tugging from within into the middle world, my own inner sanctum. Here I met myself, my every sadness and my every happiness, my every creation and every memory, my every hurt and every pleasure, my every failure and every success, my every flaw and every beauty, every missed opportunity and every action taken. Here I witnessed and experienced my every thought and every emotion. And I was pleased. I have met myself without judgment.
If brass bands were going to play, it was then I would have heard them. Instead I heard the faint voice of a little boy coming from far, far away, and I knew exactly who was calling. “Davey, Davey, where are you?”
“Here. Here,” was his only answer.
I jumped off the porch. Instinctively I started running down the lane toward the place where I had first found this child. I rounded the edge of the tree line, and thought I saw someone, something. “Davey, I’m here, I’m coming.” My legs burned. My lungs ached. Still I ran faster. I could see him, almost touch him. “Davey!” I reached out. And I stumbled and again began falling, falling, falling into an abyss that seemed to have no end.
And then I landed, back where I had begun in this room with no walls, and no beginning or end. Yet this time I was not alone. Davey was there. So was Phillip. In this wall-less, endless room of eternity, I saw every person, every animal, every being I had ever met on this journey and on my human journey. I saw my enemies and knew them as friends. I saw my friends and knew them as soul mates. I saw all the bits and pieces that made up me, that made my life what it was, sloppy at times, certainly unperfect and oh so perfect in its imperfections. These were all my teachers, everyone, in body and spirit, in human form and thought form. These were my teachers, every hurt and humiliation and every triumph and achievement. These were my teachers, and in the center of all this, I stood, knowing I am my own teacher.
I whooshed Davey into my arms and swung around, and then grabbed Phillip and hugged both of them. “It’s so good to see you!” I shouted. “So much has happened. I have so much to tell you.” They just looked at me with patience. “Of course you know what’s happened. You’re a part of me. You’re part of my inner world, and yet you’re separate.
Davey looked up at Phillip who smiled his best wise-old-being smile. “It is time, yet?” Davey asked.
“Yes,” Phillip said. “It’s time.”
“Time for what?” I asked.
Davey looked at me with the eyes of a seven-and-three-quarters-year old boy who

wondered how an adult could be so dense. “Time to meet Jeremy,” he said.

2008-12-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

Chapters 1-10 are below, or click on the chapter on the left.

Chapter 11
Healers and Healers-in-Training

I woke from a dreamy, warm place and felt the heat of hands massaging my body. Phillip answered my question as it formed in my mind. “It is more a period of suspended animation than sleep,” he explained. “This rest period is for the purpose of quieting the mind, so the information can be sealed into your memory system for future use in your Earth life.”
“So I am returning to my life on Earth?”
“Of course. There was never any intention of taking your from your life, only to provide you with this experience as a means to give you information for your own understanding and information you may in turn impart to others.”
The massaging hands probed deeper into my body, moving into and through me touching and infusing each cell with energy. I felt each cell as it was being touched, experienced each cell with different heat intensities ranging from mild to almost too hot to tolerate. It never dawned on me that in this state I really didn’t have a body, at least not in the sense I normally thought of my body. Yet I felt the hands on my body, playing it the way a musician plays an instrument, tuning every cell the way a harpist tunes each string. The heat had color and sound, and I felt and saw each cell as the massaging hands continued to probe and push into me, stirring emotions that flowed through me in an array of pictures of each experience of my life.
I was the high witness, the compassionate watcher of my life, all the while experiencing fully each minute detail, expression, and emotion of all the moments I had lived. The significance of each moment of life grabbed me and held onto me until I relinquished any attachment to the sorrow I felt for missing so much or the joy for moments fully lived. I was to stay in the place of observer, allowed to experience the emotion, but to not be attached to it. I saw my future life that was yet to come, the work I was being asked to do, and the gifts I would be given. All I had to do was agree, which was so each to do with the heated hands massaging me. I was in no place to read the small print, nor to recognizing how difficult the assignment might prove to be. I was in ecstasy, the warmth of heaven, and the bliss of nirvana all rolled into one.
“The healers are working on you,” Phillip said. “Their purpose is twofold: They are healing the body of past disease or discomfort and they are programming your cellular memory for the healing you will need when you return to the earth plane.”
“The motorcycle accident. Did I . . . do I get hurt?”
“Your physicians will be astonished how well and how quickly you heal,” he said, and I was sure I did not want to know more. I just wanted to stay in this place of profound peace. “There is one other aspect of our healing that is about to take place, “ Phillip said, and a buzzing began inside my head while a multitude of colorful lights danced across my vision.
“We apologize for any inconvenience this is causing you,” Phillip said. “It is necessary to put you into a state of euphoria while we rewire your physical brain for greater availability to us.”
“Sort of like changing 110 watts for 220?”
“Yes, one could say that. The rewiring allows a higher frequency of energy to pass through.”
“Rewire me all you want, Phillip. I could stay here forever. I certainly am euphoric.” Of course, I didn’t stay there forever. Such is life, even in this dimension.
“There now,” Phillip said as the buzzing receded and the euphoria lifted, leaving behind its trace like the final streak of pink sky at sunset. “When you return to Earth, you will be able to heal others by your touch, but only if their belief system allows them to understand they can be healed by the divine through human touch.
“Is that my purpose in life to heal others?”
“Only in part,” Phillip said. “Basically you are a teacher who has varied gifts in order to help others heal. You are a heart healer, which is where everything comes together. By teaching others how to heal their hearts, they will also heal the mind and body. One of your gifts is to teach others how to repatttern worn out ways of thinking and acting. You teach by removing the pattern that created the illness, which may also require the removal of the pain caused by the disease, whether it be of the body or the mind. You teach by writing. This is why you like to put words on paper. You also teach by speaking and demonstration.”
“That’s why my grandmother made me beautiful dresses and set me out on stage,” I said.
“Yes, and your mother saw that you had dance and music lessons, and were active in both drama and writing events in your community.”
“My whole life points to what I am to do with my life.”
Phillip smiled. “Yes.”
“That’s true for everyone, isn’t it?”
“Most certainly.
“All we need do is to look at our own lives to learn what our mission in this life is.” I felt awed by this knowledge, and yet it felt like something I had always known. “Why do we make it so hard on ourselves? Why do we keep searching for that which is right in front of us?”
Phillip thought on this for a few minutes as though his pondering would give me time to answer my own question. Finally he said,” Not everyone does. Some people know from birth what they come into Earth life to accomplish. Others take a little longer. In your case, you came into life knowing part of it.”
“I always knew I had to write.”
“Yes. What you fought against was being a teacher.”
That made me laugh. “That was rebellion against my mother and society,” I said. “I became a classroom teacher because Mother wanted that for me. And at the time, jobs other than teaching or nursing weren’t open to women. We’ve grown so much in our society to allow women to be whatever they want. They can even be teachers!”
“There is another reason with a deeper meaning,” Phillip said. “You chose the birthday November 11. The 11/11 number is that of the master teacher who must first live the experience and receive the gifts of the experience before being able to teach the lessons of the experience.”
I began to put two and two together, or maybe I should say eleven and eleven together. “It is in relationships where we receive our both greatest bruises and gifts.”
“Yes,” Phillip said. “When you come together with another you have opportunities to then look within yourself to learn more about yourself and what you as a soul have chosen to take on for the healing of the world and evolving of the human species.”
“I’m starting to get this, Phillip. Before birth we each sat up here on our little planet—or wherever we are—and said, ‘I can do that,’ but we had no idea how hard it could be.”
“Let me begin by saying we are not on another planet, but only in a different dimension, but perhaps we should hold that discussion for another time,” Phillip said. “Now I shall continue. “As you have already learned, each soul takes on an issue to heal, and in doing so helps to heal the world of that issue. Since there is no past or future except in Earth time, the soul is adding to the healing of the issue for all time.”
“Let me make sure I understand this, Phillip. Are you saying that one person’s healing helps everyone heal who lives now, who lived before, and who will live in the future?”
“Precisely. Let me be more exact. In your case, you chose to heal betrayal in the form of abandonment. You set the events up so your life would allow you to work on this healing. You chose a Scotch-Irish family with a bit of the indigenous peoples of the Delaware Nation and a touch of Nordic mixed with the Celtic lineage. Both the Celts and Delaware peoples were betrayed by governments and spent years in wars. As a warrior for each of these nations, your life was lost again and again as was the lives of many people you loved.
“In this life expression, you chose birth parents who would deepen the wound of abandonment. Your father left the family when you were a toddler and your mother was forced to leave you with your grandparents while your brother stayed with her. This cut a deep wound into your heart, which played out in your relationships. You experienced the pain of broken and lost relationships for many years before knowledge of your pattern and the healing of your pattern took place.”
“Because I went through heartbreak, I am able to help others heal their hearts,” I whispered.
“Precisely. Your experiences and the knowledge of the truth of the experiences infuses you with the energy of the experience. You hold the truth of the experience, which others can energetically experience if they are open to do so. This allows you to teach others from truth.
“Which allows for their healing.”
“Precisely.”
“Is everyone a healer, Phillip?”
“In this way, yes, but so few understanding what they are doing, so the healing takes longer or is ineffective. You must first be aware of the healing taking place within yourself and aware of how you are affecting the other and the world energetically. Once you understand, you are able to heal yourself and others at an accelerated rate.”
“It’s an awesome responsibility,” I said.
“If you take it on your shoulders alone,” Phillip said.
“Ah, we’re never alone, are we? I think I’m especially fortunate, Phillip, because I have you.”
“Everyone has a spirit guide as well as angels, teachers, and other guiding beings with them at all times.”
“We merely need to ask for help and it’s always there.”
“Yes, my dear,” Phillip said, his voice soft and full of love. “Now, lest I mislead you, I have only partially answered your question. Everyone is a healer in the sense we have been speaking. This is evolution, the way one generation takes on or passes along either the healing or the wound.”
“We pass along the wound instead of the healing?”
“Yes, my dear. If we do not heal the wound, it is passed to the next generation for healing. At times a generation may be skipped, but the wound continues until healed.”
“If everyone is a healer, why don’t we just heal the world and everyone’s wounds?”
“That’s where I might have mislead you. Everyone helps to heal the wound when healing the individual life, but not everyone is a healer in the sense of being a healing teacher or body worker. Each person has a different path. Some of those paths you judge as being wrong. They are not.”
“Like the surfer who adds laughter to the world?”
“Yes, and think deeper,’ Phillip said.
“Like the terrorist or a murderer or a child or animal abuser,” I whispered afraid to speak out loud.
Phillip smiled, his pupil was learning.
“Does the soul have a choice, or is it the duty of the soul to follow the story laid out before birth?”
“Earth is a place of free will. The soul chooses what it wishes to experience, but there is always free will to make choices. The soul always chooses that which allows for the experiences to heal the wound, but not everyone will make the choice for healing. A soul may chose to experience anger and rage, which leads the human to the choices of beating a helpless animal or choosing the harder path of walking away and looking within to heal the anger; or a person may choose to take the lives of many people in the name of god or instead seek the harder path of understanding and compassion and working to heal the anger for all generations.”
“What happens if we make the wrong choice?”
“What do you mean by the wrong choice, my dear?”
“Choosing to beat the animal with rage or to hurt or kill so many people instead of healing the wound? Aren’t those wrong choices?
“Not wrong choices. Just choices,” Phillip said.
“I’m confused, Phillip. If we have free will to make choices and we choose to hurt others, aren’t those wrong choices?”
“Choices are neither right nor wrong. They are choices. Earth is a plane of free will where humans are given the freedom of making choices. There are effects from each choice, but no choice can be judged right or wrong from the soul’s perspective. It is all part of the souls’ agreements with one another to help each other along.”
So Lucifer really is an angel.”
“An archangel actually.” Phillip thought for a moment, and then waved his arm and a park bench appeared in the middle of a sunlit forest. “Come, sit. Rest awhile. I’ll tell you a story.” Phillip breathed in the air, fresh as the morning’s dew, and then said, “The archangel Michael sat on one side of God and the archangel Lucifer on the other. God was getting a bit bored with the humans he had created. All they did was sit around and enjoy themselves.
“’Give me a good story to experience,’” God shouted, but to no avail. Finally God decided action had to be taken, so God asked Lucifer and Michael to create a story.
God told the two archangels what the story would entail. Lucifer was mortified. “’Oh god,’ Lucifer moaned. ‘You ask too much of me, but I love you so much, I agree to do as you ask.’
“Michael too was horrified. “’I will be in agony fighting my brother,’ he said, ‘but I too love you enough to do as you ask.’
“The two archangels said their farewells to one another, promising to remember who they truly were as each set on his way to his assignment, Michael to remind humans of their goodness and Lucifer to attract them to evil.”
“Is this the purpose of life on Earth? To experience both goodness and evil?” I asked.
“You miss the point, my dear,” Phillip said. Story requires conflict and resolution of that conflict. Story requires emotion and the promise of that emotion. In all creation humans are the only species who experience the gift of emotion.”
“But emotions can be so painful,” I said rather stubbornly.
“Think deeper,” was all Phillip said, so I did.
I stumbled over my words, not sure of myself at all. “Emotions are painful because we chose to experience them that way?”
“In a way, yes. Emotions are just that, emotions. The human mind adds judgment to whether the emotion is pleasant or painful. The more painful the human experiences the emotion as being, the more the human will be pushed toward healing the wound or pushing against it.”
“I get it,” I said excitedly. “Pain is a teacher of our growth.”
“Precisely.”
“But Phillip can’t we learn and grow through happiness?”
“Of course, but the human mind is such that it usually chooses to wallow in happiness and only grow when necessary.”
I laughed at that, at the truth of what Phillip said. “So it’s all a story then,” I said, wondering if any of this really made any sense at all.
“Ah, what a story it is!” Phillip said. “If you were Prime Creator how would you experience all the parts of yourself?”
I thought about that for a moment before I answered. “I tell my students the best way to know about a culture is to read the literature, not the history books, because it’s in the stories that we learn about the people how they lived and died, what they believed in, what they ate, how they spent their time. How they loved. It’s all in the stories.”
Phillip and I sat silent for a long while letting what I was learning sink in. Finally I said, “The stories keep repeating themselves until enough of us make the choice to heal the wound and create a new story for ourselves, which in turn creates a new story for the world.”
Phillip said nothing. His slight smile encouraged me to continue.
“It’s very sacred, this wounding,” I whispered. “We accept the wounding so we can add to the healing of the world. What is the end goal? Is it to return to Prime Spirit and live forever in joy and harmony and end our personal story?”
“That is one way. There is another.”
“And that would be?”
“To people other universes with story,” he said.
“Universes where beings do not yet know emotion?”
“Yes, my dear.”
“That’s a rather awesome task,” I said, yet I felt an uncanny excitement at the very possibility of such. Given the choice I knew spending time in eternal bliss would not be nearly as much fun as spending time in story, with all its ups and downs. I was beginning to glimpse why I chose to come to Earth in the first place.
“Come,” Phillip said, “or we shall be late.”
“Late? I thought there wasn’t any time here. How could we possibility be late?”
“I believe it was the Earthling Einstein who said, ‘The only reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen at once.’ You now have somewhere else to be, so we must be aware of time.” We swept through the wind and came to rest in right outside the building we had first been to when this adventure began. “We must hurry,” Phillip said. “I miscalculated and here we are outside. I meant to put us in the classroom.”
Phillip capable of miscalculating? I guess even spirit beings can err. The thought made me smile, but it also made me a bit fearful. If spirit beings can err, what does that mean for humans?
“I must leave you now,” Phillip said. “While you are in class, I too will be in class. We—all of us from angelic beings to spirits to humans to all creatures—are growing and learning. It is endless,” he said, and then he was gone. Just like that. Gone.
“Phillip, wait. I don’t know where to go. What am I suppose to do now?”
“Hurry, hurry” I heard him say, a voice within my head. “To where, Phillip? To where?” I spun around and around. “To where, Phillip? To where am I to go?” Then I stopped. I took a breath, breathing deeply, following the breath throughout my being. Calmly I silently felt each word as I silently thought, “Phillip, I need your guidance. Please show me where to go at this moment in time. I give thanks for your guidance.” I released any need to know and just gave over to the harmony of the breath.
Red Tail Hawk flew overhead, screeching its hello to me, jerking me out of my meditative state. It flew toward an entrance near the right side of the building, then gave out another long screech. “Thank you, Red Tail,” I said, and ran toward the door that would take me through another dimension and the next adventure.

