Jonathan thought about the dream as he walked down the street towards the bookstore. A lot of businesses had closed signs in their windows. “We need help,” he said softly to himself as he passed by. More and more people were being effected by the dark energy. It had woken him up years ago and for a long time he wasn’t able to deal with what was happening and go to work.

He could still remember what it was like to be completely in the illusion having been taught certain beliefs about what life is all about, adopting that worldview as a given because life is working according to that worldview. He never questioned it until his life imploded and didn’t follow the ‘given’ rules anymore. He remembered looking back and seeing that life wasn’t what he thought it was. Then as he looked forward, he was lost. His life was broken and he didn’t know how to make it work again, and he knew it wasn’t going to until he figured things out. Something was guiding him where to go next in on a mysterious inward path. The words ‘now what?’ would enter his mind. He never saw clearly what he was supposed to do. With life not playing according to anything he could control or depend on, all that was left to hold on to was the paranormal journey itself.

His body was going through the physical life like it had always been but now he was aware of his soul being awakened and having the awareness of being in another dimension, a hidden school that involved progressively more complex and difficult levels of training. His soul was looking for the door out to stop the pain of what was happening to it. He didn’t like having to think so much and being detached from everyone. It was lonely in this school. He wanted to feel normal again but knew he would never be the same and the normal would be a new normal of a different kind of person. He did like the changes.

The illusion worldview his mind believed was given to him as a child, but the real truth about reality was something he had had to struggle to understand. This was one of several things going on at once. It wasn’t just a school. He was changing as a person. After the rug got pulled out from under his normal life, he was being trained in letting go of things, not just what was going on outwardly in his physical life, but how he lived that life. Somehow his daily physical life was happening but he didn’t have anything to do with what was going on, as if he was watching a play. He found himself doing things he knew he couldn’t do before and nothing was planned.

That part was amazing, and the way his life was set up to teach him things was also amazing, but the school was a very lonely and scary place to be in. The only comfort was in knowing with certainty that it could only be Tahl, the all knowing and all powerful controller of all things, doing this to him and that it was part of something very big.

While many had their lives turned upside down and were wondering lost in the newly found other place, blind but slowing getting their bearings as they figured out what was going on, there were still billions of people still in the illusion and oblivious to the extraordinary thing that was happening to mankind. Those who weren’t being effected by the energy had a different take on what was happening that fit a normal illusion belief system. To them is was an epidemic of mental illnesses which made life especially difficult to those who were scrambling to emotionally survive being woken up.

When Jonathan talked about the journey, he was very conscious of the fact that if he wasn’t talking to someone else who was experiencing it,  he would sound crazy. He had learned
to keep his thoughts to himself until the number of people in the new paradigm clearly outnumbered the old. It wasn’t easy. He felt alone and humiliated. There was one person in his life who made it particularly difficult.

Mrs. Abbey was as old as many of the buildings in that part of the city but there was nothing old about her mind. She forever would be remembered as a famous gossip knowing every intimate detail of everyone’s life within a half a mile radius of her home. She had been part of the lives of three generations of Jonathan’s family. She tormented him. He started making up stories about her when he was very young. And he still used them, not with the intention of entertaining people, which he loved to do, but to act as damage control keeping everyone’s conversations with her as short as politely possible to protect themselves.

There was something about her, a mystery that had plagued him since he was old enough to be allowed to go to the bookstore by himself. It seemed like she always knew when he was going to be there and she would be waiting outside at the corner in front of the store. As part of his wizardly tales about her, he would say that she implanted a tracking device into his mind when he was born. He didn’t really believe it, even when he was a boy, but pretending helped with the reality of whatever it was that haunted him.

The reality was she was being used by Tahl as part of the process he was going through. She caused him more pain than the actual situation really called for. It was something paranormal taking place in his mind. He knew that she couldn’t have any idea what she was doing to him. He wouldn’t even be able to say to her that the process was using her metaling and criticism in a supernatural way to do a work in him. She wasn’t aware of the transforming energy because she wasn’t feeling it but she was playing a role. It had taken him a long time to sort all of this out in his mind. The process involved over thinking and over feeling everything, and the everyday things of life that used to be easy, becoming complicated so that you get outside of life and look at it and ask questions. He was on top of having the two lives and was able to act appropriately most of the time so long as the pain wasn’t too bad. But he felt detached by thinking so much and longed to be able to just live life without thinking about it. Not that he wanted to go back to the way it was before. He wanted his new thinking, he just wanted the lessons over and peace in his mind.

