Chapter Forty-two: Green Slime

A few weeks went by after the “Trudy affair, “we continued with our Reiki nights, and things were better.

But there was still an undercurrent of dis-ease.  I did my best to put as much love and light around the situation as I could, and keep myself in a “bubble” of light so all my words and actions would issue from a deep place of love and understanding in my heart.  I was terribly grieved that Trudy had been so hurt, and I did all I could to make it up to her.  But she began changing in some way.  Even her appearance changed and she began to get heavier.  At the same time, her husband just seemed to be wasting away to nothing.  He whined and complained and Trudy rolled her eyes in exasperation.

Meanwhile, Candy and several others were coming to our sittings on Saturday nights, and even if all we did at this point was chat with dead dudes, we still had fun with it.  All of them wanted to go through the Spirit Release process, so we set up hypnosis sessions.

One day Candy told me that Rev.  Rita was becoming very upset because I was “stealing” her congregation!    I was shocked.  I wasn’t stealing anybody.  In no way, shape, form or fashion did I wish to interfere with her conducting her services and classes and whatever else she had going on in her little church.  Just because I was doing hypnosis and spirit release work on a small handful of her congregants was definitely not an act of “stealing” anybody.  What we were doing was more social than anything else.

How could she accuse me of “stealing” her people?

I wanted to know how Candy knew this.  “I can’t say,” she answered mysteriously.  “Just be on guard.”

***

At this time, events began to converge rapidly in a strange synchronicity.  Random threads from the past, in the space of a few weeks, began weaving together in a coherent design in ways that astonished me.

The phone rang one day with a call from my Private Investigator friend.  We’d cooperated on the 1993 child murder investigation described in an earlier chapter.  He had a question about something unrelated to that case.  At the end of our exchange, he asked me about a conversation I had with a certain law enforcement employee.  Well, this conversation had never happened.

“What are you talking about?”

“I called you back in October when he was here in the office with me,” my friend said, “and one of your kids said you were in the hospital.  I left his number and a message that you should call him.  I was sure you had by now.”

I never got the message.  The kids must have forgotten.  I called the number and left a message.

Now here I am going to have to use pseudonyms which will not fully reflect the meaning conveyed in the names, but I’ll try to get as close as possible.  I’ll call the police detective “Marion Wilbore”.  I knew that “Marion” was fairly common as a man’s name in the past, but it was unusual now, so I thought it odd.  Also, Wilbur was the name of my brother and grandfather.

Two days later, Marion Wilbore returned my call.  I thought it was most curious this guy should call on my Grandfather’s birthday, February 11th.  Two “Wilburs”.

Then the phone rang again just a few minutes later.  This time, it was “Marion Wilson,” the owner of a local used book store, calling to tell me that she had a copy of Velikovsky’s “World’s in Collision” that I could have for seven dollars.  I was so excited that I told her to put a “sold” tag on it and I would be right down.  I’d been searching for this book without success for two years after my copy had been borrowed and never returned.

It wasn’t until I hung up that I realized the pattern.  “Marion Wilbore?  Marion Wilson?  Two Marions?  Two Wilburs?  What is going on here?!”

The phone rang again.  I was going out the door and almost didn’t answer it, but decided I’d better.  It was Sam, my cousin, whom I’d met for the first time at the MUFON meeting.  Sam is the one whose name is my grandfather, Wilbur’s middle name.  He, too, was calling to announce that he had just found a copy of Velikovsky’s “Worlds in Collision” in a box of books in his garage.  He knew I had been looking for it, and it was mine if I wanted it!

Well, that was just TOO much!  Two “Marions,” two Wilburs on Wilbur’s birthday, two last names beginning with “Wil,” two copies of Velikovsky after two years of searching, one of them from a guy who had Wilbur’s middle name as a last name.

All within about half an hour!  Come on, skeptics, figure the odds of that!

I mean, what were the chances of two completely unrelated people named “Marion,” with their last names beginning with “Wil” – for God’s sake!  – calling me within a few minutes of each other?  And what were the odds, within the same few minutes, of having two people offer me a specific book after two years of trying to locate it with the name connections (and the date) all running together?

