Chapter 5
I have read a lot of esoteric stuff. I don’t consider myself an expert in anything, just well read. I know precepts about Hindu and Buddhism, for example, but if you ask me to correctly pronounce terminology, I will flunk and sound like an idiot. I am really good with concepts in physics and science, too, but if you asked me to do the math, well, I am not ‘Good Will Hunting’ material. There was a time I could play the piano, and I could read music and tell you theory, but I haven’t touched any of that in over thirty years, and I sat down at a keyboard recently and discovered I have lost access to the pieces I loved. I have meditated, off and on for years. I am not expert there, and when I think of my definition of expert, I am thinking I should be able to sit down anywhere, a crowded mall, a construction site, and tune out to the surrounding and tap into the Cosmos, but that’s just not me. When I meditate, I need quiet. As to these experiences with Loxy and the others, I don’t have solid theories of how all of this works. I have noticed a trend. The more I engage it, the easier it becomes. In the beginning, the experiences came easier when I was in meditation, during a nap session, or in bed, winding down for the evening. Sometimes I might have glimpses of Loxy at work or in the home setting if there was quiet, but in bed, winding down, full on as bright as any television channel. While driving, it varied from full on to ghost translucent. I assume it has something to do with my ability to tend. If Loxy is a meditation, I getting better at accessing her at will, but I am still not walking through the mall holding a conversation with her as I go.
That’s just one of the reasons I am reluctant to share this stuff. Who am I? What is my purpose? I am not teaching people how to duplicate this. There are enough of those kinds of books. There are even books on philosophies on this stuff, and I think the Monroe Institute comes the closest to a way of approximating, in a map of the terrain kind of way, what I am experiencing. Welcome to my Focus Level.
I have become fairly good at walking away from work and leaving work at work. I see anywhere from three to 6 people a day, providing mental health assessments, and directing them to the resources they need. I visit the horrors, the fears, the sadness, the traumas, the grief, the confusion, the isolation, the psychosis, and pretty much anything you can imagine, I have encountered it in the last four years. Every day I think, well, that’s it’s there’s nothing new out there, and someone comes in and proves me wrong. I would not have been equipped to deal with this life thirty years ago. Not a hundred percent true: before this job, I worked at an airline for 24 years and that was its own special kind of hell. I say hell because I really struggled. And it wasn’t all the job, or the people I worked with, but other stuff I carried, and the feelings of being stuck and thinking I wasn’t capable of doing more but not getting anywhere, but I don’t regret any of it. In many ways, working at the airlines has been a lot like working at the psych hospital, only I was just one of the patients. I don’t regret my family or my childhood. I am who I am because of the past and I am grateful. I have been practicing some form of gratefulness, regularly since 2007.
One of the reasons I think I can let go of the things people bring to me at work is because my hands are full. I am working with my own inner folks. It’s not perfect. I do carry things sometimes, but never for long, and rarely do I carry past a night of dreams, because my dreaming life is so fantastic that I wake up excited and wanting to record my adventures in order to sort them out and discover personal meaning. And so it was, I found myself in bed reading, preparing my mind for an adventure, because you can actually seed your mind, but I was distracted by occurrences from the day. I found myself re-reading a chapter over again.
Loxy snuggled in closer. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“That didn’t sound convincing,” Loxy said. “How was work?”
“It was okay. Actually quiet. I only had one real client,” I said.
“Real client? You’re assessing ghosts now?” Loxy said, amused.
I clicked out of my book and turned off the device, putting it away. I wasn’t going to read further tonight; I was certain about that. And once I really started talking to Loxy, the world kind of dimmed, as if stage lights were coming down, and the spot light was coming up on her. That really is the best way to describe it. The walls that frame everything sometimes disappears leaving doors and windows. At least in this world. In our dreamscape worlds, the wonderlands, they’re as real, if not more real, than anything else. That’s always been true. My adventures out of body were always very real, with all the sensations you feel in the everyday world, just with superpowers, like the ability to push through walls if you wanted.
“I am really reluctant speak about this?”
“Because it was in confidence?” Loxy asked.
