 
EXPLORING CASSY

by

Margaret Guthrie

SMASHWORDS EDITION

******

PUBLISHED BY:

The Wessex Collective on Smashwords

Exploring Cassy

copyright 2012 by Margaret Guthrie

Smashwords Edition

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*****

I wanted to be tough. But the body I lived in was only of medium build, like 5' 6" at adult height, 130 lbs. It was a body I tried to keep in good shape, exercising with the recommended strengthening routines for arms and legs, and from an early age I hiked and camped with my parents and their friends. Dad loved the outdoors, and he didn't hold me back from anything. Maybe he wanted me to be a boy, which would have been ok with me. Instead, I was the older of two girls. Little Louise hung about watching everything I did, as if she wanted to either imitate, or find something wrong that she could tell on. It was hard keeping secrets from her. It was hard just being myself with her.

There was a boy cousin, a couple years older, that was the closest to a brother I ever got. He was an only child, and we sometimes competed, and dared each other to do the most outlandish thing, extreme thing, we could think of. On hikes Gene tried to keep ahead of everybody, but I made it hard for him. I was pretty good at choosing good rocks or tree roots to land on, and balancing from step to step on really torn up trails. You had to watch your feet and the ground and make quick judgments if you were to be a good hiker. We didn't have much to say to each other, but it was implied that we would compete for strength and agility and never cheat and threaten the other. It was a matter of pride. If he got into trouble, I'd help in a minute, and he'd do the same for me.

Uncle Ron was a college professor and got summers off. He and Aunt Amy owned a cabin in Colorado near Rocky Mountain National Park. Since Amy was a nurse she didn't get as much time off as Uncle Ron, and sometimes he and Gene would go out to the cabin by themselves.

My Dad worked in an REI store in Ohio and he got three weeks vacation a year, which wasn't much. Mom was into gardening and didn't like to leave things in the summers. But sometimes Dad got a job leading a troop of Scouts—which I couldn't be a part of, of course, being a girl, but he taught me the stuff they were learning.

Sometimes at the cabin, Uncle Ron went off with Louise to fish and Gene and I hunted for rocks and anything that looked interesting to collect. Gene later became a geologist, and became a professor like his father, and lived an honorable life. Mine didn't compare.

I suppose you could say that my first criminal act was in third grade when I traded with a boy his comic book for doing a math assignment for him. Or was that another lifetime? The memory comes in so clearly that I can picture the room with its wall of windows on the left side, its blackboard at the front behind the teacher's desk, the right wall empty at the beginning of the year, but then filled with student drawings after certain assignments. The strange thing is, each desk had an inkwell on the right hand side, and we learned to use pens for cursive writing. I don't know what left-handed children did. Anyway, this boy, I think his name was Cecil, had a comic book in his desk and since I sat in the next row, down one seat from him, I could easily see it. How interesting it looked! Katz and Jammer kids—oh that had to be another lifetime! In any case, he was not a good student and he made a deal with me. I easily did the few math problems and he loaned me the comic. What kind of girl did that make me?

Maybe a better question is what kind of a person does that make me now? In this existence, I'm not sure I am a "person." Maybe "entity" would be more descriptive. But you see, I do have consciousness, and I have form. It's light and easily moved around. Actually it is light rays of different colors and every entity here is like that.

Back to that Cassy life. It was short, actually. Didn't even make it to 30 years. 26, to be exact. But they were very active, if that's anything to note. I made it through high school and a few years college before I discovered that education wasn't really taking me where I wanted to go.

"And did you know where you wanted to go?"

The entity asking this is supposed to be some kind of counselor for new entrants. There's a bunch of us here, making a circle around her presence. Sitting, I guess you could say. We're supposed to introduce ourselves and tell a little about how we got here. If we know. I'm doing my best.

"Probably not," I answer. That got me to thinking about freedom, just doing whatever you wanted to do whenever you wanted. But if everyone is free in that way I guess there'd be a lot of chaos. Miss Independence my mother liked to call me. And chastising me for not being responsible. "I guess I wanted to go where I wanted to go and to hell with anything, anyone else."

"And how did that work out?"

"Geez. What a question. I'm here, right? Not on Earth anymore." I tried rolling my eyes, but it didn't seem very effective. Beings here seem to know what you're thinking without you ever saying it out loud. At least those that seem to be in charge.

I looked around at all these ovoid balls of light watching me and waiting for me to come up with some explanation. I could almost see inside these elongated balls a more intense light that gave form to something like legs, arms and head like I had so recently been used to. One of them seemed particularly excited; his light was virtually giving off sparks. The more I looked, the more familiar the form came to be. And then I had a sinking feeling that it was a familiarity I really wasn't interested in encountering.

"I know where she wanted to go," the guy said, and the others turned toward him all expectant of some great enlightenment. And then it dawned on me. Sally, from the motorcycle club. He thought of himself as a singer, and played guitar, wore bright shiny shirts and tried to blackmail me. He started coming around to a couple cafes and bars where our club often hung out. He got a crush on me, started following me around like a little kid. He said he'd stop if I gave him some money. Well, it got to be real stalking, and I couldn't figure out how to make it stop. He threatened to write a song about me. Cassy the hypocrite, Cassy the tease, things that weren't me at all. He told me I could buy the copyright and he'd hand it over. It just went on and on. He was driving me nuts. Then, some of the club guys took pity on me, I guess, seeing what he was doing. And one day he had a motorcycle accident and was killed. I didn't rejoice, but it sure was a relief at the time.

But now, I couldn't believe it. I had to confront him again? Death doesn't end things? It didn't seem at all fair.

"She wanted to go all starry-eyed, is where she wanted to go. I mean, slippery Cassy wanted to live in fairyland. She wanted her own castle in the forest with her man slaves to wait on her. The queen of the woods. That's what she wanted." The words were flung out in a shower of bright sparks, much like the sparklers set off to celebrate 4th of July. Freedom. Oh, to have the freedom from such offensiveness. It was just spoiling my day!

Fortunately, the entity running this counseling session, if that's what it is, pointed out that there would be many chances for the two of us to work out this tension between us. But right now, she told Sally he'd have to rein in his hostility. It wasn't helpful to what we had to do. She said she had in mind some assignments for each of us new entrants, and she was going to hand them out right now, and wouldn't tolerate any back-talk. She had a handy way of restraining unproductive outbursts. She simply sent laser-like rays of light that surrounded and bound the person she wanted to be quiet. Which was Sally just now and I was deeply grateful.

As far as I could tell there were five of us in the group. I was becoming curious who the three I had not met were. I couldn't think of any relatives or friends that had passed on from Earth recently. I was sure I would be finding out in good time. Which, of course, is a useless term since I gather there is no time here. No time. No space. How do I know? Osmosis? It's like knowledge sinks in when needed, like skin lotion used to sink in when we rubbed it on.

After the entity had disbursed the rest of the group, she turned to me and faced me straight on. She left a distance between us, which I felt was a protection meant for me. She could probably melt my light rays, if that's possible, make me a mist perhaps. Anyway, her countenance turned quite kindly and she made it clear that I would need to talk about my last few days on Earth. That meant my hiking trip that I had supposed would be a simple one in which I had expected to do some contemplation along the way. I had paper and pencil and intended to find a place to sit and write. Writing was a way of working out some thoughts about who I was, what I needed to do, where I was going in life. Yeah. That again.

* * *

Ok. We're back in session. I take a deep breath—or whatever it would be called, and begin.

"That day the motorcycle club wanted to place the geo-cache they had been working on someplace on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. It was supposed to be on the way to one they were tracing further on. I wanted to hike the Pawnee Pass trail, which is a good one-day hike between Brainard Lake and Monarch Lake. Most people start at Brainard, but they didn't want to bother to take me up there. If they had, maybe things would have turned out differently. It would have taken them less than half an hour from the cabin we were staying in. But no, they couldn't be bothered. I could either go with them, or lump it. Ray wasn't any help, either. He wasn't a leader. He wasn't exactly a follower, but he did have more of a conscience than most of them. I tried to persuade him to do the hike with me, but he sighed and said he wasn't a hiker. Just a biker. What a cad. So I got talked into going with them over Trail Ridge Road and letting me off at the trailhead at Monarch Lake. It was way too late for a day hike. I had a feeling I was going to get stuck with an overnight, but I didn't really care. Something inside was telling me, Do It, as if a little suffering would be good. I'd show them!"

I smiled. Those oval light bodies all looked at me as if I was crazy. I shrugged. What did it matter now.

Counselor gave me a questioning look, arched her eyebrows. Wow. She didn't need to say any words. Her look said I better think about what I just said. Okay. So it wasn't the best planning, maybe. I did have an emergency blanket and some warm-enough clothes. It was July. Best time of the year. I knew that the trail reached an elevation that could get cold at night. Still, the prospect of being alone was very appealing.

"Appealing? Can you say a little more about that?"

Now I frowned. She was just like one of those counselors's I had on Earth. Where'd she get her training? Had her Earth training prepared her for use in this place? It was startling to think about. I took a breath and went on. "I said I wanted to be tough. Well, this would prove it for sure. I wasn't going to let any guy tell me I couldn't, shouldn't. And Ray could just feel guilty when he didn't find me where I told him I would be at the end of that day. Hm." Maybe I shouldn't have said that out loud, but heck, they seem like pretty good sports here. They waited for me to go on.

"What a day. The sun was out, sky clear blue at 10:00 in the morning when I finally hit the trail. The first part was okay, as trails always are where they start. The trail took me along the edge of Monarch Lake, and then I had to watch for the junction to pick up Cascade Trail, which the book said was a popular trail, so I expected to meet people, and I did. Most were in groups, kids in families jostling each other, reminding me of younger days. I stopped a couple times, but didn't sit down, just to take a few swallows of water from the small bottle hooked to my waistband. It was important to keep hydrated. I had a larger bottle in my pack which I'd use when I took a real break. I also had nuts and raisins handy to keep my energy up. After a couple of hours, or a bit longer, I found the boulder they called Shelter Rock, and the bridge over Buchanan Creek that was described in the guidebook. It was a steep trail, just as promised, and then leveled out and passed over some marshy areas and numerous falls. Guess that's how Cascade Trail got its name. It was tempting to get off the main trail and follow the paths people had made to get to some neat views. I was still uncertain about whether I really wanted to get over the pass and down to Brainard Lake or just let time slip away and find a place to stay overnight. I didn't have a permit, so if I did that I'd really have to hide. I didn't like to be illegal, but my mood was such that—well, how to explain—not really caring what happened."

I stopped talking again. I looked around. The ones in our counseling group were listening politely, but I didn't know why they would be interested. I assumed they were waiting for me to get through, so they could tell their stories. That Sally being had sort of shut down his aura; it was surprisingly small and dull. Maybe he was bored, or maybe he was sulking. I didn't know.

Counselor raised those eyebrows of hers, said "Go on."

But I couldn't. I felt something in the distance. It looked like another counseling group, but they had turned toward us, as if listening to me. Why would that be? We were in this big field-like, open space that went out and out, but as I paused, I could see their auras getting brighter, and closer. I turned to Counselor for an explanation.

"They're hearing you talk about hiking, about mountains, about Rocky Mountain National Park, and it attracts them. You see, that's where they spent their last hours on Earth, too. Just as you did."

"Really?" I said, so surprised I knew my 'eyes' were enlarging and my auras brightening.

"Are you saying they left their bodies in the Rocky Mountains?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Are they together for a reason?"

"Support group."

"But there must be forty, fifty, beings."

"Over the years, the mountains have claimed them all."

"Do they want me to be with them?"

"That's up to you. But you have some planning to do. There's already a way open for you to return and continue your Quest."

"Oh." I was astonished. What did all this mean?

"It means you need to go on with your story. They will listen, politely as you say. But you have more to tell, and understand." Counselor was very firm. And notice how she answered that question I hadn't even asked out loud?

"All right. Then I'll tell you something else. About the water. At one point I stopped and took off my pack to rest a few moments. I decided to pull out the big bottle and save the little one for when I was walking. I ate a half a sandwich, then took a big swallow of water. It tasted bitter and left my throat feeling hot. It was not at all refreshing. That's when I remembered that Ray had come running up to me, right after I had taken a few steps, and slipped that bottle into the pack I had on my back and said I had almost forgotten it. That didn't seem right, yet what was I to do? I gave Ray a hard look of suspicion, and he just shrugged his shoulders. That was the last time we saw each other on Earth, in those bodies."

Counselor nodded, as if to say she understood. But some of the others looked puzzled, so I tried to explain. "I say it that way because there were a few times after I had left that body, that I tried contacting Ray. But it's really hard to get through that thick mass of energy when you're not in a place where gravity exists. I mean, a mind can do just so much. I knew about will power, and believe me, I used it a lot on Earth. Determination they called it there. Or persistence. Even stubbornness. It was generally considered a good thing, quite valuable in "getting ahead in life." But when you're just a ghost of your former self there's this Great Wall that springs up. Some call it a veil. Anyway, I kept banging on this Wall, and it wouldn't budge. I'd try to ram this body against it and all that would happen is that my light rays would flatten out and I'd end up spread so thin I could hardly be seen. Even here. That was frustrating."

I turned to Counselor. "You were rather helpless, too. All of you. Just watched and sighed. I do credit you with staying with me. It did feel good that I wasn't all alone. You knew, I guess, that I'd finally give up and be ready to start paying attention to you and try to see what you offered." Counselor smiled and nodded.

"Only, one time, there was a small break in that Wall." I expected Counselor to make a show of surprise, but she didn't. So I went on. It happened when Ray was dreaming. That's really the best chance we have to get a message through. He felt me. I heard him tell my little sister that I was "right there," and it was actually exciting for him. The same thing happened with Louise. I really took her for a hike!" I laughed. I do enjoy teasing. "But it was so easy to keep ahead of her on the trail in that dream of hers. Well, why not. This body is so light—I mean light weight as well as light—that I can make it go as fast as light, just by thinking it. That's the key, right?"

I look to Counselor for confirmation. She just gives me that blank Counselor look. "Yeah," I say. I think she's impressed that I'm catching on. "Thinking is what gets you places here. Thinking is what gets you anything you want. It's almost boring at times, it's so easy. On the other hand, this business of different worlds is really strange. I got into Louise's dream that time—or was it my dream that she was pulled into—and she, too, thought I was "right there." You see, we were on this trail, I skipped ahead—she always was slower than I—and then I'd stop and sit down, look back at her with a grin and wait for her to catch up. Then I'd take off again. I tried that several times before she got disgusted and woke up. I suppose that was a real waste of the break in the Wall, but it was rather fun." I sigh. "I know there were other times she felt my presence and that's kind of sad." I look at Counselor. "I suppose you're going to get me to face up to what she meant to me in one of these sessions." She just gave me a sly, confirming look.

As I was giving this spiel, I noticed one the four beings getting agitated, exuding large rolling balls of mixed colors circulating around her aura like they wanted to explode into fireworks. It puzzled me. Counselor acted as if that were perfectly normal. I wondered if she ever got excited. Probably not.

Then Counselor gestured to the being. "You want to introduce yourself now?" It was as if it had been programmed. As if this being had been assigned a part to play in this counseling drama.

"Yes," the being said eagerly. "Cassy, I know about that water. Ray told us one of his cycle buddies had played a practical joke on you." She paused. "He spiked your water with vodka when you weren't looking." Her colors kept pulsating in vivid reds and yellows. "We, your friends and your parents, talked about what a vicious and heartless thing that was."

"My water bottle? The one I wore at my waist?" I stared at her and felt my own aura becoming hot and pulsing. The others even backed away as if they would be singed from this flame I was producing. Counselor spread her hand over me like a wet towel and I calmed down. "And Ray let him?" I asked.

"Ray claimed he didn't know until much later when his buddy asked at the end of some phone conversation how you had liked 'that vodka tonic they had gifted you.' Believe me, we jumped on Ray for that. He insisted his buddy didn't really mean to harm you, that this buddy didn't know anything about hiking and how important keeping hydrated was. We had more than one confrontation with Ray about that." This being paused again, as if thinking whether to add something. But she did. "Ray did seem to care about you and was really shocked about your disappearance. But then, Ray was a slippery one, as you must have found out."

That totally blew me away. Who was this being? And what was she doing here? Turns out she was a friend of my mother's. Gail was her name. Someone I never knew. "So, how did you get here?" I asked. I gathered she was a recent arrival, but since time is so relative here, that could be months, years, of Earth time.

"Oh, I had cancer. A slow growing tumor in my abdomen." She kind of shrugged. "It took years. Not a good way to go." She made a sort of fractious grin—red and black intermittent short flashes in that mouth area. "When you disappeared your mother confided in me. They were so worried, Cassy. So pained. They'd been told maybe you wanted to disappear. You were an adult, and sometimes young people, ah, like you, single, unsettled, not apparently knowing what you wanted to do with your life, just...didn't want to face their families with all their uncertainties. And then, when your bones were found four years later, and pieces of clothing, there still was no way to know when or how you died. Anyway, finding out that water business, made us speculate. It surely would have increased dehydration. And that alone does things to the body. Maybe the mind. Oh, Cassy, we were all so sorry."

Great swells of lavender and pink and blue issued from around the being like a love blanket. I discovered that if I thought about it like that, it reached out like an arm and engulfed me. I hadn't realized such comfort, not since I was a baby in somebody's arms. I didn't know what to say.

"Just let it be," said Counselor. "Receive it. It's her gift to you."

I needed a break. What with the gang out there like spectators at a circus waiting for the high-wire show to begin, waiting as if to see whether I would fall off the wire, and this new arrival with her warm blanket offering unprecedented love, I didn't know what to do with the feelings rushing up and around me, clouds of uncertainties. "Don't you people ever sleep?" I finally blurted out. "You're exhausting me. You're pressuring me. You're confusing me. I want the spotlight off me. Right now!" If I were in a human body I would be crying. But I didn't know how to cry back then, and I sure don't know how now.

Counselor for a moment acted human, exuded a sympathetic smile, as if she did understand. "Sure. We'll give it a break. You've done well. We'll give someone else a chance to get in here. It'll be as good as sleeping. Just as refreshing."

Counselor paused, and then looked over the little group of us, five arrivals from that material existence which Earth accommodated as well as could be expected, with so many of them carelessly destroying their habitat. That's one of the things I found so disturbing in my short time there. I saw the trash left on trails and campsites, women's bathrooms cluttered with half-used paper towels, toilet paper on the floor, sinks all splattered with soap foam and water. I could never understand how women didn't feel the need to pick up after themselves, wipe up after themselves. And that didn't begin to address the larger, earth-wide destructiveness that made me feel so helpless and sometimes downright depressed.

I sighed, and turned my attention to Counselor who seemed to be appraising the Sally being. His shrunken, darkened aura looked as tired as I felt. Counselor then held out her hands, lifted them up as if asking for a blessing, and we all watched them being filled with a shining, silver gossamer goblet followed by a glass, just as translucent. From this goblet she poured a stream of blue light into this glass, and handed it to me. This happened four more times, until each one of us was holding a glass. Intuitively, we had all waited before putting that glass to our lips.

"Drink," she ordered. We did. "Now," she said. "You'll notice how things look brighter? How you are able to see each other in a new light? Do you wonder how you are all related? Do you see that each one of you had called out while on Earth in a moment of desperation, in a moment of wanting to escape the expectations, the demands to be 'all you can be', the daily duties to perform, the ever watching eyes on your behavior, your dress, your speech, until you were crying out "Stop the World, I want to get off?" Do you see how desperately you wanted to escape what it was pounding down on you, that you couldn't quite see clearly?" She paused to let this all sink in.

The Sally being sighed. "I do admit that it was hard to be accepted, and I really wanted to be...liked. I wanted that a lot."