Even those who were still asleep and not observing what was going on and asking the deeper questions were at least becoming more sensitive to things. Something was happening to everyone whether they knew it or not because of the new energy that was hitting the planet.

Gossip was Mrs. Abbey’s food. She was like a spider catching people in her web with her charm. To most she seemed relatively harmless and they got cooked like a frog in a pot slowly heating up. Jonathan saw the danger clearly because the level of dark energy he was handling caused him to be hypersensitive and put him in a supernaturally  intensified state making things hurt beyond normal. He was like a frog jumping in hot water and jumping out. He saw a lot of what was wrong in the world clearly because everything in his physical life had become supernaturally dramatic. And he learned what to do to fix a lot of the everyday problems. But he wanted answers to the problem of the pain that drove him.

Protecting himself and others from Mrs. Abbey messing up their lives became a game of wits. As he reached the bookstore, he stopped at the edge of the building and peered around the corner. Mrs. Abbey was there with her loyal accomplice, Mrs. Primston. Fortunately, the intersection in front of the bookstore was a busy one and Jonathan could wait for just a short time until something would hopefully attract their attention long enough for him to slip past them. He hadn’t ever been completely successful and the contest this morning would have its usual outcome. He did, however, manage to get inside the door before he was noticed.

“Jonathan, you’ve already got too many of those crazy books messing up your head!” The words came out of her mouth that exact same way every time. He never responded always hoping it would discourage her, but she was unrelenting when it came to gathering local news. She specialized in the scandal column and he was always the featured guest of her editorials. Apparently no one was more interesting to gossip about.

He hurried past the displays. Not allowing his youth and her cane to discourage her, she’d try to follow him, a cat and mouse game they’d been playing for years. And as he was getting away, it came.

“I see Rachel’s not with you this morning?” she inquired loudly from across the room. She mastered strategic phraseology for her inquest to make her kill. Jonathan started up the stairs, then turned around and displayed the best of his good looks and charm, smiling mischievously as he disappeared around the corner.

All the wrinkles on Mrs. Abbey’s face rearranged themselves until her entire countenance displayed her frustration. “That boy has gotten far too slippery!” she mumbled, as she made her way back to her post stationed along side Mrs. Primston.

When Jonathan reached the top of the stairs, he stopped for a moment to examine the room. They had remodeled the upstairs bringing in a lot more light and a much improved ambience. He liked the new change, of course, as he was a very well known architect and the upgrades were made at his suggestion. Rachel was still on his mind and he needed to feel good about something this morning and seeing this was a nice beginning.

He was early to the lecture and the very large poster in the window had done its job as quite a few people had already arrived and most of them were seated, anxiously thumbing through the crisp pages of their newly acquired book.

He bought his copy and was getting ready to open it when he found himself paying an unusual amount of attention to its cover. The title Is This the Right Path? spoke even more deeply into him than all the others Jacob Madison had written. And he didn’t know much about art but he felt the cover was also more beautiful than the others. As he looked at each of the different representations of the various theories about life on the cover, he was reminded about how lost he felt partially belonging to all of them and yet not at home in any of them. He felt particularly lost that morning, anxious about what was next, but he knew that his being at the bookstore was another Divine appointment and something big could happen to unlock the door to the next thing he was supposed to do as he moved along the Path.

He found a seat, set the book on his lap, took a pen out of his coat pocket and waited. Waiting was not one of his favorite past times. It took years of discipline to be waiting quietly on the outside with a great deal of commerce always going on on the inside that made him very restless. As his mind wandered, he wondered what had brought the other people there. He wondered how many of them could feel the dark energy or who were just there out of curiosity. The poster had said the lecture would be an introduction to the book going over the first chapter called “Maybeland.” 

He knew about Maybeland. That was the place you’d find yourself in when you didn’t know enough to understand what was going on and you’re mind would run around making up possibilities as it tried to figure it out. Sometimes you’d feel stuck. Then it would be time, the needed information would come in, often from an unexpected place, and you’d be off on a new project or new adventure you hadn’t thought of.

He wondered how Jacob Madison would describe the experience. Jonathan knew well how he needed other people, and that people write books because they need each other. It makes the path clearer to hear how others explain it in their words.