“That, and, well, it’s kind of weird and might come across as gossip,” I said.
“But you’re struggling to figure this out and it’s why I am here, and I know everything you know, well, mostly, but you know what I mean, and I am you, and it’s not like I am going to break confidentiality,” Loxy said.
“Tesla wanted me to assess him,” I said.
“Wow,” Loxy said. “Did you?”
“No,” I said. “I talked to him. I don’t have the metrics to diagnoses OCD, but I see evidence for that. He suspect major depression would explain some things, but like how do I assess a ghost? I mean, he doesn’t sleep or eat. I could go by his report that he isn’t sleeping well, and that his appetite has declined, but is that me, or him? I could just check off the criteria point because he is bothered by it. And he is definitely feeling bothered. He is disappointed with society’s lack of progress. He believes if Edison hadn’t stolen his work and attacked him publically, not only would we have free power systems, but we would all have flying cars, and we would be on the moon and on Mars, and we’d have a space elevator. He saw he had a car named after him and he wanted me to write a rant about how the car lacks any Tesla approved tech, that it’s all derivatives of Edison’s work, which he stole from other people. Edison was a brilliant business man and strategist, but he sucked as an inventor, and lacked the vision necessary to really change the world. He also doesn’t understand why the government bought all his patents after he died, when they didn’t want anything to do with him when he was alive, starving to death in the hotel, and they are still sitting on his inventions, and once he started reading the conspiracy theories about him on the net, which there are numerous, he just wanted to go away, angry. He wants to break the contract with me, but that he would honor it until we find a replacement for him.”
“Wow,” Loxy said.
I frowned. “And it’s not just him. Sacagawea, well, she’s angry. I mean, she is a little power house ready to blow,” I said.
“Really?”
“That cut I told you was a tree scratch? She did that,” I said.
“No way! She tried to kill you?” Loxy said, changing position so that she was propping herself on her elbows, looking at me.
“I don’t think she was trying to kill me as much as impress me that she could hold her own and that she would stand up for herself,” I said. “She had a hell of a past, you know. By our standards today, childhood molestation was just a highlight. I can’t even use that part of it, because there are cultural and historical distinctions in play, and she would say her childhood was great, because everyone was having sex at an earlier age, and so it was norm, but where it changed for her was witnessing her family brutally killed and being enslaved and being used against her will. She and a few other girls that were captured were forced to watch as the enemy killed their family. Her brother managed to escape into the woods, but she didn’t know that until much later in life. She could clearly claim that from that point forward, it was all hell, but even with that, she sees it differently than how most people today process it. She was sold to a white man, a French trapper, who was already married, but he took her as a second wife. She agreed because she figured life with him was better than with the butchers that murdered her family, and it never occurred to her that she might protest and go elsewhere once she was free of the enemy, because, well, she had a sense of commitment to the ‘rules of the game’ and also, she knew there could be consequences to her ‘sisters’ that remained with the enemy. And the trapper guys wasn’t all bad. He had his moments of kindness, usually when he was drunk, but when he wasn’t he could be angry and belligerent, and he beat her frequently. But with him, she never lacked for food or clothing, which, again, was for her a step up and she saw it as a tradeoff. Even when they joined Louis and Clark, which was more about her husband profiting, he was still beating her, and she could have just refused to cooperate with the mission if her treatment didn’t improve, but that did not occur to her. She was frequently baffled when Clark interceded on her behalf, and she suspected it was because he wanted to sleep with her, which also increased the severity of her beatings in private, because her husband though she was a slut that would do anyone, because that’s what savages do, which is just his interpretation of a cultural difference.”
“Wow,” Loxy said.
“She’s not what I expected,” I said.
“You mean like, Night at the Museum and Disney-ish?” Loxy asked.
“Yeah, I am extremely bias,” I said.
“I am sure, underneath all that trauma, and anger, there is a version of that idealized girl in there somewhere,” Loxy said.
“I would have liked to have started with that version,” I said.
“Wait,” Loxy said. “You didn’t think this was going to be all about you, did you?”
I blinked.
“OMG, John. You did?!” Loxy said.
