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I Don’t Know What

It comes to me, I don’t know what,
It comes to me, I don’t know how.
It climbs into my eyes, moist;
It fills my heart with harmony.

It blows me like flowers in the wind,
Seems puzzling, and yet so clear,
It is not God; It is not my child,
And yet is as wonderful as both.

-Mia Holm
translated by Joe Bandel

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During part of my life I worked as an in-home crisis counselor. I would visit families in crisis and try helping them sort the chaos out and find solutions the crisis. Anyone working in this area knows that to be effective it works best if you have gone through similar situations successfully.

This means you can offer insights and suggestions from personal experience and not theory from some book. Fortunately or unfortunately I have struggled through a lot of dysfunction in my life and learned a lot the hard way.

Listening to family members tell their own side of the story made no sense at all. Every family member could justify their own position and say why other family members were at fault.

Time after time the situation would boil down to family members taking unfair advantage and manipulating other family members. People resent being manipulated, especially when it is unfairly done. Educating the family on unfair manipulations and teaching them healthy alternatives was an important part of resolving crisis.

The other factor was when family members would say one thing and their physical actions said another. Sometimes things were so bad that I couldn’t tell who was lying and who was telling the truth. Everyone was very convincing.

That’s when I told people to shut up. I was not interested in hearing reasons why things went wrong. I was only interested in physical actions and physical results. Who did what to who? I didn’t need to know why. Child abuse or Parent abuse both happen. There are ways to get what you want without being abusive. There are ways to fight fairly and maintain self-respect and self-esteem. There are ways to create win-win situations. Abuse is abuse and needs to be confronted. It can never be justified.

In my own life I confronted the same weakness. I talk a good show and my actions are not always backing up what I say. In retrospect I will talk a lot about what I am going to do, perhaps more than I should until people think I’m a windbag. But I reach a point where I will actually do it.

Writing is a perfect example. Since high school I said I was a writer and wanted to write books. I got into arguments and debates with other friends that wanted to be writers too. When I experienced my first heartbreak I did write some teenage angst poetry but that was it. I wanted to be a writer but I was not writing anything.

The desire to write would come and go in spurts. At the age of thirty I took some writing courses and completed the assignments graduating from the courses with honors but still not writing on my own. At the age of forty I seriously tried writing my first two books, OAK:Foundations and OAK:Magister Templi.

I finished them as rough drafts and called it good enough. Several years later I realized my wife was right. They were not readable. I still was not writing other stuff. I remained a writer that would not write. Consider Stephen King. He began writing as a teenager and continued all through his life. Many people think you need to begin when you are young or it won’t work. They forget Edgar Rice Burroughs was forty when he began writing the Tarzan books.

I was getting old and still hadn’t produced much of anything. Was I lying to myself? In a way yes and in a way no. I thought I knew what writing was about but I really didn’t. In this respect I was lying to myself.

It was only when I turned forty eight and took three months off to write Anarchist Knight:Apprentice that I finally understood. Almost two years later I was holding the first copy in my hands. I never dreamed how much work it was to write a book and I never knew how rewarding it was.

There is a big difference between saying you are a writer and actually being a writer. For forty some years I was kidding myself about being a writer. It is only now that I understand the easy competence of writing something every day. Today for the first time I can say with honesty that I am a writer.

It was the same in families I was working with. Many family members were kidding themselves as well. They were saying one thing and not following through on their promises or agreements. It is better not to make a promise or agreement then to break it. It sounds so simple but these families simply needed to be reminded to keep their promises and agreements. They also needed to learn about being fair and allow win-win situations without trying to manipulate each other to get their own way.

Sometimes it helps to have someone tell us that we are not doing the things we say we are doing. This means confronting us and making us confront ourselves.

What are you doing to make your life better and richer? What are you doing to make your relationships with loved ones better? What are you doing that makes life meaningful and worthwhile? Are you taking the physical actions needed or are you lying to yourself?

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In other material I’ve covered the first four types of cellular life. These were each created from one of the four parts of sine wave energy. The first type of life was vegetable life, the second animal life, the third reptile life and the final type of cell formed the origins of insect life.

In living organisms these form the basis of the respiratory system(plant),circulatory system(animal),nervous system(reptile) and the digestive system(insect). These four types of life are symbolized as the four Archangels that stand before the throne of God. Each one of us has a soul that originated from one of these four Archetypes.