2008-12-10T09:15:00.001-08:00

The Found Child
by Diana Rankin

Chapters 1 - 9 are below or click on the chapters at the left.

Chapter 10
The Masters

“Come,” Phillip said. He was dressed in a white hooded robe. I recognized him as the Druid he had once been.
“You were my teacher,” I said.
“I’m still your teacher. Come.” His voice was serious, almost stern.
We walked down a long, windowless corridor, and then began descending down narrow spiral steps. Phillip stepped so quickly he seemed to float down the steps. Me it took longer, until I felt winded and Phillip turned and looked at me. “You have plenty of air,” he said. “Breathe.”
I did and suddenly I felt like I was floating an inch or so above the steps and stepped down much more rapidly and without getting winded. I was thinking I could almost get used to this dimension, and then I remembered I might not want to. It wasn’t exactly living on Earth as I knew it, and I kind of liked my life on Earth. I wasn’t so sure I was ready to give it up, but then I wasn’t so sure I got to keep it either. Phillip had promised I was still alive, but this sure felt differently than anything I had ever experienced, even in dreams.
We came to a stop in a small room with a closed door opposite from our entrance through an open archway. I looked around for Davey, expecting him to be meeting us.
“Davey will meet us later,” Phillip said. “This is for you, not yet for him.” The door across the room opened onto a dark northern forest with a dirt path that led deeper into the forest. I felt rather than saw eyes on us as I followed Phillip along the path. The path being narrow and Phillip being taller than me by more than a foot kept me from seeing past him. My only vision was to my right and left, and although I certainly do not have any great knowledge of forestry, I was certain most of the trees were oak. At one point we came to a clearing where the sun shone brightly on a grove of apple trees, then we were back in the forest, where we passed a single yew tree that stood alone surrounded by a stone circle. I had neither a sense of walking up or down hill. I did have a sense of walking in a circle, as though we were walking a giant spiral labyrinth curving back in on itself. I thought of my home where you walk down a pine cathedral before entering the spiral labyrinth cut in a field of wildflowers. At the entrance to my home labyrinth, between the rows of pine and the opening to the labyrinth, is a single apple tree, and like the pine tree was planted long before I moved there. For a moment I felt homesick and wondered what would happen if I asked to go home, or even if I could.
I was about to ask Phillip whether I would ever go home again, when he stopped suddenly and turned to look at me. “You are prepared for this encounter,” he said. “You are ready.”
I had no idea what in the world—or out of the world—he was talking about, but followed him as he ducked under the overhang into a cave cut out of a wall of stone at the end of the dirt path. Immediately I heard the most beautiful, awe-inspiring harp music. It touched and tugged my heart, and I felt my heart opening to the music, feeling its rhythm moving into me, become a part of me, every cell vibrating with each string as invisible fingers plucked and pulled the strings in a heavenly melody. I could stay here forever; home and homesickness vanished as the strains of the haunting music filled me full.
Then the music stopped. In the stillness came sounds of wind whistling through a mountain pass. Then I saw the colors. At first they appeared as a whole, bands of indescribable hues of violets, indigoes, pinks, blues, reds, oranges, yellows, greens, all part of a huge white translucent canvas where iridescent colors shone through. As they danced and swayed together in one giant, orchestrated symphony of color, they began to sing, and I heard the music of each individual color as well as the blending of all. Then they changed form, the bands of color became individual balls of light that left traces as they whizzed about.
“These are the Masters,” Phillip said, and as he spoke the lights began to turn into forms. As they took on human bodies, I gasped. There right in front of me, so real I could reach out and touch the flesh of each, was the Dagda, Jesus, the Buddha, Quan Yin, Innana, Buckongahelas, Krishna, Tecumseh, Yogananda, Plato, Galileo, Isis, Lao-Tzu, Hildegard, Plato, Zeus, Ra-Atom, and so many more. Among the Masters were those whose names cannot be spoken aloud and those who names I don’t not know. All the great teachers and leaders of the world, all the gods and goddesses, all the Masters who have taught humans thought the eons. Later Phillip would explain that many of the Masters have not yet made themselves known to those of us on the Earth plane. Others were Masters from other dimensions or planets and were convened in this room in the form in the human form so I could see them.
“Are they really here?” I whispered.
“Yes, and they are also elsewhere,” Phillip said. “They are many places at once.
“With whom would you like to converse?” Phillip asked.
I shied back. Dare I? Who was I to talk with a Master? Phillip’s thought interrupted mine. “You are prepared for this encounter. You are ready.” Who was I not to?
“The ego both pumps us up and keeps us down,” Phillip said. “The ego will tell you that you are better than the other. It also tells you that you are not as good as the other. Both are ego. One is easier to recognize in Earth plane than is the other.”
“We don’t think of the ego as that which tells us we aren’t good enough,” I said. “So Phillip, you tell me I am ready, and so I am. I step into this. I am ready.”
Phillip waited. Silence.
I too waited, not knowing what to say.
Finally he spoke. “You have not told me to whom you wish to converse.”
I began to let out a sigh of relief, when Phillip added. “Of course, you may converse with each. We are not on a timetable.” He smiled at himself then, thinking he had made a joke with the timetable remark. There was no time in this dimension. It did not exist. Time is something we make up in the earth world for organization and communication. Time has become a commodity that no one has enough of. Yet here I was standing face-to-face with every great Master the world has ever know—and those we are yet to know—and we all have all the time we need. Remarkable.
“Phillip, I’m overwhelmed. I want to sit at the feet of each and listen as they speak.”
“You can do that at any time even in your world,” he said. “All you need do is listen. Everyone here is willing to speak to anyone who asks.” He was quiet for a moment, pondering, and when he spoke it was with deep reverence. “There are those who do listen with their hearts as well as their minds. These are the ones who truly hear the Masters.”
He turned to me, raised one eyebrow in questioning. I laughed. “You look like Dr. Spook,” I said.
“Ah yes, of Star Trek fame.” He smiled seeming to enjoy my amusement. “Not even your jokes will put off the enviable,” he said. “You are not required to speak to anyone. We merely thought you might like to, but you must make that decision and communicate it to me.”
“I admit I’m a little overwhelmed. There are so many I wish to speak to, but I’m going to chose two—Jesus and Quan Yin. I was raised a Christian as a child, but it never felt quite right to me. I’d like to know what Jesus has to say about religion. Quan Yin, well she can teach me how to be more compassionate in my world.”
“So be it.” Phillip disappeared from my view, yet I felt him behind me. At the same time, a blinding light forced me to momentarily shield my eyes. When I removed my arms from across my eyes, Jesus stood in front of me. He was a much smaller man than I had thought him to be, only a few inches taller than me. His skin was darkened and his brown hair lightened from the sun. His eyes were a deep brown and intense, yet soft. His nose was large and had an ever-so-slight bump in the center. It was not a pristine nose the Italian painters would later depict, but a proud, strong nose on a real man. His hands too were strong, a carpenter’s hands, sturdy hands that could grasp a child or a lamb, or even an adult and take from them that which kept them from their own perfect health, or their life.
I wanted to knee and kiss the hem of his robe, but I knew that was not what I was to do. I was to stand beside him, looking directly into his eyes, and speak. So I did. “Master Jesus, it is said that you could have walked away from the Garden of Gethemese, walked down the other side of the mount away from the soldiers. If this is true, why did you stay?” His answer caught me quite off guard. It was certainly not what I was expecting.
“Why did you ride the motorcycle? Did you not know they are dangerous? Did you not know what was coming?”
I forgot I was engaged in conservation with a great Master, with Jesus, the Son of God according to the entire Christian world.. I was talking to a man, an interesting man who in every way treated me as an equal. I answered as one. “There were signs I suppose,” I said. “I didn’t like that road, didn’t want to go that way, but it was silly to go any other direction. And two days before I dropped the bike. I put the kickstand down in gravel and it sank in the earth, the ground being too soft beneath the gravel. I guess the signs were there.”
“You chose to not heed them.”
“I chose to not heed them,” I repeated. “I don’t know why.” Jesus’ eyes smiled at me. “I had to take that ride,” I said, and in speaking I understood, “Just as you had to wait for the soldiers.”
“It is what your soul agreed to, as did mine,” he said. “The signs were there to give you a chance to change your mind. Earth is a place of freewill.”
I started to protest that he was a Master, not me, and then I clearly heard Phillip remind me it is only ego that tells us we are not enough. I took a deep breath and spoke clearly. “Jesus, I understand why you did not leave the garden now, why you let the soldiers take you when there were those who would have kept you safe. Your death started Christianity, a whole new religion that spread around the world.”
“Yes that,” he said rather bemused. “That was not my intention. Peter and Paul had more to do with that than I. Who knows what others will make of our lives. I am a teacher. This too is what you are.”
“There’s a big difference,” I hastened to add, and then caught my breath.
“Is there?” he countered. “It is only a matter of degrees. On Earth the people require your Masters to have lived long ago and accomplished much, but I tell you there are Masters walking among you today in every country of the world. There have always been Masters walking among the people throughout all ages. This you much know and respect. You must also accept and respect the Masters who walk among the peoples of the world today. They are the teachers, the philosophers, the seers, the mothers and fathers, the children, the ones who understand the meaning of life and who give themselves to the service of life.
“Phillip is a Master,” I said in awe.
“Yes, Phillip is a Master. Not all Masters are to start a new religion,” Jesus said, and I heard the wryness in his voice and knew that he knew how to laugh and poke fun at himself.
I felt such joy being in his presence, such lightheartedness. I felt giddy. “I’m not a Christian, “I said to Jesus.
“Neither am I,” he said. “On Earth, I was a Galilean Jew. Now I am a Master.” He sighed a great weight of a sigh, and then he smiled and the sun radiated. “This I tell you,” he began. “Masters are the people who walk among you who have reached a higher level of understanding. This is all.”
“How do we recognize the Masters among us,” I asked. “How do we tell the true Masters from those who claim they are?”
“Those who call themselves Masters, are not,” Jesus said. “Nor do Masters shy from their greatness. To do either is spoken from the ego, not from the truth of Spirit. When I walked the earth, I never claimed to be a Master. Some call me a prophet, others call me the Messiah, the son of God. Never once did I lay claim to any of these titles. They were given to me by others.”
For ever so slight a second, sadness passed over his face, and I saw the burden that comes from others labeling us, and I understood that Jesus’ had walked his soul’s path much like each of us do. He was a teacher, a leader. This was his journey.
He spoke then, his voice kind. “Each person has a different life journey none other can take for you. Every human being is irreplaceable; everyone’s journey affects the lives of all who came before and all who come after.”
“Like the pebble in the water,” I whispered almost to myself.
Jesus smiled. “Ripples go out from the pebble thrown into the water, and we know not who those ripples flow over or how they affect those who experience our ripples.”
“Wow! That makes me really want to be careful about what I do and say.” For a moment I let it all sink in, and then I added, “and even what I think.”
Jesus said not a word, yet I felt his smile penetrate deep into my heart. I closed my eyes and brought my hands into prayer mode at my heart in deep gratitude for this encounter. Tears wet my eyes as I heard Jesus speak and felt the truth of my responsibility to all life.
“Follow your path in love and with knowledge and it will take you where you need to go,” Jesus said.
I felt the ripple effect of Jesus’ life touch my life and knew the ripple effect of my life would not start a religion, but might help ease the heart of another human being or save the life of an animal. I was humbled and awed by the greatness of being human.
Jesus was gone when I opened my eyes. He was again part of the swirling shots of colorful lights that whisked and whirled around. For a moment I stood alone among the swirling lights. “I understand why people thought Jesus was the son of God,” I said.
“There are many on Earth who still believe Jesus is the son of God, Phillip said as he materialized before me. “Jesus is the son of God. What is missing is accepting responsibility for their own relationship as a child of God.”
“What do you mean, Phillip?” I asked.
“All are offspring of Prime Spirit, the prime source of all that is.”
“You’re saying we are all related to the Prime Spirit in the same way as Jesus?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t we recognize this?”
“First, you must own divinity, which requires taking total responsibility for your life.”
“That means taking responsibility for every action, every word, even every thought.”
Yes. This is a most difficult task. It is much easier to pass it off to a Master. Seldom do human beings want to accept who they are. They call themselves less than they are and allow themselves to life in mediocrity, not in their greatness. Every human being is made for greatness, but this then is a relative term for which we humans have little understanding.”
“What do you mean, Phillip?”
“As you saw before, each human chooses a life. Greatness is in living that choice to the fullest.”
“If I chose to be a teacher, than it is my responsibility to always strive to be a great teacher. It that what you mean?”
Phillip took a deep breath of patience. “To strive to be what you already are, no. If you choose to be a teacher, you are a teacher. All you have to do is to be a teacher.” He could clearly see my confusion, so he continued. “You become what you are; what you are is born with you and grows along with you. You are drawn to spent time and energy on that which helps you become more of what you already are.”
“So studying that which helps us in our endeavors actually helps us remember who we are.”
“Precisely.”
“What if we’re not a teacher. What if we’re a . . . a beach bum?”
“Are not beach bums drawn to the ocean?”
“Yes.”
“My point is made.” Phillip hesitated to make sure understood his point, and when he saw I didn’t, he added. “You understand what is noble and good about being a teacher, but you’re wondering what is noble and good about being a beach bum.”
“Am I that transparent?” I asked, and then remembered who I was speaking to. “I don’t want to be judgmental, Phillip, but it does seem to me a teacher may be a bit more noble than a beach bum.”
Phillip smiled and waved his hand. A screen opened before me and I saw my quintessential idea of a beach bum—a tan, straggly hair blond of mid-twenties who spent his days on a surfboard and his nights in the gym or having a beer at the local hangout. I had to laugh.
“Now I suppose you expect to see a movie of this beach bum saving the life of a young person who grows up to do great things for humanity by becoming a captain of business and funding food projects that feed many starving people. This is true, of course, but it is a different time I want to show you.”
The beach bum, Troy by name, was strolling along a sun-washed beach when he was diverted by screaming children at play. I watched as he walked over to the children, and as he watched them play, I felt my heart lighten in joy. The children’s laughter penetrated into my every cell, permeating me with bliss.
“Not everyone knows how to lighten the hearts of others,” Phillip said.
“I feel the truth of what you say and the demonstration you showed me,” I said.
“Truth is truth,” Phillip said. “All Masters speak the same truth although their expressions may be of different natures.”
He guided my view toward another bright light gliding toward me.
“Quank Yin?” I asked.
“Yes. She comes now,” Phillip said and again disappeared.
“You wish to speak with me?” Quan Yin said and her voice sang like cool water flowing over smooth stones.
“Oh Goddess, Bodhisattva of Compassion, I wish to have more compassion and less judgment of others,” I said still fresh from Phillip’s lesson.
“Compassion comes from understanding of suffering and nonjudgment comes from understanding. Neither is a gift I can give to you. These are gifts you give to yourself,” Quan Yin said, her voice a melody of harmonious vibrations of a thousand hands passing over a thousand harp strings. “These are gifts of wisdom,” I heard her say, then she seemed to float away, and I used my voice to pull her back to me.
“It is said you still walk among the people to alleviate suffering, that you will stay until the last cry of suffering is changed to one of joy.”
She spoke to me without words, and I felt her approval of what I had said, so I continued. “Your story is so beautiful, so inspiring. You were the third daughter of a wealthy ruler who had already married his two older daughters to wealthy, but cruel men. You pleaded with your father to not force you to marry, instead of allow you to serve the temple dwellers.”
“It was a daughter’s duty to obey her father,” Qua Yin spoke, and for the briefest of moments I saw the young Chinese girl during the Chou dynasty.
“Your father finally relented, but he went to the temple dwellers and told them to work you extra hard, a punishment for your disobedience.”
Quan Yin’s eyes sparked in recognition. She nodded her head and smiled slightly. “Yes, I have heard this story,” she said.
“It is said you worked very hard and with a pure heart, doing much more than was asked of you. Everyday when you went to fetch water for the temple, your kindness spread to the animals of the forest, and soon word of your good deeds and kind heart spread throughout the forest. The animals gathered together and decided to help you with your chores. Birds filled the table bowls with ripened berries, cock brought the hens’ eggs, horse brought roots from the earth, tiger gathered rice on his coat to bring, and dragon lit the fire. Word of this miracle spread to the nearby village, making the villagers happy until word spread to your father.
“He went to the temple dwellers. Such a rage he was in. ‘She has disobeyed me,’ He said. ‘She has disobeyed me and made a fool of me. All the villagers are laughing at me. She must be punished.” The temple dwellers tried their best, but your father would not calm down. Finally in his rage, he said, ‘Kill her. Kill her.’”
No one in the temple obeyed, but you were slain. As you rose to the heavens, you saw Nirvana before you and knew you could spend all eternity in bliss. You were about to step into your ecstasy when you heard a cry of suffering from Earth.”
“I vowed then to return to Earth and walk among the people until there were no more cries of suffering, but only joy,” Quan Yin said.
“You were given the status of Goddess because of your pure heart and compassion.”
“Yes, I remember this story, but dear one it is a story made up long ago in the villages to comfort those in need.”
“Then you did not live in China long ago?”
“This is not the question. It is of no significance. Quan Yin is the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Whether or not she lived as a girl is of less importance than that her spirit lives in the hearts of all who show compassion.”
“It is her spirit, her energy that walks the earth,” I said awed by the compassion I felt from Quan Yin. She judged me as being neither ignorant nor wise.
“Stories are of immense importance to the greater human story,” she said. “You must continue to tell the story. It is a way of teaching and learning.” Quan Yin looked deeply at me, smiled, and then became a ball of light and moved away. I watched her recede from my sight, the depth of my gratitude for our encounter almost overwhelming, and yet I knew, I knew that I was now only experiencing a small portion of what I would be given as I moved through the rest of this otherworld journey and in my Earth life when—or if—I returned.