“Well, yeah, kind of. The whole point about the exercise was about me,” I said.
“Well, yeah, sure. And in that, dead on. But even though technically the Wizard of Oz is about Dorothy, it was also about helping others along the way. You don’t get better in isolation. You get better with others,” Loxy said.
I wanted to rebel against that. It couldn’t be as profound as it sounded. “What about the monk that goes up on the mountain?”
“Fuck, John, anyone can be peaceful on the mountain top. But if you never mix it with others, well, how can you ever apply what you learned in isolation? We don’t live in a vacuum, we live in a system. Even your brain is a system, and not just the two hemispheres. I am talking about your heart, your lungs, and everything else, because your brain isn’t going to function well without the others,” Loxy said.
“Okay, yes, but hypothetically, when I called folks to me so that I can improve, I called on people that I admired, who I thought had it together, who are not necessarily my peers, but were advanced,” I said.
“And they are advanced, in their areas. And, they’re human. And you’re advanced in what you do, and they need that piece. We advanced together,” Loxy said. “You thought this was going to be easy, that you weren’t going to have to work.”
“Well, yeah,” I said.
“You wanted magic,” Loxy said.
“Yeah! I’ve said as much,” I said.
“Consider every book of fiction you ever read, every fantasy you ever held, was it ever perfect?” Loxy asked.
“No,” I said.
“Why?” Loxy asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. My brain was hurting. “Maybe, people think they need to earned it.”
“Yeah,” Loxy said, softly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you and your counselors have a great deal in common. They’re capable of extraordinary insight, they communicate at a higher level than most, and, most importantly, they challenge people to think. You, John, challenge people. That’s the real reason you don’t have many friends, not because you are not liked or appreciated, but because people have a difficult time relating to you. You’re intense, you see through their diatribes and rants and make profound connections that give them pause and think, and it makes people unconformable. You’re brilliant in a psychotherapeutic sense, when people can breathe you in for a short duration, but being in a therapeutic field 24-7, well, most people just can’t sustain that level of energy. Even you get tired of you, sometimes. But when you make a friendship, they are exceptional friendships.”
“What are we?” I asked.
“What would you like us to be?” Loxy asked.
“Please, don’t do Rogerian with me,” I said.
“I love you,” Loxy said.
“Because I made you?” I asked.
“No,” Loxy said. “Because you gave me a choice.” She crawled up over me, hovered above me, and smiled down in my face. “Now, do as I tell you,” she said. “Remove the covers.” The covers moved through her as she wasn’t there, because, well, technically, she wasn’t. “Now, close your eyes. Breathe deeply, hold it, and let go.”
With my eyes closed, every sensation was enhanced. As a ‘ghost,’ which isn’t a ghost, she had access to all of me. I suppose, one could argue I have access to all of me, but I long stopped thinking of Loxy’s autonomous actions as anything other than her and not me. She would touch the inside of a nerve complex and I would shiver from head to toe, or convulse. As I gave into the experience, her touch became more solid against my skin, but that didn’t detract her from going deeper. I was quivering with delight. This was not like a massage from another person. This was energy and tactile and when I ‘arrived’ I was transported!
I arrived at a place that taxes my ability to describe. It was a whiteness, undefined, but clearly it had a floor. I didn’t feel like I was falling. I could have been falling, but, without a frame of reference, I was pretty sure I was standing. I tried moving, and I was sure my legs and feet did move, but because, again, there was no frame of reference, there was no traction. I could see in all directions around me without turning, but I decided to rotate. Rotating cause the world around me to fracture like a kaleidoscope and I rows of frames, paper thin membranes with realities playing out, and then I turned past them and I back in a whitespace. I never left the whitespace, but if you move in a certain way, the whiteness unfolds into a myriad of possible places to be. I turned again, drawing close to one of the scenes, and that’s how I saw it, a movie. Like you’re at an electronic store surrounded by new televisions. Only, these televisions were canvases and movie posters, and I bumped one and it wrapped around me and spun me up like being wrapped in a tortilla.