Ancient wisdom states we belong to one of these four groups and must find our own soul group. In the caste system these are the castes of Priest, Ruler, Warrior and Healer.

The Priest is absorbed in our connection with light and he or she channels that energy to the rest of the world. It is the Priest that attains cosmic consciousness and learns the will of God and Goddess. He will give needed council to the ruler as needed.

The Ruler is absorbed in the administrative tasks of the human collective. She organizes and directs needed activity and disciplines wrongful actions. She represents the hierarchy within the human race. This is especially true of a Matriarchal system.

The Warrior serves the Ruler and carries out her will in all things. His aggression and courage ensure that her will is supreme. He is the Rulers mate and his ferocity matched her own. His is the will to live and survive no matter what. He does what needs to be done.

The Healer is today’s scientist and doctor. She uses technology to heal the world and the human race. It is her task to heal the mess the other three create and form a united symbiotic system out of them all. She completes the circle of life even as the Ruler creates it.

In terms of the Holy Guardian Angel and the Shadow the Priest finds its Shadow in the Warrior and the Ruler finds her Shadow in the Healer and vice versa. The Warrior finds his shadow in the Priest and the Healer finds her Shadow in the Ruler.

In becoming complete each soul must become either Priest/Warrior or Ruler/Healer. They will find their soul mate in the others. The Priest/Warrior will find his soul mate in the Ruler/Healer and she will find him when the time is right.

The first step is to find what soul group you belong to and perfect that training and skill. Then connect with your Shadow aspect and develop that as well. This is the underlying basis of all occult and metaphysical literature.

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The King of Wands is related to other cards in the Tarot. He contains the essential elements of THE FOOL, THE HIEROPHANT, THE LOVERS, STRENGTH, THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE, and JUSTICE.

The King is also related to the ACE, TWO, and THREE of Wands. The King represents a real person, perhaps someone you know. The other cards are powers or tools he uses in special ways.

His Element is FIRE. He controls the power of light and electricity. Each of these things should be placed somewhere on his card to show his association with them. When he gets going and is in his element his personality is very intense and electric. Think of your favorite college professor or teacher.

The King of Wands has attained the highest levels of spiritual accomplishment and is one of the guiding forces of the “collective soul” of humanity. He is a spiritual teacher and has attained cosmic consciousness or oneness with the universe.

Illuminations cause him to trust the voice of his own conscience more than mental reasoning and he is a natural mystic.

His physical body is pulsing with life energy.

This is a person able to keep his head when others are losing theirs. His training allows him to escape old behavior patterns and develop new ways of doing things. He does this through an uncanny ability to see the big picture. This is a person that walks his own path.

He has a positive yet realistic conception of the world and resists the negative qualities of life. In love relationships he encounters barriers and frustrations with wild ups and downs because his emotional armor and defenses get in the way. He has trouble expressing his emotions and tries to retreat into his head.

The phrase “so heavenly bound that he is no earthly good” could describe him and his passion for the spiritual side of life. Wands is spiritual energy and he is the master of it. He might very well need help with the more mundane aspects of life and living.

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This continues my story of the development of the OAK magical system. I had crossed the great abyss and merged with the godhead in bliss and joy. I had returned to Source! But it seemed that Source was now gently pushing me away!

I tried to understand what was happening to me and the only material available was by Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn materials. As soon as I began to study them I had a vivid dream where I encountered Aleister Crowley and he led me to a book and said that I should read it. As soon as I grabbed onto the edges of the book to read it he began to laugh and said that if I ever let go of it I would die! I shouted “No!” and slammed the book shut. Instantly my lower astral bodies caught on fire and were destroyed. This was the spiritual death. In horror I climbed higher and higher, back across the abyss and sheltered in the godhead. All my other astral bodies were gone, completely destroyed and only my awareness remained in this one bubble of light that remained safely across the great abyss. I had no astral body. I was simply a ball of light that was aware.

Once I realized that I was safe I began the slow tedious task of rebuilding all my astral bodies from the top down. I began with the OAK energy ball meditation which opened energetic channels and assisted the healing process. My life was a mess (as happens when one crosses the great abyss) with my marriage destroyed and being forced into bankruptcy while at the same time leaving the Airforce and moving back to Minnesota.

