Chapter 16
Loxy and Heather walked paths that brought them to arches. Passing under an arch shot them to terrains that were not immediately connected to where they were. They arrived at a park and found a bench near a pond where they sat. The park seemed familiar; she placed it as being ‘Good Will Hunting;’ Robin Williams schooling Matt Damon. Ducks waddled up hoping for bread. Loxy just happened to have some in her bag. There were also squirrels interested in handouts, and Loxy found treats for them as well. There were flowers and honey bees. Lotus flowers dotted the pond. There was sufficient number of bees that there was a background hum that could be discerned when they were quiet. A cardinal landed and foraged amongst the ducks. The world seemed generally brighter here, but not like making eyes hurt bright, or the sun was burning the skin off. The temperature was perfect and the sun fell on her like a second skin.
“You traveled by archway before?” Loxy asked.
“Yes,” Heather said. “Is it magic or tech?”
“What paradigm would you prefer?” Loxy asked.
“Can I have a straight answer?” Heather said.
“42,” Loxy said.
Heather smiled, and sighed, and turned her gaze out to the lake. Loxy handed her the bread for the ducks and focused on feeding the squirrels.
“So, we’re just going to sit here and feed the beggars?” Heather asked.
“Yeah,” Loxy said. “Why not?”
“I want to understand where I am. I want to understand my life,” Heather said.
“Well, that’s lovely,” Loxy said.
Heather grimaced at her.
“It suggests you have arrived at a new plateau of being,” Loxy said. “A transition state.”
“I liked my life just fine,” Heather said.
Loxy seemed amused but doubtful.
“Seriously. I didn’t ask for any of this,” Heather said.
Loxy nodded. A squirrel came up and took an offering directly from her hand. It sat near her ankle, looking out towards the lake as it chewed into the meat of the nut.
“If I were to speculate, there was something off about your life or you wouldn’t be here. Jon is an agent of change. People come to him for transition, spin, or they’re in spin and they come to him for stability,” Loxy said. “That’s his primary personality function, or life mission if you prefer.”
Heather’s face was neutral. “I really don’t understand. Explain your Jon versus my Jon.”
“We all exist simultaneously in a multiplicity of dimensions of space and time. Jon’s personality exist in the place you come from. He exists here. I am specifically aware of 37 other places where he and I coincide. If it helps, you can consider these lives as other incarnations. There some Jon attributes that extend to all incarnations. The variance between lives is his approach to life circumstances. He deals with mostly the same sorts of life difficulties in the variety of Jon incarnations, but his response can be radically different from each of the singular multiplicity. That’s not an accidental combination of words. One can incarnate into different bodies, or into duplicates, clones if you prefer, or body types so similar people might think you’re biologically related. As for your Jon, I am speculating, based on what little you have shared, that he is suppressing his libido and not trying to fuck everything that comes his way. My Jon is more available to hook-ups and serial relationships. He has established a core group long term relationships, of which I consider myself privilege to be a part of, which are aiding him in exploration of deeper intimacy.”
“You mean he is a man whore,” Heather said.
“If you want to use disparaging labels, yes,” Loxy said. “It is our intimacy group that has brought healing to his personality that allows for greater connection and less need to be promiscuous. Promiscuity is driven by a variety of factors, such as fear of rejection, or diminished ability to connect to others, due to mental illness, or trauma, or social influences. You’d be surprised how much society influences promiscuity. Even the definition of promiscuity changes from culture to culture. In the Roman era, Jon would be considered conservative. Here with us, he has struck a balance of libido and emotional reciprocity that has resulted in a decrease in perceived ‘desperateness.’ He has healed a great deal with us. We, too, have healed because of his influence on us. In truth, he simply wants to be loved and love others.”
“Lucky you,” Heather said.
“Thank you,” Loxy said.