I shook my head to clear the cobwebs, sure that I was being taken over by “magical thinking”.  I knew things were getting weird, I just didn’t know how weird they were gonna get.

***

It was Wednesday – Reiki night.

When I arrived for the Reiki session, several people were sitting on the patio outside.  As I got closer, I was surprised to see Reverend Rita.  There was a big redheaded woman, and a man dressed all in white – white shorts, white shirt, white socks, and even white shoes – with a heavy gold chain around his neck that disappeared inside his partly unbuttoned shirt, and wearing heavy gold chains on his wrists.  I spoke to them cordially as I went in the house, but their responses seemed to be somewhat less than friendly.  I just mentally sent love in their direction and closed the door.

The woman who was “up” when I found my place at one of the tables was a hospice nurse who had been suffering from a lot of physical problems that were probably related to the stress of her job.  I had never seen her before.  I figured she’d been invited by one of the other practitioners.  I was given the head position and when I put my hands on her, it was like two powerful magnets suddenly connecting – BAM!  – in a way and with a strength that I had not ever experienced before.  And the energy began to pour.

Now, the only way I have ever been able to describe my personal sensation of channeling Reiki energy is that it really feels almost like the sensation of nursing a baby.  The instant contact is made, it feels like the milk “lets down,” only it is in the arms and not the chest.  But it is a distinct sensation.  I can feel and monitor the flow constantly exactly as I felt and monitored the flow of milk when I was nursing my five children through the years.

This particular woman, the hospice nurse, was pulling energy so hard, it was actually painful!  My wrists began to ache like an abscess that needed to be lanced.  I knew this might relate to the surgery I had on my wrists.  There were obviously some “short circuits” or something, but I’d been able to deal with this discomfort.  In this instance, I could hardly stand the pain.  I disconnected for a few minutes and shook my hands and rested them a few moments before I put them back.  Same thing.  This poor woman was sure exhausted of all reserves and I was glad to be able to help her in this way, even if it was somewhat uncomfortable.  It took awhile, but eventually the flow began to slow down, the pain eased, and the “magnetic” sensation released.  I knew that she was “finished” for that treatment.

I was going to take a break and have some punch and let somebody else have my spot, but just then the man in white from outside came in.  “Don’t go yet,” he said.  Louise introduced him as a “friend of Reverend Rita’s” who had come to try out the Reiki for phlebitis.  He hopped on the table with such spryness, I could hardly believe he had any problems at all!

I went back to my position at the head as requested.

There was nothing unusual about this man in terms of energy consumption.  In fact, he didn’t seem to be drawing at all.  I did smell whiskey on his breath.  Alcohol and Reiki do not mix.  I have seen people get violently sick if they drank too soon before or after a Reiki treatment.  I thought I would mention that it would be better to refrain for a few hours, but I never got the chance.

As soon as the five of us took our hands away, the man sat up and jumped to his feet, swinging around to face me.  “This is for you,” he said.  He reached inside his shirt, where an object dangled from the end of the heavy, gold chain.  Before I had time to react, he had traced some sort of figure on my forehead with his finger.

It was as if everyone in the room froze for a few, almost imperceptible, moments.  And everyone remained frozen until he had walked out the door and we were startled back to awareness by the sound of car doors slamming, a motor starting, and a car driving away.

At that instant, as though someone had turned everyone back “on” from their frozen posture of staring at me, they all began to talk at once.  “What was THAT all about?” or “What DID he DO?” or “Who is that man?” or “How DARE he touch you without your permission?”

The last was the main issue.  It was pretty standard in Reiki classes that no one touches anyone without their permission.  It was repeated over and over again to us, and we took it seriously.

I asked Louise who the guy was, and she claimed not to know any more than the fact that Reverend Rita and her friend had brought him.  Candy and the others were all exclaiming in outrage and examining the greasy smudge on my forehead to see if they could make out what had been drawn there.  Nobody knew who the man was.  Nobody knew the meaning of his actions.  Nobody knew what was going on with the sudden visit of Reverend Rita and friends.  That was the consensus.