I had studied the works of Mantak Chia and began working with the development of sexual energies. It didn’t take long to realize that working with sexual energy twice a day led to powerful results and I continued pushing that process for the next seven years as intensely as I could. I knew that working with sexual energy was driving a massive healing process that I needed and I wanted it to be over as quickly as possible.

Twenty years later I can say that I never imagined the process would take so long or be so energy intensive. But I began to be drawn into what I have called soulmate cycles with other women that would result in the creation and development or birth of new astral bodies for both of us. At the conclusion of the process we would be forcibly split apart because of life conditions and not being able to continue the development of the relationship. The spark of love and energetic attraction that had fired the relationship died.

As I went through these cycles propelled by my working with sexual energies my astral bodies were recreated one after another from the top down. This was a slow and difficult process.

I continued to study the works of Aleister Crowley and read all of them as well as all the Golden Dawn material that I could find. I tried to contact the OTO so that I could join them and got SOTO instead. SOTO would accept me but demanded I tithe 10% of my income to them. Since I wasn’t working anyway I agreed. They told me to send two passport photos of myself, a front shot of my face and a side shot. I had the photos taken and sent them, but I sent three photos. The photo machine took two side shots, one from the right and one from the left. I sent both.

Suddenly I woke up one night in the deepest pain as if my throat had been slashed by a razor. It took some time for the pain to go away and in horror I realized that my astral bodies (I had recreated four of them at the time) had been attacked. My astral head was severed from my astral body on my left side, but my right side remained intact. That’s when I realized that the only thing that had saved me was sending that third photo! I told them that I was quitting. They said I couldn’t quit because I had already been initiated! I did anyway and a massive energy explosion attacked me which I sent back by tapping into Source energy. I know that someone felt that return of energy!

I finally got hold of the real OTO and corresponded briefly with Bill Heidrick. I shared what was going on and these “scarlet woman” cycles or “soulmate” cycles that I seemed to be going through. He affirmed that I had crossed the great abyss and could only offer his condolences as I was now exploring the mysteries of sorrow and the grade of magister templi. Through him I was able to connect with a valid OTO group several states away and began corresponding with them.

Bill Heidrick had shared with me that once my system of magic was complete (the Dewey Larson reciprocal theory) it needed to be harmonized and integrated into the Kabbalah. I needed to do this through the use of antimonies or opposites. So I began a serious study of the Kabbalah. I laid out all 120 layers of the astral planes and began superimposing the Kabbalah on top of it. It was pretty simple to place the sephiroth, but some of the other paths were not that easy. Then I took every other known magical system that I could find and placed it upon my growing chart as well. This included the angels, the four elements, the Golden Dawn material, the stages of alchemy, the lunar cycle, the solar cycle and even the i ching. I also placed the stages of ego and spiritual development and then reversed them as well to represent male and female experiences. These were all laid out as the 120 layers of the astral planes. I then took the Enochian system of elemental watch towers and created four new elemental watch towers using the 120 sparks of awareness.

Then I took this whole mess and began creating a deck of tarot cards out of it! That original master chart has long since disappeared but my version of the tarot deck remains. You might call it a higher octave of the old kabbalah. The old kabbalah no longer works because it has been shorted out. You might say that it still works, but not in the same manner as it did before. So the OAK Tarot Of Love And Romance remains the most complex and integrated system of magic that I have ever created. I did artwork for the trumps but not for the lower cards.

I felt that you could not truly understand the significance of the OAK Tarot cards until I shared this!

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As I begin to post about the OAK Tarot Of Love And Romance I realize that I need to share some things so that people can understand what these cards really represent and how they were developed. That will require this post and the next one called “SOTO and the OTO”. So bear with me, this information is a little sensitive.

But first I would like to say that Organic Gnosticism has evolved out of the OAK magical system over the years and my understanding of things has simplified down to the point that I now believe the development of the soul and its powers is achieved simply through intense human and physical effort. The physical body generates energy and sends it out into the universe where it first connects with collective opposite sex energy and comes back to form a composite spark of awareness. Simply put you give and give until your energy starts coming back to you.