Heather sorted her expression wondering if the sarcasm was lost on her. The only thing she could discern was a projection of love. She frowned when the image of Loxy became the original Mary Poppins, with Karma in the backdrop of her mind saying ‘practically perfect in every way.’ “And, so he no longer hooks up with strangers?” Heather asked.
“No. He still does. Not as much, but we do encourage it whenever the opportunity avails. The more he does that, the less he wants to do that. It wouldn’t be fair, though, measuring that from your paradigm. Here at Safe Haven, the community shares everything- even intimacy. No one here gets denied. Now when Jon engages strange, it is more thoughtful, with the spirit of love and deliberate compassion to help another person grow, to make a profound connection with other, and to share energy. There is always an exchange of energy. What you give comes back to you. If you use someone, you get used,” Loxy said.
“Safe Haven is a hippy commune? I am not into this free love,” Heather said.
“That could explain why you and your Jon have not hooked up. With rare exception, he isn’t monogamous. He has had lives where he was married several times, even faithful; he and I are in agreement, serial monogamy is not monogamous,” Loxy said. “There could be other reasons that blocked the two of you of making a deeper connection. My intuition says you’re flying apart at exponential speeds.” Loxy’s eyes went to the lake and beyond. She smiled. “I just had a flash of him reaching out to you, like in a hallway in a horror movie and the hall extended keeping you separate.” Loxy spent time on that, sorting and then let it go with a smile. “There was a moment where you could have shared orbits, changed each other’s trajectory, but that may be gone.”
“Good riddance,” Heather said.
“Don’t mistake preferences for a lack of loyalty. From the paradigm of reincarnation, we interact with many partners over many lives. Sometimes we connect with the same soul in consecutive lives, but we also have peers in our soul groups that we must share lives with. We must interact with individuals from other soul groups in order to share energy, love, lessons, and give validity to other’s soul paths,” Loxy offered. “We’re all students and teachers all the time.”
“I don’t want this,” Heather said.
“Okay. There is nothing wrong with your personality’s expression of love, or the wanting that you have,” Loxy said.
“You don’t know what I want,” Heather said.
“You’re asking for a sense of stability for this life, and perhaps that transcends this life,” Loxy offered. “You want to experience love, to love and be loved over a life time. Without being harmed. You want to be heard and recognized…”
“That’s generic enough to apply to anyone,” Heather said.
“I am not trying to give you a Tarot reading,” Loxy said. “You’re out of sorts. You’re out of place. You extended love to someone who was not at your capacity to reciprocate. Maybe you found yourself exhausted. Maybe you’re a lightening bug who was kept in a jar until your light diminished, and then he shook the jar trying to get to that last spark before discarding you. Maybe you escaped and he came looking to extinguish that light. I don’t know what brought you here, but I know this. Jon valued your light so much he found a way to extend it. He isn’t trying to hold you, capture you, isolate you, or put you on a pedestal. The love he brings is closer to being unconditional. Conditional love is almost always limiting.”
Heather couldn’t maintain her gaze with Loxy. She didn’t feel the tears in her eyes, but noticed the lotus flowers blurring like a Monet painting.
“It was not wrong to extend love to someone,” Loxy said. “Tell me, what did you learn?”
Heather tried blinking the world back into clarity. It would clear, and then return to being impressionistic. Reds and pinks bled into the greens and dark blue of the water, reflecting the sky and clouds. Turtle heads emerged and sent ripples across the pond that interacted with each other as they expanded. Karma’s voice: ‘you think the turtles are aware of the ripples of others?’ She responded with a joke: ‘a disturbance in the Force.’ Karma seemed annoyed with that, and using a Yoda like voice: ‘the Force is disturbed by all things. Only discernment defines source.’
To Loxy, Heather heard her voice saying, “I am all alone.” She felt like this statement was not valid, but it was out and she decided not to correct it.
Loxy looked at her, sorting the statement. “You feel alone,” Loxy echoed.
“Yeah,” Heather said.
“You feel alone, which means you’re seeking connection,” Loxy said.