2008-07-30T13:52:00.002-07:00

The Found Child
by Diana Rankin

Chapter 9
The Entourage, Watchers, and Prime Spirit

Chapters 1-8 are below or click on the chapters at the left

We entered a large, windowless room, lit brilliantly by the beings who inhabited it. They flit and flickered quickly about, much like the fireflies and fairies on the land where I lived. Instantly I felt quite at home. Phillip clapped his hands and the flittering and flickering lights began to take all sorts of sizes and shapes. Some even began to look human.
“This is your entourage,” Phillip said. “These are all the beings you came together with before entering life. The team, or committee, you gathered together, so to speak. They are your guides, teachers, protectors. They will appear to you in the form you fine most acceptable, that of human beings. As you can see, their natural form is one of light, but they can take any form needed. If you were in a different dimension or a different universe, they would take the form of the beings there.”
I counted nine beings.
“ I am the tenth,” Phillip said.
“Does everyone have ten beings on their committee?”
“You actually have eleven members of your team,” Phillip said. Before I had a chance to ask him where the eleventh member was, he continued. “Everyone is different. The soul chooses the number needed for their team. The number depends on what a soul wants to experience and how much help will be needed. In addition, the soul takes into consideration the beings who request to be on the team. In these cases, an audience is requested with the soul and the team in place. If the team deems the being as helpful to both the soul entering Earth life, the team, and the being requesting to be part of the entourage, then that being is invited to join the team. Members of your team are here to help you in your development, but it is just as important that you are here to help them in their development.”
“I’m the eleventh member,” I said suddenly glimpsing my own importance—and responsibility—as a member of a team.
Phillip smiled. No words were needed.
I was awed by the overwhelming love and acceptance I felt. I fell to my knees in gratitude, and they all followed suit by kneeling before me. Even Phillip kneeled. “Phillip, I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“We are a part of you as you are of us,” he said. “What you feel, we feel. We are as deeply grateful for you as you are for us. It is a symbiotic relationship.”
I looked around the room, at the kindness in each face, at the strength I saw, and I knew we were indeed a team. I would never again feel alone. I stood and everyone followed suit. “Tell me more,” I asked of Phillip.
“You are the one who held your hand up and volunteered to enter into Earth life,” he said with a wry smile.
One-by-one each came before me, offering words of encouragement, cheers of well done, or praises for accomplishes. They appeared to me in human form, some looked vaguely familiar. Phillip explained that many of the team members had had life experiences on Earth, some of which we shared. These beings appeared before me as I would have known them in the lives we shared. They had completed a round of earthly lives and had a grasp of what was needed while living on this planet. “Philipe is of this category,” Phillip said when a small, dark man came before me. “Philipe was with St. Francis of Assisi. He works with you with the animals.”
“I've always felt you near when the animals are near,” I said. “Thank you so much for watching over them.”
“It is I who thank you,” Philipe said, and I felt his sincerity.
The next being who came before me needed no introduction. She had been my best friend in my California years. “Anne!” We embraced. My tears flowed freely.
“No reason to cry, Diana,” she said. “I’m right here. I've always been right here by you. I felt your pain when I came into this dimension, but I could not soothe it. Now perhaps you will know that what we said was true.”
I nodded, unable at the moment to trust my voice. We promised each other to stay connected, even if one of us died. Anne died, but my grief had been too great to feel her nearness, then time passed, I moved to Ohio, and life there took over.
“Anne was one of your guides even while in body,” Phillip said. “She remained a guide in spirit form.
“We guided each other,” Anne said. “She taught me about human love.”
“You were so hurt,” I said. “Your husband had just left you for another, younger woman. You were beside yourself with grief.”
“You helped heal my grief. Every time you reached out to love, you healed me.”
I laughed and cried at the same time. “You pieced my heart back together a time or two,” I said.
“Yet, you continued to love,” she said. “Even after Jeremy.”
I started to remind Anne that she never met Jeremy, then stopped. There was no time here, all was now, so of course Anne knew Jeremy, knew how my heart was torn away from me when I was so young. She knew I tried to love again. She had been alive and with me, watching me trying to make a relationship work, and piecing my heart back together every time one failed. Phillip broke into my thoughts, “Anne is your creator guide. She helps you write and create that which you want in your life.”
“Anne, you always did that,” I said. “We sat in a coffee shop for hours, nibbling on dinner, so engrossed in our conservation about art, writing. I remember a poem I couldn’t get right, couldn’t get the ending. You told me to tear it up and start from the end and work backward. I loved the beginning of that poem, loved everything about it except the last line, but I listened to you, tore up the poem and rewrote it from the outside in, so to speak. You were right. It was one of the best poems I ever wrote.”
“It won an award,” she reminded me. She took my hands between hers, and I felt her warmth. “I must move on and allow you to meet your other guides.”
“Don’t go,” I begged.
“I’m never far away,” she said. “Only a thought from your heart brings me to you.”
“Are you still painting?” I asked as she moved away.
“Yes,” she said, smiled, and then was gone back into the light.
“Your painting still hangs on my wall,” I called after her.
Phillip introduced me to the other members of the entourage—the scholar who provides where to find needed information; the orator who helps me when I speak in front of others; the comforter who holds my heart and encourages me when I feel lost; the healer and strength giver who cares for my body and my spirit; the protector who watches over me and keeps me from harm; and the teacher who guides me to learn the lessons and receive the gifts I came to Earth to learn and receive.
“I am the communicator,” Phillip said. “I am the one who speaks to you so that you are able to hear the voices of all your guides as one. To hear each separately is possible, but not always desirable. Most practically it is best to communicate directly with each one for specific information or advice in the guide’s category. You might wish to speak to Philipe when directing energy toward the animals, for example. For most other information, you communicate directly with me.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“It avoids confusion,” he said. “Think about life within your own world. If you walk into a room full of people and ask a question, what happens?”
“No one knows if they should answer.”
“Precisely. Either too many answers will come, or no answers will come. Either way, the simple solution is to work with one communicator who speak to all to receive the answer you seek.”
This made sense to me, even more so when Phillip explained future. “There are other beings who also impart information through me for you. Some of these are around you all the time, such as your guardian angels, others are angels and beings who come in for temporary assignments when called. I also have access to libraries and other beings who are always ready to be of service whenever we ask. Of course these beings can also communicate directly to you when necessary. Your angels were with you when your motorcycle went down. They protected you.”
I wasn’t so sure I had been protected in the accident, but at the moment it didn’t seem important. There was too much going on, too much to wrap my mind around. “It’s all so magnificent and so mind boggling,” I said.
“Yes, it’s difficult for the human mind to fully comprehend the vastness and complexities of existence.”
“Is there more?” I asked.
“Yes. There are the watchers. The watchers are beings from other galaxies,” Phillip said. “They are emissaries of Prime Spirit, or Prime Source, if you prefer. The watchers observe all of us, guiding us that we may best guide you in the work you do on Earth and helping you have the life experiences you chose. Their main concern is that you accomplish that which you went to Earth to do in the first place.”
I wanted to ask Phillip what I had come to Earth to do, but Davey pulled at my arm. “Look!”
A doorway that spanned from floor to ceiling opened and we stood in the midst of the most magnificent night sky. At least that’s what I though it was. I imagined it was like standing in the middle of the Milky Way. Millions and millions and millions of lights of varying sizes moved around us, some floated, others whizzed, some even seemed to be standing still. They didn’t seem to form any sort of pattern until I looked at my own body. It too was made up of these dots of lights flashing about within the confines of the image of my physical body. I could make out my arms and even individual fingers, but nothing was solid; instead my body was a group of different sizes, all fairly small, lights moving in rhythm at the same speed.
With a single thought, my right arm lifted and the most magnificent rainbow of color swept across my vision as I waved my arm. I reached out to grab a star and my hand lit up brighter, then dimmed at bit when I opened it. Davey giggled. He leapt upward and a sprinkle of stars fell from his feet. I did the same not knowing how high I could go and not caring if I ever came down. Phillip did though. He reached out to both Davey and me, held each of us by a hand, then leapt about with us. “There are dangers you are unaware of and no need to learn of,” he said. “You can get lost.”
“No we can’t” Davey said. “We have you.”
“Yes, and I’m going to hold onto you very tightly,” Phillip said, but his eyes sparkled with merriment and I knew he wouldn’t hold any tighter than necessary, good guide that he was.
I could have stayed there in that heavenly night sky forever, but our journey was not yet over. There was more to experience, and it began with the wind. It was the sound of wind through tall trees, a sound much like water falling over a cliff. Then came the music—almost too loud for my ears—that sounded like thousands of musical instruments from eons of time playing all at once in accordance with the beauty of every human voice that ever sang. The music was celestial, otherworldly, and yet so very familiar. As the music grew in volume, my every cell exploded with its intensity until I thought I could not longer stand it, and yet I wanted more, more, and I went beyond.
The colors almost blinded for my eyes from their radiance, and yet there was something so splendid as they pierced into me that I wanted more, more, and I went beyond. It was a moment of sheer ecstasy, an euphoria almost too much to bear, and yet I wanted more, more, and I went beyond. My heart pounded hard in rhythm to a pulsating, primal, sensual beat that came from everywhere, and I knew for sure I would explode, and yet I wanted more, more, and I went beyond.
There are no words for this rapture, this exquisite mystical experience that transcends anything known within a human existence. I ceased to exist in that moment in time and became a part of that which is so much greater than I could ever have possibly imagined.
I felt Phillip pulling me back. “No! No” I tried to scream, but no sound came. The pain was unbearable, my insides were being torn from me, I was being ripped from myself, and I could not stand it, could not stand the agony of leaving. Yet I had not choice.
I fell exhausted at Phillip’s feet. He picked me up, and then I was resting on a bed covered with the finest of linens. Davey stood beside me. “What happened?” I whispered.
“You went to the lesser edges of Prime Source,” Phillip said.
“I wanted to stay, to go deeper.”
“Yes, yes, I understand, but now is not the time for you,” Phillip said.
Davey looked at me with sad eyes. “You can’t go yet,” he said.
“I wanted to, I so wanted to,” I said. “It was so beautiful.”
“No, not yet!” Davey screamed.
“Shush, shush, Davey,” Phillip said. “Diana’s not going anywhere. She knows there is more to do here first. She knows it is not here time. She knows we only showed her a glimpse of Prime Spirit. She knows that to experience more is greater than even those of us in spirit form can take. The energy is much too powerful for us let alone for a human being.” Phillip said all this and I nodded as though I understood and agreed, but what I really was thinking was about the ecstasy and how I wanted to return. Phillip and Davey needed to have something really powerful and enticing to keep me here.
“Rest now,” Phillip said. “When you wake, we’ll continue our journey.” Then he smiled and added, “You’ll be rather enticed by our next journey,” he said, then touched my eyelids and closed then into darkness and a dreamless sleep.