Jacob arrived wearing a very strange ensemble which he would give the audience an explanation for at the beginning of his lecture. He was brilliant and very entertaining and while the attire didn’t appear to match the tone of such a serious subject, it was in fact wonderfully clever.

“Good morning, my friends. Did I wake your mind up with this ridiculous outfit I’m wearing?”

Everyone smiled and there was some giggling.

“In doing this exercise, I always worry someone might think this is for real, so I make it as outrageous as I possibly can. Have you been trying very hard to figure this out?”

The audience smiled again.

As he continued, he joked, “Maybe he’s colored blind? Maybe he had too much to drink last night? Maybe he forget to do his laundry and this was all he had to put together? Maybe he lost his glasses? His mind? Or, how about this one, This is L.A. We can do these things and still be considered okay. Right?”

Everyone laughed.

“I wanted to make what I have to say to you this morning about your mind and your brain very real to you. How many of you know the difference between the mind and the brain?”

A few hands went up.

“Not too many. Good. I always love to be the first one to teach someone something, and I will probably be giving it a new spin for you who did raise your hands.”

Jacob turned around and walked towards a white board, picked up a pen and began to draw.

“With the proper scientific equipment, you can watch what is physically happening to your brain as thoughts come into your mind, and when you are changing your mind. The brain cells are called neurons and what we have in our head is a neuronetwork of all our thoughts and concepts that looks like thousands of little branches attached together.

“So your brain is something that can be physically observed and the mind is the stuff we can’t see but we know is causing the brain to grow, wire and rewire the branches. Anything unclear here? Seventh grade science right?

“The mind asks the questions, does the research, compares the information, embraces or dismisses data, and organizes it. The brain is the computer that houses everything. So, when you change your mind, your brain changes. As you develop your mind, you’re making it stronger, increasing its capabilities, and your brain needs to upgrade with faster programs and applications that can access and display more information in new and different ways.

“Now we’ll skip a few grades as we talk about what is happening when you are learning. The underlying program during this process is association, connecting something with a similar thing stored in one’s mind. We start off looking at everything as being separate then through the association exercises we begin to see how everything is connected. A new piece of information changes a ‘truth’ which immediately does a makeover of all the other concepts and beliefs we held to. Things begin to fit together into one, like a picture being put together out of puzzle pieces.

“If you encounter something new that doesn’t fit into your system of how you believe things work, you get lost and the mind makes the neuronetwork start rearranging itself and reach for the new information that will fix the problem. It spontaneously and systematically retrieves all the related data, getting as far as it can go, then as it continues to reach for the data it needs outside of what it has, it grows. The time varies depending on how evolved the mind is. The answer can show up either seconds or days later, and you recognize it instantly. We call these shifts. The newly integrated data changes your life as you spontaneously act according to the clearer truth.

“There’s another related exercise concerning ‘not knowing’ so you can experience what I have just said about the basic association program of learning truth. Have you ever noticed that when you are worried about the outcome of something, you run all these possible scenarios in your head, then, when whatever it is actually happens — the correct data — it’s never one of the scenarios you played out in your mind? Then did you see that you are better prepared for what really did happen from having gone through the process? My previous books should have prepared you for this.”

Many hands went up.

“Good. It’s a bit of work our brain goes through doing these exercises and it can get very painful and tiresome depending on what you are trying to figure out in your life. As far as my clothes were concerned, not knowing may have been entertainment for some of you, but not knowing if you are going to lose your job is painful. And when the association exercise uses a relationship breakup, you are depleted of all your energy — emotionally, psychologically and physically — leaving you desperately in search of the cure for the deep pain.

“The cure to avoid pain is better data. Better data means you have the tools to create a happier life. With every loss, everything that’s taken from you, or that you have to give up, or leave behind, you come out the other end and find yourself in a spiritually higher place, looking at life and seeing what it is that you want to create more clearly. This process becomes especially clear when you observe the very painful path to your spiritual partner, the one you join paths with and find the happiest life.

“As your questions and answers become deeper, and the association program puts the puzzle pieces of life together, broken relationships are not seen as separate experiences of life, independent of each other. When you play a word association game you are shown a word by someone and you say the first word that comes to you that your brain associated it with. Like this game, when a relationship stops working, your mind pulls up the file from similar experiences in the past and you revisit the pit again, only this time you have the present emotions and the past ones making it much more painful. Your heart is the most powerful tool you have to get what you want in life and when it’s been broken, the emotions are pulling strongly in every direction for relief from the very intense pain of the break-up Unfortunately that can mean you pull in a rebound relationship and when that doesn’t work out, too much emotion builds up and you can end up on the floor unable to get up.”