I was now in the movie. Simply enough, I found myself in front of a temple, open to the air, and a roof supported by caryatids. I wasn’t dressed. It can be disconcerting to find yourself elsewhere, but to be suddenly borne into being and completely naked and vulnerable, with no place to run or hide… Welcome to the Universe. I found a garment, folded with a flower lying on top, in front of a hawk on a pedestal, which startled me, because when I reached for the garment the hawk took flight. I was perturbed, but determine to clothe myself as opposed to running away naked; well, I maintained a reasonable presence of mind not to run naked, but once clothed, and not further threatened, I tarried. I think I had not anticipated the hawk as being real, as if I needed an explanation. It made me wonder if the caryatids were real and not stone. I do love hawks. I spot them often on my way to work and I secretly thank them for being visible in my life.
With the robe on, and it was a robe, like a priestly robe as opposed to a bathroom robe, pretty much all white with the exception of some hieroglyphics over the left breast, I gave more attention to the temple. The marble floors felt warm to my feet. Each tile was a pentagon shape, alternating black and white. The temple itself was circular in design, and the stairs that I climbed were part of the base, but making the entrance possible only from the south. There was a fountain, quite noticeable as you entered. The movement of water was the only noise breaking the silence, and the fountain was a perfect dome of water in the center of the pool. At the far side of the temple was a pedestal large enough to contain a throne, and a back drop and two active incents container, and apparently, a Goddess, with wings and everything. I was either in Egypt, or on the set of a Stargate episode that didn’t air.
“You’re an American,” she observed.
“Um, I am,” I said. I was startled by the voice, but having been conditioned by the hawk, I managed to push through without revealing just how much so. I really thought the Goddess was a stature.
She nodded. “In that case, I will forgive you for not falling to your knees. Your kind has forgotten how to consort with gods.”
“Is this what this is, consorting? A consortment?” I asked.
“I think the word you’re looking for is consortium,” she said. “I am surprised you don’t have better command over your own language. It is your primary language, after all, and the principal interface with the Universe at your present stage of development.”
“Isis, I presume?” I asked. I was well into my game of invisible counselors, I knew what was up. There was no need to get my neck cut by a goddess to remind me who summoned who.
Isis rose from her throne, and what I thought were attached wings turned out to be an artifact of her throne. Perspective! She descended down the stairs of the pedestal and advanced on me. Her movement was deliberate, feminine, provocative, captivating, and intimidating. Her movement was exaggeratedly human, and yet not human. Nor did she move like a hallucination. She didn’t hover across the floor. She had shadows that fell appropriately. I have been in the presence of celebrities and felt that euphoric giddiness and awe, and the feelings provoked in me by her presence was a hundred times greater. I was on the verge of collapsing when she took my arm and steadied me.
“Breathe,” Isis said. “I do not intend to harm you.”
“I…” I couldn’t even complete a thought.
“This will pass. I find being intentionally familiar with my subject expedites your recovery, if you would like,” Isis offered.
“Um,” I began, wondering if I heard what I thought I had heard.
“Yes, I am suggesting intimacy,” Isis said. She seemed to be amused by my reaction, pushing in close enough to me that we nearly touched. Her hand pushed into the robe and grasped hold of me. It occurred to me, if a woman gets all girly and weak in the knees, that’s okay, but if a man is equally provoked to the point of being stupid, he gets disparaged. “You are aware that you can’t solicit a god or goddess and it be anything other than complete surrender? I am light and I am knowledge and I will come at you at all levels of your being until you are fully illuminated in all aspects of your life. There will be no closed doors between us, no secrets, no wanting left in your entire being, and when you are completely satiated at all levels of awareness, you will radiate this to everyone you encounter. Others will rise to your new level or they will flee your presence. You only believe you have experienced loneliness in your past, but what’s ahead of you will seem darker than anything you believe is possible. This is the price for interacting with deities. This is the price of becoming a god.”
“It’s punishment?” I asked.
“It will seem so,” Isis said, easing off her aggressive stance. She went and leaned against a stone pedestal that was solid block of marble higher than a coffee table. “But that is paranoia. Mostly, you will feel isolated because your experiences will be ineffable. Because of your personal history, you’re more likely to withdraw from others because you will fear being locked up or killed outright. And, your fears will be valid. Humans from earth who speak to gods don’t fare well. Consider this conversation informed consent to my participation in your life.”