2008-07-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

The Found Child
by
Diana Rankin

Chapter 8
Bonds and Double Bonds

Chapters 1-7 are below, or click on the chapters at the left to read

My head reeled trying to sort it all out. My birth family of origin was my birth family of this life. I was coded by the ancients to teach my family about the ways of the ancient ones and to learn from my family about the ways of Earth. My brother, David, was once my father and he had the same name as the little boy I found at the end of my lane, and the name meant beloved. I was somewhere in time and space, but I had no idea where I was or why I was here. So much of me wanted to go sit on the deck under the tall trees at home and read a good book and forget all this. It was just too much. Yet, I had to admit it was also fascinating. I was on some kind of an adventure that I could not stop, and in truth, I’m not sure I would have even if I could have. Still it was all so overwhelming and reading a book on the deck under the tall trees sounded so much easier than what I was going through, or what I was sure what lay ahead. I had no idea. Perhaps if I had I would have run for the backyard deck.
Phillip spread his arms again and once more I saw hundreds of people. There was one difference though. Now animals were part of my soul family. They roamed among the people—dogs, cats, deer, a black panther, elephants, raccoon, chipmunks, squirrels, mice, dozens and dozens of different animals—and no one seemed to take any great notice. Great and small winged ones soared overhead and screeched, squeaked, squawked, and chipped—red tail hawks, eagles, turkey vultures, seagulls, robins, wrens, killdeer, Eastern bluebirds, and hundreds more. I saw the pets I had as a child and the ones who lived with me now. I caught my breath when I saw Paco and the Sheltie girls. “My dogs, how can I see them? They aren’t. . . “
“They are all very much alive,” Phillip said. “They can be here and running the fence line on the land where they live with you.
“Can people do the same?”
“Of course,” Phillip said, then motioned for me to look toward the left.
I saw all my motorcycle friends. There was Dan and Mindy and Tod, Steve, Nancy, Dennis, and dozens of other friends I rode with, sometimes two-up on the back, sometimes on my bike. I heard them laugh, so much wanted to go join them, then noticed I was with them. Before I had time to think about this, my attention was drawn to a group of students from the university where I teach. I stood in front of the class talking about the historic influence of religion on politics in the beginning of this country; then I was telling the story of the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna to a group of workshop participants; then I was leading a meditation on personal and planetary healing to another group of people; then I was listening to Clare in a writers’ group I once belonged to; then I saw myself among my closest friends, and I felt a deep longing to be with them. It was then I noticed the strangest thing. I was among these friends, just as I was engaged with each of the different groups that made up my life, and at the same here I was still standing between Phillip and Davey.
There I was dresses in motorcycle leathers laughing with friends, and at the same time there I was dressed in clean beige slacks and soft cream-colored blouse and deeply engaged in discussion with the university students; and there I was dressed in a purple cape talking about ancient Sumner; and there I was in a teal dress with Celtic swirls leading the meditation, and there I was thirty years ago dressed in a long, lose skirt and blouse in the writers’ group; and there I was in a tee, blue jeans, and sandals talking with my closest friends. “This all seems perfectly normal, Phillip,” I said surprising myself by how calm I felt and how very normal it did all seem.
He raised one eyebrow. “It is,” he said. He proceeded to show me friends from my childhood, adolescence, and, adulthood—friends from throughout my life. Then he showed me everyone who had ever hurt me, and I whirled with new understanding of my life and experiences. A third-grade teacher who sat me alone in the back of the room was not punishing me, but providing me with advanced reading material, because I read ahead of the class and she didn’t want to hold me back. The betrayal of a man I loved was no longer a painful experience that needed healing, but a soul contract to break my heart open to more love. The hurtful words of a girlfriend were no longer hurtful, but words of love to spur me into greater self-growth.
I saw flaws in others and knew they were my flaws. I saw love freely given to me that I misunderstood and rejected. I saw flashes of anger where I had driven love away. I saw my own impatience. I saw acts of kindness I missed both giving and receiving. I saw how I was both the receiver of another’s cruel words or acts and how I was also the given of cruel words and acts. I saw how I was both the receiver of another’s loving words and acts and how I was also the giver of loving words and acts. I saw everyone in my soul family and how we all interconnected and interacted over the eons of time to help one another grow to our greatest potential.
“How are soul families created? How do I know who is in my soul family? Is everyone I meet part of my soul family?” I asked, the questions slipping out of my mouth right on top of one another. Both Phillip and Davey were excited by my questions, glad to have such a willing student.
Phillip waved his arm again, and I saw hundreds of people I didn’t know. I laughed. “I guess I don’t know everyone in my soul family, at least not this time around.”
“You are quite astute,” Phillip said, seemingly pleased with his pupil. “You have different encounters with different souls in different life experiences. Everything depends on the choices you make.”
“Or which life I chose,” I said remembering the old woman in front of the monitors watching the different lives she could choose from.
“That is correct,” Phillip said. “Also choices you make within each life experience helps determine which members of your soul family you will interact with. Some you may only pass in an airport terminal and feel a sense of connection with; with others you may spend your lives together in a close union such as marriage or as a parent and child. Some you may not have any need to recognize within this life experience.”
“It all depends on what I have to learn,” I said.
“Yes, but more importantly, it all depends on what you have undertaken to experience. Learning is only a part of the experience, just as the gifts that come from each experience is only a part of the greater whole.”
“There are no wrong choices then.”
“That is correct. All choices are correct choices depending on what you want to experience. Some choices are errors in judgment that need to be relived to make different choices, but all choices are made to allow you to experience what your soul chose for its experience.”
“Until we experience it all.”
“All is infinite,” Phillip said. “An endless creation.”
“Is that what life is? An infinite creation?”
“Yes, and yet no,” Phillip said. “Certainly in this universe, the one in which you live, creation takes place and is never ending. You create tomorrow by how you live today. This is the nature of your universe. You also create other universes of which you are not even aware by your thoughts and actions. These universes are not creation universes, but ones of experience, study, or for other purposes. The ability of Earth and its universe is the ability to create, which is why free will and emotion are so important. All of this is unique to Earth—the ability to create, the free will to create whatever you choose, and the emotion necessary to drive the creation into manifestation.”
“I see, or think I do,” I said. “It sound simple enough now, but how will I remember all that you are telling me?”
“There’s no need to concern yourself with remembering. You are already coded with the information. You already know all that I’m telling you. Just remember what you know.”
“Remember what I know. But how do I know that I know?’ Phillip was a bit impatient with me now and ignored my question. “I guess I’ll know as I need to know,” I said sheepishly, and Phillip smiled.
“Soul families begin with a nucleus,” he said, and then I saw a group in the middle of my soul family, a small group of maybe twenty beings or so who glowed with an iridescent light that pulsated to a regular beat.
“Are they the nucleus?” I asked.
“They are the nucleus of your soul family,” Phillip said. Within each soul family there is a nucleus, a group of beings who set the parameters and goals for that family. They are the leaders I suppose one could say.” Phillip looked at me to make sure I was listening carefully to him. The nucleus beings are chosen by Prime Spirit or ambassadors of Prime Spirit, their destiny is to lead others to fulfill their destinies.”
“Were they created as nucleus beings?” I asked, afraid to ask, afraid for some reason of the answer, but yet the words came out of my mouth almost against my will.
Phillip looked at me carefully when he spoke. I wanted to look away, but could not. “Some were,” he said. “Mostly nucleus beings were chosen after long lifetimes of study as multidimensional beings with eons of study in a multitude of diverse universes. Finally there are additional lifetimes of practical application as an apprentice, a fledging who works with the nucleus beings, but under the guiding light and guardianship of others.
“Each soul family has different purposes, different exploration to undertake different creations to manifest,” Phillip continued after a pause. Souls, before manifesting into life, look at different families, and then decide which family best suits their needs. The soul then petitions the nucleus beings for admittance into that soul family. The nucleus beings of the chosen soul family meet with the nucleus beings of all soul families along and with all of their guides, teachers, angels, and other spirits to decide whether to accept or reject the petition. Of course this is all determined with the assistance and approval of Prime Spirit’s closest aides.”
“Prime Spirit?”
“Yes, well some might call Prime Spirit, God, but not the god you knew in your childhood. Unfortunately that god was swallowed up by religions who made god in their own image. The pity is they make such a small god, I suppose because they couldn’t understand the infinity of God, or Prime Spirit as we’ve come to say.”
“Prime Spirit,” I mumbled to myself. The words felt vast and primal, unknowing and unknowable. “We humans need to feel something or someone is watching over us, taking a personal interest in our affairs, helping us in our needs,” I said. “Perhaps this is why we created a more personal God.”
“Oh my dear, so many watch over you and take a personal interest in your affairs. You have a whole entourage at your beck and call 24-7 as you are fond of saying in your world these days.”
“We do?”
“Phillip, the nucleus beings,” Davey said. “Remember?”
“Yes, yes, of course. I divert,” Phillip said.
“But I want to know about Prime Spirit and my entourage,” I said.
“Yes, yes, well.” For a moment or two Phillip seemed confused about which direction to take, which questions to answer first. He quickly composed himself and continued. “There is no beginning or end really. There’s only just now and all that is.” Then he added, “I suppose we should cover things in order, so the nucleus it is, but do remember it’s all tied in together.”
This seemed completely contradictory to me, but Davey seemed satisfied with Phillip’s explanation and the direction we were taking. He really is an extraordinary little boy, I thought, then reminded myself that he was not any ordinary little boy.
“As I was saying,” Phillip began, ‘there are millions upon millions of souls in the universe.”
“There are more than that,” Davey said. I heard there were . . . “
“Yes, well, it doesn’t really matter, now does it, Davey, the number that is,” Phillip said. “Of course there are aides to Prime Spirit who know the exact number, but it’s a number that has no meaning to Diana. It’s not even a number she can comprehend.”
I laughed. “Probably not,” I said. “Numbers were never my strong point.”
“Oh but they were,” Phillip said. “You once well understood the Greek Pythagoras, having spent time studying his work. Of course his work is very different from the way numbers are used today. In his day, numbers were used for mystical purposes, to better understand life and the universe. Numbers were the predictors of the future through understanding of Spirit’s cycles and patterns.” Phillip shock his head, and then continued. “But never mind. I divert again, and must come back to nucleus beings within soul families before Davey reminds me again.”
Phillip smiled and looked at Davey. A genuine emotion passed between them, which surprised me. Maybe Phillip was right when he said there are many who look out for us and care about our wellbeing. Did Phillip feel emotion? Did other beings in the universe feel like humans did? What were these other beings like? So many questions to ask Phillip. Would I ever learn all the answers?
“Now where were we?” Phillip asked, then answered without waiting for an answer. “Ah yes, as I was saying, there are more soul families than you can imagine in the universe, even this tiny little universe that Earth is part of.”
“You mean there are more universes?” I asked.
“Why yes,” Phillip said.
“More than I can count, I bet.”
“Oh yes, more than you can count.”
“And Prime Spirit is ahead of all these universes?”
“Well now, perhaps the more appropriate word is creator of,” Phillip said. “but more about that later. First you need to understand nucleus beings within soul families and double bonds.”
“Double bonds?”
“Yes, double bonds. Everyone within a soul family is bonded, basically—and that’s very basically—it’s a fundamental attractive force that binds souls, much like chemical bonds when atoms and ions bond in a molecule. These bonds, although strong, can be broken. Double bonds are stronger. These bonds are found among certain members within soul families, and although stretched, are seldom broken. In your world, two souls may choose to form a double bond, using each other to help them grow into their greatest potential. There is great danger in this journey. These pairs may also bring out each others’ most horrendous faults and spend lifetimes correcting their errors.”
“Are these our soul mates?” I asked.
“Usually these are actually twin souls who are one time were created as one, and then decided to split into two entities, who then formed a double bond. Soul mates are any members of your soul family with whom you decide to come together in order to work through specific issues for the growth of both souls.”
“In my world we’ve changed the meaning,” I said.
“Yes, but not entirely. It still can be a very romantic relationship, but that’s not the only relationship soul mates have. Like double bonded souls, soul mates manifest in a variety of different roles and genders.”
“Are nucleus beings double bonded?” I asked.
“Nucleus beings are triple bonds,” Phillip said. The nucleus beings of each soul family is triple bonded to the nucleus beings of every other soul family throughout all the universes.” Phillip could see that I was having trouble wrapping my mind around what he was saying, so he gave more explanation. “Imagine a small circle within a large circle. Everyone within this circle is related, one soul family, the smaller circle being the nucleus of that family. Now imagine several additional large circles, all with the smaller nucleus circle. Draw a line from one nucleus to another, then add a third nucleus, and so on. Soon the lines among the nucleus of each soul family begin to cross and come back on themselves, but as you can see all the small circles connect, even though the larger circles do not meet.”
“So this is how we’re all connected, through the nucleus beings,” I said.
“Yes, that and you are all made out of the same matter, but that’s another matter” Phillip said and laughed at his own joke.
“It’s all so mind boggling,” I said. “Are there other bonds?”
“Yes, the number is much higher. Your scientists have discovered quadruple, quintuple, and sextuple bonds, I believe, but they aren’t quite sure how they all work. They’ll discover another bond soon, but still they have a ways to go before discovering—or fully understanding—bonds. Suffice to say, all you need to be concerned with are double and triple bonds.”
“Tell her why,” Davey insisted.
“Certainly we’ll get to that,” Phillip said. “But first she wanted to know about Prime Spirit and her entourage. It will take the whole entourage to explain Prime Spirit.” He motioned us toward a doorway at the back of the room. “I believe everyone has gathered in there,” he said. “They await us.”