After all the hubbub died down, we all settled back to our work, and I was surrounding myself with love and light, certain that whoever the man was, and whatever the purpose of his strange behavior, it couldn’t penetrate my shield.

That night, at about midnight, I woke up in so much pain that I knew I was having a heart attack.  There was not only an elephant sitting on my chest, there was a fence post driven through my breastbone AND  I was encased in an iron maiden that was slowly squeezing the breath out of me.  I woke Larry.  He took me to the emergency room.

The doctor said I would have to be admitted for tests and kept under observation for a few days.  At this point, I was so frightened I was willing to overcome my dislike of hospitals and let the doctor handle this one. Needless to say, I was pretty terrified at this sudden activation of a condition that I believed to have been cured by Reiki.  I had not suffered a single episode for months.

When the nurse wheeled in the cart with the IV setup, a voice as clear and powerful as anything I can ever remember spoke in my head: If I let them put that needle in my arm, it would be used to kill me.

My rational conscious mind immediately countered with “That is utter nonsense!  You are paranoid!  You’ve been reading too much weird stuff for too long”.

Then a wave of heat washed over me and “knowing” I would die if I stayed in the hospital surged forward again, drowning out the conscious argument.  I felt totally schizoid for a moment.  I mean, how do you say “thanks for trying to save my life, but no thanks!”?  I was between a rock and a hard place of overwhelming proportion.  There seemed to be no way out.

I tried to convince the nurse that an IV wasn’t necessary.  She simply brushed my objections away and said it was “standard procedure” and needed to be done.  There was no option.

I then told her quite simply, “No, I don’t want the IV.”

She ignored me, stripped away plastic wrapping and laid out the instruments.

Perhaps I was having a heart attack, and it could be a precursor to the “big one”.  But, on the other hand, it could also be something to do with that man at the Reiki meeting.

If I was perceiving accurate information on how things could work at “psychic” or “unseen” levels, then maybe what was happening to me was designed to get me in the hospital.  And maybe it was being done so that somebody at the hospital could then be activated to “get to me” and “accidentally” do something stupid that would result in my death.

That was so egotistical a thought that I immediately discarded it.  I was a nobody.  What difference would it make in Cosmic terms if I lived or died?

When I asked myself that question, an answer immediately presented itself: the nonlinear nature of the Universe.  The idea that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China could start a chain of events that would lead to a hurricane in Boston was not lost on me.  Nobody that I was, there still might be some small thing I was supposed to do, similar to the butterfly who started a storm.

But, no matter what, it was still a choice I had to make without visible proof!  I could go with the “surface” or “standard” interpretation of events – I needed to be in the hospital because I might be having a heart attack, which entailed taking the risk of dying either naturally or unnaturally.

Or I could go with the subtle, spiritual interpretation, based on knowledge I had accumulated by study, observation, experience, and most important of all: reason at an absolutely abstract level.  By using this mode of assessment, I could make a choice to take the responsibility for my life into my own hands, do something significant based on knowledge without proof.

At that moment, I felt just as I had years before in the dream of battling the dragon.  The same denial of fear, the same crazy “courage” swept over me.  Right or wrong, for once in my life, I had to listen to my inner impressions.  If I was wrong and I died, so be it.  It would not be for lack of courage!

I decided.

A great calmness descended over me.  I told the nurse firmly that she could put the kit away; I was not going to be admitted.  At first, I don’t think she believed me, but when I got off the gurney and began to put my clothes on, she said, “Let me get the doctor,” and dashed off in a great panic.

The doctor came in and gave me the “you are making a big mistake here!” talk.  I would have to sign release of liability forms and all that.  “I’ll sign.  I have nothing against the hospital or you or anything, but I am not going to stay here and I am not going to have needles and drugs pumped into my system.”  And, just for good measure, I said, “It’s against my religion.”

Well, that must have been the right thing to say, because they had the forms ready by the time I got to the desk.  I signed, went out to the waiting room and told Larry to take me home.