"Dude, I know what you mean," spoke one of the two beings that hadn't been heard from. Our attention turned toward him, and his aura lit up like a neon flashing sign welcoming visitors to a gift shop. "I got rejected by this set of Christian missionaries because they thought I was too meek and weak. I was just a hopeless mess. I wouldn't be able to hold my own if objectors to the message started an argument."

I saw great flashes of angry red jut out around him and could see why he might have been rejected. Not that I was favoring Christian missionaries. Not that I wasn't either. "You scared them," I said. The words just came out without my thinking.

Sally perked up and asked him what he had done to get here. "By the way," he added, "I'd appreciate if you all would recognize me as Salvador, which was my real name. We're supposed to be open and honest here, right?" He looked around for approval.

Counselor nodded. "That's correct. There's no judgment or punishment here. These life review sessions are for planning the next steps in the Big Journey. So, Torch, you are going to tell us how you got here. And, you might explain the nickname sometime." She gestured toward the being who was churning through the dark angry colors that took up so much space around him that we all stepped back a little.

"I was like a torch, lighting things up," the being said in a way that exuded pride. "I decided if they didn't like me the best thing was to eliminate them. I didn't need them. So I bought a gun and brought it to church one Sunday morning and sat in my car watching these dressed-up religious people going about excluding me." Torch took a breath. By that I mean his auras sort of pinched up in the chest area as if he were gathering them all together to exhale fire, like a dragon. And his words did make us pay attention.

"So I got out of my car and picked off a couple of the pretty young chosen ones, the girls that were going to heaven." Yellow clouds bellowed out from his mouth as if he were laughing. "It gave me a high, seeing them fall, seeing that red blood oozing out. They all started acting crazy, running this way and that trying to save themselves. No Jesus to save them there." He laughed again, a kind of cackle, or crackle like burning flames.

"I was something to be dealt with," he continued, with a smile that stayed for a minute until his next statement. "Only, I didn't know they'd have an armed guard, a woman sharp-shooter." He frowned, then went on. "A woman! With the guts to send a bullet into my chest. It was a funny feeling. Really. Just one minute that high of accomplishment and then a total collapse and I looked down and saw this body in its own blood and realized I was not going back into that mess. It was a relief, actually. A relief. So here I am."

"And your real name?" I asked. His story made me remember that Ray was exploring some Christian bikers who talked about target practice, about bringing their church friends up to the cabin for a shooting party. I hadn't liked that idea. It sounded dangerous, and illogical. It didn't fit what I thought Christians were. But I wasn't into religion, so what did I know. I waited for this guy-being to tell me his name.

"David," he said, and the yellow laughing rays of light increased. "Isn't that just the most gimpy name ever?"

"Well, David did kill the enemy with his sling shot," I reminded him. "David is a good name."

"Then you must have been my mother," Torch/David said, looking sideways, away from me. "Somewhere in time." His aura had withered into a reasonable looking being, but his suggestion of me having been his mother at some point was appalling. In fact it made me angry. I didn't want to be implicated in any relationship with him. No, no. no. What was he trying to do? I felt my aura jumping about in agitation. At the same time I did realize that we had been drawn together for a reason. Unfortunately.

Counselor observed this with calm indifference it seemed to me. But the fifth being, the one who had not yet spoken, came to the rescue. "You boys are being so dramatic," she said, her blue, smooth aura like a calming, refreshing breeze. "Neither of you have any patience, either with yourselves or others. You're going to have to do something about your attitude. Life isn't meant to revolve around you. You can't make yourselves the center and expect to be liked. That's childish. I think you've got some hard lessons ahead of you." Then she turned to me and shook her finger. "And you, little one, have got to learn that childish people have to have rules laid down early in the life game. You are strong enough to be a mother insisting they be followed."

I was shocked. "I was never David's mother," I protested. What was she talking about? And what made her so authoritative? Wasn't she just another recent arrival? Counselor wasn't doing a thing to monitor this exchange. She just seemed content to let us all wallow in our own emotions.

This fifth being smiled as if she knew my thoughts. Counselor gave a little wave of her hand, that slight film of light motioning for her to continue. "I've known you all," this new being said. "You've all come to the cabin at one time or another, though never all at the same time. My last name was Ruth Mitchell, and though I've been gone from Earth for quite a while, I've been waiting for you. The mountain cabin you called the Mitchell cabin was a retreat place. And just to be clear, this wasn't the cabin of Cassy's uncle Ron and aunt Amy. Our cabin was in a totally different place." She turned to the Salvador being. "You came with a group of Harley bikers, including that Ray that you knew, Cassy. And Cassy, you were there along with them from time to time. But mostly you were there with a mountain hiking club. I was still alive when you were pulling out books to read and think about, and I saw you writing and writing. You put words down on paper that you couldn't have said out loud. But wanted to. Right?"

Again I was astonished. How clever of Counselor, or whoever ran this place, to put us together this way. I trusted it was for good reason, but sensed it would take a lot more to get what it was all about.

"Ruth Mitchell? You were like a legend. People talked about how you could do just about anything. You climbed all 54 of the Colorado Fourteeners, you welcomed just about anybody to the cabin, you were a great cook, and certainly had lots to say about a lot of things. But, I thought..." I paused, looked at her.

"That I had passed on a long time ago?"

"Well, yes. I guess."

"And you're wondering how I got here?" She laughed, big gales of blue undulating waves around her. I nodded, rather speechless. "I did live a good, long life. Almost 90 when I decided it was enough, and just stopped eating. I was in a retirement home in Denver by then, and people didn't really notice. That was okay. The body got weaker, and after a couple weeks, the fasting was easy. Just as you found out Cassy, going without food and water, especially water, can bring on some interesting hallucinations. I suppose my death wasn't so different from yours. Maybe more intentional. Though you did pretty well."

Salvador, David and my mother's friend Gail, were looking at us strangely. I suppose I was going to have to give them more of my story, such as it is. "I had put in a few power bars in my day pack," I admitted. "I thought that one night out wouldn't be so bad, but I didn't really expect to go longer. And those two women I met by that lake were really interesting. They were tough and independent and I admired them for that."

"Yet they weren't hiking alone. They had each other," Ruth said. I could see she had a lot more she wanted to say to me but was holding back, for now.

"True." I frowned, not understanding what she was getting at. "I don't think that made it any safer. There were two women murdered on the Appalachian Trail a few years ago. Remember? Someone, a single man presumably, was offended they might be lesbian, not worthy of life. So he sliced their necks open, and their dog didn't protect them either. He just stayed with them and mourned. Finally another hiker found them all." I let out a long, slow breath. "At least I didn't get murdered," I said, so softly they barely heard me. I found it hard to look at them.

"Your mother particularly was concerned that you were alone...when you died," Gail said. "She had a hard time thinking about what happened to you." She looked at me so earnestly that I began to squirm. I hadn't really thought about anyone being concerned about me. But now they were virtually accusing me of being selfish.

"I'm sorry," I said. It seemed a long time before anyone was ready to talk again. It was like the whole atmosphere was in pause mode. A quiet, like in the middle of the night, settled into place. An expectant stillness, as if every being was positioning themselves into floating gear, into fluffy clouds that hung about waiting.

"You starved yourself?" Gail asked.

I looked at her a while before answering. "Isn't fasting what you do on a vision quest? Isn't that what Indians did when they climbed alone to a peak where they tested themselves, purposely let go their bodies to gain mind over matter? consciousness over body?"

"Were you mad at Ray?" Salvador asked hopefully. His aura had perked up considerably.

I considered his question. Was I? "I suppose I was." I answered, and set about to study him. Sally/Salvador had been in a small body, which of course wasn't his fault, but 'puny' came to mind as the way I thought of him. And 'puny' was not attractive. Ray, on the other hand, was taller than I, thin, but not skinny, and though he had a shifty look much of the time, he also had a smile that melted my insides. It was a kind of 'I know you, and I am tender with that knowledge.' So, when he let his buddies keep up their insane remarks and wasting my time, slowing down purposely to make me late on the trail, I did get irritated. He could have shown a little more spine and given them some strong words of disapproval. Why didn't he?

"Ray knew those bikers were bad news," Salvador volunteered. "He knew they played tricks on people. And laughed behind their backs. You wanted to be tough?" Salvador grunted. "Not their tough, though. Right?" He looked at me with a kind of pity that was nauseating. "You were too good for them, and they knew it." His aura took on a mellow, golden-grey look. I found it interesting, and surprising how often auras changed colors around all these beings. I wondered if this happened on Earth, too, but no one could see them.

Salvador kept looking at me as if I should be grateful for his observations. I didn't like it. I got the feeling he was about to tell me he could have saved me. And that made me mad, too.

"So what made you think you could become one of them?" I asked, thinking I had touched on an important point. I felt my aura heating up, sort of glowing with satisfaction at my cleverness.

Counselor raised her hand. "Stop," she said. "You're heading for a fight. That's not what we want right now. Let's go back to where you, Cassy, said you were sorry. What were you feeling when you said that?"

"My parents were sad. I'm sorry about that."

"They're still sad," Gail said.

"But we can't do anything about it, can we? We're all dead." I heard the consternation in my voice. I turned to Counselor to see what she would say. But she said nothing, just waited as if she expected me to answer my own question. Then it occurred to me to wonder how Gail knew my parents were still sad. Had she learned some way of looking down to Earth and observing?

"There are certain lessons Gail has learned," Counselor said then. "One of them has enabled her to look through the Veil or whatever name you have for that separation. She and Ruth go together to that observation room when they are in the right mood." Counselor smiled, and Gail and Ruth nodded in agreement.

"So, you have something like classrooms here?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Well, who gets to use them?"

"Anyone who has prepared themselves properly. You have made a start by becoming aware of selfish intentions on your trek into the mountains without letting those who love you know you really might decide to disappear."

Wow. I had to think about that. "You know, I heard some Earth people say that life there was a school. Now you're telling me existence after Earth life is a school too?" This opened up a lot of possibilities. So many, that I couldn't begin to think of all of them. I could see that David was looking bored. His aura was pulsing out in sharp spikes like an impatient child wanting to go off somewhere where he could pout and wallow in his own bitterness. I didn't know what he was doing in our group anyway. Just to tell me I was his mother once? That idea still irritated me. I'd just as soon he did go off somewhere.

Counselor knew what he was thinking, I could tell. She dismissed him, waved her aura arm at him as if to say 'ok, go, go.' I have a feeling she could bring him back anytime she wanted. I noticed when he left, there was a thin trail of something following him, like a string little children hang on to when they're in a group. Only his string was a ray of white light. I'm not even sure he knew it was there. Interesting.

Salvador watched him go, and looked like he might follow, but he didn't. Maybe he was still thinking about Ray and getting in touch. Maybe he wanted to learn to take those lessons Gail and Ruth had taken. I guess I did, too, actually.

* * *

I turned my attention back to the trail that day. "You said I had selfish intentions, going off by myself and not telling anyone but Ray. But I was all conflicted that day." I knew it was an excuse and I sensed that Counselor wasn't buying it. But it just made me try all the more to justify my 'selfish intentions.' I could tell my aura was shaking like a filmy silk gown might do around a body, if I had one. I guess it was nervousness. "A lot of thoughts were running through my head that day." I said. I wasn't really wanting to share them with these 'people.' How could they understand? But I plunged ahead. "I had a lot of frustrated energy in me, I was ready to hike hard and fast, and just let my body collapse. I was also thinking about the river job I'd just accepted. As one of the guides, I'd be taking little kids on rubber rafts down the Poudre River for a few miles. There could be some good runs in the spring when melting snow made the river fast and exciting. Kids were thrilled to be splashed and jounced and scared a bit. As a guide I'd yell them instructions over the roar of the river, and always there'd be a chance for a raft to get caught up on debris, or spill its occupants. So it took skill and responsibility and risk." I looked at the group trying to size up their thoughts. Salvador was still looking off in the direction David had gone. Ruth and Gail were attentive, though. And Counselor.

"Were you scared of that?" Gail asked.

"Not really," I said. "I was more scared of disappointing Mom and Dad. They'd have been proud if I had become a ranger, especially in one of the national parks. But I'd have had to go back and finish college."

"So, why didn't you?" Gail persisted.

I shrugged. That is, my aura kind of lifted and fell. "I simply had no enthusiasm for it." In fact, thinking about it made me sick. Like, right in the gut. A feeling of dread. I didn't have an explanation for it. Counselor was eyeing me. Could she see something I didn't?

"And marriage wasn't for you either," Counselor said, as if urging me on. Did one have to tell everything?

"Yeah. Too many of my friends were married and divorced, or living together unmarried. Some had children and passed them back and forth. It didn't look right."

"So you were thinking that day about what you were living for?" Counselor asked. How did she get into my thoughts that way? It was sort of scary.

"Well, I was thinking, here I am already 26 years old, with no great goal like you're supposed to have. I knew I could support myself and have fun. Or help others have fun. But in the end, what was the point? Ray and his friends were wanderers. Ray was ok, but I didn't like his friends. They just weren't nice people, to be honest. And the river runners, ski bums, cave explorers, mountain climbers, all had that obsessiveness to achieve and mark their accomplishments as if that were what made them important. That didn't appeal either. So, what was it all for? Life." I remembered kicking at the rocks on the trail as I trudged along. At some points the trail was so dusty it covered your boots. Sometimes people had stepped off the trail so many times it had been widened. Between the tree roots and big rocks to avoid, you had to watch your step to keep from slipping or stumbling.

"I was pushing myself pretty hard that day," I said. Salvador looked skeptical. I figured that was because he had never hiked a mountain trail. Gail and Ruth seemed interested. I think it just proved to them why my mother worried about me. David was still gone from the group, but his tether of white was still visible, which said to me he would have to come back sooner or later. But I didn't care whether he was interested in my story or not. I went on.

"I began breathing heavily even before the trail got steep. Then there were switchbacks, so your feet got twisted around sometimes trying to keep in the path. I felt the blood pounding at my temples and the beginning of a headache. I knew I should stop and rest but that desire to punish the body was strong, and I kept going. I remember pulling out the small water bottle from its holder on my belt and finished it off as I walked. That was my big mistake. As I tipped it up to get the last drop I couldn't see my feet or the trail and down I went. It was so humiliating. I automatically reached out to catch myself, but even so my face hit the dirt and rocks and split my lip. It started bleeding and I got really dizzy. Guess I hit my head, too. So I sat there a bit. When I tried to get up my pack wouldn't move. It was caught on something. I had to loosen up the straps and slip out of it. Then I just sat there, letting the world spin and my stomach lurch, reminding me of the one time I was actually drunk.

"While I was sitting there pondering the situation, I heard voices. Pretty soon a couple of women appeared and stopped in front of me on the narrow path. They asked me if I were all right. I said yes, of course. Who wants to admit they're not all right?" I smiled at the listeners. They smiled back. So, they knew what I meant. "The women were outfitted with overnight packs and as we talked they invited me to join them. They were headed for Lake Isabelle, on over the Divide and down a way." I motioned with my aura hand, trying to indicate a mountain with its two sides where water runs down on both and makes for rivers running in different directions, one east and one west. But this wasn't a lesson in geography. I sighed and rushed on with my story.

"The women suggested I could have suffered a concussion and probably shouldn't be left alone. Well, it was after noon by then, and their offer was tempting. We talked over the fact that they had overnight permits and I didn't. But if a ranger did come along it could be explained that this was an emergency. One of them expressed a concern that I might need medical help, but I insisted that wasn't the case. At that point I felt an evening of rest with them was just the answer. Let Ray worry when he didn't find me at Brainard Lake to pick me up. I had assured him I could take care of myself, hadn't I? And I was. These women seemed quite comfortable with the idea of getting me to their campsite and watching over me. I gathered they didn't mind breaking rules and challenging authority, either. That in itself intrigued me, so I took them up on their offer. They helped me up. Before I put my daypack back on, I got out the big bottle and took a long drink. It still tasted funny. But I thought maybe it was just hot, or my taste buds had gotten shaken up with the spill I had taken. Anyway, I got my pack back on. My lip was bleeding on the inside where my teeth had cut into the flesh. But that was good. It would cleanse the wound and not be so likely to get infected. I used my kerchief to sop up the blood until it stopped. I could wash up at the lake.

"We climbed the last of the switchbacks slowly. Frankly, I was glad to have these women with me. I couldn't seem to shake the dizziness. And by the time we reached the lake I was so nauseous I had to lie down right away. And then did things spin! I closed my eyes and the world still spun. In spite of that, that night was one of the best I have ever experienced. They set up their tent, made supper, built a fire in the stone ring to protect it from spreading, and treated me like a lost sister. And I let them do it. I was finally able to sit up and eat a few bites of the stew they had heated up from freeze-dried bag on their jet-boil, compressed gas stove.

"The women told stories. They were teachers, about mid-thirties. They reminded me of Maureen, who had been my best friend in high school, and still was. I regretted letting our friendship languish. She really was a nice person, and had moved out to Colorado on my suggestion. But she didn't enjoy the outdoors like I did. I could sense that when she was with me hiking, or river rafting, that she was tolerating it, not enjoying it. So I didn't push her. And then, I'd actually had the nerve to call her and ask for money to pay off Sally when he threatened to tell lies about me." I glanced over at Salvador then, forgetting for a moment that he was there. He looked startled. But I went on anyway.

"I can't believe I stooped to such a thing," I said, then frowned, and inwardly thought I'm admitting that I valued Maureen more than I valued Salvador. And in this place, was that permitted? I didn't know. But Counselor didn't say anything. So I went on.

"And then, when Maureen confided in me that she'd had an abortion, I didn't respond very well. I should have been more sympathetic. I should have got her to talking more about what all that had meant. And I didn't. So all these things were on my mind on the trail. And being with these women, it seemed I could admit to all my shortcomings. They were really understanding. Yes, that night, around a campfire, well protected in its ring of rocks, we talked and talked under the stars, the nearly moonless sky, the dark surrounding us except for the lake that reflected the light of the fire and the stars. It was like another world for a while. They told of their troubles. Men who had tried to befriend them, but just didn't have the same perspective of a woman. Love, to men, was different. More physical, less the deeper innerness of feeling. That didn't mean emotion. Feeling. The women tried to put it into better words, but could find none. Still, I think I knew what they meant."

As I was going on and on in this way, Counselor seemed pleased. The others listened politely. Sally/Salvador continued to look defensive, but stayed perfectly still, which surprised me. It must have been something Counselor was doing that made this truth-telling, this openness, possible. Maybe the drink she had offered earlier made us rise above the human qualities of resentment, fear, meanness, one-upmanship, criticism, and all that led humans to hurt each other.

"You want to give Salvador a chance to respond?" the Counselor asked. I shrugged. It didn't matter to me much; this was all past history. It was beginning to feel like the story of some other person, as if I were only reciting it to get it out of the way.

"You!" Salvador exploded, the purplish auras around his face jumping around in agitation with disgust and jealousy. "Men are just physical handicaps, is that it? Just clumsy, dumb brutes? Is that what you think? Well, for all your big college education, and all that fancy gear and clothing your rich father got for you, and all those free nights in a fancy cabin, you can't figure out a practical joke so you stumble around and bang your head on a rock? That's your fancy end? That's the life story of Cassy the Great?" He threw up his aura hands with great swaths of lights, and moved them around in large waves of undulating colors that reminded me of flying squirrels, bats, or large predator birds that inhabited Earth.

"Well, aren't you the spectacle," exclaimed Ruth, who was standing calmly in her pale blue aura that fit like a lovely cloak over a slim body. "We welcomed all sorts of people at the cabin. They could be hikers, climbers, boaters, motorcyclists, nature lovers, music lovers, and even once in a while—but not while I was alive—the gun shooters. If you didn't like the company you were in, Salvador, you could have found plenty of others more to your liking."