2008-07-22T11:58:00.000-07:00

The Found Child
by Diana Rankin

Chapter 7
Soul Family

Chapters 1-6 are below

We entered a large room with a long table filled with colorful glass plates of fresh fruit and vegetables, silver bowls of nuts, golden platters of cheeses and crackers and chips with assorted dips. In the center of the table was a large fountain of crystal clear water gracefully spilling over the seven tiers into a pool filled with floating water lilies. Several smaller tables, filled with food, were spread around the room. People milled about, the way folks do at a party while waiters in black tie and short jackets moved about and poured wine into glasses. Near the window that overlooked a breathtaking view of mountains and a waterfall that rivaled El Capitan in Yosemite was a violinist, flutiest, harpist, pianist, and drummer playing the most heart-touching ethereal melody. Singing with the group were two vocalists whose ethereal voices resounded within me, stroking every fiber of my being.
“This is your soul family,” Phillip said. “We thought a little festive air might make it more fun,” he added when he picked up on my disbelief. “Shall we start with your birth family?” Like Moses parting the Red Sea, Phillip raised his arm and all the people stepped aside, the tables and food disappeared and a spotlight shone down on a giant of a man with sun-fired braided hair and bright, intense blue eyes. He wore a belted knee-length yellowish colored tunic embroidered with red trim and a brat of animal fur that was held in the center with a gold pin. His feet and legs were covered with strapped-wrapped fur, and on his massive arms were three bracelets of gold, each handsomely carved with interlocking spiral patterns.
In a V behind him stood hundreds of people, more than I could actually see as the dim light at the edges faded their faces. They stood on a great green mountain, the top of which was shrouded in a thick, rolling fog. Wailing bagpipes saturated the air, and I knew I was in the presence of someone and something great and noble. A young couple stepped out from the crowd and faced the giant man. From out of a wrap around her breast, the woman pulled a baby. She handed the babe to the giant of a man and I felt his arms as though they were around me. He lifted the baby in his big hands high into the air. I put my hand on Davey’s should to brace myself as I suddenly felt off balance.
He spoke, this great giant of a man, and his rich, resonant voice boomed across the mountain range. His words were strange to my ears, sounding more like guttural grunts than words, and yet I understood every single syllable, and what he said sent chills up and down my spine and pierced my eyes with tears. “We welcome this babe into the world and into this clan,” he spoke. “She brings into this lineage the light of knowledge from afar. It is to her we will turn and it is her we will ridicule. She is our teacher and she is our student. From her we will learn the ways of the ancient ones and from us she will learn the ways of Earth. She comes to us coded with the future, and through her reproduction and that of her children and her children’s children, the coding will be passed from generation to generation until the future time comes.”
My head felt light and my breath hard to come by. I wanted to close my ears, and yet I stood transfixed, unable to stop listening, somewhere within myself knowing that the truth is more terrifying than any of us want to know. Davey dropped my hand just then and took a step back, and I knew I had to stand alone as did that babe held high above the earth. Then the shadows lifted from all the people standing behind the great man and I clearly saw each face of each person. They numbered, not in the hundreds as I had originally thought, but in the thousands. They spread over the mountains and across the valleys, and as I watched their clothes and hairstyles changed, morphing from one generation into the next until I saw only myself as a little girl sitting beside my grandmother on the green plaid porch swing.
“She looks so young,” I said of my grandmother, the sight of her startling enough that the giant of a man and the babe suddenly became as a memory and all that existed in time was right before me.
“Your mother will be here soon,” Grandma said. I saw then through the eyes of myself as the child sitting next to her. A long, ribbon of a road stretched down the highway that divided wheat fields, much like the country fields where I now live. “It will be good for you to be with your mother for awhile,” Grandma said. “I’ll miss you though.” She pulled my small hand into hers and pushed her foot against the floor to push the swing back, then lifted her foot and we went forward. “It’s hard for her,” Grandma said about Mother. “She works so hard without your father around to support you and your brother. Ah, don’t get me started on that good for nothing man.”
I saw him then, my father. He stood outside the windows of the porch watching Grandma and me on the swing, and suddenly I understood that he was fulfilling his destiny. He was not meant to stay with the family he helped create, but to leave, his purpose fulfilled once I was conceived. He was my direct link to the great giant of a man, the lineage I was to have, the heritage only he could give to me in this lifetime.
I saw them then, Mother and my brother, David. They rode up the road in Mother’s old black Chevy and parked it right along side Grandma’s gold Hudson in the gravel circle near the back of the house. Mother existed first, a pretty young blond with wireless glasses and an infectious, impish smile. She walked over toward the other side of the car, where David was getting out. My brother, two years older than me, was about eight. As he and Mother walked toward us, I—in my present self—gasped. David, no longer a child, was the man I had seen with the woman who handed the babe to the giant of a man in olden times, and Mother was that woman. My mother and brother in this life were once my mother and father in another life.
I watched my child-self run for them when they came close. Mother—again the mother I knew in this life—pulled me to her. “Go get your things,” she said.
“She’s all packed,” Grandma said. “Her things are right here.” Grandma rose from the swing. “Papa’s inside. He’s ready for supper. We’ve been waiting.”
“We got here as soon as we could,” Mother said.
“I know, I know,” Grandma said putting her hands up. “That city traffic and all. You couldn’t help it.”
They went inside, the three of them, and I felt my heart go with them.
“We have the same name, you know,” Davey said. “My name is the same as your brother’s ‘cept everyone calls me Davey.”
“Why Davey? Why do you have the same name? Is there a reason?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Just is,” he said, but I have the distinct feeling that nothing just is. It only seems that way until we come to understand the patterns woven through our lives.
“Beloved,” Phillip said.
“Beloved?” I asked.
“The name. David. It means beloved.”