Larry thought I had completely lost my mind.  So did I!  But I just simply could not argue with the inner conviction that was compelling me to leave that place.

I went home, shivering with the implications of what I’d done.  I had opposed and defied all normal convention.  I had gone against all the programming of my life to be under one kind of control or another – to be a “good girl” and let “the doctor,” or whoever, make the decisions about what happened to me.  After the fact, I was assailed by so many doubts it’s a wonder I didn’t have the “Big One” there and then!

But through it all, I clung to that slender thread of “rightness” and my courage never left me, even if doubts plagued me about whether I was right or not.

The next day I was feeling very bad.  I was weak and felt “on the edge” of something deep and dark.  The “fence post” effect was ever present, and the elephant on my chest seemed to have gained weight.  I was functioning, but only barely.

When I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, I looked out and saw that the pool was green.  It had turned into “pea soup” overnight.

This distressed me even more.  I asked Larry to have the water tested and fix it.  He did.  Two days later, it was still – pea soup.

Somehow I knew that this condition of the water in the pool represented my psychic environment.  There was an “invasion” of psychic “slime”.

Candy was very anxious to help.  She chose this moment to inform me that she had received extensive training in various schools of magic, including Wicca and Native American shamanic systems.  She came over armed with sage and candles and salt and crystals and a whole raft of metaphysical accoutrements and set to work.

She “cleared” a place in the study and set up an “altar” with candles, bowls of herbs, stones that had been “charged” and all sorts of things.  She went around the house with burning sage, opened all the doors and windows to “air the place out,” carried a drum around beating on it, chanting, and so on and so forth.  She had me stand in a loose gown while she “saged” my entire body, and then waved incense all around, incense guaranteed to get rid of any negative energies or your money back!

I was certain it would work because – heck – even I wanted to leave after smelling it!

I didn’t really object to this because, after all, I had done some little rituals of my own making years before, when my daughter had been threatened by the “alligator at the window”.  “Who knows?  Maybe such herbs have an effect in terms of reversing atomic polarities?”  I was already working on a theory.

After she was done, Candy packed up all her paraphernalia except for the little altar and candles she had left burning.  I wasn’t to touch them, and by the time they went out, everything would be as right as rain!    As she left, Candy said she’d try to find out more about the man at the Reiki session.  She would call me back later to report.

The candles finally reached the end.  Nothing happened.  As much as I relied on these “rituals” to be able to “fight fire with fire,” I still felt the elephant on my chest.  The sensation of depression and constant pressure was still there.

***

Meanwhile, Tim – the young Wicca guy from the Reiki group – called me and wanted to talk about the incident at the Reiki session.  He was distressed about it as I was.  He also had many suggestions for “cleaning” my psychic environment that he had learned from his Wiccan friends, and he offered to come over and try them.  He also wanted to see the pool situation for himself.

Sure!  Why not?  If they were convinced these things would work, I was most definitely open to the experiment.  And, since Candy had her shot at it, why stop now?  Maybe this was a double-header situation and would take two times at the bat to make it to home?

I said “come on over”.

Tim came and had a look at the pool and then did his selection of guaranteed-to-work rituals, which were not much different from Candy’s, though he used a lot more salt.  I was vacuuming salt up for weeks after.

Tim’s candles on the altar created by Candy burned away over the course of the day and night.  The next morning, nothing had happened.  The elephant was still sitting on my chest, and my pool was still growing green slime.

Larry went for more chemicals.

***

Candy was very clever in getting information out of Reverend Rita’s assistant, and it seems that our gentleman of the Reiki open house was an alleged adept in ritual magick, the “Highest Initiate Big Banana” of magickal mumbo jumbo in the whole state.  He knew all the Enochian, Golden Dawn, O.T.O., Aleister Crowley stuff, it seems.

Swell.  That didn’t make me feel any better.  In fact, I was downright depressed thinking about people who would do something so nasty and hurtful when I hadn’t ever done anything to them.

Clearly we had a problem with the “love and light shield” business.  It didn’t work.