Several people laughed.

“Sounds like some of you have been there.”

Others joined in the laughing.

“Then you know it’s all good. We don’t want to do it on purpose of course but at least if you do something unwise, you know the worse the pain is, the more you get out of it.”

There were a lot of nods.

“I see some confirmation.” He walked around the room as he continued. “Comparing the notes from each relationship goes on for years. And when you have the all the data you need organized in your brain and are very clear about what you don’t want and what is needed in order to have a relationship work, you can finally create it and the Divine exercise ends.

“This association program runs behind our entire existence, behind the smallest to the biggest questions of life until you can see that no part of your life is separate. There is one purpose behind all your endeavors.

“Anyone out there want to play a guessing game about whatI’m going to say that is? I’m going to give your brain one minute to run around the filing cabinets and come up with one word.”

He lifted his sleeve and looked down at his watch until the minute was up, then he looked around the room and began to speak again.

“If you stand outside and look at what’s happening, you realize that what you are doing is assembling all the components in your life to create Enchantra, a life where you become everything you can possibly be, have everything you could ever dream of, and do whatever you want to do. Did anyone write down the word happiness? I see a few hands. Good.

“We’re not talking about being selfish and only thinking about our own happiness. I’m going to ask you a question that will seem odd at first but if you are deep, you’ll get it. Have you ever talked to your plants as you watered them or apologized to your car for carelessly banging it into something?”

Everyone laughed.

“Yes it does seem silly, but necessary. If you have done anything along these lines, it means your heart is out there creating happiness for everything because you don’t want anything negative happening anymore to anything.

“I’m going to go back now to the beginning of this lecture.

“When you first looked at me this morning — and hopefully this didn’t send you to a pit. I suppose it might have if you have a background in fashion.”

They all laughed again.

“But when you saw these clothes, how many theories ran through your head because you didn’t have the data? Were you even aware that there was a process going on in your brain as your mind was running around trying to find files with data that was related and playing a guessing game about me? You should practice looking at what your mind is doing. Even at this small level it’s a very good exercise that will evolve you.

“I’d like to test how well you are able to do this. As I am speaking these words to you, riding along towards the answer to this clothes riddle, your mind is reaching for the answer. You are all experiencing a spiritual hunger and words are its food. And as we keep moving along in this lecture you are feeling some nice feelings because you are getting to the finish line, the dessert.

“This is a small picture of getting to our happiness goal. The process of finding the answers to the small things, like the ridiculous attire I’m wearing this morning — I think I’ll remove my coat and tie now so it’s not so distracting — and the process of finding the answers to your personal problems, like Sally and George leaving, is all part of one program that is going to show us how to create happiness. You will eventually see that your inner life and your outer life are both working together to gather the data for that one purpose. There’s not a single moment in your life that isn’t playing a role in finding the most significant answers in all of history.

“History has been played in Maybeland, the place where we don’t have the answers and not knowing has been causing us all different kinds of pain. We’re waking up now and see the problem and we’ve figured out that just looking at life sets on a quest to find the answers to fix the problems. And I am fairly certain the end of the journey is more than just the end of pain. We’ve never had just happiness. There’s always been some kind of pain somewhere. Either that or the happiness is short lived. So it’s a journey to find the data we need to know how to create a life of happiness we’ve never known that will never end.

“Okay, we’re going to move this out of the inner world into the outer big arena of life as we know it. Look down at the cover of the book that’s lying in your lap. We have a representation of hopefully every major religion and spiritual or scientific thought system out there. These are theories on what the answers are to the deeper questions of life and the health of the planet, a result of the mind reaching for answers using the incomplete data that we have.

“Now, if someone tries to argue with you about this, you simply say ‘had we had all the data, we would never have built all these different systems. There would only have been the one correct set of answers and the word ‘religion’ would never have been part of our vocabulary — along with a lot of other words. Since we haven’t had all the data our minds have come up with ‘answers’ that can only be theories. We have been playing a game of ‘maybe it’s this,’ and ‘maybe it’s that,’ and what is curious is we’ve been taking ourselves so seriously that some groups have killed each other over it.