At some point this collective opposite sex energy is replaced by soul mate or divine counterpart energy which permanently seals and activates that individual spark of awareness and integrates it into your developing soul. This needs to be achieved for all 118 sparks of elemental awareness plus another spark of awareness for rotating magnetic field energies and another spark of awareness for the photon state itself. There is nothing to distinguish one spark of awareness from another and the process is entirely mechanical in nature.

To put my current understanding in one sentence, “All effort is cumulative!”

These 120 (118+2) sparks of awareness and energies also create Gaia’s new energy grid. In other words Gaia’s new energy grid consists of these same energies and these are the original blueprint that has always existed. So the old original blueprint is being restored in the new great cycle. This is a massive project that many light workers have been busy with.

Having said all that I can now return to my story of the development of the OAK magical system. The first part of my life was spent in a spiritual searching for mystical experiences and a merging of my soul with God. I joined the Rosicrucian Order AMORC at eighteen and remained a member for over twenty five years studying weekly monographs. While I lived in Phoenix I was able to attend lodge meetings and participate in initiations and demonstrations. At that time I had completed all 12 degrees and had restudied all of them at least three times, some as many as six times. I was thoroughly grounded in the material compared to other members that may have read them once. So that was twenty five years of mystical study, prayer and meditation. But I was doing much more than that during those twenty five years!

I devoured all the New Age material available at the time. I collected and read all the books of the Theosophical Society including the secret fourth book of the Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky. I became interested in astrology and studied that as well as any variant forms of Rosicrucianism that I could find. Other fantastic resources came out in the 80’s and I was heavily influenced by Jane Roberts and her Seth materials. I devoured her two volume “The Unknown Reality” as if it was candy. Dick Sutphen was exploring the outer edges of self empowerment and I spent hundreds of dollars on his materials. He in turn introduced me to NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming. I still have over six books on my reference shelf that I will never give away. Channeling by Cosmic Awareness Communications further expanded my horizons and led me to the discovery of the Ra Material and through that to the Reciprocal field theory of Dewey Larson.

The Reciprocal field theory of Dewey Larson laid out the creation of the entire universe through the development of the photon, magnetic field energies and all 118 elements much as I have described them. It was his work that offered a physical space/time universe and a reciprocal non-physical or astral time/space universe that were connected together through the speed of light.

I instinctively knew that he was right and the illuminations and insights formed the bulk of the posts that you are now reading. These came from my first two books “Modern Survivalism” and “Magister Templi”.

The spiritual effort that I was putting out was immense and in 1990 my awareness plunged across the great abyss for the first time and my soul merged with the godhead in a feeling of bliss and rapture. This was the end of my spiritual journey because no matter how hard I tried to go further into the spiritual light and extinguish myself, I was always gently pushed back. With horror I found that my polarity had flipped and my insights and illuminations were returning back across the abyss and down into the mental levels. It’s not that I was being forced out of the spiritual levels, but that there was no more activity at those levels. The activity was working itself back down toward the earth.

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Today we are going to start talking about the 13th-century and courtly love. This will take probably two or three posts because the subject is quite intensive, so bear with me.

Courtly love or the age of chivalry ran historically from the 12th century to the late 16th century and is a notable time in the history of women and the beginning of feminism.

At the beginning, women were basically despised not only by men but by themselves. They were hardly treated like people.

I have to backtrack here, back before Christ and back before the invention of reading and writing. Over 4000 years ago, women ran the place with goddess based religions and these goddess based religions had females playing the prominent role. This was because it was the females that brought life into this world and they were also held responsible for death and rebirth.

So the whole focus way back then was around women and the important role they played in bringing life into this world. Gradually the male became more powerful and more empowered and it was around the time of the invention of reading and writing that the tide turned for the male.

Well, it was during this time, during the age of chivalry, that the tide began to turn back in favor of the female. Now the beginnings were small but they led to a lot of the things that are happening in the women’s movement today. At the end of the 16th century, women were respected and admired and this set the stage for the modern women’s movement.

Now back during the goddess religions of ancient times civilization was matriarchal and dominated by women. They failed to consider the males growing importance until it was too late.

In this time men were so obsessed about living in their heads that they indulged the women and let them do what they wanted. So women began taking over the running of things. This especially happened during the Crusades when a lot of the men were gone and the women were left home to take care of routine business. The women began to realize that they had a head for running things.