2008-07-16T13:15:00.001-07:00

The Found Child
by Diana Rankin

Chapter 6
Phillip Arrives

Chapters 1-5 are below

No wind, no music, not even a great light came to announce Phillip’s arrival. One minute he wasn’t there and the next he was. I knew immediately who he was, yet I can’t explain how I knew. He stood before me as a man rather strangely dressed in black trousers with red suspenders and a white broadcloth shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was white as were his moustache and goatee, and his eyes were strikingly dark with planes like the antique jet beads of my grandmother’s era, each facet brillian with its own secrets and fascination. Before I had a chance to consciously think much about his appearance he said, “Ah, something else, perhaps.” Then he proceeded to morph from one image into another. It happened so fast, I hardly caught any one image, but of those I did see there was a lovely woman with blazing red hair; a hunchback in tattered clothes; a European king dressed in royal clothes; an ancient Egyptian mixing perfumes; a baby in a test tube; a Sumerian wading among reeds; a man pulling blue stones toward Stonehenge; a woman in a starship; a young couple standing by cornfields; and an elderly couple sitting in a swing that overlooked a big city. With each image came the aromas and sounds of the image, and I felt the experience of each as though I myself were living that life.
I burst into laughter. A part of my rational mind was still working, and it was impossible to take it all in, and yet at another level, I was taking it all in and even having some understanding of what was taking place, although I certainly couldn’t have explained it then, and still don’t have the proper words to do so. All I can do is give my best recollection in explaining something that cannot be explained. This was going through the rational part of my mind—that someday I would have to explain this—while Phillip was morphing and I was experiencing each image, while at the same time wondering how I was going to explain all this. Of course I laughed. Wouldn’t you?
Then Phillip settled down into the image of the white-haired man in black trousers and white shirt, with the red suspenders, which made me laugh all the harder. He caught me up short when he spoke, and I settled down immediately. “Did you not find any of my images pleasing?”
I didn’t quite know what to say or do. Davey had said Phillip was an angel. Was I suppose to bow or kneel or something. Since I didn’t know what to do, I did nothing. “All your images were pleasing, Phillip.” As an afterthought, I added, “Sir.”
This made him smile. “Fine,” he said. “I shall stay in the dress of what you culture thinks of as wise.” As an afterthought, he added, “Unless, of course, you would be more pleased if I appeared as a woman.”
“No, no, you’re find, Phillip. Really,” I said hastily. Again I found myself just wanting to giggle. I folded my hands into each other and dug my knuckles into my lips to stop the laughter, but it did no good. Davey started laughing too and together we rollicked with merriment. For ever so slight a moment, Phillip seemed bewildered, then he too joined in and our laughter rolled across the heavens and around the planet. I had the thought that in some places our laughter was heard as thunder and I thought of the ancient stories of the gods laughing, but the thought quickly floated away and only the mirth was left.
“Can we show her now?” Davey was the first to speak.
Phillip pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket, shock it open, and wiped his eyes. “Human do have some advantages,” he said. “Laughter is built into humans. Much needed, much needed, I think. It’s not always easy being human.”
This was an angel? Isn’t he suppose to play celestial music or something?
“Ah, no my dear. That’s the human’s way of seeing us. Besides I’m not exactly an angel.” Like Davey, Phillip was able to read my thoughts. It was a bit unnerving, but then if he’s not an angel, who, or what, is he? And what does Davey want to show me?
“Oh dear, I see we’ve confused you,” Phillip said. “That’s not our intention at all, you see. We’re here to guide you. Well, come along then.”
“Guide me? Guide me where? Why do I need a guide?”
“On my, you don’t know do you. Well you see you had this motorcycle crash . . . “
Then I knew I must be dead. But it wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. I thought people I loved in spirit world would greet me. Maybe they were all in heaven and this was . . . “
“Oh no, no dear,” Phillip broke into my thoughts. Technically there is no heaven and, well, you know. And technically you’re not dead.” He waved his hand and I saw myself in the helicopter. A man in a blue uniform leaned over me. Sunlight streamed through the window above my shoulder and lit the upper part of my body. “You see my dear, you’re very much alive.” He stood back and looked me up and down for a minute, then crossed his arms over his chest, which seemed much larger than I noticed before. He reached his right arm up to his chin and stroked his goatee. Then he spoke,” You’re in the Otherworld,” he said as though this would make perfect sense to me.
“The Otherworld?”
“Oh yes, the between world.”
“Between what?” I asked.
He seemed puzzled that I would even ask. He shock his head slightly as though to clear it. “Between here and there, of course,” he said.
“I think I understand,” I said, although I wasn’t sure at all. “I’m between life and death.”
He pondered this before he answered. “Yes, I see how you came to that conclusion, although we don’t think you are going to die at all. It’s more that we need you to take care of business here in the Otherworld.”
“So you crashed my motorcycle?”
“Rather dramatic, wouldn’t you say?”
“Did I agree to this?” I asked more calmly than I felt.
“Well of course. You don’t think we would go to all this trouble without your consent, now do you?”
I had no answer. By this time I didn’t know what to think. I was just along for the ride.
“Ride, yes,” Phillip said, again cutting into my thoughts. “Now there are several ways we can get there.”
I started to ask where we were going, but thought better of it, which was just as well. Before I could blink, Phillip produced two motorcycles, one looked remarkable like my Kali.
“We could ride these,” Phillip said.
“Cool!” Davey said.
Before I had a chance to ask where the road was, one appeared, a long stretch of country road much like the ones I ride every day. The road did look inviting, still I wasn’t so sure I was quite ready to jump right back on a bike. Hadn’t I just laid mine down? I could still hear the pinging of the gravel pitting against the fender right before the slide down. Phillip picked up on my hesitation.
“How silly of me,” he said. “Of course you’re not ready to ride yet.” He waved his arm. The bikes disappeared, replaced by a red sports car, a convertible with heated seats and all the amenities. He opened the door and I slipped into the passenger seat. Davey climbed into a small area behind me. Phillip drove.
There was no clear road ahead. All was dense fog, yet we whizzed along. My hair—which I remember as being tied back in a braid—now hung loose and blew about my face. I had the feeling that we didn’t need a vehicle to move in this world, but Phillip was having fun. He served to miss unseen obstacles, downshifted, upshifted, raced thorough curves only he could see, and finally braked hard to a stop. The car lurched, sputtered, then the engine quit. “Here we are,” he said.
The fog gathered itself into white, puffy clouds against a robin’s egg blue sky. A summer sun shone brightly and a light, cooling breeze lifted the edges of my hair. A perfect day, I would have called it in my world.
“We simulate as much of Earth as possible before souls enter into its atmosphere,” Phillip said, again responding to my thoughts.
He seemed much more assured now, then I noticed his outfit had changed along with his demeanor. He wore a lightweight beige outfit, pants and a jacket with a high, upturned collar. “This way,” he said as he put his hand on the small of my back and turned me toward a huge round building that reminded me of an arts complex, complete with large cement planters of hot pink germaniums and purple and yellow pansies evenly spaced along a walkway with long, rectangle reflecting pools on both sides. Near the entrance was a round fountain, the spray of which I felt on my face.
“How do you do that? Make all this appear?” I asked.
“It was here all along,” he said. Even his voice sounded different, almost stuffy, yet friendly and endearing, like a favorite teacher who lives deep in the world of academia and comes out to play occasionally with a prized student. “It is not the buildings that appeared,” he continued. “It was the clearing of your mind that allows you to see. Many beings and objects exist side-by-side, but you are unable to experience them until you have the proper energy intake.”
“Raise the vibes,” I said with a smile, but he seemed to have lost his sense of humor along with the red suspenders.
“Yes, you could say that it is vibrational.” Phillip went into a long explanation of energy and vibration that I forget even before he finished. Not that I understood it anyway. It was all very technical and way beyond my meager understanding of physics, but then I’m not sure even a scientist could understand. Clearly Phillip had mastered an understanding of the universe better than driving a sports car. I didn’t want to even imagine what he would have been like had we taken those motorcycles he manifested, but then Phillip was full of surprises, so he probably would have ridden just fine.
Changes took place in me while he talked. I felt taller and lighter. My vision cleared and everything seemed more vibrant like someone had taken a bottle of window cleaner and washed my eyes. I also felt deep profound peace, totally contented.
People appeared the closer we came to the entrance. It was a normal, busy day with people walking into and out of the building, around the edges, and up and down the walkway. Inside was a great dome that opened to that brilliant blue sky. Ahead were several doorways.
“These are the project rooms,” Phillip said waving his arm to include the line of multiple doors. He pointed to a triple set of double doors in the middle. “Let’s step into the arena, shall we?”
Thousands of people sat in plush theater seats while watching a large screen that wrapped around the front of the room. “This is one of the last stops for souls before being born in the earth dimension,” Phillip whispered. Images of life on Earth flashed across the screen, images superimposed one on top of the other leaving a pentimento effect in reverse. In the center of the screen, a man and woman, both dressed in conservative gray business suits, stood side-by-side. They spoke at the same time. Their voices blended, yet each voice was distinct and individual. It was like listening to Pavarotti as Rodolfo and Mirella Freni as Mimi singing the aria “O Soave Fanciulla” in Puccini’s opera La Bohème in an auditorium with flawless acoustics when the beauty of each voice stands out and also blends into the perfect whole.
“Memories of your time spent here and in other worlds will fade quickly after you enter your Earth body,” the duo said. “You may lose memory as early as within a few months. Some of you will remember for a few years. A few select ones will always remember. Life for these individuals will be more difficult. They are being sent to help the species awaken, but few will want to listen. They may be stoned or scorned, some may suffer greatly, others will enjoy the fruits of life on Earth. Their lives will be similar to yours with only the difference of a heightened sensitivity. This sensitivity will make them seers, poets, artists, healers. It also makes life more difficult in that their own hearts will feel the suffering of others. They sit among you in this theater, but you do not recognize them even now. This is at it should be. Your memories will return at the appropriate time for each of you individually.”
“Come,” Phillip said, his voice softer than before.
Next we entered a circular room where individuals of varying ages sat near each other, each in front of a series of five to seven small monitors. “This is the preview room,” Phillip said. “Before an individual decides to enter or reenter an Earth life, he or she previews different life situations that will best give the experiences desired.”
“It’s like a story,” I murmured.
“Most certainly,” Phillip said. “You choose the parents, siblings, family heritage, country. Here’s let’s watch.” We moved to stand behind a wizard of an old woman, stooped-shouldered and hungry looking. Phillip explained that I was seeing people as they portrayed themselves to my energy. He was able to see them through my eyes, so that we could see the same images, but it was only images that we saw. The people, or images, were souls who displayed themselves differently depending on who was looking and depending on how they saw themselves. “These souls are portraying themselves to you as humans in different stages of life,” he explained. “Many hold the image of how they looked as they left their last Earth life. This woman starved during the Cultural Revolution in China.”
“Are we disturbing her by being here?” I asked.
“Not at all. She, like everyone here, is only aware of our being here on the level of visual awareness, which is why you can see them. To preview their futures, they are concentrating on the level of creation and mind adjustments, which is why they don’t see you.” He saw my confusion. “Think of an elevator,” he said. “The elevator is one compartment, but can move up and down to different levels. If you get off the elevator on the second floor, you have no awareness of what is going on the third floor. The third floor still exist. You may even know its exist, but you do not have an awareness of what is taking place on that floor unless you take the elevator to that floor.”
Davey squeezed my fingers. “Real cool,” he said sounding more like a teenager than a seven-year-old.
The old woman watched one monitor where a movie played of a young Asian couple cooing over a newborn baby. “She has the choice of returning to China, or going to another country,” Phillip explained. “If she chooses to return to China, she may choose to return to her former family lineage. This is often the choice when business is left unfinished within that family that the soul believes they can master.” Phillip turned to look directly at me, his eyes serious. “You, for example, returned to your family of orgin.”
I started to ask him why when Davey yanked on my hand. “Look!”
The old woman was watching a different monitor. An obese man who wore large, gold rings on each hand, sat alone in a restaurant stuffing down spaghetti. Red sauce dribbled from the corners of his mouth. “Why would she choose this life?” I wondered.
“She wants to know what it feels like to be full,” Phillip answered. “This life will probably not suit her though. It does not allow her to feel satisfied, only to experience a variety of different taste. At the third monitor, there was a leader of a large and important industrialized country. “This life,” Phillip said, “would give her the opportunity to change world politics and better understand how governments work on Earth.” The fourth monitor was that of the life of a female doctor from Ireland who was aiding starving children in Africa. The fifth monitor was also the life of a woman, a nutrionist and healer in China who counseled others.
The sixth monitor was a picture of a large bounder near an ocean cliff. The scene remained the same while we stood watching for several minutes. Nothing changed. “This life option is as a stone person,” Phillip said. “Being a stone person would allow her a life of observation and contemplation. In this life expression, she may come to understand the purpose of earthly life.”
I started to ask Phillip what the purpose of earthly life was, but the old woman moved onto the seventh monitor, and we moved with her. This was the life of a house cat, one of five. “In her last life she was a member of a collectivist society,” Phillip said. “She’ll be able to adapt well to being part of a large family of cats. She’ll also be well fed and not have to scramble for food. She’ll be pampered and well cared for. In this life, she’ll learn to receive life’s bounties.”
“Which life will she choose?” I asked.
“That is up to her and her committee,” Phillip said.
“Her committee?”
“No soul makes decisions as large as this alone. Every soul is part of a committee, a team, if you will, to help guide the soul to make the best decisions.”
“Are you part of my team, Phillip? And Davey?”
“Yes, I am a guide, your spirit guide you might say.” Phillip waited for a moment or two as though pondering what to say next before he spoke again. “Would you like to meet your whole committee?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then we shall certainly do so, but first let’s meet your soul family.”
“Soul family?”
“Yes, every soul is part of a larger family, souls you incarnate with. You form soul agreements with many of your family members,” Phillip said. He moved us out of the monitor room and toward a long hallway.
“Don’t forget, Phillip,” Davey said.
“Certainly not. We will not forget,” Phillip said.
“Forget what?” I asked.
“Why you’re here,” Davey said.

2008-07-07T14:33:00.001-07:00

The Found Child
by Diana Rankin

Chapter 5
Motorcycles and Mysteries

Chapters 1-4 are below

“It was Sunday, September 2,” I began. “The day was sunny, a beautiful day to be outside. I had breakfast on the deck, spent time writing in my journal and talking to Carole, a friend in California. I told her how very content I felt, how comfortable I was with my life these days. She reminded me to be careful on my intended ride. Then I left. I rode for awhile, and then headed down to Yellow Springs to meet a couple of biker buddies for lunch. I was early, so I rode around town for awhile. The day had turned hot and riding in traffic was uncomfortable, so I parked and spent a little time people watching and thinking about how fortunate I was to be doing exactly what I was doing.
“When Dan and Dennis showed up, we had lunch, and then took off for another ride,” I continued. As I talked to Davey, I felt myself actually there in that day and telling Davey the story as I lived it. “Dan was in the lead when we left Yellow Springs. I was in the middle and Dennis was bringing up the rear. They both rode big Harley’s. My Kawasaki Vulcan 500 looked like the little sister to Dan’s Heritage Softtail. They were both red traditional looking motorcycles, the kind most people think of when someone says motorcycle.
“We made one stop, then I took the lead as we headed west out of West Liberty toward my house. Dan was going to fix the lawnmower, so I could ride the John Deeere that evening and mow the grass. We didn’t make it to my house though.
“I never liked that stretch of highway coming out of West Liberty. There are hairpin turns that go under a railroad bridge, then the road straightens out into a couple of long S curves. Although I had ridden these curves several times, I always felt better to be past them. Plenty of times I rode tight curves and long, hilly S curves. It was the nature of all the roads where I live, and like all bikers I loved the thrill of riding the curves. Still there was something about this particular stretch of road that always made me a little tense, and today was no exception.”
Lily pounced from the bed just then. She ran over to Paco and swatted her paw against his nose that lay on his forepaws. He lifted his head, tilted it, and just looked at her, then put his head back down and ignored her. Davey and I both laughed. He scooted in closer to me. I put my arm around him. Jesse protested as the mattress moved. “What happened next?” Davey asked.
“I upshifted as I came out of the last curve. Dan was behind me, Dennis behind him. We rode in a staggered formation. I was near the left of the westbound lane, Dan was behind me to the right side of the land, and Dennis was behind him to the left side of the lane. We were on a straightaway about to enter the first of the long S curves, when I saw the tar and chip. I was so glad to be on the left side of our lane so I could ride down the middle of the road. When the state paves a road with tar and chip, the center of the road where the lines are painted is left alone, without any fresh tar or chip. On a hot day, the road tar is slippery. On any day chip—gravel—is like riding on marbles. The two together are a dangerous combination for motorcyclists. Add freshly cut glass clippings to the mix and a curve with an oncoming vehicle and the danger increases.
“There was a lip between the paved and unpaved section of the road,” I said to Davey. The bike jerked, slipped, still I was upright, then there was gravel, loose grass clippings . . . and I was flying. I was flying. It felt good.”
Lily stood on the edge of the water bowl, pulling it toward her until she knocked it over with a crash. Water slopped across the floor. Lily’s action pulled me out of my thoughts and back to Davey. Suddenly I was embarrassed. What was I doing telling this little boy all this about the motorcycle mishap while he sat next to me on my bed in the middle of the night? Then, as though it were the most natural question in the world to ask a seven-year-old child, I said, ” Did I die in the crash? Are you an angel?”
“No,” he said only once. “Phillip’s the angel.” Davey reached his little hand out to me and as easily as that I took it. For a few minutes nothing happened, and then I looked at the clock again and noticed it still read 4:44, the same time it was when I woke to find Davey in my room. Suddenly everything began happening at once.
A light filled the room, a light so bright I momentarily shielded my eyes with my free arm until my eyes adjusted. The light was white and yet filled with colors of every imaginable hue and intensity. It was iridescent and pulsated with a beat that felt strangely familiar. A great wind swept into the room and swirled around. All five dogs began barking and howling at once, which made the three cats jump from the bed and take off running down the hall. Music—the rhapsody of a thousand choirs signing together—permeated the air and the tints and tones of the colors embedded within the white light moved into deeper shades that danced with the music that itself pulsated with this strange, yet familiar drum-like rhythmic beat. It was sheer ecstasy.
As quickly as the light and wind and music came, it disappeared, leaving Davey and I transported across time and space. We stood above the earth as though on a low cloud. I saw everything with an uncanny clarity, the road out of West Liberty, the curve and the gravel, the blue van approaching from the west, the three riders coming from the east. I saw myself first, riding in the lead. I knew what was coming, but I didn’t shout at myself to stop, go back. I couldn’t have shouted even if I had wanted to. All I could do was watch, a silent witness of the destruction of my body that was about to take place.
I saw myself downshift as I neared the curve and move more to the center of the road to put more space between myself and the van. I saw me smile, and then the bike went sideways and my body went flying, it bounced then continued to scrape and slide down the road. Dan rode into the ditch around me, around my bike. Slippery grass clippings spun from his back tires as he steadied his own bike for a safe stop.
I watched as Dennis stopped and parked his bike. I watched as the lady in the blue van turned around and protectively parked behind us to keep others from driving unaware upon the scene. I saw my bike sideways on the road, and then I saw me. My shoulders and arms were red raw from road rash. A gash cut deep into the side of my helmet and my mouth and chin were covered in gravel and dirt where the face shield had broken away. The lady in the blue van leaned over me, talked to me, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She was an EMT with the local squad. I watched her as she took ice from a chest in her van and cooled my face, and I watched her look after my body until the rest of the squad showed up.
I watched as Dan picked up my glasses from the pavement and put them into his pocket. I saw him take his phone out, and I knew he was calling friends to bring a trailer to pick up my bike. Kali I called her, goddess of creation and destruction. I heard the sirens and saw the squad arrive, saw them cut clothes off me, saw them push against my body in different places, saw the looks on their faces.
“You were never alone,” Davey said.
I turned at the sound of his voice, for the first time aware of his presence. “No, never,” I answered. “I never felt alone.” It was as though it was all orchestrated, even down to the lady in the van being an EMT and having a cooler full of ice to help me cool down. It was so hot that day and the pavement was especially hot. I heard the helicopter approaching, saw my friends and neighbors Mindy and Tod trying to get through the stopped traffic, saw my body on the stretcher being lifted into the helicopter. It took off, spewing dust and loose straw in its wake. I felt its wind as a caress. Davey stood quietly beside me, his sweet smile reassuring.
The scene below faded as Davey’s smile became my whole awareness, its sweetness enveloping me. My own heart rose and fell, expanding with each breath. I knelt down to Davey’s eye level. “I love you, Davey,” I said, not grasping why I felt an overwhelming urge to tell him, or even why I felt such abiding love for this little boy.
“I know,” he said. “Do you remember me now?”
“ I looked deeply at him, put my hand on his shoulder, and reached deep into the labyrinth of my memory, but nothing came. Davey looked so hopeful that I’d remember, but not even a flicker of recognition ignited itself in my mind. While kneeling beside this strange child, wondering of the bond that united us, a tear fell from my eye and I felt it in my heart.
He leaned closer to me to make sure I was listening. “You gave my mom money. She bought me toys for Christmas.”
Recognition froze into me.
“You do remember,” he said. He clapped his hands together to applaud my long overdue recognition.
“Davey, we never met, never saw one another. How do you know?”
He blinked, surprised I would ask such a silly question. Then I heard another voice. I heard the voice both from within myself and without as though every molecule of air echoed with each word, syllable, and the sounding of each letter. “You are united by love.”
“You love me,” Davey said clearly. “That’s why they let me come help you.”
A million questions flew through my mind. Why are they? Help me how? But none of the questions seemed important at the moment. Davey wasn’t an angel. He was telling me the truth about that. Davey was a little boy. He was telling me the truth about that too. But he had left out a few very important details.