Counselor turned toward Salvador then and asked him whether he had chosen to be with motorcyclists. He admitted he had. "And you admired them?" she asked.

He waited a moment then said yes. "And you chose to be with them even when they ridiculed you for wearing shiny silk shirts, played the guitar, and sang romantic songs which they also made fun of?" Counselor asked. I was surely surprised at her bluntness.

Salvador blushed, as much as an aura being can. His agitation did seem to settle, as he concentrated on what Counselor had said.

"Choices are what lead human beings to their next life steps," Counselor said. "Didn't you notice, in your life on Earth, that you were presented with many possibilities?" We all looked at her and thought about what she said. She was probably right, but it seemed complicated to me. So much of life was moving from one event to another without much thinking about it. Making choices sounded like taking responsibility for what happened to you. And that was rather unsettling.

"What you choose changes the environment around you. Earth scientists call them paradigm shifts. Choices move your consciousness to another set of possibilities, and leads to the consequences of those choices." Counselor homed in on Salvador again. "Choosing to be with those motorcyclists who chose not to like you, did what for you?"

Salvador's eyes bugged. "Brought me here, that's for sure. They were the ones that killed me, I'm just a sure as I can be." His aura took on a horrible look of fear, anguish, despair, with lightning-like waves striking this way and that around him. In that moment something opened up like a big movie screen showing for a swift moment a motorcycle being tipped on its side, slipping along on gravel, dust flying, until it suddenly stopped and all was quiet. And from that mess of machinery rose a white, film-like form which we knew instinctively was the soul of Salvador, now with us.

"Guess you bumped your head, too," I said, a bit sarcastically perhaps. I dipped my 'head' so I wouldn't have to look at him. "Any blood?" David had said he looked at his bloody body and didn't care to return to it. I looked up then, just to see his expression.

"No blood. No pain," Salvador said, in a triumphant note, as if to say his death was better performed than others. "Too sudden." He gave a quirky smile. "Didn't have to wait around for months not knowing exactly when it was coming."

Gail related to that. The aura around her nodded and sighed. "It was the loss of energy that got to me," Gail explained. "Cancer has a way of sapping the strength slowly so that you keep hope for a while, then you begin to realize this is the real beginning of the end. That's when you start thinking about what's going to happen after...you know, you leave your body." She laughed. That is, her aura jiggled. "I didn't think of it that way at first. I was one who thought, oh, when you're dead, you're gone. And then you start searching. I read books. I visited different churches. I wanted to find someone who could tell me, convincingly, what was After Life. Well, it didn't take long to discover that you could find just about anything to answer that question. My husband thought one would be remembered by the things they left, or the children and grandchildren that carried your genes. You could have your name put on bricks at your old high school, or college, or church. You could leave money in a trust fund. That was good enough for my husband. But it didn't satisfy me. I kept looking." Gail stopped and looked over at Counselor. "Was it you that started coming to me?" Gail asked

Counselor said, "There are many of us who watch over human beings that are preparing to pass over. We know that it is a special time in their lives and have devoted ourselves to learning how to be the loving mother or father each soul longs for." Counselor smiled. She looked up and out beyond our group. We followed her eyes. There, in the background we saw a host of aura beings illuminating what might be described as the sky. "Humans are never alone, even though most of them don't realize it," she added. "There is never a time in their lives in which they are alone. But they don't believe."

"But was it you?" Gail persisted.

"We are all One," Counselor responded.

Gail looked a bit disappointed, but then she brightened. "Well, I did come to believe someone was with me. My husband, of course, was very attentive. He was so patient. Sometimes, when I got irritable from pain and frustration, he got a bit restless and irritable himself. But we had a wonderful daughter who came and took over from time to time. Even though she had a responsible job and was a couple thousand miles away, she came. I was very grateful and so fortunate to have family that loved and cared."

"Yes, you chose your family well," Counselor said.

"Chose," Gail repeated. "I don't understand that concept, even though since coming here it's been a talking point in more than one class."

Ruth laughed. "I know what you mean. It's as if nothing is random or accidental. We go to these observation rooms and look at the various 'plays' that appear to be going on. Sometimes when you see a group interacting you realize that it was your family in that last lifetime. Or sometimes it was a former lifetime, part of which has carried over."

Salvador snorted. "Yeah, this choice stuff I don't understand. Like, someone tried to tell me I chose my parents. Well, I didn't choose my parents," he insisted. "And they didn't choose me, either. They made that clear."

"The choice may have been because you needed to learn what rejection felt like. In former lives you had the habit of persecuting those who weren't like you. That's a lesson many have to learn," Counselor said.

"How do you know?" Salvador demanded.

"She knows everything," Ruth said. Her elongated blue aura made her look regal and shrewd, as if she was an old soul, having lived through many incarnations. "You don't want to challenge Counselor," she added with a persuasive smile.

Gail nodded. "All the counselors are perfected beings, Salvador. They are all around us to help. But we have to ask them to help, too. They can't make you do anything, or believe anything. But when you choose to learn more, they will give you the opportunity. I should know." Gail's aura puffed out like a vaporous white curtain with a playful breeze dancing it about. "I was just as skeptical as you at one point in my Life journeys."

"Gail's last life time gave her the love of family that she had earned from a past life where she hid others during a war where they were being pursued. She endangered her own life time and again until she was finally caught and killed. But that was a quick death. Now she has put that behind her," Counselor explained. Gail looked surprised, and humbled.

"So she's ready to choose who will be in her next life?" I asked, being more and more curious as the talk of choice was pursued.

Counselor smiled. "You all will be doing that."

It made me wonder whether that was the purpose of this group I was in. Which didn't make me entirely happy. I could see having Gail and Ruth in my life. But Salvador? Un-uh. Or David the Torch. How did I deserve them?

That thought brought me to Counselor's attention. "You deserve what you attract. Salvador came into your life because you were getting reckless with yours, and he envied that casualness you portrayed. He watched to see what you would do next."

"He didn't just watch! He butted right in! Threatened me!"

Salvador grinned, his aura more relaxed and colored with light greens and yellows, as if he had won a point. It was infuriating. It felt like he was trying to place himself into my next life as a little brother that would be a lot worse than Louise had ever been. "He's not going to be in my life!" I tried to shout. My 'voice' didn't go far, the vibrating waves coming from my 'mouth' simply disappearing into the general atmosphere. I turned to Counselor. "That's a choice I have, right?"

"Yes," she said. "But if you want to master the art of calm, strong, intentionality, rather than destructive reactions, you might consider taking him on. He might have something to learn from you, too. He might learn to work with you, rather than trying to get something out of you."

Salvador stopped grinning. I could see him thinking about what was being said. "Maybe he would like to find a Cause that would make the Earth a better place. Maybe you could both find a Cause to work for together," Counselor said.

I shook my head. Salvador snorted. Counselor said, "It was just a suggestion. Perhaps there are other things to work on that are more important." She turned, and pointed out toward the horizon where a figure was coming slowly toward us. In his hands, he gathered up his tether, much like a mountain climber recoils his rope after a climb.

***

David the Torch looked tired and depressed, his ovoid aura thin and dark. "It took a while before I found them," he said as he joined the group. We all waited for him to explain.

"Well?" Ruth asked. "Who were you looking for and why?" She reminded me of a stern schoolteacher. I was a bit surprised that Counselor stayed so motionless and calm. But then, she was a model for proper behavior, I suppose, under the circumstances.

"Those girls I killed," he retorted, as if it were a nothing event. "I wanted to see if that had taught them to be sorry. But they wouldn't even look at me. Just turned away and moved into the clutches of passed-on grandparents and church members, or whoever." He flung up his dark purple aura hands in a big arc of disgust. We all moved away, even Counselor.

"Oh, poor little me, you've dissed me, so I'll make you pay?" Counselor gently touched that dark aura and it virtually melted into a deep blue that was much easier to look at. "I think you'll find that attitude that so many young people on Earth have fallen into, not very satisfying. It does not bring peace, does it?"

"No," Torch admitted. "But why couldn't they have looked at me? This is..." He didn't finish.

"A better place?" Gail asked. "You're going to find out that it's only better if you work at bettering yourself. Same thing as needed to happen on Earth. Killing doesn't change a thing. Just postpones what you're got to face."

Counselor did an interesting thing then. Just as she once had us drink from the chalice which was so refreshing, she now called over a group of those like her and asked them to sing. It was like nothing I'd ever heard. Even the most moving chorus on Earth did not have the range and passion of these beings. They did not use words, just hummed. It set up a vibration that pulsed through me and I'm sure the others, too, with such soothing intensity that I was full of what could only be described as Love. I could see the auras of the others change and move in waves that neatly intertwined, as if we were dancing together, our vibrating lights like the undulating motions and colors produced on TV and computer screens that were so mesmerizing.

After a while the beings started moving away and their humming followed them, getting softer and softer. But we were left noticeably more mellow and receptive to each other.

Then the David being, hardly any Torch to him, told us of something else he had come across in his wanderings around this place. "I found Jesus," he said. He paused, and we gave him the attention he was wanting. He motioned to some vague place in the distance. "He was over there with all twelve disciples." He scanned our faces. "Twelve," he repeated. "The thing is, why was Judas with them?" This time he gave Counselor a long, respectful, inquiring look, and she smiled at him.

"Judas has been working for centuries, lifetime after lifetime, to redeem his betrayal of Jesus. Now he can sit with the divine beings as one of them. So, you see, never give up trying. You were privileged, David, to see what you saw. Not everyone has the eyes to see. Yet." Counselor looked pleased. Then she asked me if I were ready to tell us more about my own demise.

I wasn't sure that I was. This had all been such an eventful occurrence, that my story seemed trivial. On the other hand, perhaps I was ready to take a look at that last life I had left behind, so I could go on and plan the next one. I guess I was ready to let Salvador, David, Gail and Ruth in on my last hours on that Earth that we once called home.

***

I took a moment to bring my mind back to that night with the two women. "It was a night in July, at an elevation of a little under 11,000 ft. The night was cool, but not bad. Surrounding Lake Isabelle were several mountains rising to over 13,000 ft. They were called the Indian Peaks because of being named after Indians—Navaho, Apache, Shoshoni, Pawnee. After a while we got tired of talking and just sat there watching the fire in its ring die down to embers that glowed red and then became grey ash. The women poured water over it several times to make sure it was out before we went to sleep. They got in their tent and I curled up in my emergency blanket outside, close to the fire ring and the tent. It felt perfectly safe, and I lay there letting myself absorb the stillness and the dark sky with blinking stars. The women had given me a blow-up pillow to put under my neck and a sweater to add to my clothing layers. In spite of the headache, which did not want to go away completely, it was fairly comfortable. It was about three miles to the trailhead where I was supposed to have been, and I figured I could stay around the lake most of the next day and do some writing before I had to walk out and try to find a ride. At least, that is what I think I thought. It could have been something else. I was still half wanting to just disappear and never be found.

"Next morning, the women woke up early and were taking down their tent and packing up before I was awake. They'd even heated up cocoa and coffee and offered me some. When I sat up the dizziness caught me by surprise. I accepted that hot cup of mocha and sipped. The warmth of holding a hot cup on a cold morning is a comfort hard to describe. It almost takes you to another dimension, another space-time. If I hadn't had to go to the bathroom, I could have sat there all day. And I knew they wanted to get going so had to drink more quickly than I wanted, wash their cup and give it back to them. They showed me a place in the trees that made a good private bathroom, and when I got back from that they were ready to leave. I assured them I was all right, and wished them well. I played the tough girl role pretty well, I thought. Then, after they had gone and I was alone, the nausea started. It was mild at that point. Just a vague feeling that the thought of food made worse." I stopped and looked around at those variously colored specters watching me so intensely. What an audience!

"Well?" one of them said. "Go on."

So I did. "Well, I did manage to get out paper and pencil from my pack and jotted down some notes. The sun came out for a little while, then clouds moved in and I decided I better find a place to get out of the coming rain if I could. I took my pack and moved into the trees, off the trail, trying to find an overhang. For some reason I hadn't bothered to fill my water bottles the night before and all that was left was some of the wicked stuff. But I took a few sips anyway to get the sweet cocoa taste out of my mouth. Before long, the sky got really dark and a wind picked up and it turned cold. Then hail. I had my rain gear on and got under some bushes and tree limbs that worked pretty well for a shelter. That's when I started shaking. I'd had hypothermia before, but this seemed different. I didn't seem to care. I thought maybe I should care, but I didn't. I think I started talking to myself. I'm pretty sure I saw a coyote go by, about as wet and droopy as I was and it made me laugh. It apparently startled him, because he stopped and looked my way. It was a friendly look, and I thought it was kind of nice to have some company. After a while the shaking stopped and I started to feel warm. The coyote had gone on, the rain had stopped. Everything was wet. It didn't seem to matter; I was sleepy and my head hurt and my stomach felt sick and all I wanted to do was curl up and let the world go by. Which it must have done, because I can't remember how long I may have been in those bushes before the visions started coming. That's what I wanted, wasn't it? The vision quest I was on? I can't remember when the visions brought people who transported me to what I thought was a level playing field where everything was open and comfortable and full of Love." I stopped talking and looked at Counselor. The others were quiet as I asked her, "Is that when I passed over? It was such an uneventful thing, almost like going to sleep and waking up in another reality. Could that be?"

"Death is sometimes like that," Counselor said. "The details of yours may be something you needn't remember. Perhaps more important is the question, do you regret passing over?"

"Yes and no," I answered. "Yes, because I lost the life that I could have had, had I been able to find someone to help me figure out what I was supposed to do with it." I paused. "No, because now that I'm here, I think I have found someone." I looked at Counselor and she gave me a long look of such understanding it made my heart leap to my throat, and my eyes fill. Only, I had no physical heart or throat or eyes, since I was all vibration and light. Even so, it did fill me with hope, and a desire to know more about this place and what it offered.

It was then that Gail commented that she didn't see how hypothermia could happen in July. "Even at that elevation, and even with hail. It surely wasn't that cold, right?"

"It could have been dehydration," Ruth offered. "She wasn't drinking enough good water. It's something we always thrust on our guests when they came to our dry country from the Midwest. One little bottle of water wasn't nearly enough on a long hike like Cassy was on. And then to fall and hit your head. That could have killed her right there."

"We went through a lot of possibilities," Gail sighed. "A park ranger had recently died from a fall on one of his hikes in the high country. His body was found a few days after he went missing. It was a shock. We speculated that that's what happened to you." She gave me a penetrating look that made me shiver. She was closing in on one of those lesson points that I dreaded facing. "But the ranger's co-workers knew where he planned to hike and when he planned to get back. Cassy, you didn't say a thing to anyone but Ray. You didn't say anything to your parents or other friends." She was right, and it didn't make me feel good, but my defenses went up anyway.

"Why would I have told them?" I asked. "It was just a hike. I needed to be alone to think. I didn't really have a plan to kill myself, if that's what you're thinking." Actually, I wasn't sure that was the truth. In a way it was and in a way it wasn't. I did want something to happen. I was tired of waking up in the night and feeling so tense, so absolutely ready to punch something, to break open whatever it was keeping me from knowing what I needed to know. I began moving about, pacing like I used to do in the middle of the night, but doing this without the heaviness of a body was strange and awkward. I felt like I could float off at any moment. Yet, I, too, had a tether, just like David. We must all have had one, though it wasn't apparent. Maybe they appeared only when they were needed. A life line, sort of. I looked at the group. All were watching—even those away from our group, those that had died on mountains. Watching, as if some great learning was about to take place. A lesson being achieved.

"All right," I said when no one said anything. "So I was careless. I did not care. I've said that. I wasn't deliberately starving like Ruth. I wasn't deliberately getting dehydrated. I just let it happen. Okay? I pushed the body to exhaustion. I made it go, go, go, and did not care. Haven't you ever done that? Runners do it all the time. They push until they feel that 'high' which takes them up and beyond the normal body experience. They push through whatever pain there is, and punch through that bubble into a higher dimension. For a moment. Isn't that what every living body wants? David, isn't that what you really wanted? Not just attention. You knew you weren't going to get that. Didn't you just want someone to open their eyes and ears and see...you? the real you?"

I could see that question took him by surprise by the way he jumped back as if to avoid being hit. He stared at me so long I began to wonder if he were going to answer. Still, no one else broke in. No one was going to save him from answering. Or me from his answer. Then, he broke down in tears, streaks of shiny rivers pulsing down the front of his aura, his 'shoulders' shaking and his 'hands' rising up to cover his 'face.'

"They thought I was gay. They wanted me to go into therapy and become normal. Like them. They told me I chose what I was—just like you're doing! I didn't choose...that. It chose me!" The Torch took on a fierce, demented look that was pitiful to see.

Counselor stepped in then. In a soft, consoling voice she said, "You chose to switch genders, David, that's all. You had been trying a woman's body in the last several incarnations, now you wanted to try a man's. But it causes a little confusion sometimes. So in one sense, you chose who you were, but you're also right that you didn't choose to be 'gay,' as it is called. You were attracted to men in a feminine way, but in a man's body. Unfortunately, humankind has not learned that men and women try each other's way of living as part of learning to be One with all things. If you really learn what being One means, you will realize that there are no actual differences, just modes of being. A hand has five fingers, usually, each finger contributing to the whole. Each human being is a part of a larger whole. The real You, David, is an ever-existing finger of the One."

We all looked at each other. This business of choosing what kind of person we were going to be, or discovering what kind of person we were last time on Earth was looking more and more...complicated. It was as if we had chosen a part in a play, a role, and we were going to choose another role for the next play. And if you thought about the millions of humans that have lived and are going to live again, it's just really overwhelming. I was again ready for a break. All this exchange had gotten really intense. How much were we supposed to take?

"Okay," Counselor said. "Shall we call it a 'day'?" She smiled, as if it were a joke. Which I guess it was. "Let's take our attention to something more amusing. Shall we?"

***

Counselor motioned for us to follow her. "I'm taking you to the children's playroom," she said as we hustled forward. It was an interesting motion, different than walking, since we had no legs. But they weren't needed. Not at all! We moved in a smooth, floating way that only took the matter of willing it. And fast! In an instant of no-time we came to a large 'room' where about a dozen children that looked to be around two years old in human-Earth time, were playing. They looked fully human, materialized. Each child had been given a soft, cloth toy in the form of an animal. Some children did not like what they were given and yes, there were a few efforts of a child trying to take away the toy another had. It was interesting to see reactions. Some children gave up their toy easily. Others not at all. Yes, there was ego already in these children. Definite personalities. But also the inquisitiveness each child had. The desire to explore. Sometimes it involved poking into eyes, ears, mouth of others. Sometimes there was a push, a child falling down in astonishment, then getting back up and moving on. The children were behaving just like I remember the little ones on Earth. Most uniquely, the children were all colors—white, black, brown, olive, and features associated with indigenous peoples from all over the globe of Earth. It was obvious they noticed differences, but once noticed, how easily they accepted each other. Was that the purpose of this observation?

Then I noticed around the periphery were adults, apparently the parents of these remarkable children. They were observing also, and didn't seem aware that we were there. I guess we were invisible. So I was confused. Was this real? If so, where was it real?

"You've asked a very good question," Counselor said, even though I hadn't spoken.

"I brought you here so you could see all the possibilities available for your next incarnation. Not only can you choose your sex, but also you can choose your race and your ethnic family. You can choose where in the world you want to live. You might say these are temporary children, materialized as protocols for possibilities. Or patterns, templates to choose from."

"I thought our past behavior played a large role," I said.

"Yes, that's true. We have to take that into consideration. But if you want to experience what it's like in another skin color, here's your chance."

"So why do you show us two-year olds?" Ruth asked.