Now, one of the important consequences of the Crusades was a meeting of cultures. Europe was living in the dark ages compared to Persia, or compared to the Muslim countries who were highly civilized and had knowledge of Greek and Roman literature.

Suddenly these crude and uneducated Crusaders met up with this advanced civilization, and it was quite a shock. So they came back with a lot of eye-opening experiences which they wanted to share. But they came back to a world that women had kind of settled into while they were gone.

Courtly love is the great theme of late medieval literature. Europe was rediscovering the sciences and the wisdom of the classical world through the influence of Muslim scholars in the translations of Greek and Roman texts. So philosophy and the sciences were being reintroduced.

This was a golden opportunity for women of the upper class. At the same time, the cult of the Virgin Mary was brought back to Europe by the Crusaders.

Courtly love was class conscious, escapist and idealized. It was basically considered a harmless daydream by a lot of people. But it was very powerful in its own way as we shall see. Courtly love was the game of love. We’ve all heard about the game of love. This is where it started!

It was first thought to have been characteristic of the romantic German and Celtic peoples and included remnants of the Organic Gnostics through the influence of the Bogomils who came from the Caucasus area in eastern Europe. So courtly love still had traces of those early feminine goddess religions.

Now it was also considered a conspiracy of the Cathars to overturn the Church. But mostly courtly love was influenced by the Arabs because the Arabs treated their women differently than the Europeans did. The Arabs kept their women apart from everybody else. They segregated them and locked them up into harems. They made the women wear veils over their faces.

In Europe the female was always out in public and because she was out in public she was not considered special. The Arabs considered their women special and that trait also influenced this idea of courtly love.

Courtly love was sufficiently possible to be attractive to lovers, but improbable enough to be a challenge. It was like a hopeless case of soulmates never destined to join together in love and that’s probably the way to think of it in a in a metaphysical sense.

This was a meeting of souls, not a meeting of sexual pleasures. In fact, one of the phrases back then was that the union of souls was a thousand times more beautiful than that of bodies, so the whole concept of courtly love was Tantric.

It was talking about the mixing and the touching union of male and female souls. This is important because that’s part part of Organic Gnosticism. These tantric based teachings were spreading into every aristocratic family.

There was at least one person who could read and write, and they would snap up books because there were not very many to read. They in turn wanted to talk about what they read. They want to talk about new concepts and ideas just like we do today.

So the nobility began to permanently employ scholars. These scholars in turn would help with the business deals. They would write legal papers, keep the accounts and add some scholarly debate into the household and actually provide tutorship to the younger generation of children.

Things were different in the countryside for the superstitious common people. Sexuality was rampant with succubus and incubus attacks everywhere. These were vampires sucking up the energies of those with weaker blood. But the prevailing opinion of the common folk came from the Cathars. There was no sin from the belly button and below.

The aristocrats were talking about the soul. They were talking about the love of the soul and about soulmates. They were not talking about the physical consummation of sexuality.

The priests made generous use of this idea and the upper part of the body became so spiritual that it no longer knew what the lower half of the body was doing! If you can believe that!

Every act was holy and the priest was able to sanctify all women who sinned with him because sin was of the body and not of the soul. In Spain and France nuns were called the “consecrated ones” or mistresses of the priests. This was how pervasive sexuality was among the Church and among the common people.

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“I can see that,” Rafe nodded. “Sure, I’ll be there. Where are we meeting anyway? It’s cold out there.”

“You getting soft in your old age?” Tobal joked. “You just keep lots of that grog on hand. I was thinking of meeting out by the central fire like we did last time.”

Rafe sighed, “Ok, right after circle then. Did you see Dirk made his fifth chevron?”

“Already congratulated him, how about you?”

“Maybe next time,” Rafe said. “The fights are getting more even. I can’t wait till you get to be a Journeyman and get your butt whipped all the time.” He chuckled.

“Well I’ve got to leave and get hold of Ellen.” He turned toward the door.

“Sure, changing the subject,” Rafe laughed as Tobal went out.

It was mid afternoon and he arranged with both Crow and Ellen to meet immediately after circle by the central fire. Ellen had changed into her robe and was getting ready for circle. She was one of the few non-ritual team members that was going to be wearing a robe. It was so cold most of the others including Tobal were wearing their furs to circle. He asked her about it.