“You’re accepting the invitation?” I asked.
“Conditionally,” Isis said. “Before I name the conditions, I would like to hear your response to a few questions.”
“Just out of curiosity, being a goddess and all, don’t you already know the answers?” I asked.
Isis laughed. “I get that question a lot. And yes, I do, but you don’t, and if I gave you the answers, you would always be wondering if it was your answer or mine, so, in some ways, Glenda got it right when she made Dorothy walk it off,” Isis said.
“You know about the Wizard of Oz, too?” I asked.
“John, John, John,” Isis said.
Fair enough I thought. “What are the questions?”
“When you and Loxy discussed who you might invite, you initially avoided a god because you thought it was too much of a power house. So, what changed?”
I shrugged. “I wanted a direct connection with divinity, without having to rely on someone else’s word, or a book,” I said.
Isis nodded. “Now, I want you to ask me a question.”
I opened my mouth to ask something and there was nothing.
“Oh, come on, anything,” Isis said.
If I had just a dime for every time I had a question for god, I’d be a wealthy man, and suddenly, when faced with a deity, I had nothing. “Um, would you allow for an observation instead?” I asked.
“I accept,” Isis said.
“You’re much darker than I imagined,” I said.
Again, Isis laughed. It was actually pleasant, almost girlish. “Contrary to popular belief, we are not all white skin, blue eyes, with blond hair,” she said. She led me over to the fountain where she sat down, leaning slightly back and stretching her legs out. She smiled coyly.
“Speaking of blond hair, blue eyed gods, why didn’t you summon the one from your childhood,” Isis asked.
“I kind of have a love hate relationship with him and thought I’d spend more time arguing than listening,” I admitted.
“That’s honest enough,” Isis agreed. “But I want deeper.”
Really? What could be deeper than that? “I had too many questions in regards to the text of origin and why things are there or why things are missing and I get realy confused by things that seemed to be borrowed from other sources…” I said.
“Oh, please, don’t even get me started on Christianity and Judaism’s plagiarism. Israel! IsisRaEl, the ultimate trinity which I am a part of. But quite frankly, it’s not just them, John. Everything written and everything that will be written is borrowed. You don’t think my dialogue comes from you, do you? If I give you wisdom, it’s written somewhere. Let’s have clarity on that,” Isis said, putting a foot on me, teasing the robe open. She planted the sole of her foot on my thigh. “There’s more to your request for me than simple avoidance of the other.”
“I remember liking Almighty Isis as a kid, and I figured if I was going to have a deity, I might as well be attracted to her,” I said.
“Good for you,” Isis said, glad that I owned it. Clearly, I can’t be the only one that ever had a crush on a deity. “And, what do you think?”
“Um…”
“I see,” Isis beamed.
“You’re not going to smite me?” I asked.
Isis chuckled. “Of course not. If every human who held such thought was eliminated there would be no humans. And, there was a time when we used to intermingle much more than we do now. You humans really have too many hang ups on the whole subject of sex.”
“The rules were imposed by you gods,” I pointed out.
“No, that was completely all human. If you still had temples devoted to me or Hathor, Aphrodite, or Venus, I dare say there would be a lot less hang ups,” Isis said. “John, do you understand why you’re such a poor magician?”
“No,” I admitted.
“You philosophize too much,” Isis said. “True magic is not performed with the head, but with the heart. All your life you’ve ignored the impulse to go inwards in favor of becoming more cerebral. You’re not going to think yourself out of life. Get out of your head and into your heart, and you will see things much differently. And if you want even more different than the radical difference that heart vision will give you, than go even deeper! The way out is not up. The way out is in.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her.
“You frequently experienced AP as a child. Do you know why it quit working?”
“Fear,” I guessed.
“Partly. But mostly because you read a book and you started trying to follow someone else’s protocols and now you’ve turned it into a mythological research topic trying to master techniques to force yourself out of body, but you can’t will yourself out, because there is no body. You are consciousness. Your consciousness is not limited to space/time.”