"Because they're past the first baby stage of true innocence and are developing quickly the tools to live in the environment they've chosen. This is a reminder that race and culture have a strong influence on your next life span on Earth. It's also a reminder that parents all over Earth really do love their children. You may find that hard to believe, Salvador, but it's true. You probably can dig up some memory of that love expression toward you in your mother, and in your father."

"Humph," he snorted. "I bet David the Torch can't either," he added. "We're two of a kind there."

David looked at him in astonishment, as if he'd never considered they had anything in common. It was interesting to see the two eye each other. "You didn't know who you were, either?" David asked after a while.

Salvador shrugged his shoulders and was silent. I think both of them were uncomfortable and confused. But then, who isn't in this place. It's so totally unexpected, and unending. And I'm beginning to see how many different groups there are. Right now, we've left the children and seem to be flying over group after group. Some of them look like communities that you'd see on Earth, with gardens and houses and people working. I say people, but they're not quite. They're like half-beings, their bodies almost visible, as if their consciousness was trying to create a physical form.

Counselor once more picked up my thought. "That's true, Cassy," she said. "But it's not possible to exist here in physical form. They're being pulled back to Earth. They're not adjusting here. They want too many things that only Earth, or another similar planet, can provide. They don't realize, yet, that they have to go back into the womb and start from the beginning."

"How are they going to find out?" I asked, perplexed, because I could tell this was going to come up for me. And those around me.

"When their projects fail. When their gardens and buildings lose the solidity they so carefully tried to build and return to light rays. Then they'll ask for help and a team will become available to them for the life-planning sessions they will need."

As we passed over various areas, we noticed excitement in some and passivity in others. Gail asked why the groups seemed so different from one another. Ruth suggested it was the 'many mansions' that Jesus mentioned in the New Testament.

"You're quite right," Counselor answered. "And you see that group over there?" We looked to where she was pointing. Several beings were moving toward a bright glowing ovoid, waiting, as if newly born into this place. She was soon surrounded with glorious exuberant colors, splashing up and around, and out until all was such brilliant light that we could hardly look at it.

"It's a celebration," Counselor explained. "They are welcoming this spirit back from a special life-journey. She has been on a mission to Earth for the express purpose of helping humans raise their awareness of the Love that holds all things together. See what giants they are?" Counselor asked, and then motioned us to stay back "Give them room," she said. "But let yourself feel the love that this group exudes."

I was gaping. I had never seen such energy, such an array of colors that kept swirling and changing, as if it were a language, but expressed in total silence. A silence so full of love that I could barely comprehend, and brought to me such longing that my 'eyes' overflowed with tears. And I'm not one to cry. I don't like criers. It also brought a memory of those times I climbed up on my father's lap to get his love and embrace. I had almost forgotten that part of my life. When Louise came along, I was supposed to be the big girl. Big girls didn't need all that petting. I looked around surreptitiously, wondering how the others were reacting. They seemed to be enthralled as much as I. David was big-eyed. Salvador's aura was stock-still for a change. Gail and Ruth had moved toward the group as far as Counselor allowed their tethers to go.

"This is a very special group, and we are honored to be seeing this reunion. The beings in this group were on Earth at different times throughout its existence. Humans call them Saviors, Lords, Masters."

David took issue. "There's only one savior," he said quietly.

"That's what you were taught," Counselor stated. She gave him a sympathetic look. "And the Jesus you are familiar with made a huge impression in that world. Hence the marking of time from before and after his existence there." She paused as if judging how well we were listening. "But other saviors were sent to Earth when the darkness threatened to blot it out. There were saviors before Jesus the Christ, and after him." She paused again.

I could see that the figures looked slightly different from one another if I concentrated on each one. Gradually each one took on a different kind of dress, as if letting us see the historical figure they had been.

That's when Ruth gasped. "Krishna," she said. "Moses. Buddha. Even Mohammed. Saint Francis. Oh, there are others I have never seen pictures of. Perhaps from Mexico? the Andes? the Himalayas? even ancient America?" She was excited and clasped her 'hands' together in reverence.

"You've got it," Counselor said.

"What are you talking about," David asked. He was a bit irritated.

"Why are they all greeting this one...spirit?" Salvador asked.

"Good questions," Counselor said. "You're beginning to pay attention. They are all greeting her because she has known them all. And because the Truth they teach, the Love they practice, is the same for all." Counselor reached out and touched David and Salvador lightly on their shoulders. Just a quick, bright pinpoint of light like stars put on children's papers' when they do something well.

"Each of these beings have been through the many incarnations on Earth that it takes to finally understand what the whole exercise is all about." She laughed, her aura doing a little jig. "You see," she went on, "Earth is very old. Millions and millions of souls have gone through millions of lifetimes on Earth, and gone through the travails and excitements it provides. It's been said that Earth-time goes through evolutionary cycles." She studied us, judging how much we were ready to hear.

"People in the east say it takes 12,000 years to go from the darkest period to the brightest period and 12,000 years in a downward cycle from the golden age to the darkest age. And all that time Earth has beings watching over what is happening. When they see deep, destructive problems, they send down a spirit like the one who has just returned, to give Earth the light it needs."

David was shaking his head. "That's just totally wrong," he said

"Or you were given wrong information," Ruth told him. "That church group you were with. The one's that came up to the cabin and used our back yard for a shooting range. They were giving you false ideas. I was already dead, but I could see what was going on. They were just loading you up with fear. Isn't that right?" Her usually blue aura was darkening into a violet with a reddish tinge. Anger.

He looked startled. Then sighed. "They thought they were so right. They made the Bible read like a history book, and they didn't like anyone who challenged them."

"I guess you should know," Gail commented. We all looked at her and waited for more explanation.

"Well, I mean, you did go and try to shoot them into paying attention to you. What were you thinking, anyway?"

"I don't know," David admitted. "They were just so righteous. And then they got to acting like I was an enemy. One day we were at the cabin—it was a shooting party for Christians. And the minister was there. He said some people were saying it wasn't right. And he laughed. He suggested we all bring our guns to church and show them off. Unloaded, of course, he said. He was just pissed off at those who thought guns should be regulated. So, I figured I'd take him up on that."

"So you just one day decided to be the enemy?" Gail asked.

"That's what they wanted," David said. "That was my role, I guess." He looked at Counselor. "Isn't that what you meant? We played roles, like in a play. On Earth."

Counselor nodded. "And what have you learned from that role?" she asked.

David slumped. He motioned over to the group still rejoicing and celebrating. "I'd like to have some of that," he said.

I noticed that from out of nowhere, other ovoid lights were slowly moving toward the bright group of Giants, Masters, Lords, Saviors, then stopping, as if they couldn't move any closer. As if some wall had sprung up preventing their approach.

"You're not ready," Counselor said. "But if you want what they have to give, you can choose to enter the disciplines necessary to raise your consciousness to their level."

"Disciplines?" he asked.

This perked me up too. It sounded like work. Like going back and redoing lives, maybe changing some habits, or perceptions, or experiences. Like making choices I hadn't thought of before.

"Now you're getting the picture," Counselor said. "All these beings have spent lifetime after lifetime learning to discipline those senses that human beings take so much pride in. Admittedly, it takes those five senses to fully experience Earth, but that also opens each one up to all the hurts and humiliations that living with all those different people entail."

"So they were just like us at one time?" Gail asked.

"Just like you," Counselor replied. "The difference is, they persevered, life after life, to be the best human they could. Each life brought them more understanding about the meaning of their existence. Each time they learned a little more about compassion for others, serving others, loving and caring for others. And each time they served, they knew a bit more about the Love that is the glue, the essence of Life."

"So they became saints," Gail said.

"Right," Counselor replied. "They became saints that could have stayed here on this plane forever. But because of their compassionate nature, they went back to Earth and suffered through the limitations of earthlings in their little bodies." Counselor let her aura settle about her as she gazed at us, noting—and no doubt evaluating—our expressions.

Counselor went on. "These perfect beings went back into human form and became models for others to follow. Jesus knew his message of love and forgiveness would be challenged. They all knew they would be misunderstood and mistreated. Human ignorance and pride is a major tool of the dark forces that want Earth to continue in their control. They knew, however, that they were never alone in their mission. They always had some contact with those here, and with that One that is everywhere, in everything." Counselor smiled. "Furthermore, they knew that there were some who had the eyes to see and the ears to hear, and that would be enough to keep their messages remembered through years to come." Counselor stopped. She looked over at the celebration. As the movement of other figures kept coming, there also seemed to be something else going on.

If one could see this place as a big sky, and you viewing it high above clouds from a plane, or even maybe as a skydiver floating gently with clouds, along with other skydivers, celebrating together, enjoying the experience, feeling separate and safe, then looking down one could see an opening, and those on the ground were looking up, wanting contact, wanting in on the experience. Well, that was the feeling I was getting. As if those this saint left behind were celebrating in their own way. Like they did on Earth. Celebrated a life. Making it not a funeral, but a service helping those left with the transition, just as the one lifted up was in transition.

We all watched what seemed to be a long time.

Gail broke our silence. "All those religious wars," she said. "All the factions of one religion fighting over the rules to live by, as if only they were right. That's one reason I never went to church much. Too much dogma. I thought just being a humanist, a nature lover, was good enough." Her aura jiggled about as if she were laughing.

"You were a good human," Counselor commented with an aura of light that surrounded Gail like a hug.

I watched, and waited for the 'but,' to come. Something told me that just being a good human wasn't enough to keep you here, in this atmosphere which was really a comfortable place. We were all cared for, and cared about. And we could do no wrong, or at least we were not scolded and shamed and made to feel like hopeless nothings. That counted for a lot.

"Yes, this is a comfortable place," Counselor agreed. "It's a place to rest and recover. And hopefully find what it is you need to do to graduate from Earth school and realize this is your rightful home."

"That makes _here_ sound temporary," I said out loud. "And I was just beginning to get used to it." I was being light and cynical. David seemed to be trying to smile. Salvador looked restless. Gail and Ruth looked expectant, ready to hear more.

"You have all lived through a dark period on Earth," Counselor stated. "It's just now starting to enter a new age where people will learn better methods of communication. Already you have experienced the era of electricity and other energies that have made the lives you lived more full and fast. Perhaps too fast."

Ruth picked up on that and said, "That's why the cottage was so important. People came to get away from the rat race, as they called it. The mountains were a place to renew themselves."

"Yes, Earth's mountains are special places." Counselor smiled. "The One made them with that in mind. Many mountain caves have been used as places of contemplation. And they have been used for less worthy pursuits." She stopped there, but it seemed obvious that we were all thinking about the wars that were going on in mountains a lot more rugged than the Rocky Mountains we knew.

"Wars will continue until the message of Love is understood." Counselor looked at us in such a sorrowful way that I nearly cringed. Were we supposed to go back and carry that message of love? I, for one, couldn't imagine that role.

"Special Ones have been sent to do what they can," Counselor said, repeating what she had said just moments before. "They are on Earth now, doing their best to spread the message that all souls are from One Source, that all individuals are related, that no one is better than another. At the same time, the darkness doesn't want to let in the light. The darkness wants to rule, to keep ignorance going, to encourage division and selfishness, greed."

We all looked at Counselor. She was so earnest. Her aura kept expanding and contracting, waves of her spreading out into the distance, then coming back and hovering around us like gentle arms embracing. She was using the best shower of Love she could, or that we were able to accept. It was as if we needed to know this before we made decisions about returning there. I felt a sharp, electric sizzle run up my 'spine' reminding me of the alarm-clock that used to awaken me to prepare for an early, before the sun was up, trip to climb one of those 14,000 ft mountains in Colorado, down there on Earth. Mountaineers are asked why they climb. Many say, 'because it's there.' Many go to the Himalayas to experience greater heights, greater challenges. Going for the caves and the contemplation in the silence and solitariness I could relate to. That's what I did. I really did. But why didn't it work? Must I return to Earth to try again? It's one of those possibilities to choose from. I remembered climbing, the challenge of taking one step after another to get higher and higher, to find the right path, to go on in spite of rain, cold snow, elevation that makes the hands swell, the breath come with effort, and at the top, to see the distances, the other mountains, the ravens soaring, catching the down drafts, the little pica's with mouths full of grass, always busy with their nests, the marmots pitching their calls to each other, sharp and piercing.

Counselor had paused, her aura settling down around her. She seemed to be listening to all our inner thoughts, perhaps analyzing them. She spoke first to Ruth, and I caught myself feeling left out. After all, Counselor had been responding to my thoughts before. Why not now?

"You've been studying with some of these Masters over different lifetimes," Counselor said to Ruth. "You've understood their messages. You've been frustrated with the way the messages have been misunderstood and distorted. Still, you have done well. You no longer feel the need for family. You will find satisfaction in a group of men or women devoting themselves to raising their consciousness. As a nun, or monk. Right?" Counselor smiled at Ruth, whose blue aura spoke joy, joy, joy.

"All of you. Let yourselves feel the Love that this group is emitting. Absorb it. It is like food. Take it with you. But we cannot stay. None of you are ready for the strong energy they are evoking. It would be dangerous for you to get any closer." She paused. "Still, when you are curious enough, when you long enough, when you're tired enough of wailing for what you know not, come back to this feeling and know that Love like this is what you are after."

Her words hit me hard. Love like this. Yes. That's what it is! Counselor was already moving us on, leaving this group to their celebrations. And it felt so lonely all of a sudden.

"Okay," Counselor said, almost crossly. "Do you, all of you, now realize you have some work to do? You complain about not being loved, about being disappointed, about being ignored, about being rejected. But what are you going to do about it? Are you going to turn it around and find ways that you can be loving, caring, accepting people? Are you ready to take a good look at what your goals are for the next incarnation?

"So you're going to expose us to this great Love and then tell us we can't have it?" Salvador asked in a bold, righteous voice.

"Ah, I got your attention," smiled Counselor. "Sometimes it takes a bit of doing." She turned to David. "And you. What do you say? Did you feel the Love?" She stepped directly in front of David, whose Torch was pretty much out, challenging him.

"Yes," he said, pouting. "I felt it."

"But you're not convinced it's available to you?"

"Probably not."

"Why do you suppose that is?"

"They don't see me?" David shrugged.

"They don't feel any love coming from you!" Counselor said sternly. "You chose a gun over Love?" She shook her head sadly. "When are you going to understand that Love cannot be purchased. Love cannot be forced. Love does not come by killing the possible giver of Love."

"But they didn't have any Love. They just hated," David whined.

"And you absorbed that hate? You thought hating back would get you Love? Doesn't work that way, David". Counselor was inches away from him, as much in his face as one could get. And yet, it wasn't like any encounter I could imagine on Earth. Counselor had an authority that one couldn't ignore.

"How can you love if you don't know how?" This came from Gail, surprisingly. I thought it was a David question. Could it be he wasn't even able to formulate that question? That he didn't even know that was a question he needed to ask? If so, then, his last life must have been really barren. Could he have been one of those babies orphaned and placed in cribs, so crowded into a room with others that the staff had no time to pick them up, cuddle them, play with them? Or did he come from an indifferent mother and missing father who themselves had not known parental love. If, as Counselor was saying, we are all a finger of the One, when did these little ones get lost? When did those fingers get cut off? and why?

"My, how many questions you have," Counselor said, again picking up my thoughts. The others looked puzzled, but she didn't stop to explain. But in answer to Gail's question, she said, "If you don't know how to love, you will need to be shown by example. And be willing to risk accepting and honoring the emotions of love in yourself. Basically, you are made of love. But when you go back to Earth you are also given free-will to break away from love and try living on your own. Love, you see, always involves two. Love is kept alive by the energy of many fingers. The One is Love made from the bonding of many, the 'we.'" She threw this out like a seed that might find the soil it needed to grow, but with the possibility it would find only stony ground.

It brought to my mind the trails I had traveled, past big boulders with little soil, and yet a tree found root and continued to grow, year after year. I had always been amazed at the tenaciousness of nature. So many different kinds of wild flowers I had seen, some in open meadows, some hidden in shadows, many along streams, some in high, dry country. So I suppose love was somewhat like that tenacious nature to live and grow.

"Very thoughtful," Counselor said. "You might want to share those thoughts some time with the others." She opened her wide, wing-like aura that seemed to throw sparkles of goodness in all directions, a kind of showering us with fairy dust. "But I have something else for you to see," she announced, and began to move. We followed, again with the speed of light it seemed.

***

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

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

"People working harmoniously together," Ruth stated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well," he hedged. "Sure there is."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yeah," David admitted. "Guess it went with the territory."

"But did you play with other kids?" Gail asked.

"Don't remember," David said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Doug and Mr. Spencer."

"Mr. Spencer was the foster father?"

"Yeah."

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

"Fifteen maybe. I was about ten."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You don't know that!" Salvador said. "You're just supposing."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sometimes, when we arrange it right," Ruth said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He surely does," Ruth said. Counselor smiled.

"But Ray and the others don't miss me at all, do they?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's a good way to feel," she commented.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He'll soon be choosing his next life companions," Counselor said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

I hadn't thought about continuing to exist after dying, though I had heard Maureen say that we are souls living in a body. But it was just a saying. I didn't take it seriously. So all this talk about consciousness was getting really, really, spooky. But, if one thought about it, we were all spooks. And that was as funny as Salvador thought not being able to get killed again was.

Suddenly, Salvador asked a question, directed right at me. I was so startled, I didn't really hear it at first. He had to repeat it to get my attention. "Do you want to be with Ray, again?" he asked.

"How could I do that?" I asked.

"Well, he's still alive, right? And so is your sister and that friend you mentioned."

"That doesn't mean I could be in his life again. I can't be Cassy again, as I understand it."

"But couldn't you be someone he's going to know?" Salvador insisted. "We both could, couldn't we?"

"Wait a minute. Who says I want to get back to Earth with you?" It was a notion that didn't appeal at all. I wasn't ready to make Salvador an Earth companion that I actually had to live with. That was too much. I would wait a thousand years, too, if that was anybody's thought.

Counselor smiled at us. "Maybe we need to discuss what some of the possibilities are," she said. "You don't have to return all at the same time. You don't have to be in the same family. Perhaps you don't want to meet each other until you are adults."

"Do I have to meet him at all?" I asked, realizing that meeting as adults could mean the same problems as last time. "I don't want you hassling me in any way," I said emphatically. "I don't want your attention. I don't want you in my life!"

"Hey, what if I'm not like I was. What if I'm a girl! Maybe we could meet in that farm place, that cooperative community," he said.

"Interesting that you should suggest that," Ruth offered. " I think that's where Ray and Louise see each other these days. And Maureen, too." She went still, waiting to be asked how she knew.

It had to be the viewing window. And it got me curious. Could I take a look through that window? Could it be that my little sister had taken an interest in Ray? And Maureen? What were they into? It made me feel that I was really missing something. And I hadn't intended that! I was so determined to be my own person. Course, what that was, I still hadn't figured out. It got me to thinking. What if I could come into their lives again? What would it be like?

"I don't like the idea of having to be a baby all over again," I blurted out. "That doesn't seem fair."

Counselor laughed. "Look at it as a fresh start. All will be so interesting as you try out your new body. What will it do? Look at those hands, how the fingers curl and touch and pat each other. Look at those feet that you can pull up to your mouth. Look how this body can be turned and twisted. Look at those eyes watching, the human behind them making those warm, googly noises that are trying so hard to please you." Counselor's aura became like a brilliant rainbow with variegated colors around her center that then extended out to the rest of us like we were the mythical pots of gold at its ends.

"But that's only if you get a good mother," Salvador reminded us. "What chance do we have of that?"

"Your choice," Counselor said. "There are wombs available right now. Or you can wait a while. But the sooner you choose one, the sooner you will be with those still living. And what I see around the ones you mentioned, there is a young girl who is going to give in to a young boy hanging around her, and give someone a chance to be born."