“Oh, I’ll be alright,” she laughed. “I’ll be next to the fire and can keep warm there.”

“Well, I’ll have some extra blankets or furs by me if you get cold,” he told her.

“Thanks Tobal, but I won’t need them really. Especially tonight since I’m so keyed up.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m training to be High Priestess of the Journeyman Circle. It is quite different than this one. Misty will keep doing this one for awhile yet.”

“That’s great,” he grinned. “You will be High Priestess when I become Journeyman. You will probably get to initiate me again.”

She smiled, “we’ll just have to wait and see. I’ve got to get to the circle now though. See you later, ok?”

With that she gave Tobal a hug and he went looking for the girls. More and more he looked forward to the circle time he shared with Melanie and Becca and sometimes Nikki. He had come to think of it as something they did together as friends.

He had noticed the last few months that Melanie was spending a lot of time with Becca. Part of him was sad and upset but part of him was honest enough to realize Becca was a lot different than he had imagined her to be. He had been thinking about her quite a bit these last few days and didn’t really know why. She wasn’t at all what he had expected. She hadn’t shown the vicious, aggressive behavior she had during the disastrous night of the Halloween dance.

Instead, she seemed more aloof, unemotional and withdrawn as if she was hiding some deep secret or misery and keeping it to herself. It was only with Melanie that she seemed to cheer up and laugh about things. Several times he suspected they might be laughing about him but pushed that thought away. He was hoping to get a little time alone with Melanie. But it seemed that was not to be and with good humor he filled his tankard and moved over to sit beside the two girls.

“There any room for me?” He teased.

Melanie and Becca both jumped with delight and took turns giving him a hug and a kiss. Melanie’s hug was delicious and his arms folded around her as their lips met in a kiss that was longer and more passionate than he had been expecting. He took his time thoroughly enjoying it and almost regretfully stepped back.

“My turn”, Becca quipped and stepped up to him with a glint in her green eyes he didn’t recognize. She pulled the hood off and shook her red hair so that it cascaded freely around the fur of her jacket. Then she reached up and pulled his own hood back and ran her fingers through the hair at his temples till her fingers found the back of his neck and pulled his lips down to hers.

It seemed as if the universe had stopped and there was only this one moment frozen in eternity as he breathed her essence into his lungs and heart and breathed his back into her. Almost reflexively his arms tightened around her and crushed her against his body. Their lips fed on each other with a passion that consumed them in a whirlwind of feelings he had never felt before.

He moved first lifting his head up and shifting his grip as he stepped back. Her eyes met his in a soundless plea that he couldn’t answer. He saw the hurt come into her eyes as he moved back and looked away.

“Wow,” he said. “ I need to sit down after all that and I’d better sit between you two so you don’t fight over me.”

Instantly he knew that he had done and said the wrong thing. Both girls instantly went from being glad to see him to cold as death itself. He pulled the hood back up and so did Becca. They sat in frozen silence.

He tried joking and asking about their month but nothing worked. He was actually relieved when Nikki came over to join them. If Nikki noticed that anything was wrong she didn’t mention it and soon all three girls were laughing and telling stories between initiations.

They were however, very curious and envious of his new decorative clothing. He told them Crow had taught him. He opened his fur coat and showed the beautiful beadwork and porcupine needles stitched carefully and decoratively on the comfortable buckskin clothing he was wearing.

“How does Crow know these things?” Becca asked curiously. “I thought you were supposed to be training him. Not he training you?”

The girls laughed and Tobal blushed. “I just got lucky,” he said. “Crow grew up in a village about two hundred miles west of here.” He instantly wished he hadn’t said anything about the village.

“You mean the rogue village?” Nikki asked.

“You really need to talk with Crow about that,” he said. “I’d really like to stay and chat,” he said. “But I’ve got to talk with Rafe and Ellen right now.”

“You are always talking with Rafe or Ellen.” Nikki pouted. “You spend more time talking with them then you do with us. What’s that about anyway? Are you too good for us?”

That last comment had a little bite to it and Melanie and Becca looked at each other. Tobal didn’t like to leave things that way. It just didn’t seem right. He sighed.

“It’s about increased rogue activity,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it later if you are really interested.”

“You promise?” Melanie asked suddenly suspicious. “There’s something going on that you are not telling us. You can’t lie worth a damn Tobal. No one is in danger are they?”