2008-07-01T11:30:00.001-07:00

The Found Child
by Diana Rankin

Chapter 4
4:44 a.m.

Chapters 1-3 are below

The sun was moving through the sky toward the west as we reached the edge of the woods. Paco raced down to the end of the fence line, wagging his tail and barking all the way. Davey jumped out of the Jeep and ran over to him almost before we were stopped. Paco danced, his four paws skittering up and down, touching the earth, then not, then touching earth again. “Paco, sit,” I commanded, which he did, but was too excited to stay in the command. At eight-five pounds Paco outweighed Davey and stood almost as tall. A mixed breed, he’s part German Sheppard, part Chow, and mostly a good old handsome country dog.
We’ve had a close connection from the beginning. A friend who lived on the edge of the city called to say he had a dog for me. I didn’t want a dog, but Paco’s story touched me deeply, so I had to at least meet him. Paco was only a puppy then, maybe six or seven months old. Someone left him beside a creek where he was observed for three days where he just sat and waited. Finally someone took Paco to my friend’s house and left him, because my friend had dogs and would know how to care for Paco. He did. He called me.
I knew Paco was coming home with me the minute I saw him. He seemed to know that too as he bounded up to me, circled, then lay down beside me, all the while his tongue hanging out. Our bond continued to deepen in our nearly years together, ten now. We came especially close when he climbed under the fence and injured his spine in two places, which resulted in the loss of all four legs. He taught me how to heal as we worked to get him back up running again—a one percent chance, the vet said. A miracle, I said.
Watching him with Davey warmed me. I opened the gate so they could both experience the benefit of each other’s playfulness. Paco reached his big head into Davey’s waiting hands and friendship was formed between the little boy and big dog. They played together while I scraped and scrapped together a dinner. A half-dozen white-tail deer scampered away when the pair ran into the meadow and over by the pond. Lady and Freddie lounged in the big dog pen oblivious to the goings on outside their area, but the Sheltie girls raced up and down the little dog pen, barking commands at Paco and Davey and doing their best to herd the two back under the trees into the yard.
Two more calls to the Sheriff’s office yielded the same results as before: there was no report of a lost—or found—child. I called every local television and radio news show at least twice, but at the end of every phone call there was a dead end. Mostly I was answered by voice mail, with no one calling back. In the rare instance where I actually talked to a person, it was deja vu with the Sheriff’s office calls. Finally I gave up figuring that somehow this would all sort itself out by morning. We made up a bed for Davey, and gave up trying to find his home for the night. At least he was safe, although I was concerned for his parents. How they must feel! Yet, I was out of ideas as to how to get him home.
I could hear him breathing through the window from where I sat on the front porch swing. Paco slept next to him. Freddie sat next to me, his long, soft hound-dog ears velvet against my calf. Lady slept inside with the Shelties and cats. All members of my four-legged family were home and safe tonight. Davey’s family didn’t have that safe feeling that comes from knowing those you love are safe in your care. “Let them know,” I whispered. “Let them know Davey’s safe.”
I had brought the letter from Jeremy outside with me. I pulled it from the back pocket of my shorts and held it a long time. It was too dark by then to see the writing, so I put it back into my pocket and walked out toward the meadow. Tree frogs chanted. A near full moon passed down its rays through the branches of the tall trees and lit the way. The meadow, dazzling with the silvery blue radiance of the moon, was alive with flickering fireflies and fairies. Larger than fireflies, fairies carry lanterns that have a center point of light that diffuses at the edges into a mist. Fireflies illuminated the ground as they emerged and flew up almost meeting the higher flying fairies who topped the trees and kept on going straight up, and then turning in ninety-angles before landing on a branch high above the ground.
Overhead in an arch over the labyrinth cut from wildflowers, the Milky Way shone so brightly I felt you could actually walk across it. Everything seemed to shimmer, more so than I had every noticed. It didn’t even seem odd that the stars were so bright with the mood so full. The heavens pulsated with light as did the air itself. Everything felt charged with an intensity and energy. Long had I known I lived on special land, magical land, and tonight it felt even more magical than I had every experienced. Maybe it was a child being here, or maybe it was the presence of Davey himself. A shiver skittered up my spine and came to rest, spirit sparks I call them.
Davey and Paco stood inside at the glass doors that open onto the deck. I didn’t see then until I was back under the trees in the back yard. The boy and dog were backlit from light inside, giving them the appearance of glowing. I waved, but they couldn’t see me in the dark under the trees. As I neared the garden by the deck, the Shelties barked. For a moment I looked away. Davey and Paco disappeared from the doorway in that moment. The garden statue of Quan Yin, Chinese goddess of compassion, was awash in moonlight that then echoed across the small reflecting pool. Tears came to my eyes of the beauty of it all, the perfection of all life. I felt cleansed by the moment as moonlight glittered and gleamed on everything around me. My senses heightened, I could hear deer out by the pond, their tongs licking against the salt block. Beneath my feet, night crawlers scraped through the grass in a rasping sound, crickets chirped, and somewhere in the woods a single owl hooted a long whooooo. For a long time I stood still, awestruck, unable or unwilling to move. I just wanted to be part of the night, part of its beauty and its mystery, part of its ambiguity and part of the terrible unknowing of its darkness.
I don’t remember going inside, or even how I got there. Paco lifted his head when I checked on Davey. His breathing lifted and fell in the regular rhythm of sleep. Paco put his head against my legs as I sat down on the floor. I leaned against him, then curled up and held his body against mine. “Do you know how much I love this doggy?” I asked him. He licked my hand. I started crying. Soft, mute tears. “Oh Paco,” I whispered. “What are we going to do with this little boy?”
When I crawl into my own bed, the letter fell from the pocket of my shorts. I pulled the comforter close and settled against the pillows. “Now you can read your letter,” Davey’s voice said so clearly I almost thought he was in the room instead of speaking from my memory. Like everything this night, the paper shimmered and the words resonated with something deep within me. I heard Jeremy’s voice across time and space as he spoke to me from out of some far away place.
My Beautiful Diana,
I never want to leave you, never. Although time and circumstances have taken us apart, I am nonetheless still with you always. You must believe me. You must trust this is true. All that will ever matter is our love for one another, no matter what.
Tomorrow we leave for
The letter was unfinished, unsigned. It didn’t matter. I knew the ending. Tears came then, unabashed wet sobs that fell in long streaks against the moon-soaked comforter. Long ago I had cried my tears for the lost of Jeremy, the loss of a love cut short, untested in the trials of time. But here were all these tears flowing and deep cries of anguish. These tears were for Jeremy, but they were also for a terrible, unspeakable loss; for unlived moments, and times I felt life as a burden instead of a treasure.
Finally spent, I lay back against the pillows. JesseCat pushed herself into the curve of my arm while Lily kneaded her front paws on my stomach before settling down against Sophia, who was nestled between my legs. We must have dozed then, the cats and dogs and I. It couldn’t have been for long. It was still dark when I sensed, more than saw, Davey in my room. He stood beside my bed. Paco roamed around the room, sniffing and waking the other dogs.
“You were crying,” Davey said as I opened my eyes. “Did the letter make you cry?”
I sat up, pulled the comforter closer to me. “Are you cold Davey? It’s cool for a summer night. We can get you another blanket.”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you afraid? That’s only natural. You’re in a strange place.”
“No,” he said, and I knew he meant it. He wasn’t afraid. “Paco’s with me.”
That made me smile. Paco was the protector—of me, of the land, now of Davey too. “Do you want to sleep in here with me?” I asked.
“No,” he answered. “It’s time to go.”
Jesse stretched, walked across me to the other side of the bed, then walked back across me to her original position. Suddenly it occurred to me that I might be dreaming. This whole day might be a dream, but before I had time to think it through, Davey asked another question.
“Do you remember the motorcycle wreck?”
I caught my breath, so taken back by this question, and yet it seemed a perfectly normal question to be asked and perfectly natural to answer. “Only bits and pieces,” I said. I looked at the bedside clock. It read 4:44. It really was absurd to be talking to this child at this time of the morning, and yet here I was reliving that day.