“A real connection,” Heather said.
“You want emotional and intellectual reciprocity of interaction,” Loxy echoed. “You want to be heard and able to hear another.”
Heather turned to Loxy, her left knee coming up onto the bench. “You really hear me?”
Loxy smiled. “Maybe what I said is generic enough to apply to anyone,” Loxy said.
“I am sorry I said that,” Heather said.
“Never apologize. If you speak it, it has validity at some level. All thoughts are real, and you need to grapple with them to fit them into their context. When you interact with an artifact, it changes. You change. All relationships, whether that is a thing or a person, changes us,” Loxy assured her. She turned to mirror Heather, with one difference, she rested an arm on the back of the bench, reaching out to her. “The question is, what do you want to change into?”
Heather blurted out. “I want to be you. Beautiful. Wanted. Loving. Intelligent. Magical.”
“I love you,” Loxy said, trying not to laugh. “Thank you. You are already all these things and more.”
“If that were true, Jon would have been more direct in trying to be with me. I wouldn’t have married the other guy,” Heather said.
“Maybe. No way to really sort that,” Loxy said. “Maybe you both needed to learn something else. Maybe your energies were too much alike, or too different. There is no failure in not connecting. Sometimes our subconscious minds have bigger plans for us. Plans we’re not privy to. Every relationship brings us a gift, or a lesson. If we don’t get the lesson, the gift was opportunity.”
Heather frowned, sorting that.
“Tell me, why do you want to be a Jedi?” Loxy asked.
“Strength. Wisdom. The ability to turn intuition into a solid knowing,” Heather said.
“What would you do with strength?” Loxy asked.
“Slay the dragon,” Heather said.
“Oh?” Loxy asked.
“You disapprove?” Heather said.
“Depends on the dragon, I suppose,” Loxy said, she rocked her head as she mused. “In the end, Dennis Quaid had to kill Sean Connery. Bastian Bux would never have killed his dragon.” Loxy became aware of Heather’s confusion. “Movies Dragonheart and Never Ending Story. Dragonheart emphasizes contextual relationship that imposes necessity. Killing a dragon, it depends on the paradigm and the metaphor being invoked. What would you do with wisdom?”
Heather didn’t have an immediate response. “Have better discernment, I suppose.”
“Yeah, that came with your third wish, of increased awareness of intuition,” Loxy said. “Sort what it means to hold wisdom for you.”
“The ability to give advice that is generally useful,” Heather said.
“Giving advice is generally not useful, by definition. It’s an imposition of will and direction that limits the expression of agency to explore alternative responses to life. There would be no evolution if we didn’t explore off path solutions. This is why the best counselors and gurus avoid giving advice. It’s always better when it comes from the student,” Loxy said. “How else would wisdom be useful to you?”
“I would never find myself in trouble again,” Heather said.
Loxy laughed. “I think you need watch all the Star Wars movies again.”
“Why?”
“I never saw a scene, book or media, in which a Jedi came in and chaos didn’t ensue,” Loxy said. Heather couldn’t hide her amusement. “Seriously, holding a lightsaber as a meme eventually plays out where it must be used. With one exception; Luke throws down his saber and says, ‘No. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.’ Now that’s a meme worth exploring.”
Heather eyes tracked to the distance, beyond the nearest tree. There was nothing particularly there. If she squinted she could almost see the ghost of Karma. Loxy waited quietly, watching her process the information. Heather’s gaze returned, and she blushed.
“What are you feeling?” Loxy asked.
“I don’t know. Distant?” Heather asked.
“Because you’re not here,” Loxy said.
“Where am I?” Heather asked.
“You tell me,” Loxy said.
Heather found herself suddenly back in a bubble, on a pedestal, looking down on a sleeping dragon, and the seven sleeping slaves. She felt as if she had just dozed and had a dream, even though she hadn’t fully slept. She held a Torch that pushed a shield. She felt tears on her cheeks. She felt stuck.