“We don’t really know.” He pleaded. “I’ve got to go. I’ll talk later ok?”

Then he stood up and left before they stopped him or asked if they could come with. He went around to the other side of the fire circle and waited, painfully aware that Nikki, Melanie, and Becca were not leaving the fire circle either. They were going to watch the meeting from across the fire.

Rafe was the first to join and then Crow. Ellen came last. She had changed out of her robe into furs. She smiled at Tobal.

“I almost took you up on that offer.” She said shivering. “I was freezing on one side and roasting on the other side all night. You were right. I should have worn my furs. I didn’t really need the robe.”

She looked at the others, “Are we ready?”

Tobal cleared his throat hesitantly. “We might have a problem.”

All three turned to look at him expectantly.

“Becca, Melanie and Nikki are on to us. They know something is up and want to know about it. They are sitting across the fire from us now.”

Crow, Ellen and Rafe turned and looked across the fire and the three girls smiled and waved at them.

Ellen sighed, “I still don’t think we should tell any more people than we need to about this. This could be very dangerous and I don’t even want you talking to any of the other medics about it. Please?”

Reluctantly they all agreed and turned back toward the issue at hand with Ellen taking the leadership role.

“There are still many tracks around the lake area.” She told them. “I continue to patrol it every other day but never see anyone. I am convinced they know when I am coming because of my med-alert bracelet. They know I am coming and hide.”

“It gets worse,” she said. “There is a growing rumor the rogues are from the primitive village west of here. There is another rumor that the city is planning an attack on the village to make the area safe for all those that are claiming sanctuary.

“They are planning to attack my village!” Crow demanded. “Why? We have no technology to track people like you say the rogues do. We do not even have med-alert bracelets. I need to leave immediately and warn my grandfather.” He got up to leave but Tobal stopped him.

“You said your grandfather, Howling Wolf has trained you in the ways of the shaman?”

Crow nodded in the affirmative, his dark eyes flashing. “Yes, that is true.”

“Well,” Tobal suggested. “Can you get a spirit message to your grandfather instead so you don’t have to travel there physically?”

Crow pondered the question and Tobal could see he was visibly relaxing. “Yes, I can send a message to him that way. I will do it tonight after this meeting.”

“Good,” he said. “That means you can use next month to complete your solo. It would be a shame to not finish your solo since you have worked so hard at it.”

“I will ask Grandfather,” Crow said stiffly. “I will do as he suggests. My own parents were massacred and buried in a mass grave. I don’t want my grandfather or my village to suffer the same fate.”

The mention of Howing Wolf jarred something loose inside Tobal’s mind and he tried fitting things together. Howling Wolf just knew too much and was in the center of too many things. He had trained his parents in bi-location and hand-fasted them together. He had built the cairn over the mass grave by the waterfall. He was somehow in contact with Sarah’s father. Perhaps it was Howling Wolf the rogues were interested in and not the village itself.

“Maybe they are interested in Howling Wolf and not the village?”

“That would mean my sister and I would be in even greater danger,” Crow told him.

Rafe said, “We need to know more about the village and the city of Heliopolis. We also need to know more about the sanctuary program.” He looked at Ellen. “Is there anyway you can research some local history on the computer and find out what the official story line is on all this stuff? I’m getting so many versions that my head is going to split.”

Ellen nodded, “That’s a good idea. I’ll see what I can dig up for our next meeting. Now”, she turned to Crow, “Can you fill me in on what you’ve told Tobal.”

Crow again told the story of the Lord and Lady and the research at the lake. He told of the part his parents and his grandfather had played in it. He also mentioned how the Lord and Lady had taught his grandfather and the others in a secret location to go on special journeys where they would disappear and return at a later time bringing objects back with them. That’s when he floored Ellen and Rafe by saying the Lord and Lady, Tobal’s parents were still alive and needed their help.

Ellen was visibly shaken and didn’t know what to say. She finally asked how the Lord and Lady spoke to him and questioned him about his experiences. Tobal had forgotten Ellen was training as a High Priestess for the Journeyman degree and was expected to speak with the Lord and Lady. She was obviously having some trouble with the concept that the Lord and Lady were Tobal’s parents and that they were still alive as physical beings.