The next day, the pool was still pea soup.  I sent Larry down to get more chemicals.  We dosed the 15,000 gallon pool with enough chlorine and algae killer to clean an Olympic size pool four or five times as big.  We ran the pump constantly, cleaned the filter over and over again, ran it again, cleaned it, and so on for another 24 hours.

Over a hundred dollars worth of chemicals later – pea soup.  It was even developing “body”.  I could just see it spewing out of the kid’s mouth in the movie as her head spun like a top!    The pool guy said it looked like we were going to have to drain the pool and start over with fresh water.  He had never seen such a case in all his years tending pools.

***

Day after day I struggled to function against the physical attack, which soon became a form of horrible oppression in my mind.  I felt as if I were wounded and a pack of wolves were slowly circling, getting closer and closer, sniffing and testing, waiting for the weakness to take away all powers of resistance.  Then they would spring forward and destroy me.

Day after day there was pea soup in the pool.  Chemicals in the pool.  Rituals, prayers and “cleansing” actions in the house and around myself.  Hours were spent erecting “psychic” barriers of love and light around me, the house, and so on.  We tried psychic mirrors; cutting psychic connections, you name it, we tried it.  Nothing happened.  Frank, Candy, Tim and I discussed it up one side and down the other with no resolution.

During the many hours I was laid up in bed, an inkling of a solution came to me.  I had some clues from the spirit release work.  The problem might be an “etheric cord” of some sort, kept in place by association with certain people.  I knew from the claims of such entities that “attachment” very often resulted from simply being close to specific individuals who usually don’t even realize that they are carriers or instruments of connection.  It was rather like the idea of a psychic “Typhoid Mary”.

Since I couldn’t exactly see who the “carrier” was, I’d have to experiment.  First of all, break with the crowd at the Reiki sessions until I was strong enough to experiment with each one to see who was the carrier of attack.

This was hard.  I really liked these people and we had a very good time together.  Of course, the incident with Trudy made it possible she was the conduit of attack, but that meant anyone who associated with her and then with me could carry the infection by proxy.

I tried to explain my thinking to Candy, suggesting that, as an experiment, we should all cease any association with the group until we could make some tests.  Candy was appalled at the idea.  This was an idea that went blatantly against the “love and light” philosophy of acceptance and “unconditional love”.  It also went against compromise and “working to get along,” and so on.

But, at this point, based on what I had learned and experienced in spirit release work, it was the logical extension of that information.  I mentally closed off connections to all those people until I could find out more about what was going on.  I reluctantly told Candy that, since she did not have any desire to cease association with that group, I would have to include her in the moratorium.

She sounded hurt when I said this, and I regretted most painfully what I was doing, but it was the only thing I could see that I hadn’t tried.  I apologized and told her that if I were wrong, I would admit it.

But I didn’t think I was wrong.

I also talked to Tim, explaining my position to him.  He agreed that it sounded reasonable and volunteered to join me in the experiment.  I was grateful for the support.

That night I had a dream.

In the dream there was the pool.  Somebody evil had driven a car into the pool.  I was  trying to figure out how I was going to get the car out.  There were two people in the car and I was trying to save them, but I couldn’t.  A woman suddenly arrived on the scene who seemed to be a relative.  She told me not to worry.

“This will be as easy as pie to manage,” she told me.  She had a wrecker waiting that pulled the car out.  Then she drained the pool, hauled all the other debris out, scrubbed away the mud and oil and gas, and then waved her hand in the air.

With this motion, a wave came from the nearby ocean and refilled the pool with sparkling water.

I woke up and wondered what the dream might mean.  It had given me a positive feeling and I got out of bed feeling much better.  The pressure was gone, and my breathing was much easier.  I went to the kitchen and looked out the window.

The pool was clear.

I stood there staring at it in disbelief.  For the previous few days, we had put no more effort into trying to clear it.  We gave up, decided the pool guy was right and the only solution was to drain it.

And now, there it was: just as clear and sparkling as the pool in my dream.

At that moment, Tim knocked at the door.

“You won’t believe it,” I told him.  “The pool’s clear.  Come and look.”