“How childish and absurd it would have been if you had started a discussion using the questions that were coming into your head about my attire and it started a fight. This is Maybeland, a grown-up child’s game. The global mind has been wiring and rewiring since the beginning of history, running around looking for all the answers that it thought were there, that haven’t been there.

“Now you’re asking yourself ‘Why?’ ‘Why isn’t the data here?’ And I think the answer to this is that we haven’t been able to process the data. It’s my belief this exercise of reaching for answers at higher and higher levels is preparation for the mind being able to receive the answers. The pain does something to us. When the puzzle pieces are in place our mind is like Tahl’s and we are now able to look at reality like Tahl does.

“We’re here today in a world that has built complex systems that are not working in anyone’s best interest. Whether they are at the top of the system that was built with missing data, or at the bottom, everyone is being damaged in some way. The world has become insane and is now in self-destruct and it’s taking the planet along with it. But I don’t believe mankind is going extinct and I want you to walk away believing not having the missing data to build a sane life is a problem of the past. The systems can’t get any bigger or more insane. As it always happens to civilizations in history we’re hitting the wall and the rug is being pulled out from under us but we aren’t going to perish. We are going to have the data to continue.” He paused and looked around the room.

“Has your mind left and gone on another search through the files asking okay then what? We’ve got the rug thing going to get everyone to let go of all the systems but who has the missing data that our tahl-like mind can now understand?” He paused again. “Has it come up with any maybe’s yet?”

There were inquisitive looks and smiles.

“You can stop your mind now from looking for something that we don’t have yet. I’m going to give it some data from my files and I’ve even got some maybe’s for you.”

“Tahl doesn’t hand any level of ‘truth’ over to leaders without them proving themselves first. Tahl’s way is to enter the broken and humbled. The ancients of the world, who are hidden away in remote places, are this kind of people and they have been the keepers of the secrets for centuries. But they don’t have the rest of the missing data. So maybe Tahl is sending a galot, or maybe Tahl has been giving instructions to someone, someone we wouldn’t expect because they are a nobody not someone with a PhD. And maybe that person has been ready to teach and has been waiting for the world to be ready.

“Many here in this room are among the ones waiting for that Divine messenger because none of the systems on the front of this book work for them. The world is in a global Dark Night of the Soul. Mankind is hitting a universal crisis of emotional survival and we don’t have the answers we need. The rug got pulled out from under me and thousands of others and we’ve been wandering for years, waiting for another paradigm to show itself. But maybe not just a normal shift. Maybe mankind has evolved to the point where we need to live in a very different place.

“It’s reminded me of a children’s story. The one where the baby bird falls out of the nest and goes wondering around looking for its mother. We are this lost baby bird. The pain we feel is because there is somewhere that we belong and it doesn’t exist yet. We are looking for our home. We’ve been open, ready to embrace the correct data to create that life, unlike the system keepers. But it’s changing. Something mysterious is happening deep in the souls of every man. Maybe we’ve had to wait for them. Maybe the whole world had to be awake before the rest of the data could be given to us. Maybe we’ve needed to to have it all taken away from everyone in order to see ourselves as one and maybe it required all of us working together to do what’s next.

“I have kept this brief. You are now ready for the next chapter, ‘Is Fashion a Sanity Statement.’ I hope you enjoy it as well as the rest of the book. My email is at the end of the book for you to send me your comments. I rarely respond to them but every one of them is very important to my research and for that reason I read them all.

“Thank you for coming. I will make myself available for the next forty five minutes for questions, for fashion advice, whatever, and also to sign your books if you’d like. Thank you again. It’s been an honor and a pleasure speaking to you this morning.

The eagerly anticipated lecture was over. Another morsel of food to alleviate the spiritual hunger. Jonathan was looking over the next chapter as he waited in line to have his book signed when someone approached him and extended his hand out to him.

“My name is Michael,” he said as they shook hands.

“Hi, Michael, I’m Jonathan.”

“I am a researcher and scientist,” Michael said. “and I couldn’t help but notice you have made an unusual amount of notes in the margins along with underlining. I do that too and I’m curious what you wrote. Would you like to join me for lunch?”

It was one of those rare encounters when you meet someone and feel like you’ve known each other for a very long time.

“I’d like that very much.”