It was shortly after that when she excused herself and the meeting was over. Crow went to warn his grandfather the village might be attacked and he might be in danger. Rafe stayed for a few extra minutes talking with Tobal.

Tobal wondered why Ellen felt none of the Masters/medics could be trusted. It seemed strange since Rafe knew several of them and trusted them. Perhaps it was not the people, Rafe suggested. Perhaps it had something to do with the job of being a medic that made it dangerous to confide in them. Anyway it was a puzzle with no ready answer.

Perhaps Rafe would learn the answer when he became a Master. He was at four chevrons and could get his fifth and sixth at any time. Rafe especially would be seeing Ellen on a regular basis at Journeyman circles and could get word from Tobal to her in case of an emergency. On that note they separated and went on to other things.

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Difference

The bright tears, like light dew,
That my lovely boy cries,
Dry quickly, when the warm
Summer sun shines once more.

But mine are like rain drops
In a bleak autumnal world,
Frozen to ice over night,
And fall down, tear after tear.

-Mia Holm
translated by Joe Bandel

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We all have false responses. That’s when we feel one way and act another way. Someone might ask if we are ok and we tell them we are when we really are not ok.

Other examples of false responses are never completing things we start; feeling the grass is always greener somewhere else; never asking someone out on a date because we fear rejection.

Over and over again our false responses get in our way and cause us to trip and fall right before we reach the finish line. False responses are rationalizations and lies that we tell ourselves to avoid confronting the things that need to be owned and accepted before we can move closer toward our goals.

In most cases our false responses are protection mechanisms created to avoid unpleasant situations. We live with someone we don’t love for the sake of the children or stay at a job where we are not treated like a human being because we fear unemployment.

We are all blessed with a wide range of sensory awareness and life experience. Our physical human bodies are fully integrated and functional. At least they try to be unless we frustrate and block them with our false responses.

What I’m trying to say here is that our false responses divide and separate who we are and what we feel. They make us feel divided and lead to stress and perhaps mental or emotional illness. When we want something and can’t get it there are two paths we can follow. The easiest option is to rationalize and lie to ourselves that someone or something is preventing us from the achievement of that goal. As long as the cause of our personal failure lies external to us we have no reason to change or try harder.

The second path is much harder. We have to own up to the fact that our own actions have brought us to our current situation and our own actions must carry us forward out of them. The reason we can’t achieve our goal is because we are either doing something wrong or are not ready yet. When we hit the brick wall we need to realize that it usually manifests when we are going in the wrong direction.

Rationalizations and lies are mental in nature. This means that mentally we can’t find a way that will reach our goal. It does no good to tell ourselves that our body is wrong or that our emotions are wrong. We sense what we sense and we feel what we feel. Those are true things. We just don’t fully understand them.

The mental nature needs to be in harmony with the physical body and the emotions. This is obvious but how can we do this? Research and exploration. Research the goal and study how others go about achieving it. An in depth study of any subject will show that it is not exactly what we imagined it to be. Being a writer is much more hard work than I ever imagined it to be. I had no idea that material needed to be re-written up to ten times before it was presentable as a book.

Having a loving and sexual relationship with a partner has been nothing at all like I thought it would be. It’s much more work than I ever dreamed but it is also much more satisfying.

When we first try to achieve a goal we don’t know what it takes to reach that goal. Our expectations are not realistic. We can either stop trying and rationalize why we can’t have what we want or we can research and learn to have more realistic expectations. False responses are when our mental nature gives up.

Learning by doing and having a gentle gradient are the most powerful ways of breaking through false responses. Taking things by baby steps and mastering each small step at a time will break through any false response and replace it with a true success. This is much better than wanting too much too fast and then crashing and burning.

At the completion of each baby step we learn more about our goal. Our expectations become more realistic and we might even find we only thought we wanted that goal. What we really want is something else entirely. We can’t even discover that deeper truth until our curiosity is satisfied about the first one.

Learning and satisfying our curiosity clear the way for advancement to what really matters. This does not mean to give in to every stray whim and fancy. That is what our mental natures are for. When fully integrated they recognize these physical and emotional impulses and understand them for what they are, sensory data and impressions.

Our mental natures discern harmful or negative possibilities and steer us around bad experiences while affirming those feelings and impressions. It’s ok to look as long as you don’t touch. You’ve got your own at home.

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