“So, stop trying to open my third eye?” I asked.
“Oh, definitely stop obsessing about that. Do you have to think in order to see with your eyes? Contrary to popular belief, squinting doesn’t improve sight. And you don’t have to think about your kidneys to produce urine. Everything does what it’s supposed to do when it’s supposed to do it.”
“But…” I began.
“Really, you want to argue with me? Do you want to argue in favor of a way of being that hasn’t been productive for you?” Isis asked.
She had a strong argument.
“Also, if you consider it, almost all of your so called spontaneous esoteric experiences happened while you were engaged in intimacy,” Isis said.
“You mean, I have to get off to get out?” I asked.
Isis laughed. “You have to be engaged to get out. Getting off usually ends the sessions,” Isis said. “Think of it this way. You tend to trance out during intimacy. That’s when you travel. Orgasm brings you back to your body. Which is a good thing, there is a reason you anchored yourself in the body. When you dream, you are sexually aroused and engaging the universe. All humans are sexually aroused during REM sleep. Typically, when people get over stimulated in the dream, they wake up before the orgasm. Sexual energy is a core ingredient of the Universe. You should not fear it. It is a part of you and it is more vital than the blood that runs through your body’s veins. Your body will die, but you go on, and does sexuality. You’ve heard same above as below, but you’ve never really unpacked it the way it deserves. Yes, a tree reaches for the stars, but it’s also reaching into earth. Your thoughts are lofty, and they’re important, don’t favor the leaves while ignoring your roots. You, Sir, have already touched the sky, and now it’s time to go deeper.”
Her foot came off my thigh and she beckoned me forwards. I came closer, but she urged me to come still closer to her, and there was no way to get closer without stepping between her legs, without coming into contact. With that, she touched my forehead, my throat, my heart, my stomach, and then hovered over my groin. Her eyes met mine, her long, gold eyelashes fluttered. The smile she gave was more than an invitation. She didn’t ask, she simply opened the robe, taking each side of me in her hands and pulled me into her.
I don’t share all of this just because I think I am some bad ass who just slept with a goddess. I am not the only one who is ever had a transcendent experience with sex. There is a book that details many accounts from many people from all walks life who have experiences of transcendence during sex, and one of the common experiences is their partner channels a deity, and I don’t know if it was because Loxy had opened something up in me and sent me here, or this is just something I had fantasized about from youth and it was inevitable. Not only am I not bragging here, I feel compelled to say, don’t think this is all sunshine and puppies. Because it’s not. When I returned to my body, I was soaked with sweat, and I was too exhausted to move, or perhaps this was me waking up to sleep paralysis and I felt trapped. Loxy was still there, moving against me in a rhythmic way, bringing herself to climax. I had already moved way past pleasure was now beginning to experience pain, but I couldn’t communicate this because I was immobilized. Loxy finished and fell exhausted on top of me and again, and after a moment, fell to the side of me, sound asleep and smiling, her hand on my chest, over my heart. I felt a sudden release and my whole body convulsed.
Another part of this that makes it unpleasant is that there’s no one to discuss it with. It’s like that condition of persistent arousal disorder, where a person has sustained arousal and orgasms frequently. This condition is a true disability and painful, and yet the public misunderstanding of it says “Oh, I wish I had that problem.” If a man has a sustained erection for more than two hours it becomes a medical emergency, but we don’t treat women sufferers with equal concern? And neither male nor female gets empathy, because we can’t get past our own jokes and wanting. What I am experiencing isn’t a medical issue; it is this truly amazing experience, and there are others who have experience similar, but there’s just no way to go to work and say, “So, last night, I slept with a goddess” and there not be jokes for the sakes of jokes and jokes for the sake of ridiculing and silencing a person into conforming with the expected norm. “Don’t talk about religion, don’t talk about politics, don’t talk about aliens, or ghosts, or magic, just do your job and talk about sports or the weather.” I wish I could just go into work and say I slept with Isis and she said if you don’t give me a raise, she may have to send a plague or something. (Yes, the Egyptians were doing that to others before they enslaved the Israelite who stole it fr