"You make it sound like a take-it-or-leave-it type of choice," I complained. "I don't know that I'm ready to go back so soon." In fact, I hadn't really gotten used to not being in a body. I was still wanting to explore this existence that was so different. It had a lot of interesting places, if that's what they were, and maybe classes."

"Just remember, there is no time here. It's not like Earth when you have to plan everything in a matter of 24 hours a day, and make all those appointments months in advance, and sometimes years in advance. So don't panic. You've got all the time in the cosmos." Counselor gave us a tender, motherly look.

"But you can see the future down there?" Salvador asked.

"We can see the possibilities," Counselor clarified.

"Well, give me an experienced mother. Not one of those child mothers who get themselves into trouble. Nor one that does drugs and alcohol. Or is crazy. I don't want that again." He laid out his requirements as if ordering a new motorcycle.

"Do we have to have a mother?" David asked. His aura was darkening again, as if he'd lost hope of anything that he wanted coming to him.

"There have been cases of two men raising a child from infancy," Ruth noted. "That way, you wouldn't have a female mother. Men can be nurturing when they want to be," she said. As usual, she seemed to see into the possibilities better than the rest of us.

"I'd have to be a boy again?" he asked. After a slight pause, he said, "If Salvador can be a girl, why can't I?"

"You want two men to raise you as a girl?" Salvador asked, looking at him in astonishment.

We all became silent again, as if the numerous possibilities before us could actually be real. As if a life plan was the most common thing in the world. As if it were expected and was the next step in our evolution. As if evolution was the purpose of life. Life after life. All those stories I'd heard from Maureen that I had shoved out of my consciousness, even ridiculed. Maureen and I had been best friends in high school and read these raunchy novels that made sex out to be a necessary exploration, that without it, one simply hadn't lived. Or even worse, was a detestable prude. So, sex became the break from parental rules, the secret, behind-their-back activity that went against all warnings and lectures but made one acceptable.

Talking about sex in whispers so little Louise couldn't hear, but would be curious about was, for a time, the fun event when we got together. But then, after going through those teen years, sex became something more serious. To be honest, it was something I never understood in a relationship. Why couldn't men be friends without making as if women were the fault of all their troubles? I started thinking back about some of the men I knew. Matt, for example. He and I were paired in a biology class. We worked side-by-side looking into the microscope at ameba and other little things swimming about in a drop of water. Then dissecting a frog. It was done in a manner of joint exploration, a simple, sexless adventure. Then there was the ski instructor whose name I can't remember. A night class, and we were all beginners, or almost all. The guy was so impatient. Critical. If one took him seriously, you'd think you were incapable of ever finding your balance on the skis. He made me mad enough to prove him wrong. And he thought he was such a good teacher! The thing is, I could never find a man that was as good as my father. He was my standard. But of course, there was no sex involved to complicate things.

Then Ray came along. He had a kind of swagger in his walk, a sort of cocky little smile at the corner of his mouth, that for some reason intrigued me, because it was more like a come-on, a mask over something more interesting. And Ray liked the outdoors. He liked camping out. He appreciated the sky, looking at stars and naming them. He seemed to feel at home in the great outdoors, and I did, too. The only thing was, he kept saying he didn't like hiking. Or climbing. He loved to ride the motorcycle. He had to have that fast mode of travel, and the wind in his hair. He wore a helmet because he'd seen some pretty gruesome accidents. But he didn't like them.

Ray was a free spirit. And I thought I was, too. But when I saw Ray with his cycle buddies, I felt left out. They wore their black outfits, heavy chaps, vest, gloves, like a knight in shining armor. Kind of like they were out to conquer an enemy. Except they didn't really have any. They had contests, though. Those geo-cache things, where they hid a cache, then challenged others to find out where it was. They made it into a really big deal. And that, to me, seemed so stupid. What was the point? Why not hike a trail and find what Nature had to offer? There were lots of things that a camera could capture. Which reminds me. I had a camera with me on the final hike. I wonder if anyone ever found it. I probably should have told someone besides Ray what I was planning to do—hike over the Divide, take notes along the way, pictures, do some thinking. I didn't intend to get sick, fall and hit my head. I didn't intend to end that life. But maybe, because it wasn't going anywhere, there was an unconscious wish? to find a way to start over? Not really expecting one. But now, here it is! I could even go back and see Ray again. That possibility was pretty interesting.

* * *

As I was doing all this thinking, all this down-to-earth reminiscing, everything around me went still. I mean non-moving, like suspended from any activity. And silent. But maybe that was just my perception. Because, when I came back to awareness, the others were there, thinking their own thoughts, I guess.

I heard David mumbling, and kind of shrugging his aura. "Well, that's ridiculous," he said. It took me a moment to remember that Salvador had asked him if he wanted two men to raise him, if he went back to Earth as a girl.

"You could give it a try," Gail said. "Maybe gender isn't the dividing factor that humans make it out to be. Maybe you'd learn a lot about men-women relationships that way."

"There are lots of things in the current societies on Earth that are changing. Even though there's lots of wars and misunderstandings, and religious intolerance, there's also a lot more knowledge about the human body, and about the history of Earth, and new technologies that make for some very interesting possibilities."

"Then why do you want to wait a couple thousand years?" David challenged. "You said things were going to get better, but they were pretty bad right now."

"Well," Ruth hedged. "I like it here, actually. I like sitting in on these groups that start planning their next lives, and Counselor has helped me understand more what lives on Earth are for. There are so many different life-stories. So many different goals that an individual might choose. I've been here long enough to see people leave for Earth with their life-plan all laid out, and come back here after it was achieved, and often when it was not. It's become such a routine that I am amazed at how fearful those on Earth are of what they call death. Such tales they tell to frighten each other. And that's one big problem with religion, or so-called religion. At least religion in the darker ages. Humans get all bloated up about their "selves," making boundaries around their bodies as if they were limited to a little space around the body they are in. And oh how they want to be like everybody else." She laughed. "Except when they start dividing up into groups, and naming this group workers, and that group warriors, a third group business and intellectuals, and a fourth rulers. Then they start insisting that a human in one of those groups can't change to another group. It's like herding sheep. Or goats. From here, it looks insane."

Counselor let Ruth talk. She had a serene look about her.

Ruth continued. "In one sense those divisions just describe what happens in evolution. A soul comes into being as a new ray of the One, then quickly gets enamored with the idea that he/she/it can be a being all to itself, without recognizing the One as the very Source of his being a being." She laughed again and giggled in a sort of apology of her attempt at being humorous in her repetitions. "So," she went on, "to enlighten this being who has fallen into the delusion that he/she/it is independent and separate, and thus prone to fear, anxiety, and a puffed-up ego that insists on doing life all on its own, we send Someone who suggests what they really are, a child of the One. Generally, by that time, these independents are so into their delusion that they simply scoff at the suggestion."

At this point I remembered again my own mother calling me "miss independence" and how strongly I wanted to be my own self-dependent woman. If an aura can blush, I must have been doing that. Ruth wasn't looking at me exactly, but her words sure were.

"Or," Ruth went on, "and this was what I intended to say, some of those goats that see themselves as leaders take on the idea that what they say is the Truth. They devise rules and regulations that determine exactly what an individual must do to be saved from that fear they've developed. Of course, that just increases the fear and anxiety. It's one thing to devise the Ten Commandments, and another to explode them into 120. It's one thing to point out the need for disciplining the body and mind in order for them to perform at maximum efficiency, and another to threaten total destruction to your being if you slack off and just be, for a while." Ruth paused and sighed. "I'm getting too complicated," she said, adjusting the aura around her 'shoulders,' like a shawl that had slipped a little.

"Specifically, it's the leaders of the Jews, and later the so-called Christians, that told Jesus he was a heretic and were so infuriated that they killed him. I mean, he was killed physically after his thirty years on Earth. But his message has been killed ever since by those who don't understand his message of love and forgiveness, and the kingdom of Oneness being within. Those who put down all the rules for salvation are simply putting up barriers. So, I'm waiting to go back when more people have become aware of what being one with the One means. Some individuals are saying even now that 'we are all One,' but how many really understand what that feels like?" Then she turned toward Gail and reminded her of what they saw through the window.

Gail smiled. "Well, that's what we're getting at, isn't it? The group in that co-operative were trying to live in such a way that they would feel 'we are all One."

Ruth nodded. "Right. And if you here want to go look through that window, maybe we could get Counselor to take us. Is anyone interested?"

By that time, my curiosity had been aroused and I answered yes. Salvador and David both gave a slight nod—Salvador more enthusiastically than David.

Counselor looked at our group, apparently evaluating our interest and readiness for such a venture. Then David began to scowl. We all looked at him.

"What?" Counselor said. "You have a question?"

"I think I may get what Ruth is saying, but I'm not sure. Like the Christian group I knew," he said, then paused. "They had rules. And definite beliefs. They divided people into groups. They had this idea that Jesus was Savior and came here to take away all your sins if you only believed that he did. Then they had a whole list of sins. And you had to agree that that's what they were. And sometimes that just didn't seem right. Especially when I didn't understand why I had this really strong desire sometimes to try on my sister's dress that made her look so pretty. I just wanted to know what it felt like to be her. You know, lipstick and that make-up around her eyes that made them look so big and strong. I did that sometimes and just felt the power that took over. How could that be such a sin? It really hurt when I was told I'd go to hell, and they made hell to be something really, really awful. But I'm here, and it's not so awful, so they must have really been mistaken. Weren't they?" He gave us all a quick glance before looking into the distance as if he might find trouble coming at him.

I must admit I was a bit shocked, because David had never actually said this about trying on women's clothes. I wasn't sure whether he thought he wanted to be a girl, or was just jealous that to him they seemed to get more of what they wanted.

"You don't have to go to the window if you're not ready," Counselor said in a very gentle way. "I'd suggest you stay here. I'll call over another counselor or two to be with you. Would that be all right?"

He nodded. I felt a bit sorry for him. I wondered if this meant he would be sent to another group. It was all very curious. Curiouser and curiouser as Alice in Wonderland had said.

* * *

I'm not sure how we got to where we are. I just know that we stopped before a huge window that reminded me of the dioramas in museums. Except this was a look at Earth people. This particular group was sitting in what looked like a large living room. There was a fireplace on one side, and chairs set up in a half-circle, with a woman in the front sitting cross-legged on a cushioned armless chair. Some in the group sat on the chairs, backs straight as boards, others sat cross-legged on large cushions. They were all silent and motionless, with their eyes closed.

Before I could ask, Counselor explained that we were looking at experienced mediators. They were deeply concentrated. As I looked closer, I saw each one had light rising from their heads like a cone, much like when sun breaks through a cloud and beams its rays to Earth. Only these rays of light beamed upward. Counselor said these light rays were an energy from the mind of each mediator. I noticed some cones were brighter than others, but all reached far up from where they sat. The whole visual gave me a kind of tingle, or buzz in my aura.

"You see how the cones sort of blend together and reinforce each other? And notice how the whole group has a large cone over them," Counselor said.

"Cones of connection," Ruth exclaimed. "We can use these cones to send love back to them, can't we?"

"That's what they are wanting, and reaching for," Counselor said. "They've come together to live a life dedicated to that Connection, knowing that Love flows through that cone."

"Is that like becoming one with the One?" I asked. I kept my eyes on the group, wondering if they felt our presence.

"They're engrossed in whatever Love that comes from Here or from where they are," Counselor said.

"Have they, then, transcended the body?" Gail asked.

"For a time," Counselor said. "If they continue with this practice, they will indeed develop a higher consciousness."

"And still live on Earth and take care of all the duties and responsibilities that humans have, to just live?" I asked. I thought of all the everyday stuff I had gone through, from the time I got out of bed, dressed, bathed, ate, got to a job, worked for several hours, went through another routine before going to sleep. How could one take the time to sit and meditate? Here there is no body to take care of and we move around without a thought about how it's done or what we have to do to keep it going.

"Earth beings do have a lot of duties," Counselor laughed, her aura fluttering about her rather like a colorful butterfly. "But as you may have found out, duties get sometimes boring, stressful, and unsatisfying. So, if you want to get our of that state of mind and transcend the body consciousness, then you've got to change your routine."

"Back to the disciplines," I noted, with a bit of sigh.

Ruth looked over at me. "You hiked the mountains for a high," she suggested.

"Yeah, for that Rocky Mountain high John Denver sang about," I added. And never obtained, I thought to myself.

"Well," Salvador began, "we're all Here, on this side of that Cone of Connection. Why aren't we all feeling high?"

"Because you still have Earth desires, Salvador," Ruth said. "You already know you can't stay here. You've got to go back and try again.

"Well, what the heck. I didn't do so well last time. What's make you think it'll be any better if I go back?"

"Haven't you learned anything from being with us?" Gail asked, a bit plaintively. "We've patiently listened to your stories. We've come to care about you, Salvador. Isn't that love?"

"Well, maybe," he admitted. "But if I go back I have to leave you."

"Just this form of us, Salvador. You may meet some of us again, you know, down there," Gail said.

"You're going to be with that group at the co-op?" he asked.

Gail looked startled. "Perhaps. I hadn't thought about it before," Gail said. Then she looked to Counselor. "Is the group we're viewing in an ashram? What if we want to go back, but don't want to be so separated from regular Earth things. I think I'd like to go back and have children again. I loved my babies."

"You can do that," Counselor reassured her. "You can have a family and also be part of a group that seeks for that Cone of Connection." She paused a while and let the air, or space, or vibrations settle around us until we were nearly as still as the group we were viewing.

"The co-op group where Cassie's friends are," Counselor said, "also have a Cone of Connection. She didn't look at me when she said this, but I felt a shiver run up my aura spine.

Then Counselor went on to say, "The group you're viewing is the group we saw earlier celebrating the return of one who just came from Earth. Their cone of connection is reaching the group that received that being and now, if you notice carefully, the two, one on Earth and the one Here, have joined and the love passing from one to the other, back and forth, are producing an almost permanent tether, much like what keeps you all from getting lost.

My friends? What was she getting at? I certainly did feel the strength of that Connection, and it gave me a thrill that I'd never felt before. But I also realized they had practiced for years and I just didn't have that kind of discipline. "I could never sit still like they're doing." I shook my head aura rather vigorously." Though I had a certain longing for that great Love passing back and forth, I just couldn't see myself joining them.

"It is the discipline that frightens you?" Ruth asked.

"It reminds me of the athletes on Earth who trained for races and games and exhibitions. I was never into that either."

"You wanted to be tough," she reminded me.

"But not competitive."

"Except with Louise, perhaps? Or that cousin Gene?"

"You don't miss anything, do you? I had to be better than Louise," I insisted. "She was the little sister. That doesn't count. And Gene wasn't the same as team competition."

"Tell her that," Ruth said, her aura twinkling around her.

"What do you mean?" I stared at Ruth and then it dawned on me. "You mean in a dream?"

"You did it once before. You can do it again."

"But she has to want that, doesn't she?"

"Aren't you curious about what she and Ray are doing?"

"Ray?" First, Salvador asks me if I want to see Ray again, and we go through the possibilities of that happening. And now Ruth is suggesting I send a message to Louise about what...that I wasn't intentionally competing with her? Or that I'm sorry if that's what she thought? Or, what? This business of Earth lessons being so important in the whole scheme of things was beginning to push at me harder and harder. The honeymoon of Here as a resting place must be coming to an end. "And Louise? Are they together a lot?"

"Come see for yourself," Ruth said. "We can change the window screen, and go to the co-op where Ray, Louise, Maureen and others are learning some of the basic elements of how to establish that cone of connection you've been watching."

Before I could answer, the view had changed. I could feel Salvador, David, Gail and Ruth gathering closer to me as if they were just as interested as I. It was amazing how warm their aura energy felt, and yet cool at the same time. How was that possible? Well, this was not Earth, so the same rules didn't apply.

Actually, it was a scene similar to the meditating group we just saw. A group was sitting, some on chairs, some on the floor cross-legged, with eyes closed and silently meditating. There, too, was a woman human in front of the group. As I looked closer, I could make out the form of Louise and Maureen, sitting next to each other, on chairs near the front. And there in the back, was Ray. I chuckled. The aura around him was like erratic spots of light jumping here and there in the outline of his body. I could feel my own aura responding to his restlessness. If they stayed silent much longer he was going to bolt right out the back door and hit the road. That was Ray, all right, moving fast with the wind whistling through his hair.

Salvador noticed him, too. "What's he doing there?" he asked. "You must have a powerful sister to get him into a group like that," he said without looking at me.

A wisp of jealousy ran through my aura. What were Louise and Ray doing together? Actually, I hadn't paid much attention to whom she made friends with. I sighed. Maybe I hadn't been a very good sister. But what would I say to her if I could?

"Have you ever said you loved her?" Counselor asked.

The question startled me. I'm not sure I ever told anyone I loved them. It wasn't something our family did. We just did our chores, the duties assigned to us, and went about our lives. Isn't that love? You don't have to go around hugging people to let them know you care. But did I really love Louise? I couldn't say that it had really crossed my mind to need to. She just was. I didn't resent her. Did I?

"What kind of group is that," David asked, ignoring Counselor's question.

"We saw them earlier, David," Gail said. "They're that co-op group. What you're seeing is their church service. Cassy, your parents went there a few times while I was still alive. I think I even went with them once. They call themselves a yoga retreat ranch and are trying to raise their own food, and offer courses in how to live spiritually. It looks to me like Ray and Louise have found a common interest there. I think it's because they both knew you, Cassy." Gail's aura moved back from the screen as if to let the rest of us see it better.

"I didn't think it necessary to say 'I love you,'" I finally said. "It's assumed."

"No one ever told me they loved me," said Salvador.

"Me either," said David.

"But you wished for it?" Gail asked.

They both shrugged. "Wouldn't have believed them," Salvador said. David agreed.

"Well, that's sad," I said. "But you must not have seen love."

Salvador's aura suddenly brightened, their greens, reds, yellows, blues mixing like flames that burn hot and fierce. "I just thought of something." His aura jiggled around like he was laughing. "If Ray and Louise got hot for each other, they might, well, you know..." He stumbled around, embarrassed perhaps, and we waited for him to finish his thought.

"Get married and you'd have a chance..." David started, then, too, got embarrassed.

"Oh, you're thinking of going back as Ray's son," Gail said, then added "or daughter, and cause a lot of trouble by being a mischievous little brat, huh?" She gave him a playful smile.

"Well, wouldn't that be fair?" Salvador asked, with a sheepish grin to his aura.

"He was kind of responsible for my leaving Earth so early."

"He didn't," I declared. "He wasn't the one to cause your bike to skid," I did not want to believe Ray would have done that. It had to be one of his Harley buddies.

"You may want to believe that, Cassy, but Ray was there! He's not going to get out of that, and if I have to go back and teach him a lesson, I will!"

"And you'll just create more trouble for yourself, too," chimed in Ruth.

Counselor said nothing. She seemed to be enjoying this round of assessing possibilities. I wondered how many lives she had led before she was determined not to go back to Earth and get all involved with their problems. I wondered if there were ever jealousies and conflict with the counselors that ran this place. Were they really above all that?

"You mean is it possible to fall from grace in this atmosphere of love?" Counselor addressed me as if she had heard every word of my thoughts. But she was smiling, rather tenderly, like a mother who looks at a misbehaving child and patiently waits for the proper response.

"I guess one could, huh? But the One would still be..." I couldn't find the right word to express what I sensed.

"Waiting," Counselor said. "The One is present, always."

***

I had gone off away from the group after this discussion, needing to consider what the next steps should be. Maybe I could get to Louise, not in a dream, but when she was in the Cone of Connection, if she got to that point. Then I could tell her, sister, you're not through with me. I've not forgotten you. Then I could look for that girl whose womb may be available. Not that I would encourage her to give a boy that chance, if I were on Earth and had any influence in the situation.