He stood there staring at the sparkling water, shaking his head and saying over and over again, “I can’t believe it!    I can’t believe it!”

Tim had helped with chemical applications, filter cleaning and so on, along with “spiritual cleansing” activities, so he was amazed at the sudden turnaround.  I told him about the dream, but I was uncertain about its meaning, or the identity of the woman relative who had come to help me.

At that moment, Candy called with news of her own.  A Metaphysical church member told her that Reverend Rita’s red-headed assistant and the Big Banana Magickal Mojo guy had been in an automobile accident during the night.  They were both in the hospital in critical condition.  Prayers were being requested for them by Reverend Rita.

Candy felt this accident proved I was right in my assessment of Big Mumbo Jumbo Banana.  I told Candy how bizarre this accident news seemed in connection with my dream about a car being driven into my pool.  Now the pool was clear, and the elephant had finally gotten off my chest.

What were the connections among the dream, the clearing of the pool, the relief from the “attack,” and my decision to terminate contact with the group and taking action on this intention?

***

There is a point in the life of a person who seeks knowledge when events no longer seem to happen in a simple, straightforward, consecutive way.  Linear time seemed too limited to hold the trajectories of meaning that began to surround my life.  My work began to occur on several levels of meaning at once.

Was the relative in the dream a higher aspect of myself that was being activated, by activation of principles in my physical life, that were derived from higher perception, thereby establishing a link between the higher self and the physical reality?

Was a key being revealed? The connection to the higher self is activated by choosing to act based on a spiritual perception that was a result of reading the subtle clues in the environment.

These clues were put together with what I had learned about darkness, rather than choosing to act according to the “rules” with which we are conditioned.  Even the so-called teachings of metaphysics, which were supposed to be based on “spiritual” perceptions are still part of the control system.

This brought me face to face with several ideas: the idea that surrounding oneself with love and light might not be as effective as was touted, especially in certain circumstances.  It might be something that people are told for the express purpose of leaving them vulnerable, to prevent them from understanding how much knowledge they must acquire, and most of all, that they need to apply this knowledge in their lives.

What was apparent was that even the Major Mojo worker of certain High Occult practices had no clout against such an activation of knowledge.

Wow!  What a concept.

Could it be that the belief in the “bubble of love and light” as well as the belief in the powers of Magick were both some sort of “inhibitor” of knowledge, of growth, of progression?

People who were living in such “cocoons of belief” were exactly as likely to be attached – to be “used” by dark forces or “dead dudes” – as anyone else.  Maybe even more likely, because they did not believe it was possible, they believed they were “protected”.  They were unable to realize that it was probably happening to them without their knowledge!

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Here we had a perfect example of this statement.  Without knowledge, nobody was doing anything except continuing to perpetuate the same beliefs that clearly belonged to that “mechanical” universe described by Gurdjieff.

When a person is locked in a belief system, they cannot see what is really happening in an objective way.  They do not question their observations or experiences and seek knowledge to explain them, but rather interpret them according to their a priori belief system, with no options for other explanations.  Square pegs that don’t fit in the round holes are ignored or swept under the rug.

I knew this mode well, having been a past master at the sweeping under the rug activity.

It also seemed that a lot of people were presenting themselves as “light workers” who were not, in fact, of such a nature.  Maybe they truly believed they were.  But without knowledge, they were simply passing on the contagion of lies and ignorance.  It was becoming highly probable, in my estimation, that at some deep level, something was going on that really required fresh study and observation to discern.  Little by little I was being guided to discover a hypothesized “other level” of reality, and step by step, I was facing repeated struggles between whether or not I could accurately “read” it and act based on that reading, or accept the standard teaching.

Again, the words of Gurdjieff came back to me:

“In order to be able to speak of any kind of future life there must be a certain crystallization, a certain fusion of man’s inner qualities, a certain independence of external influences.  If there is anything in a man able to resist external influences, then this very thing itself may also be able to resist the death of the physical body.  But think for yourselves what there is to withstand physical death in a man who faints or forgets everything when he cuts his finger?”