2008-06-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

The Found Child
by Diana Rankin

Chapter 3
No Lost Child

Chapters 1 and 2 are below

I turned away from Davey, didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want him to know no one was looking for him. It took another minute for all that Deputy Sheriff Arrowman said to sink in. They didn’t have my report from earlier either, and I knew I had talked to someone in the Sheriff’s Office.
“Take the report now,” I said as calmly as I could. “This child is lost!”
“No I’m not,” Davey said.
I spun around at the sound of his voice and looked at him. “I’m not lost,” he said. “You said I was lost. I’m not lost.”
Immediately I took a breath, calmed down, reminding myself there was a child here and I needed to be careful what I said. The deputy took my report again. When I hung up the phone, I grabbed the Jeep keys and said, “Let’s you and me go for a ride,” I said to Davey.
‘Can we bring Lily along?” he asked.
“You like her, don’t you?”
“She’s soft. Like cashmere.”
“Instead of taking Lily, why don’t we take the Sheltie girls. They like riding in the Jeep better than Lily.”
“Can we? Can we?”
“Sure. Let’s go get them.”
Both Lacey and Sienna were outside in their run. Davey held the door open while I lifted each dog into the SUV. Sienna’s tailed wagged so hard her whole body moved to and fro. Lacey stood on the back seat and held up a front paw.
“They’re so pretty,” Davey said.
“They like to hear that.”
“Does Paco or Lady or Freddie mind if they don’t get to go with us?”
“No.” I answered before it dawned on me that Davey knew the names of all my dogs. I must have mentioned them while we were playing Go Fish. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to leave a note on the front door for the Sheriff’s deputy with my cell phone number.”
We were nearly at the end of the lane before Davey said anything. “Stop at the mailbox,” he said. It was more a command than a question.
I ignored him. “Do you remember if you came from this direction?” I pointed to the north. He looked in that direction, pushed his mouth sideways, and shrugged his shoulders. I pointed south and asked, “Did you come from this direction?” He looked south, but said nothing. It was in the direction of town, so we went south out of the lane.
“Stop!” he shouted. We both fell forward from the quick stop. “The mail. Don’t forget the mail.”
This child wasn’t going to let go of this, so I turned off the Jeep, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and walked across the road to the mailbox. The door was shut. I opened it. Inside was one single yellowing-white envelope. My heart quickened. It could be anything, I reasoned. Still my arm hung limp, too heavy to lift.
“Go on. Get the letter,” Davey said from the Jeep in the lane across the road.
Time ceased to exist. Stillness prevailed. Not even a single breeze rippled through the wheat fields, already golden with the coming of summer solstice. Only Davey’s voice could be heard, its timbre seemed to pull my arm up, reach my hand into the mailbox, and lift the letter. The return address was smeared as was the postmark. The stamps were strange looking, foreign, something I did not recognize. I did recognize the handwriting, and it shook me to the bone. It came at me from remembered love letters passed back and forth in what now felt like another life, it was so many years ago. I couldn’t wrap my mind around all this. I couldn’t make any sense of it all.
I still held the letter in my hand as I moved back across the road and back into the Jeep. All I need do was to breath, to calm down. Too many strange things were happening today. Davey. A letter from him. From Jeremy.
“Aren’t you going to open your letter?” Davey asked.
It took a moment before I could answer. “It’s an old letter,” I said quietly. “It must have been lost in the mail all these years.” It was too nerve wracking to even start questioning how Jeremy would know my address or the dozen of other logical questions that vied for attention in my mind. All I could do was push them all away and focus on Davey, but he wasn’t helping the situation.
“It’s not old,” Davey said, but I ignored him.
“We’re going to drive this way first,” I said forcing my mind to concentrate on driving and finding Davey’s parents. “You tell me if anything looks familiar.”
“Those are new houses,” he said referring to a short row of brick ranch houses built on the edge of a cornfield.
“Do you know any of these people, Davey?”
“No. I told you those are new houses.” They were older than my house, but I chose to ignore Davey’s remark. A child’s memory and all. Maybe he didn’t know about my house. It was pretty hidden in the woods at the other end of a long lane.
I kept driving, turned right toward town at the stop sign. We’d stop at the grocery store and post office, both housed in the same building along with the local bank. The mall, we locals called it; the only businesses in town, save for the machine shop. There used to be a granary, but it closed a few years back. Surely someone would know this child’s parents at one of these places.
“It’s Sunday,” he said.
My shoulders slumped. Of course he was right. It was Sunday. Everything was closed. We turned right at the Methodist church next to the two-way stop sign, the only traffic sign in town except for the railroad tracks and a speed sign cautioning motorists to slow down to 40 miles-per-hour, a signal that motorists were traveling through an inhabited town. There used to be school signs, but the district built a new school over on the other side of the lake, and the school signs went the way of the students. Gone.
“Does anything look familiar, Davey?”
As he looked around I felt a mixture of both excitement and sadness. I kept watching him out of the corner of my eye, occasionally taking a moment to look fully at him, looking for some reaction, some sign that would show me where he lived. Why didn’t this child know his address, his phone number? He was old enough.
“Was Lacey every lost?” She barked and sat up on the back seat at the mention of her name. Her paw went up and her brown eyes shone with recognition.
“Yes, she was lost. So was Sienna.” I told him Sienna’s story then of how the local shelter called to ask me to foster a little found Sheltie who was so scared she cowed in the cage and wouldn’t eat. People were strange and scary to her. Most likely raised by Amish farmers, she was a breeding dog, prized for her white mane and herding abilities, turned out or lost at the end of the season. Picked up by someone and dropped off at the humane society, Sienna probably had more contact with sheep and other dogs than with humans.
“She let me put a collar on her after awhile,” I told Davey. “The collar was too big for her. She could slip right out of it. We were on our way to Columbus one Saturday to buy her a new collar, one she couldn’t slip out of.”
“That when she got lost.”
“Yes, it was, Davey. Yes, it was.” I still felt the stab of guild as I glanced in the rearview mirror to check on her. “We stopped on the way to visit a friend in her bookstore. I had just lifted her from the car when a big truck went by. It scared her. She pulled back so far she slipped right out of her collar.”
“But you found her,” Davey said.
“Yes, it took seven months and three days. She traveled twenty miles away from where she was lost. In the meantime, lots of people saw the flyers and called about Shelties they had found. One of those was Lacey. She had lived with an older man who loved her very much and took good care of her. He’s the one who taught her to lift her paw to shake.”
“Why did she run away?”
“Well, Davey. Her human daddy went to heaven.”
“You mean he died?”
“Yes, and Lacey went to live with his son, who wasn’t very nice to her.”
“Is that why she ran away?”
“Could be, but Davey, sometimes dogs run away even when they’re loved very much and well taken care of.” I was beginning to wonder if Davey was a runaway. “Sometimes parents say things or do things that children don’t understand, so they runaway.” He knew what I was thinking. I could feel it. Lacey shifted in the back seat, dragging her paws over the leather with a rub. The Jeep’s tires thudded against the pavement. Somewhere a wren chirped. Davey turned, put his hand around the back of the seat. Lacey leaned forward, butted her nose against his hand, and then licked her soft tongue against his hand.
“Can we go home now?” Davey asked so gently I felt my heart give a leap.
“Are you sick, Davey?”
“No.”
I thought maybe he had to go to the bathroom, but was too embarrassed to say so. We turned right again and headed back home. We didn’t seem to be doing any good out here anyway. “I’m going to stop at a few houses on the way home. Is that okay? Can you wait a few more minutes?”
“Yes.”
Only two houses stood between my home and the corner. Both were filled with country quiet. I left a note, asking my neighbors to call as soon as they came home. Then headed down the lane again. Davey looked straight ahead when he spoke, “Now you can read your letter.”

2008-06-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Found Child
by Diana Rankin

Chapter 2
The Letter

Chapter 1 is below.

Lily brushed against his leg, purred, and then sat back and looked up at both of us. Davey leaned over. “Can I pet her?”
“Sure.”
“She’s so soft. Like cashmere. My aunt had a cashmere sweater. That’s how I know. I heard her talking,” he said.
I started to tell him Lily looked a lot like my first Siamese cat, Cashmere, even acted like her sometimes, like the way she followed me everywhere and the way she held her front paw up in the air whenever I scolded her, but this wasn’t something a seven-year old needed to know. “Lily has two cat sisters,” I said. “She also has three dog sisters and two brothers.”
“She’s lucky.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?
“No.”
“Do you have a dog?”
“No.”
“A cat?”
“No.”
“Any pets?”
“No,” he said a little sadly, and then with a bit of impatience, he asked, “Should we go get the mail?”
“It can wait,” I said. “I bet I can even find some ice cream if I look in the freezer, and I bet you like ice cream.”
“That’s where you were going,” he insisted. “When you saw me. You were after the mail, but you never got it.”
“It can wait, Davey. Really. I’d much rather talk to you. Besides the Sheriff’s deputy will be here soon, and then we’ll get you home and your parents will be so happy to see you.”
“They aren’t coming,” he said with assurance.
“Sure they are. The want to help you get back home. I’d drive you home, but you couldn’t tell me where you live, and none of the neighbors I called answered their phone, so we called the Sheriff. They’ll help us get you back home. I’m sure by now your parents are very worried.”
“They love me,” he said.
“I’m sure they do, Davey. And I’m sure they’re very worried, but we’ll get it all straightened out real soon.” Lily pawed the air, meowed, then pushed her tail up and took off in a run down the hall.
“What about your letter?” he asked. His wide-open eyes were big, rounded, pure, with a depth much older than his years. This child has seen a lot, or been through a lot. There was the childhood innocence about him, and yet, yet there was something else, something I couldn’t quite put my fingers on other than to say there was something very old about him.
“It’s an important letter,” he said. “It’s from him.”
“Davey. The mail can wait. Besides I don’t know who you mean by him.” I filled his water glass again. This poor child is really thirsty. “I know, let’s play a game,” I said. “Do you know how to play Go Fish with cards?” Thankfully he nodded yes. He was starting to rattle me with all his talk of a letter from a him. I just needed to keep this child entertained for a short while longer until the Sheriff’s deputy arrived, then we could find his home and parents and sort this all out.
We played Go Fish, ate ice cream bars, and stopped all talk about the mail, or any letter. Lily stayed in the bedroom with the other cats, all sleeping soundly, the way cats do much of the time. A couple of times Lily came out, wandered about, and then returned to the bedroom. About the time I was beginning to wonder where in the world the Sheriff’s deputy was, Davey asked, You do remember him don’t you?”
“Who, Davey?
“Jeremy.”
Momentarily shaken, my cards fell from my hand. I caught my breath. “I knew a Jeremy once,” I said slowly. “It was a long time ago.”
“Don’t be sad,” Davey said, surprising me away from my thoughts.
“You’re right,” I said, ruffling his hair on the top of his head.
He giggled. “I like that. I’m glad I have hair.”
“Me too.”
“I didn’t always.”
“Have hair you mean.”
“Unhun,” he said.
“You didn’t, Davey?
“I lost it,” he said matter-of-factly. “When I was sick.”
I wanted to ask him about being sick, but didn’t. Better to keep everything on the upbeat. Besides before I had time to think, he caught me off guard again with another question.
“Will you take me for a ride on your motorcycle?”
He must live one of the farms nearby, I thought. He’s probably seen me ride by. Or maybe he lives in town. Everyone in town knows the lady in the woods rides a motorcycle. Town was a far ways for a child to walk though, but then there weren’t any houses all that close by either.
“Will you, hun?” he broke into my thoughts.
“Take you for a ride on the motorcycle?”
“Yea!”
“Ah, Davey. I’m not so sure that’s such a good idea.”
He pouted out his lip and put his chin down into his chest. When I mimicked him, he started laughing, which made me laugh so much it brought tear to my eyes.
“Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Take me for a ride on your motorcycle?”
“I’ll make you a deal, okay? Let’s find your parents, and then we’ll talk about taking rides on motorcycles. Okay?”
He thought about this for a few minutes, and then said, “I’d really like it. I’m all well now. I promise to not fall or anything.”
His look tore me apart. It was so beseeching. “I can’t promise, but when we find your parents, if they say okay, I’ll ask a friend of mine if he’ll take you for a ride. Fair enough?”
“Are you afraid to take me?”
I felt my shoulders rise, and then fall with a sigh. “I think you’ll be much safer with my friend,” I said.
“But are you afraid to take me?”
I looked deeply into those eyes of his with the deep blue irises. “Yes, Davey. I am afraid to take you on my bike.”
“Is that because of the accident?” he asked.
Everyone in the community knew of the motorcycle mishap. The hospital helicopter flew right over my house on the way to pick me up off the highway. Still, I was surprised he knew. I looked at my hands for a moment, the scars nearly healed from the road rash and broken bones. Davey blinked once, then twice. “Hey, you know what?” I said. “I bet those Sheriff deputies are on their way, but what do you say we call them again, just to make sure?” I jumped up, went to the other side of the counter and dialed the Sheriff’s office again.
“What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher asked.
“This is Diana Rankin again,” I said. I called about an hour ago to report a lost, actually a found child. We’ve been waiting for the Sheriff’s deputies, but no one has come yet.”
“What did you say your name is?”
“Diana Rankin,” I said again, then spelled it. I gave the dispatcher my address, phone number, all the same information again. “I called about an hour ago and made a report,” I repeated.
“Could you hold on for a minute, please ma'am,” she said. I winked at Davey. He sat quietly on the stool next to the counter. What a good child. He must have learned patience when he was sick. I’m glad he’s well now. The world needs more children like him.
“Ms. Rankin,” a male voice said. “This is Deputy Arrowman.”
“Hello. I was telling the dispatcher that . . . “
“Yes ma'am,” He cut me off.
“Is there a problem?”
“Well ma'am, I guess you could say that.”
My nerves were already a little raw. Now I was really on edge. “ I took a deep breath and as calmly and quietly as I could, I began again. “I found a child.”
“We understand, man,” he cut me off again.”
“What then is the problem?”
“Well ma'am, we don’t have any reports of a lost child, or a found child. Not from you. Not from anyone. ”

2008-06-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

The Found Child
by
Diana Rankin
This is a work of fiction . . . or is it?

Chapter 1
At the End of the Lane

Since moving to the country, I've become accustomed to picking up people’s half eaten fast food sandwiches, beer bottles, and pop cans tossed out of car windows, and I've taken in the dogs and cats people abandoned, but none of this prepared me for the day I found a child. There he was, a blue-eyed, blond-haired little boy at the end of the gray-graveled lane. He just stood there, looking down the long lane toward me. I rushed to him, fearful he might step backward into the road.
Thankfully no cars went by before I reached him. No cars went by at all, but that’s not something I realized at the time, only something I came to think about later, how unusually quiet that day was, with not a single vehicle in sight as far as you could see down either side of the road.
I squatted down to meet his gaze. He must be about six or seven, I thought.
“Seven-and-one-quarter,” he said, his clear eyes looking right at me. “That’s how old I am. Seven-and-one-quarter. You were wondering, so I told you. Seven-and-one-quarter.”
Now I sure don’t know much about seven, ah, seven-and-one-quarter-year old boys, but I know enough to know he shouldn’t be wandering alone out here in the rural area of Ohio. At the moment, it didn’t dawn on me to question how he knew I was wondering how old he was. I was more concerned about finding his parents. Besides, most children pick up a lot about what adults are thinking. Don’t they?
“They’re home,” he said, again answering a question I had only thought, not spoken aloud. But it was a question most adults would ask a child under the circumstances, and he answered it like he had been asked the same question before. I had the feeling this wasn’t the first time this child had been out wandering alone. Were his parents alcoholics or drug addicts or just neglectful?
“May I have a glass of water, please?” he asked politely. He was clean, dressed in a green tee-shirt the color of spring grass with the picture of a baby wolf on the front. His blue jeans were spotless, not a single worn thread on them. Even the laces on his shoes were tied.
“Yes, of course you can,” I said. “We have to walk back to the house.”
He looked down the long lane, gave me a sweet smile, then reached out and took my hand easily as though we had long been friends. Who’s leading whom here, I wondered, but took his hand and headed toward the house. When we reach the house, I reasoned, I could call the Sheriff’s office. This child’s parents must be frantic.
“Davey,” he said. “That’s my name. You forgot to ask.”

I was dialing the Sheriff’s office when Davey took a break from his glass of water and said, “You got a letter.”
Unnerved, I sputtered when the Sjheriff's dispatcher asked, “What’s your emergency?”
“I, I found a child,” I stammered.
“Your name.” The dispatcher said this as more a statement than a question.
“Diana Rankin,” I said, a bit more composed.
“Where did you find this child?”
“At the end of the lane where I live. His name is Davey.” I went on to give my address, phone number, the few details I knew about the boy, and his description. “I'm sure his parents must be so worried,” I added.
The dispatcher ignored that and kept right on talking. “We’ll have a Sheriff’s deputy out your way within an hour,” she said.
“Within an hour?” An hour! Why weren’t they rushing out here, sirens blaring. This is a seven-year-old child. It just didn’t seem right.
“May I have more water, please?” Davey asked.
I calmed down. The Sheriff deputy would be here when he was here, or she was here. There was never any knowing which these days.
“May I have more water, please?” Davey asked again.
“Of course, of course.” I pulled the water jug out of the refrigerator and was half way turned back toward him when he again said, “You have a letter. It’s from him.” I nearly dropped the water jug. “Davey, how do you know that? Did you look in my mailbox?”
“No. That would be wrong.” He hesitated and looked directly at me before he added, “I just know. That’s all.”
Then he looked away, looked toward the water jug, andpushed his glass across the countertop. “May I have more water, please?”

2008-06-19T10:25:00.000-07:00