Ray and I had never talked about marriage when we were together down There. It hardly seemed necessary. Recreational sex was enough to calm some of the hormones that kept popping up for attention and living together wasn't all that attractive either. So when I thought of Ray and Louise in a relationship, it kind of blew my mind. Mind? My consciousness, anyway. Louise, the last I knew, had found work in a greenhouse and made flower arrangements for weddings and other occasions. I remember only one time when she met Ray. It was when we were all at Mom and Dad's for some reason. I don't think they even had a chance to do more than just meet. So what were they together for now? And Mom and Dad visiting that co-op yoga place? If I were to go back soon I could see them all together. But they wouldn't know it was me, would they! If that's the way it worked. So what would be the purpose? I'd come in as a different personality. Would I still like to hike? Would I still like to be outdoors more than indoors? Would I still be as restless and feel disappointed in people as much as I did? Or would a different set of parents change all that?

Counselor came over, floating like a waft of breeze, and joined me. The others were off communing with some group that I'd not seen before. "David was trying once more to get the attention of the girls he shot," Counselor explained. "Salvador, Gail and Ruth are with him to be a buffer and try to help them look at each other in a different way. They might even wander over to the Jesus group for a bit, and plug into the vibrations there. Perhaps Jesus will reiterate some of the stories he told on Earth. Or make up new ones just for them."

"So will the girls and David hear the stories differently?" I remembered how David expressed his feeling of rejection by them. I wondered which story would help them accept each other. Maybe one of the "Blesseds," like "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall..." What was the rest of that?

"They shall be called the children of The One," Counselor finished for me. "But you, my dear, are having some serious thoughts here. Different parents, different attitudes of those around you, all will have an effect. Your purpose? What's the feeling you get?"

I had to think on that. I suppose I could have come back as a child to Louise. But that didn't appeal. Especially if Salvador wanted to do that. That is, if Ray and Louise did get together. No guarantee of that yet, as far as I could see. So if I came in via another womb, my baby body wouldn't have any filial relationship to Louise. "How would I then be around her?" I asked.

"From what I see, the young girl will probably let her baby be adopted. So she'd be your biological mother is all," Counselor said.

"You can see all that before it happens?" I ask.

"I see the possibilities," she reminded me. "I can't guarantee anything. Human beings do have free will, and they can be very unpredictable and irrational." Counselor's aura vibrated as if a shudder ran through it.

I laughed. "Oh, my. I suppose." I still hadn't thought of an answer to her question about the purpose of going back into a place where I would know Ray. And Louise. "One purpose would be to see how he turned out. How they became different. Maybe that's just curiosity."

"You can do more than that in your life, you know. What kind of work do you want to do next time? What kind of skills do you want to learn? Lots of choices." Counselor started naming off a list—teacher of young children, or older children, botanist, forest ranger, historian, physician, lawyer, manager of money, farmer, explorer, inventor, writer, artist. I heard her list many more things and began to feel dizzy with all that Earth beings could do.

"Do I have to choose now? Can't I wait until I'm born?"

"Certain of your familiar desires and attitudes will still be with you, of course. I imagine you'll still like to be in Nature. And you did enjoy being with people who explored and used their bodies in heavy activity. But if you have a few left-over longings to see the whole world, for example, you will find a means of doing that, and a family that will encourage it."

"Will the co-op people do that?"

"They've shown an interest in conserving the earth and its resources. Looks like even Ray has found some skill in installing solar equipment," Counselor said. It felt like she was nudging me to start making up my mind.

"You trying to get rid of me?" I asked.

"There is a certain window of Earth time that has to be considered," she answered.

"Right, the womb. People getting older. Earth keeps moving, night and day, season to season. Time marches on." I stated these things in a stodgy, heavy manner, my aura slumping disconcertedly.

The others had turned around and started back to where Counselor and I were conversing.

We turned our attention to them.

"There's a lot of activity in the Intake area," Salvador exclaimed with such excitement that his vibrating aura threw off all kinds of colors. They blended, then separated, moved in spikes and sharp angles, then came together again in soft new ways.

"Something big must have happened on Earth for all these new ones coming in," Gail stated. Her aura was calm and contained, like a worried mother might be.

"Another large earthquake," Ruth said, "that set off a tremendously devastating tsunami in the Pacific Ocean. "Thousands of people have been washed away with their homes. So Intake is very busy rounding up counselors to receive the frightened and shocked new entrants. I might be called to help them for a little while. You see all those lights over there? Relatives who've been notified of their loved ones coming in. There'll be lots and lots of smaller groups gathering that will welcome the newcomers."

"Anyone I know?" David asked, almost hopefully. "My father was sometimes stationed in Hawaii." He studied the many orbs of light in their various forms.

"Not this time," Counselor said. "But we can all put ourselves into the spirit of love and welcome them from where we are."

Then a remarkable thing began to happen. I saw Counselor begin to pluralize herself, her aura slicing itself into repetitive patterns that spread all the way from us to the groups of beings in the distance. How did she do that? It was the most amazing thing. Would she then divide herself into many? or just continue like paper dolls linked together when cut from folded paper? But then, things didn't really stay the same for long Here, and we all watched in silence and awe as more and more globes of light gathered.

"Sometimes they have to bring in Beings from other planets," Ruth said. She was still with us, not yet having received a call for her help. "That way, every entrant can be assigned a committee of at least three that will be there to help them with their life review. Then they will designate where they are to go."

"When do they see their family?" David asked.

"What if they don't have any?" Salvador worried.

"You already know the answers," Counselor told them. "Neither of you were greeted by family, right?" They both nodded. "And you probably had never thought that far ahead. But if you had had a long-standing belief that you would have grandparents waiting for you, or siblings, or parents, they would have done so. And if you had had a long-standing belief that you would be greeted by a Divinity you would have been." She gave us a warm smile. "In no case will anyone pass over alone. Whether they know it or not."

"Well, I'm glad I came in unaware of what was happening to me," I said. "I'm glad I wasn't facing a big wave of water coming at me and know I was going to drown." My thoughts went back to that last morning, feeling dizzy and weak and not caring. A pretty easy death.

"I didn't feel dead right away," David volunteered. "But I wasn't afraid, either."

"The fear comes before death," Gail said. "I had lots of time to think about Here, but didn't have any expectations. I was ready to accept what ever there was." Her aura gave off a look of puzzlement, and then she asked whether coming in large groups like this was different than the one by one route that we all took.

"One by one," Salvador contemplated. His gaze carried beyond us, over to the area where many orbs of light were interacting and lit up the space like a new sun. Then his attention returned to us and he said, "Either way, you're still dead."

I almost laughed, but I could tell he was thinking something new, that he hadn't shared before. He blurted it out. "When you're young you tend to think you're immortal. That's why they get into so many accidents. They take risks. Those bikers maybe didn't realize they could kill me with what they did. Maybe they thought I could pick up my bike and jump it over that stick they threw in front of me. Maybe they thought I was so strong and fearless nothing they did would hurt me."

Well, that was sure wishful thinking. Those bikers weren't juveniles, teenagers. They may have wanted to never grow up, just be carefree and careless. But I believed they knew exactly what they had done. They'd had no conscience. So why was Salvador making excuses for them? His aura swirled in dull dark colors around his center, like flags waving in a breeze, then settled down to a smoothly moving outline in shades of reds, greens, blues.

"We need to explore that sometime, Salvador," Counselor said, indicating she meant the two of them alone. "But to the question about these large groups. They just take more attention Here. But you see how we adjust to the situation. You're amazed at how it looked like I became many? It's just a matter of perception. We can make ourselves omnipresent when necessary, when we are called upon by many voices at once."

"So those coming in," David began. "If they wanted to see Jesus, they would?"

"Or Buddha, Confucius, Laozi, St. Francis, Mother Mary, or another of the many Divine Beings available," Counselor said. "But it helps to have practiced calling upon the Divinity with intense devotion over a period of many years." She gave us all a loving, motherly smile.

All this activity and questions coming up made me wonder how many new entrants came Here over an Earth year of time. And, how did that compare with how many left this place and went back to Earth. Or on to other planets.

Counselor had an answer. "The statistics you would find on Earth technology would show that about one percent of the population would die each year. With six billion people that would be 60 million, including about 10 million children under five. That compares with 136 million births, including 3.3 million stillbirths and 4 million dying within 28 days of birth. One-half million women die in pregnancy, childbirth or soon after," she concluded.

"Well, that was precise," I said, awed again at the immense knowledge Counselor had. Not only omnipresent but omniscient as well. The very description of Divinity. And I was in its presence? But surely I wasn't special. This Presence was here for everyone coming in from Earth. It gave me a shivery thrill up and down my aura spine. My aura was vibrating furiously at the immensity of what Here was all about. If only human beings could know! And I guess that's what these Divinities were trying to get across when they told about sending Avatars and Saviors to Earth every few years to support the most enlightened ones.

"There are always a few of humans who see the Light," Counselor acknowledged. "Even in its darkest stage, there are a few who know us, who have that Cone of Connection operating full time." A radiance of bright white light grew around her. "They know what it means to be one with the One." I watched the light slowly expand. "Earth is not a totally lost cause," Counselor assured us. The light around her was entrancing. It embraced all of us until we were like one ball of light being held in the hollow of her loving hands. For this moment we became the most important endeavor she had.

We looked at each other. Ruth reached out her aura hand to Gail beside her, then automatically we all followed suit. In this ring of light we rested as if we were bathing in the sun or relaxing in the best hot tub we had ever experienced on Earth. It was indeed heavenly.

Salvador was the first to break this spell. He cleared his throat, or some such thing. Earth words are so inadequate to describe what happens Here. You could tell he was bursting with another thought that had come to him.

"Research," he said. Immediately the light around us began to diminish and we quickly became separate auras again. Salvador looked apologetic, but I think we all understood there was nothing he could do about it. "That's a profession all by itself." He wrinkled his aura face. "But how boring would that be?"

"You're considering this for when you go back?" I asked. It was interesting to note how we were all beginning to make our plans for the next life trial. And I do mean trial. One we couldn't escape.

"It's entering my mind," he said. "Which is still open to suggestions." He looked at each one of us as if inviting our comments.

"You could research what to do about Earth becoming overpopulated," I offered. "Maybe Earth is deliberately shaking itself with earthquakes in order to get rid of some of those mouths it has to feed."

"Could it do that?" David asked with a bewildered expression to his aura. "Like it's an organism? A live thing?"

"You're catching on," Ruth said, her aura brightening. "If you go back to Earth with deep respect for all it is ready to give human beings, and be ready to work with its Nature, then you will have a purpose. That could be a really great thing, David, " she said with genuine admiration.

"Do you think that some of those coming in now planned their lives so they would be in that tsunami together and make it serve as a message to humans?" Gail asked.

"You mean like group sacrifice?" I asked. "That when they were Here they thought up a scheme like that to go back and give Earth a big message?"

"That does happen," Counselor said with a soft nodding of her head. "It may be hard for you to understand how much we care about Earth. And it needs so much help," she said with a sad little shake.

"Or a big massage," Salvador grinned, his aura shimmering with spectacular colors. "Another great profession. Massage therapy, or message therapy."

"Your cleverness is getting a bit strange," Ruth advised, but her aura held a crooked grin. She was like an indulgent grandmother.

"What if we go back and try to understand what all the different religions have done to Earth," David said. "I mean, some of them have been pretty stupid, don't you think? Sacrificing animals on an altar, for example. Killing each other because they didn't agree on the rules of how to worship their idol. Capturing and putting in prison those who spoke out against the killing. Or that practice of shunning. Now that's a brilliant way to stifle that love you talk about." His aura had changed completely as he spoke. From the bright white light that had surrounded him, and us all, he let it turn to pastels, then grey, then brighten to a brilliant, fiery red.

"You started out with a good idea, David," Ruth said calmly. "But how quickly you let human emotions get you riled up. What are you going to do about that when you go back?" she asked. Her aura was turned toward him and he stepped back a bit startled.

"Oh, yes," he replied. "I do get passionate." His aura was easing into a gentler pink. His whole speech had surprised me. He had changed. He no longer had the hangdog look I first saw. He now appeared more like a professor, or someone who knew what he was looking for.

"Were you a minister in one of your lives?" I asked, for that was exactly what his appearance was reminding me of.

"Probably," he admitted. "Isn't that what I was working toward last time?" He shrugged. "I really messed that up." I think that was the first time he really recognized that bit of truth.

"Maybe you ought to look for parents who want a girl, and who believe girls can do most anything," Salvador suggested. "That way, they'd encourage you to do all that studying about religions and you could find the best one." Salvador's aura had a satisfied look about it. "It'd be like killing two birds with one stone," he added. "You wouldn't have to fight for the gender you think you want to be, and in this day and age, girls can be just as aggressive and pushy as men." His aura became even more self-satisfied with maybe a bit of tease to it.

Counselor looked on with a pleased aura about her. "You're all beginning to realize some of the things you need to work on in your next life. When you become human again, you will be given all the emotions to express your divine self as well as the choice to express the ego self. If you forget the divine side, which you will be tempted to do, you will get caught up in making Ego king of your soul. With ego confidence, ego satisfaction, and ego accomplishment, you may find power over others and oh how it will pull you in more and more to thinking you don't need any Cone of Connection. In fact, you may totally reject any concept of the One. That is always sad for us to see. But, it will be for you to choose. We will still be Here.

***

The activity in the Intake section of Here went on and on. Sometimes we were allowed to go to the window and see what people on Earth were doing about all the new destruction. I watched as Search and Rescue teams came in, suited up in protective coveralls, mouths masked, and dogs in tow. Often they clutched a long pole, or spade, and it looked dangerous for them as they walked over shifting debris. I was impressed with the many people who came to help. It surely gave them some meaning to their lives. Would that be enough to go back for? To be a Rescuer when disasters occurred?

I was also impressed with David's suggestion about learning about every religion on Earth. That could easily take a whole lifetime. Then there was Salvador's idea about research. That had so many possibilities that I couldn't even think of them all. One could do archeological research and try to find out how old Earth is. One could do research into where Earth fit into a larger cosmos, and how it came about. One could research all the peoples that had ever lived on Earth. Or one could research the very body that housed brains and organs and emotions and try to figure out how they operated and related to each other. So many possibilities. How could one ever decide?

Then one 'day' Counselor asked me directly whether I was ready to plunge into the womb that was ready for a spark of life. Had I decided to use it? "You could wait, of course. But do you know that Salvador and David are already looking over the possibilities for themselves? Salvador, for instance, is really watching what Ray is doing."

I was surprised. When was he doing that? and how?

"He's discovered the right window, Cassie. You know there have been times when he has gone off on his own. David, too. Even Gail is starting to consider her possibilities. Ruth has said she's waiting, and she's sticking to that," Counselor confirmed.

We were alone, just Counselor and myself. That had not happened before. Not that I remember, anyway. It must mean we are moving along, or being pushed along. "Salvador's not going back before me, is he?" For some reason I didn't want that.

Counselor just raised her aura eyebrows.

"Ok. So what if I get into the womb before I've completely decided what my next life course should be."

"Then let's review the few things you have indicated so far." I nodded for her to go on. "I gather you want to be in the lives of Ray and Louise. How about your friend Maureen? or your parents?"

"I don't need to be with my parents again," I said. "Nor Maureen. That doesn't mean I'd reject them. It's just that I don't need them. But yes, Ray. And if Louise is with him, I'll take her, too."

"And the environment? You have a feeling about that?"

"Whatever they're in. That co-op thing is all right. I want to get a good education, and I think those people would provide that. It's rural, right? Near the mountains I hiked before. That'll be all right." I shifted about, my aura kind of floating this way and that. I still wasn't used to not having a material body, just light rays doing all the moving of my 'self' about in this atmosphere of light. Then a thought came out that I hadn't expected. "I could go back and finish the training to become a ranger." I looked past Counselor so I wouldn't have to see her reaction. I just knew that a redo on that plan was exactly what she'd approve. But it brought memories of classes that I had detested. Or feared that I would fail. Yet, was it the actual content of those classes, learning the flora and fauna of forests, parks, wilderness areas and all that entailed or was it something else? A flash of memory, a professor, a lecturer, some fellow student encounter, some threat that I couldn't bring up precisely, froze me for a moment. Counselor knew. Yet she chose to ignore it and shift her focus to something entirely different.

"You know in the womb you'll be in darkness."

"Like a cave, I imagine." I thought of a protective cave out of the rain and cold when hiking. Or a cave of blankets in bed when it was storming outside. Caves were a good thing. Even though there was always the possibility something else occupied them that you didn't know about.

"A moist warm cave," Counselor clarified, then smiled. "But you'll still be conscious of Here for a while."

"I'll be talking to you?" I was amazed. Did they really guide us from birth to death? Forever?

"We'll be in communication, yes."

"Will you be a...Protector?" That suddenly seemed very important. Going back to Earth held dangerous and frightening possibilities. Back to bodies that can get hurt. Feelings that can get hurt. Here had been such a relief from all that.

"You're not the body," Counselor said. "Get that in mind while you're Here, and keep it in mind. That will help."

Thoughts started coming in such a rush that words were futile. Something exchanged between us now that didn't have words. I thought "Consciousness." Without a physical body, even without an astral body, I am still Consciousness. And in that exchange of Here for There, that may be the only thing I Am. That thought moved on to the thought of changes. Whatever I am, it keeps changing. Perhaps each thought makes a change in me. Perhaps each movement around me, every vibration makes 'me' change. In the womb, I will start very small, a few cells. They will keep expanding, increasing, more and more cells. A TV documentary that I watched once, called "The miracle of Life," never explained at what point consciousness came to be in the fetus. If I understood Counselor, though, it was always there. But she also seemed to imply that Consciousness was present both there, in the fetus, and Here. Could that be?

"Perhaps you could just concentrate on your purpose for going back," Counselor said. "Wondering about all the 'miracles' of the universes might delay your actually giving yourself the means to work out those thoughts." I felt her presence beside me, patient, strong, supportive. I wanted to ask about the fear that was coming over me, the dread of encountering whatever situation it was that I couldn't quite remember.

"How is this going to work? I mean, at what moment will I be in the womb, and out of Here?"

"The moment you decide you're ready."

"I'll never be ready," I blurted out.

Counselor looked amused. "You like Here?"

"Well, yes." And then I realized that I hadn't been very appreciative of her constant concern and motherliness any more than I had been of my Earth mother. "You've been really great," I mutter and make my aura smile broad and bright. "But how can I go back not knowing that thing I can't remember, that I'm going to have to face again. Can you help me with that?" My aura was shaking and I couldn't control it.

"My dear, didn't I say we will be with you?" She gave me a warm, patient smile.

"How will I know?"

"Once you have felt Love it's hard to completely forget it. If you associate Love with Here and the Divine Beings, it will be in your Consciousness and carried with who you really are. So even though that unfinished business related to that school you referred to may come up, it's nothing to fear. You can call for help whenever you think of the One. We are all together." Counselor waved an aura arm out over the vast space of Here and it seemed to touch all the lights of other counselors that were busy with their groups.

"So, it's a matter of keeping the One in mind? Are there classes Here to help me do that?"

Counselor nodded. "There are a few things we could help you understand, if you are willing to do some work. Like assignments in college classes."

"Okay," I said, a little hesitantly.

"You have questions?" Counselor asked. I hadn't noticed before how she could make her aura expand and contract, elongate, then reduce to a pencil thin line, or form into a figure that was nearly like a human body, with substance. It seemed she was doing this right now, deliberately, almost like she was showing off all her abilities. Did she want me to ask about them? I suspected Counselor didn't do anything without a purpose. And there was that word again. Purpose. It was almost like she was directing my thoughts!