What is there in people that is able to overcome the action of negative influences in their life if they ignore everything that points to such things, and close their eyes to its existence by pulling down the shades of their “personal myth?”

It seemed more and more likely that learning about these things and facing them was crucial to overcoming them.

Gurdjieff:

“…What may be called the astral body is obtained by means of fusion, that is, by means of terribly hard inner work and struggle.

“Fusion, inner unity, is obtained by means of ‘friction,’ by the struggle between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in man.  If a man lives without inner struggle, if everything happens in him without opposition, if he goes wherever he is drawn or wherever the wind blows, he will remain such as he is.  But if a struggle begins in him, and particularly if there is a definite line in this struggle, then, gradually, permanent traits begin to form themselves, he begins to ‘crystallize.’  

“But crystallization is possible on a right foundation and it is possible on a wrong foundation.  ‘Friction,’ the struggle between ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ can easily take place on a wrong foundation.  For instance, a fanatical belief in some or other idea, or the ‘fear of sin,’ can evoke a terribly intense struggle between ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and a man may crystallize on these foundations.  But this would be a wrong, incomplete crystallization.  Such a man will not possess the possibility of further development.  In order to make further development possible he must be melted down again, and this can be  accomplished only through terrible suffering”.  

I had suffered and I had achieved this inner will, I had grown a sort of crystallized self – but  it was on the WRONG foundation!    I had spent years and years of my life searching and sorting and categorizing and analyzing, and I really thought I had a handle on things!    And remember, I was not doing it from the perspective of materialist existence!    I was pretty open to all kinds of theories of consciousness and philosophies and metaphysical stuff of every form and sort!    I even had the idea that there might be some usefulness to the magickal operations of some groups…  that ritual was a valid means of producing results.

But this was a WRONG crystallization.

And when Gurdjieff talks about being “melted down” through terrible suffering, he isn’t kidding!    There is nothing more terrible than facing the destruction of a belief system!

I thought again of Gurdjieff’s description of the “four bodies” of man: the physical body, the astral body of feelings and desires, the spiritual body of the mind, and the divine body of consciousness.  It seemed that some sort of “development” of a higher body was taking place in me as a result of these struggles between the “conditioned” view of the Universe, even though my view was based on far broader categories than the views of most people, and this new “seeing” of the pattern behind the symbols of life.

Make no mistake about it: this was a struggle.

I had spent years struggling with my body; striving to develop will to overcome the weaknesses of the flesh.  In like manner, I had struggled to exert will over my emotions.  Up to this point, I had used the knowledge base that was generally available to anyone who took the time to seek it out.  Now it was clear that this wasn’t enough.  I was now struggling with a different level of knowledge that seemed to be the path to truly achieving mastery over the body and emotions.  At this point, I was vaguely beginning to understand my position, knowing that I lacked certain essential information that would guide me to “crystallize” the “third body”.

More than this, I was beginning to realize that, exactly as Gurdjieff had proposed, such work on the self was against nature, or at the very least against some sort of control system that was imposed on humanity – the nature of which I was not entirely certain.  I began to realize how true it is that “Strait is the gate and narrow the way and few there be that enter therein…”

As Gurdjieff pointed out, in everyday life there exist small, almost imperceptible phenomena that contain within them the “instructions” for development of hidden and higher possibilities.  Following these clues is opposed to the general pursuit of everyday life as we are conditioned to believe in it.  In fact, following these clues is opposed to nearly all religious and philosophical treatments of how a person ought to live their life.  I was seeing that following the “rules” of life as we are taught them – even including the “New Age” view –  is the “wide way” that leads to death.

It was becoming clear to me that our lives and the conditions of our lives and our experiences correspond to what we are!    Becoming cognizant of these symbols, learning to read them, learning to respond to them appropriately according to a higher vision of reality is the crystallization of the 3rd body, the acquiring of knowledge that must accompany being!

I needed more data.  What’s more, I needed more proof.

It was soon to come.

Continue to Chapter 43: Hungry Aliens, Stinky Demons, and The Return Of Keith