"One purpose in going back is to re-experience the human emotions, especially love. I think I learned to be afraid of other people, and being afraid I couldn't love. But Here I haven't been afraid and I have experienced love. I haven't had to be tough. I've been able to just be. We all have. Here we aren't judged good or bad. We don't have to live up to anything. We just are what we are."

Counselor nodded. "So, not having to be tough how are you going to relate to Ray? And Louise? Neither will be your own age, remember. You will have a different relationship to them." She looked me straight in the aura eye, so to speak. She had made herself an equal height to me. I had to look straight back. What I saw was the blue of a Colorado sky when the humidity was low. I felt a slight buzz run up my aura spine.

"Ummm." I murmured. "Yes. Well, they will still be fairly young. I'll need to live longer than before. So I figure I'll grow up in that co-op place and if they become parents, that child will be close to my age, and they'll be visiting frequently. That's kind of the picture I'm getting." I stopped. It was a strangely powerful picture, and I had the feeling Counselor had something to do with it. Then I had the thought. Salvador. He could be that child of theirs. Horrors. He'd be the little brat of my childhood. I just knew it. Not a brother, thank goodness. But he'd be there, from time to time. Maybe in the same school. Maybe a bit younger. That would help. And I just bet he'd settle on going back as a boy, so he could pester Ray better.

"Yes, you're getting the picture." Counselor laughed this time. A big, shaking laugh, like she was enjoying my discomfort.

"But this all has to be okayed by Salvador, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Counselor said, but I could tell it was pretty much settled. "Then there's David," she reminded me. "He won't be far behind. But maybe in a different community before you meet him."

I sighed. Things seemed to be moving fast, all of a sudden. Maybe faster than I was ready for. Counselor moved off a way, as if checking to see where the rest of our group had gotten to.

"You expressed an interest in classes." Counselor studied me. I nodded. "There's one that might be valuable, about the spinal centers which you have become aware of from time to time, though you haven't mentioned it. I know you've observed in the auras that each one has a centerline like a human spine. Perhaps you've also noticed how they radiate different colors more consistently than the rest of the aura."

"I did hear of the chakra centers when on Earth. Louise and Maureen made me feel like this was something terribly important. And anyone taking yoga acted like they were the center of knowledge. I took a yoga class once. The stretching and bending was good for limbering up the body. Before hiking I'd often do some of the stretches. They were good to do before skiing, and anything to do with balance. Yeah, I know what you're referring to."

"Yes, the West has been awakened to the East in many ways. But I'm referring to the spiritual centers of the spine that are not visible to the human eye or any machine that has been invented. There is something more than exercise yoga, which the co-op community has an interest in. If you grow up there, you'll be taught by people who have experienced the feelings in the spine that are more than physical. So, while you're Here, you might want to take a look at what they're doing. See how it affects you. See if you can be mellow enough to want to catch the point of what they are trying." Counselor was shifting around as if trying out different ways to 'talk' about her point.

"Are you trying to warn me about something?"

"Well, I believe in this past life you were less than tolerant about Louise and Maureen's spiritual beliefs. And you've indicated a bit of surprise—in fact, shock—that Ray is with them so much right now. So perhaps you need to ask yourself what about Ray do you want to relate to? How do you want to relate to Louise? Can you see either of them as one of your teachers? As one of your models for behavior? What are you wanting from them?" Counselor looked a bit grave, her aura quite still.

The questions puzzled me. What did I want from them? Maybe they'd be like an uncle and aunt, as I remembered Uncle Ron and Aunt Amy. They had been almost like a second set of parents, except more lenient. No, that wasn't the right concept. More physically active, perhaps. But they were the parents of Gene, the competitor in my life. Did I need that again? Did I really need to redo that one-bettermanship that I practiced last time? Maybe I could let that part go, and put that energy into more education, more learning what the world was about. Maybe I didn't need to compete with people so much. Maybe I could be a better helper. Back to the Search and Rescue idea. Back to developing thoughtfulness of others that I guess I didn't do so well in last time.

"Now you're getting to the bottom of things. Good for you. Changes in personality can be decided right Here. You can make a list of those qualities that will take you further in your next life. Thoughtfulness instead of constant competition is a good beginning. What's the next one?"

"Well, learning what love really is was something I missed before. I didn't really learn how to express love. I didn't really learn how to feel love. So I suppose that's on the list." I thought again of how I had kept my distance from Louise, my little sister. But I wouldn't have her as a little sister next time. So I couldn't redo that situation very well. She'd be the 'aunt.'

Not an actual one, but in a position like one. But Counselor mentioned something about seeing Louise and Ray as models of behavior. Wow. That would be different. Would they be that much changed? Would Ray be someone other than that carefree Harley rider? And Louise more than that tag-along who wanted to know what I was doing? Counselor was nodding her head and looking at me so intensely that I wondered what was up.

"You want to take a look?" She motioned her aura arms to some place off in the distance. "We could just check on them for a minute."

Well, how could I pass up that opportunity? I agreed. And next thing I know we're looking at this group having a picnic outdoors on a summer day. It looks like the co-op group, and they are eating corn-on-the cob and watermelon that has been grown in the gardens there. How do I know that? It just comes to me. I presume Counselor is behind that thought. Louise and Ray are sitting across from the woman yoga teacher, and it seems she is talking to Ray. A smile plays about his face as if he's trying to take in some kind of compliment he doesn't understand. Louise looks on surprised by the attention she is giving him. "What's going on?" I ask.

"I believe this teacher has just told Ray, who likes to look at the stars, that he should look to the One star. You see, she's pointing to his forehead. That's where one point of the Cone of Connection starts," Counselor explained.

"That would be a new idea to Ray," I commented. Now that I understand a little more about this Cone of Connection, I could see that things were changing with Ray and Louise since I last checked in with them. "They're into a totally new life-style aren't they?" I said, not so much as a question as an observation. "And that's what I would be getting in on?" A kind of shiver ran through my aura and I didn't know whether it was excitement or dread.

"You want to go back with challenges," Counselor commented, "or you won't move forward."

"And that's the purpose of redoing things?" I meant it as a kind of joke, but, it seemed pretty real. All of a sudden the window closed. Counselor and I were back to where we were.

***

It's hard to describe the environment of this place, since I'm still in the memory of a human form. Everything is light. But light has different degrees, densities. There's probably a human technical word for it. Something to do with protons and energy. But I wasn't into that kind of thinking on Earth. So I look out over this vast light-space and see different sized specks of light—almost like light bulbs of different voltages. When there is no real darkness, or shadows, the variety of light brings out color. I wish I could say it better. Maybe in my next life I will get a chance to take some courses in the physical sciences. Does it seem strange that physics is still important in this non-physical world?

In any case, I look into the light-space and notice that there are bulbs of white light getting larger and larger, closer and closer. Then I recognize their colors and sense the personalities in this group coming from these orbs. Salvador is out front with his excited shades and hues of red, yellow, green colors sparking around him. Almost like a Christmas tree all decked out with alternating on and off lights.

"There's a library," he shouted, swinging his aura arm up above him as if he were a runner carrying the torch to light the Olympic flame. "It has the whole history of the universe. The history of every human that ever lived. They have a book for each one of us that tells about every life we've ever lived." His aura arms opened wide to make sure we were all watching and understanding what a great thing he had discovered.

"You'd be surprised at all the characters we have been," he continued, his aura eyes bright and big, their color remarkably brownish. It was as if his aura had condensed into an almost physical form. This seemed to happen when some insight came about. As if our thoughts had become things.

"Not that I looked into you guys' lives," he assured us. "I wouldn't do that." His expression was sincere, and I had to check another positive in my mental list of his characteristics. I reluctantly realized that my next life would include Salvador and I might as well start dealing with that Here. So I had decided to take note of anything good about him.

"David, here, found out he had several times been a preacher, just like he suspected. And Gail discovered she'd been the Nubian Queen Amanishakhato. She was shown the pyramid where she was buried with lots of jewelry, and writings, all sorts of stuff. And humans on Earth can see this stuff in an Egyptian archeological museum. She was told the pyramid had been destroyed, though, by the treasure hunter who excavated it in the 1800's. Too bad, I'd say. But then, guess it makes for interesting history."

"And when did she live?" I asked, curious now.

"Around 10 B.C, they said. Right? " Salvador gave a swoop of his aura arm their way as if handing over the pulpit to Gail.

Gail looked embarrassed, her orbit-light turning pale and pinkish. David, a translucent whitish light that nevertheless stood straight and tall, had a proud smile playing about his aura face. Ruth's orb had floated off some other place. Maybe she was over helping the new ones in Intake. I wondered if any of them had come closer to when they wanted to re-enter Earth.

"You ought to go take a look," Salvador suggested to me. "You don't want to repeat things you don't need to repeat," he said as if he had learned something shocking. I waited for him to say more, but he went silent and gestured toward Gail to tell her story.

"I learned from that library consultant, who stood there presenting all this to us, that all that wealth and power made me snobbish and indifferent to people who didn't have much." Her orb emitted the palest of colors that were so thin and filmy that it was easy to see through her and see the other many orbs of light moving about everywhere.

"I was downright obnoxious. Arrogant. I don't think I'll need to repeat a life like that." Gail let out a kind of tired sigh. "I saw that in many of my lives after that I was poor, having to do with little food and ragged clothing. I was a beggar. In that life I became aware that there were good people who were willing to give me a few coins and in turn I learned to give a few myself! I was like the woman whom Jesus talked about who put her coin into the church box even though it was her last one. It made me realize how many lives Judas had to work out to be forgiven for his betrayal. If Earth people only knew how their greed and desire for power would come back at them, they'd be more thoughtful! But it's all very complicated. It's not just bad karma, of course. People have mixed lives, doing both good and bad things while on Earth. And sometime people living good lives get a lot of bad stuff because they can take it. David, if you're going to be a preacher again, I hope you understand all this. Do you?" She turned toward him.

David's orb began to compact into a more solid white-grey form. He seemed to be thinking hard. Perhaps he was weighing what he had done in his act of murder and how he had to pay for it. Was he frightened? I couldn't tell. But he didn't answer Gail, just stood there. And then I noticed he was shaking.

I guess Gail had noticed, too, because she went on talking about the lives she had seen in those books. "Those pages kept turning," she said, "like an account book with the sales and expenses listed in columns. They turned quickly, yet I could understand each one, as if there was still a remnant of memory in my subconscious. I could understand that the bad things that happened to me when I was trying to be a good person were simply opportunities to learn my mistakes and not repeat them. And if I took the bad things with humor or humbleness they turned into what others called heroic. Or admirable. Or a model of how to conquer adversity." Her orb of light took on the look of pale pink see-through scarf. She seemed embarrassed.

"At least I got past the need for all that," she continued. "Then I spent some wonderful lives being a mother, and a teacher, just caring for other people. Maybe next time I'll take my turn caring for older people, those who are at the end of their lives and need some help in passing over. That's kind of what I'm thinking I'll do. I'd probably want to work with those who have had a little insight into the possibilities an afterlife provides. Not those older humans who have become bitter and fearful of losing everything that had meaning to them."

"But they're the ones that need help the most," I exclaimed. "Like me," I added, suddenly remembering that before I died I hadn't considered any possibilities. I had died totally ignorant of an existence that was immortal. And if I went into Search and Rescue next lifetime, I would be doing it to help extend life, not help anyone pass over to Here. I wouldn't be able to take on that role. It'd have to be someone more experienced in those transitions. Someone who remembered the two worlds, although I wasn't sure how that worked. I felt my aura heating up and its light dancing about like little drops of water on a hot burner. Then I decided that Gail, too, was going to have a role to play in my next Life plan. Interesting.

"And the ones who don't know they need help, and won't accept any help." Gail retorted. "They'll just have to pass on to Here and let somebody like Counselor try to enlighten them." She blushed apologetically, and looked toward Counselor who laughed.

"Ah, yes," Counselor said. "Those who try to keep building their boat, or their business, or their military army, or try to order others around Here. They don't get very far, do they?" She was smiling a kind of genteel, patient smile, and raised her aura eyebrows.

It must take a lot of patience to be a counselor Here. I do remember the man whose boat kept disappearing on him. It was rather funny. And David didn't get anywhere with the two girls he had murdered, who simply turned their backs on him. No wonder he was shaking. "So how do you develop the patience?" I boldly asked. Counselor's laughter tinkled like the bells when a door was opened to alert a shopkeeper.

"We were once the same way," she said. "So it took a while before we understood the workings of Earth and Here and how they were different. You will learn," she said confidently, than added, "especially when you see that connection of everything and in particular, your connection, to the One." Then she lifted her arms and spread them wide as if blessing us all with her love. It was like a cleansing wave washing over us, and I noticed that David settled immediately as the wave came over him. He so much wanted Love. He had so missed it in that life he'd just lived. And I knew David, too, was going to play a role in my next Life. He was going to get some of that love he needed.

"One odd thing about Here," David said, his aura now exuding a touch of pale robin-egg blue. We all turned toward him expectantly. What could be more odd than having no time, no space, no fear, no hunger or thirst? "There are no games played. Haven't you noticed? No races. No teams competing one with another. No speakers trying to sell you something. No politicians. No tests. No comparisons. No one bragging about being the best. There are no cheerleaders. No sermons. No one is trying to tell you what to think or how to behave." His aura was as relaxed as I had ever seen it. He must have come to some decision about his next life .

"Yeah. We don't need all that," Salvador agreed. "We don't have physical bodies that need food and stuff. We don't have any use for clothing or furniture or boats. Don't even need a Harley Here. We can go as fast as any Harley ever did. Don't have to worry about a road, or running into objects cause we can't break anything." He laughed, his bright aura jumping about in a most amusing way.

We all joined in with his exuberance, our auras spilling out into the so-called space like colored clouds forming and reforming in the wind of my remembrance. Those days in Colorado when one half the sky was blue and the other half had moving clouds was entrancing. Nature down there could be very lovely, and exciting. Oh, yes. Even the storms that came up, with their rain, snow, hail, dangerous and thrilling. What would it be like to never have all that? to always know there was no death, no danger, no risk, all harmonious, loving, peaceful, blissful. Always the same. No change. You'd think it might get very boring. Yet all that I could see Here in the Counselors was that they were perfectly satisfied with it all. They didn't appear at all bored.

"There's plenty of things to see on Earth," Counselor noted. "All that change you mention? Never does the beauty last. Never does the peace. Never the contentment. It all comes in a brief moment that passes into anxiety, pain, fear, grief, embarrassment, and all those other emotions that make the body sick and sad. Why would you choose that over ever-new joy? Once you've experienced that you don't want to go back. But," she nodded, "none of you have experienced it yet. So you will go back. And there's nothing wrong with that. You all make for interesting viewing." She stopped. Someone from afar waved to her. It was Ruth.

***

I've not been to Intake before. I glide over now because of all the intense activity. There are many areas, with volunteer counselors like Ruth greeting groups who have apparently been killed together. There is a lot of wild, chaotic energy that leaves me gasping. I'm not ready to deal with it and back off to watch from a distance. I'm not sure how these volunteers sort them out. Perhaps it's by how the new entrants were separated from their bodies. Those separated by gunshot in one group, those from being blown up in another, and those from machete and knives, still another. The space, the 'air' is filled with their common sense of outrage. How dare you take my body away like it was nothing? How dare you take my life? How dare you hate me when you don't even know me! You have no right! The light orbs and auras shivered and shook, intermingled, in chaotic frenzy. Even back from it as I was, the intensity was like a hot forest fire that burst into new flames here and there and calming it seemed an impossible task.

But there was Ruth, plunging right in with her calm, blueness wrapping her arms around those screaming, crying astral forms. Others like her were doing the same. After a while, a certain order came about and the groups were encompassed by the counselors and counselor aids who encouraged them to tell their stories.

Even as these groups were being comforted, others kept coming in. Counselor took a moment to explain. "Certain Earth peoples have risen up in rebellion against their leaders who have stifled their creative energies for longer than they can tolerate. The young ones cannot find jobs. They have the energy and motivation to come together and shout their grievances in the streets of large cities. They have some astonishing new communication technology that helps them speak to one another at distances. They've been able to tell each other where to meet and what to bring. They have made signs telling their leaders what's wrong." She paused for a moment, as if listening for more information. "Most of them have started peacefully, with no intention of hurting those supporting the leaders they want to change. But as the Earth days went on and extended into weeks, some leaders got impatient and began to use their guns against their own people. The killing has gone on."

Counselor looked us over, judging, it seemed, whether we were ready to hear more. "Others are coming in from another section of Earth where gangs of those using drugs have been overpowering the police and the people." She sighed, as if reluctant to go on. "Those gangs use beheadings as a favorite way to destroy a body, not realizing that didn't destroy the consciousness that would continue to exist, even if they couldn't see it. They bury the bodies in secret, so loved ones do not know what happened." Counselor spread herself like a mother bird spreading her wings over her little ones to protect them. It was like a thin curtain that took the edge off the pain we were seeing and feeling.

Then she went on. "You are seeing a time on Earth where a lot of changes are being made. The fight for power over others is the big game there. In some places those heads of state who've been in power for decades are finding out the people they've regarded as less than themselves have found a way to challenge their control. They are seeing them gathering in the city squares holding signs against them. What a shock for them. They aren't liked. And their power is being torn from their grip. When the protests keep on for weeks and the reality of their loss gets closer and closer, anger and revenge take over. Killing the protesters is their last resort, and look at the mess they've made of their countries." She stopped, as if thinking about what she had just said. "You see, these kings and their retinues are going to come here, too. And what a special place we have for them." Her light twinkled and blinked in a kind of mischievous way. "Oh not the hell you Earthlings have made up for yourselves. But a special place where the games these people have been playing is challenged in a more sophisticated way. You know, face to face with a model of All Good Things. It's hard for darkness to continue in the light." She gave a little shrug and smile. "We don't torture Here, do we?"

"You just tell the truth," Salvador said brightly. "Or show us the truth, in a way we've never seen it before," he added. "Like letting us see through those windows." He gestured over to the far horizon where he had discovered the Library.

I wasn't sure what was going on. I was beginning to know that Truth is not something that makes you free until you really understand what Truth means. Admitting one's faults, for example, may be seeing the Truth, but that's not exactly comfortable. But being able to admit faults when someone like Counselor is there with you makes it different. Something about Counselor and the other Beings Here, make it possible to see the Truth, to admit to it, and then be washed and purified by it. I guess that's forgiveness, or grace. I just think that those who have been the most powerful and cruel people on Earth are still going to have a hard time looking at themselves for what they are, and admitting that changing would be good for them.

Counselor looked like she had something else to say, and I stopped my thinking to pay attention. "You all know by now that when people get Here, they quickly learn they have to go back if they haven't learned their lessons. And finding out what lessons they must learn, is one of the main goals. If a human insists on continuing the search for power, then they're pretty much still in kindergarten. Right?" She smiled, her 'eyes' sparkled, and it was hard not to feel she was deliberately letting us in on a secret.

It reminded me of the book once so popular, called The Games People Play. The author described three ego states which he named Child, Parent and Adult and suggested that if they were used inappropriately, they brought counter productive results. If a boss acted as a controlling Parent he was likely to get child-like reactions, such as excuses, pointing the blame elsewhere, maybe even temper tantrums. That book came out in the 1960's and I don't know that Earthlings have progressed much since then. But I do hope those who are rebelling against tyrants are going to finally get the changes they want. I think all the counselors Here are rooting for them, too. And still, Counselor Beings are going to include the worst tyrants in the love they so freely give. A great wave of Love fell over everything, all of us standing there, and all of the never-ending Here. I felt her deep hope that we would come to see and understand the things she understood. Tears blurred my vision. It was beautiful.

***

I've done it. I've settled into that moist warm cave and my host is feeding and nurturing me into a human being. She doesn't like it one bit and sometimes pounds the outside of this cave, her own abdomen, as if she'd like to kill me. But that doesn't really bother me because Counselor has assured me everything is working out just as we planned.

Before I got into this place Counselor sent us all to a class on human development. All except Ruth, that is. She continued her work in Intake. So, we've been watching through this special window that Counselor made for us, the development of a new entity come into being. What an amazing process. It was from this window that we saw my host and her boyfriend do 'it.' I wanted at the time to yell down to her that it wasn't just all fun and games. But of course I couldn't get through the veil to do that.

The physical process the One has created certainly is awesome. And human beings have been fascinated with it as well, putting a lot of effort into observing and recording the minute details of human conception. When humans discovered DNA, their curiosity increased. It gave them an incentive to study further and further into the whole process of how humans come into being. I guess the One was responsible for putting that idea of curiosity into the minds of humans. I think the One has a sense of humor, too. How else to explain the many complications put into the make-up of Earth, let alone the whole Universe.

Anyway, just look at what the One did with the male production of spermatozoa! Spermatozoa come by the thousands! Truly! And each has 23 chromosomes, half the needed 46. Isn't that clever? Makes it necessary to have a partner when a human is created. So, the class instructor—not Counselor, by the way—told us that some spermatozoa have an X sex chromosome, and others have a Y sex chromosome. That, of course, isn't the end of the chromosome story. We'll get to the rest later. And the instructor pointed out that even though spermatozoa look energetic and purposeful, some human scientists say they are not alive because they don't have a mind. Other human scientists say they are alive. So the people on Earth get all excited about who is right and who is wrong, make it into a big issue, cause a lot of hard feelings and a lot of fighting. Even murders. Did the One really mean to make that possible? I don't really ask that out loud, just hold it there to wonder about.

In any case, if spermatozoa do have a purpose, it's to fuse with an ovum. All that energy, and only one reason to be. Well, that wasn't a surprise. I laughed and snuck a look at Salvador. His orb had turned a peculiar pink. David's orb, on the other hand, looked a bit sick.

Instructor went quickly on to the female part of this process. She explained how the ovum, or egg, also has 23 chromosomes, one of which is always a X sex chromosome, and is produced once a month. It felt strange being in a class like this, talking about the making of human bodies. Here we were, all light beings, all see-through bulbs with no substance, as humans think of substance. It seems that those Here may take human scientists more seriously than many humans on Earth do.

"So," Instructor went on, "That means the spermatozoa must penetrate the skin of the ovum to complete what is called 'conception.' After that a new entity begins to form. The scientists call it a zygote." Instructor reminded me of a teacher in a regular human grade-school classroom, standing beside her desk in front of a blackboard. Of course, that was pure imagination on my part, as Here is nothing like that.

"At first the zygote divides into two identical cells, then the two divide into four and so forth," Instructor said. She waved her arms like a teacher might do. "This all takes place in the woman's fallopian tube, you see." She looked at us to make sure we were paying attention. We were. "Then it has to move down to the uterus, where it will attach itself to the uterine wall, a process that takes about ten Earth days." Instructor brightened her colors, as if emphasizing what she was about to say.

"This is the point at which many religious groups say God implants a soul and is the defining event that makes this entity a human person," Instructor noted. I waited for her to say something more about Soul and Consciousness, because I was wondering if they were the same thing. But she didn't. Perhaps she was expecting us to figure that out on our own. In any case, I'm in this cave-womb and I still have communication with Counselor. It's nothing like a phone, or even voice, it just happens. I'm able to be aware of Here and of the cave-womb. Counselor is in both, and is guiding my little trip back to Earth.

Instructor had a lot more to say about the process toward human life. She pointed out that the zygote, with its X sex chromosome donated from the egg and either an X or Y chromosome from the spermatozoon determines the sex of what will be the embryo. If the zygote ends of with XX chromosomes, it is female; if XY, it is male. Thus, it is the birth father's spermatozoa that determines the sex of a child. This was an interesting point, since some human cultures blamed the woman for not having a male child. Another excuse for men to devalue women. Now why don't they have these classes on Earth!

So the little zygote keeps dividing and implants itself in the inner wall of the uterus. That becomes the medical definition of pregnancy. This is when the woman's urine will detect the hormones of what is called a blastocyst. You see, these human scientists have scrutinized very well and carefully identified each little step in the process of human development. Of course, as humans argue with one another as to when life begins, they've made it necessary to be very particular about it all. Personally, it all seems a lot of nonsense, since no life really dies, and that's what the issue is about. Abortion! Humans have made it a dirty word. But if my host wants to abort me, I know there will be another womb that will accept me. So what's the big deal? I'm eternal! As are all souls. The ONE knows.

What seems so strange to me is how some people can be so hateful and violent when it comes to an issue like abortion. Maybe there's some karma involved when a woman purposely aborts, but she deals with that with the One. It's nobody else's business. That's my attitude, anyway.

***

At one point, David started talking about his next life plan. He'd been looking into the availability of parents. He had started a list of requirements. They had to be young professionals, like physicians or scientists, or college professors in theology or philosophy, or research in that area. They had to not have other children. His last life with Christian fundamentalists hadn't worked out very well. He considered Mormon, but since he wanted to go in as a girl, he didn't think that would give him the freedom he needed. Then there was Islam, Buddhist, Native American, mainline Protestants, Catholic. He rejected them all. They seemed too familiar. That left Hinduism, and India.

"India," Salvador said, with a tone that suggested he thought David was crazy. "All those masses of beggars and cows? Which are you going to be?" he said, his aura shaking in amusement.

David scowled at him.

"Oh, you're going to be a Brahmin," Salvador teased. "Isn't that what they call those...?"

David cut him off. "I'm not interested in castes. I've found a couple who live in a city where they follow a yoga tradition. They are both respected doctors."

I couldn't help but notice that David thought Salvador pretty ignorant of religion. In fact, so ignorant that he wasn't going to bother with more explanation.

"They know how to love a child," David said. "They desire that their child be educated. They'll support whatever religious work their child decides to do." David said this with such certainty that Salvador just looked at him and stayed silent.

"Well, then, guess you're all set," Salvador said. "I suppose I'll see you sometime on Earth."

Counselor nodded. "Yes, your paths will cross in adult life." Then, as if a clarification was still needed, she pointed out that growing up with the parents David had chosen he had the opportunity to balance out the resentments David had formed, and help him see other points of view. "And India is many things, Salvador. Perhaps you might try it some life time." She glowed at Salvador in a tender way, so that he almost melted into a humble indistinct light.

***

The further along in my host's pregnancy, the more I felt like two different Beings. I am conscious on the one hand of being basically Here, made of light, moving about effortlessly, with no sense of time or need, exploring what Here has to offer. Like it's different windows and courses and library. On the other hand I am comfortably resting in the dark womb with its gurglings, susurrations, and musical pipings that call to me in a new, yet to be spoken, language. Both are tantalizing. When Here, I am supported with such Love that I don't want to leave. I just want to be Here always and always. But when I'm conscious of being in the womb I feel a sense of time, a future with exciting adventures and entertainments. I ask Counselor, Do I have to make a choice? And she says yes, my dear with such a sweet smile that I am befuddled and humbled. Take Love with you, she suggests. How? But she doesn't answer. I'm to figure that out on my own. To Be or not to Be. That is the question.

***

We are all five gathered in a circle, much as we were at the very beginning of our transition. We are sharing our next-life intentions, how we will be meeting again, and when in that stage of existence. Gail declares that her life is going to be short and sweet. She will grow to adulthood, do some service in that area of helping older persons, then come back Here while she is still young.

"Why?" I ask. "You're going to have loved ones crying and missing you, and wondering what they could have done differently to keep you there." And maybe some of them would be blaming God for taking you, I thought, but did not express.

Gail shrugs and gives a kind of 'so what' look. "Perhaps some of them need to learn to be less attached to friends and loved ones. Maybe that will help them look for meanings in life beyond what they had let themselves believe before. Maybe they will take an interest in what comes after body death." She smiled then, and let out a sound very much like a giggle.

Ruth picked up on that. "So, you're going to let your loved ones mourn just like Cassy, David and Salvador did." She let her gaze wander off someplace, as if we weren't even there.

My eyebrows went up, and I looked at David and Salvador. They looked back, as shocked as I at the deliberate reminder of our indifference to family we had left.

"Well, I haven't done that in a while," Gail said. "But also, there's a couple of old friends who have this desire of parenthood, so I've agreed that I'll come to them in a few more years. They will help me grow to an adult and be proud of me. But they're pretty informed about Here, and with their parenthood desire fulfilled, they won't need that experience again. It will free them, you see, to move ahead in their spiritual journey."

"Those friends are already back in body?"

"Yes. Still children, though. They haven't met each other yet. "

I was puzzled. When had Gail and these two souls made this commitment? And how was I going to have Gail in my life if her Earth plan was already in the works? "Did I know them?" I ask.

"Some lifetimes back, probably. We do tend to reincarnate in little groups. So many things to work out among us, don't you think?" Gail smiled shyly. I can see her plan is almost ready to put into action.

"But you're going to be in my life, right?" I ask. I thought that had been noted before.

"Oh, yes. But I'll know you in your teen years. We'll be hiking in those Rocky mountains together."

"Riding Harley's?" Salvador broke in.

"Possibly," Gail laughed.

"And you're going to leave me, too, then," I said, feeling a sudden shock, like electricity felt on Earth, move through the light rays of my being. "Just like I did!" So it really was 'what goes around comes around.' An emotional buzz of regret, astonishment, and worry made me look over to Counselor for sympathy. She sighed and gave a rather nonchalant shrug.

"That's the idea," she said. "As I've said before, it takes some shocks to get some to know the round of lives are for learning to become One with All Things. Eventually, you will see that Here, or a comparable place, is where Oneness is really understood and you won't feel a need for anything else." She gave her enigmatic smile, knowing I couldn't take that all in.

Right, I thought as a deflated little sigh escaped me. But then, I became quite consciously aware that in the background of these two Beings of myself, there was a potential for Something to occur that would bring me a sudden understanding of everything that is. Wouldn't that be absolutely magnificent? To know just everything. How the world of Earth works. How all of the Cosmos works. How everything that was ever created works.

This thought gave me such energy that I could barely keep my light rays in one place. And then I thought, wow, if I had this understanding while I was embodied on Earth, I'd be able to understand what those human eyes couldn't see. The veil Earth people spoke of would be lifted. Or rather, dissolved. If that Insight came about I'd know what Beings in the Here understand, as well as what Beings in human form are limited to. The feeling coming to me was that beauty, sound, taste, smell and touch were waiting to be used in one environment and to be extended in another environment. Then it occurred to me that there are Beings who move back and forth from Here to Earth easily and frequently. The exceptional ones. The ones most humans are afraid of if that ability is shown. Earth beings are easily frightened of what they don't understand. Yet I'm sure there are those on Earth that Counselor appears before. Isn't that what the Cone of Connection achieves? Surely in the Cone those people on Earth see into Here and understand more than those who haven't learned to develop that Connection.

Even though I was not near to that Omniscient understanding, I felt a comforting Hope, or Possibility, that I was working toward that which would allow me to stay Here in a Love never ending. And in the meantime, the womb called me. I would see Gail, then lose her. And that was right. I would see Salvador and he'd bug me about whatever. And that would be right. I would see David, perhaps in college, and learn from him what he had learned from all the religions he had studied, and experienced, and then shared as a professor in some well-respected university. Then perhaps I would see Ruth in my latter years, if she decided not to wait two hundred years. Or maybe I'd reach the 100-year-old mark and she'd come in to give me a bit of relief with her energetic, loving, old-soul nature. I could almost see it. Me in some retirement home that had little children, dogs and cats, come in to add pleasure to the old people and stir their memories of all things good.

Yes, it was almost all laid out. But I had more work to do. I had to develop a body, with senses and brain. I had to go through the birth canal and cry into the next world and then, perhaps, lose all memory of Here, Counselor, and the Beings that eased the lesser ones from the pain of one life into the new exhilaration of another.

***

At last. Guess my host is as glad as I am to part from each other. But what a shock! All of a sudden I was thrust into the most awful cold, slippery condition, and screamed out at the indignity of it all. Naked, exposed and alone. But the scream seemed to delight the voices above me, and quickly their warm hands gathered my wavering arms and legs into ordered position along this body, turned me over, and wiped off that wet substance. It wasn't long before they had a warm blanket around me that simulated the protection of the cave where I got my start in this life. Their soft voices were comforting, so I resigned myself to their hands and to whatever they would see fit to do with this body. I felt already the limitations of this new 'me,' but at the same time there was something exciting and right about it all.

For a moment I longed for that independent, tough Cassy personality, insistent on doing things on her own, owing no one a thing. But this new 'me' was going to be different. Already it was willing to let strangers decide, as they examined this body, whether it was whole or not. And if it weren't I felt sure they had some solution. I examined them back. Blue, sharp lines. Indistinct. Only the eyes, eyes, eyes pulled at me, said things I didn't understand. Some eyes were indifferent, busy, busy. Others lingered, smiled. Voices, voices, like the eyes, a mixture of softness, sharpness, hurry, hurry. I locked on to the most friendly and held their attention as best I could. Finally, they all seemed satisfied with what they had done and moved this body to a single, little bed and left me. I was exhausted, and I slept.

It was a strange time. The Light that I had become used to was no longer there. Sometimes it was light and sometimes no light. Faces changed. Eyes appeared, and went away. Hands held me, bathed me, put a nipple in my mouth and I sucked and filled my stomach, slept again. It all happened again and again. Then there was a face that stayed and studied me for a long time. It had a voice that was warm and soothing. It went away and came back, but it didn't pick me up or bathe me or give me the nipple to suck. Still, strangers kept up caring for this little body, and I accepted that.

Then, after many faces and many hands had come and gone, and the place of my bed had changed many times, I saw that face again, the one that had studied me, and made a feeling come into me that wanted it to stay put. By this time, I had studied the hands that were my own, and found the feet that I could pull up and connect to this mouth. I could move around, and I felt where this body ended and something else began. Yet the face did not stay, and I wondered why.

There were times when I could feel a difference between this world and another that was not this world. At times, perhaps when I was asleep, I felt the presence of a Being that I had once called Counselor. It made me happy and sad. Happy because it meant I was not alone. Sad because she wasn't there when I woke up.

The many faces continued and I became alarmed. What if none would stay long enough to show me how to exist in this new world? What if no one would tell me what this body was meant to do? What if no one told me what the things I was feeling, the objects that I was seeing were all about? Still, there was something in the background that lingered, a memory, an assurance, that all would be well. So, I kept responding to those faces and matching their smiles with mine. That seemed to be a clue to keeping their attention. Smiles worked almost better than cries, but there were times that cry just came out whether I wanted it to or not. This body seemed to need one thing or the other all the time. In between, though, there was sleep. What a wonderful gift is sleep. What a rest it gives to the constant needs. What a great thing to yawn and close the eyes and forget. Then the eyes open sometime later and look around, finding all kinds of different things to explore.

***

Things kept going on around me, so much activity and voices talking, talking. At times it was exhausting and my eyes wouldn't stay open even though I wanted to know what was happening. So it was a surprise when I was startled awake and found that face looking at me, and another face with it. They were smiling and excited. It had a feel of change. And sure enough, I was lifted out of this bed and put into the woman's arms. I felt comfortable and safe. After the vibrations of her voice stopped, she shifted her hands and pretty soon I felt myself being placed into the other person's arms. Those deep voice vibrations felt soothing and the arms comfortable and safe too. I could sense that something really important was taking place. The movement around me was different. There seemed to be a gathering up of objects, an exchange of voices, and I was carried further than ever before. The light changed, and the air totally different. Then the arms holding me changed position and I was in a new place and there were new noises and strange movements and then after a while another change. The arms with the beautiful face and lilting voice was carrying me again in that light and air that made me close my eyes and look through slits just large enough to see that it was all right, whatever they were doing to this body.

Now I was placed into a new bed that came up around me that was as comfortable as that cave, but open at the top. I was carried around in it, and I watched the shifting sights above me. Moving, moving. When the bed was set down, there were new eyes, faces, smiles, as if I were of great interest to them. It stirred up such energy that I was reminded of the Beings I had so recently been with. I got excited then, and my body stiffened for a moment, without any intention on my part. I cried out. It felt like hunger, but a good hunger. I thought that it was like love. I didn't know how to thank anyone. So I cried.

"She's so sweet." "Beautiful." "Oh, look at that blonde hair. It'll take a ribbon soon." "Precious." The words went on above me. They carried meaning that was beyond me. But I heard that I was in my new and permanent home, with a mother and father to take the place of the womb mother that gave me life.

"Heather didn't know what a gift she was creating," one of the voices told another. "A 15 year old mistake has become Tom and Sophia's delight."

"And little Trisha will have a wonderful home on this ranch with all of us working together like we do."

"She'll have playmates. Tom and Sophia's Emily is already bragging about her new sister."

"The adoption went rather smoothly, I thought."

"Yes, the social workers helped Heather work out her anger and guilt, and she's going to finish her high school with home schooling. They also helped Heather's mother and grandmother understand Heather's rebelliousness. And doesn't it seems perfect that this community can be the family little Trisha needs?"

"Won't it be fun watching her grow?"

"But we must keep from spoiling her. And make sure that it's Tom and Sophia that she knows as her parents. We who live here too, will be more like aunts, uncles, and cousins. Maybe like it really used to be when a family expanded and continued in one communal setting."

The voices kept on and their happiness made me feel good, too. I was a gift. I had a name. I was adorable. What more could one want?

***

"Three months already," a voice said." I was in my mother's arms and tucked my face into her neck and peeked out at the voice. Something about it was special and a flash of memory told me that I knew the person with that voice. I had known her, that is. I had known her very well. A sister. Oh, my. I was flooded with thoughts. I was grateful that I didn't know how to speak them, because this was just too awesome and private. Our eyes kept looking at each other, and when she held out her finger for me to grasp, I did. It was our message to each other. She knew I knew. And the electricity flew up and down our spines so strongly that I could almost see it.

"Guess she knows you, Louise," the man beside her said, and I looked over at him, too, still holding on to the finger. He had a big grin and he put his arm around Louise and then I felt I had to reach out to him.

"Look, Ray, she wants you to hold her." And he did. It gave me such a thrill. For some reason I thought of riding in the open air clutching on to this man of my most recent past life.

"You know, Louise, this reincarnation thing is real, isn't it?" He paused to consider what he'd just said, then added, " I have a feeling we're going to be riding a motorcycle again sometime. I remember the feeling of her behind me, her arms around me and her head buried into my neck, the wind whipping past as we roared up the canyon road to the mountains." It was a long speech, and this Louise gave out a funny little laugh.

This reincarnation thing, he had said. Again it was like being in two worlds. I could see these two people were important to me and would play a big part in this life, even if they were not like the other humans that seemed to be living together in this communal place. I could also see that being called Salvador that I had known along with Counselor and the others. And this Louise and Ray were somehow going to give him a new life in this Here called Earth.

"But she's going to forget," Louise said, a bit sadly. "My big sister has come back but she's not going to tease me this time. I'll get to do that!"

"You won't," Ray said. He still had me in his arms and he rubbed my back in sympathy.

"Not really," Louise said. "She's too cute. Besides, she's Trisha and I love her this way."

Then I realized that all these people in this place were in some way known to me before. But I was in a totally different position in relation to them. What a plan. This kind of show could go on forever, with players taking different roles and drawing different situations to play out in the next scene. Totally amazing.

#######

a note about the writer

Margaret Guthrie received a B.A. in literature from Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR, and a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. She is the author of two novels, _The Return_ (available as an ebook) and _Silent Truth_ , and three poetry books. She is a member of Trail Ridge Writers, Columbine Poets of Colorado, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and the Lyons Itinerant Poetry Society. She lives with her husband in Estes Park, CO.
