The Twelfth Insight: The Hour Of Decision Part 12

"Grandmother," I replied, reaching for the tea, "you helped us get started with your dance."

She didn't answer but nodded out toward the distant horizon. I followed her eyes to see a larger sliver of moon hovering in the late afternoon sky.

Just then a crow cawed loudly down by the big tree, which made me flinch for some reason.

"You have a good guide, too," she said. "You will enjoy your visit to Sister Mountain."

She was still looking into the distance.

"Are you talking about Mount Sinai?" I asked.

She was walking away. "It is red, too, like the hills of Sedona."

"You live in an interesting world, Grandmother," I called out.

She stopped walking for an instant, not looking back, then smiled and continued on her way.

I was leaning back against a small tree near my tent wondering why Grandmother called Mount Sinai "Sister Mountain," when Coleman walked up.

"I wondered where you got off to," I said.

"I just took a walk," he replied, smiling. "I needed some time to reflect on everything you've gotten me into on this trip. I never dreamed I'd have these experiences, much less have to keep a scientific perspective on it all."

I nodded. "No kidding. A lot has happened. It's forcing us to put our spirituality into practice, and it's all been building on itself."

Coleman nodded as though he wanted me to elaborate, so I just let it come intuitively.

"The First Integration," I said, "sustaining Synchronistic flow, got us going. That's what was so hard to do before. All we have to do is expect it, and it happens. After that it's a matter of staying in that 'star of your own movie' centeredness by telling others the truth about your path and how it is unfolding. That's when each Synchronicity begins to lead to another one.

"Then we were shown how the Second Integration works. And how we should try to find a higher truth with others, even in uncomfortable encounters."

I nodded toward him, remembering our first conversation in which I'd written him off as a skeptic. He knew what I was thinking and laughed out loud.

"We were being shown," I went on, "that if we partic.i.p.ate in Conscious Conversation, we can always receive a larger truth about how spirituality works. And thus we contribute to the building of an ever more complete, spiritual worldview.

"The Third Integration gave us an even larger picture of what happens when we stay in this centered truth, showing us that if we operate in truth, we fall into Alignment with the Law of Truth and can see the other laws that support this flow: Connection, Karma, and Service.

"If we hold to our truth as it evolves with others, and never lie or manipulate but strive to be of service, then we fall in harmony with the Law of Karma, avoiding its corrections, and naturally attract those who are there to be of service to us, so that we rapidly flow forward into a higher Connection with each other and the Divine.

"The Fourth Integration showed us the stakes involved in our quest to reach this deeper spiritual Connection. Those stuck in secular obsession are building ever more polarized systems of untruth and becoming more extreme in their dehumanization of each other, endangering everything.

"Thankfully, the Fifth and Sixth showed us a glimpse of how deep our Connection with the Divine could become, where we find love and, most important, Protection, and an awareness of mission. We realized we have a part in helping one another move through the rest of the Integrations. Now we have to figure out how to Rise to Influence and create this Template of Agreement that, supposedly, will reach those in fear."

I took a breath. "Which brings us to the present. The Seventh Integration showed us how to step up the Synchronicity even more by following the guidance that comes to us if we tune in."

I paused and looked at him, somewhat surprised that I had been able to voice the Integrations so quickly.

"You were right," Coleman said. "It's all a consciousness that builds on itself."

I looked at him a moment, then said, "It reminds me of a verse I learned as a child. Something like, 'If you are honorable over little you are given much.' I guess it turned out to be true."

"So what do you think is going to happen now?" Coleman asked.

"Hopefully," I said, "Synchronicity will continue to lead us through the remaining steps, and we'll continue to integrate more of the Connection we reached on the mountain ... until we remember it all. That's when, I guess, we'll reach our strongest influence."

For a long moment we were both lost in thought.

Finally, Coleman said, "I just wish I could understand one thing I glimpsed up there. It was like a Connection point with all that I was feeling."

"What? Are you kidding me?"

"No, I really felt something. It was elusive and seemed to come and go."

I jumped to my feet. "I experienced the same thing!"

He looked amazed.

"Yeah," I repeated, "almost exactly as you described it!"

The next morning we were up early and, by first light, heading back toward Sedona. Wolf had returned late the night before, just in time to grab a few hours of sleep and to help us load our gear. Now, as we rode along in the early light of dawn, he looked tired but was still full of mischief.

"I have a surprise," he said.

"What is it?" I asked. Coleman was smiling from the backseat.

"Don't ask," he said. "You'll get it later."

We tried to pry it out of him, but he wouldn't budge and eventually all of us fell into a lengthy silence. Then, as we entered the city limits, we were treated to a beautiful Sedona sunrise, and as usual, people were pulled over on the side of the road and standing on some of the hills, ushering in the day. I wondered if the sunrise was Wolf's surprise, but I could tell from his face that it wasn't.

The sunrise invigorated each of us. We were all completely centered and setting a tone of expectant waiting without even talking about it. And we were alert, not just for a Synchronicity, but for the guidance that preceded it.

Suddenly, Wolf pulled into a side street and stopped, a worried look on his face.

"There's something wrong," he said to me. "My friends who were keeping your car were supposed to meet us back at that gas station we pa.s.sed. They weren't there."

Coleman and I looked at each other.

Wolf thought for a moment, then said, "I believe I should take you straight to the Phoenix airport, right now, as fast as we can get there."

"Wait a minute," Coleman said. "My car is at my hotel. I can't just leave it. And what about the rest of my clothes?"

As he spoke, I tried to visualize us driving directly to the airport, easily seeing us arriving there and boarding the plane. Then I tried to picture us going to get the cars instead, and immediately had difficulty. In fact, I couldn't picture us getting to Coleman's hotel at all.

"I agree with Wolf," I said. "I think we should go now."

Coleman seemed unconvinced, but not overridingly so.

"I guess it's okay," he said. "I can contact my friends later and make arrangements for the car at that time."

"I would be careful calling anyone for a while," Wolf said.

Coleman was staring at me. "You seemed very clear that going ahead was the right thing to do."

I told him exactly what I had seen.

He thought for a moment, looking away, then said, "Yeah, I get the same thing now. You know, it's a lot harder to follow your intuition when it means having to change plans."

"Yeah," I said.

"You know," Coleman added, "we're tuning in, following the Seventh Integration exactly. Too bad we don't have a copy of the next Integration."

I saw Wolf perk up.

"Oh," he said, tongue in cheek, "Wil and I stopped by a friend's place to get some food for his trip."

He was reaching under the seat, pulling out a folder.

"Surprise!" he quipped. "Our friend happened to have a copy of the Eighth Integration. Now, since you're so good at tuning in to your guidance, you can learn something else."

He handed the folder to Coleman. "You can learn to tune in to people."

THE ONENESS INTENTION.

As we began the two-hour trip to the airport, I wondered how we were going to find Rachel and Tommy. Wil knew they were headed to the city of St. Katherine in Egypt. But just where they were staying there was unknown.

"It's a small town," Wil had said. "You'll find them. Just pay attention. Something will happen."

I knew he was probably right. From the intuitions Coleman and I had experienced, we were definitely headed to the correct place. Egypt could be dangerous at times, but the government was usually friendly toward tourists, especially those who might be interested in a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai.

Coleman had put down the Doc.u.ment, so I grabbed it and began to read. As Wolf had hinted, the Eighth Integration said we would be led into another level of Connection with others, a level that would heighten our understanding of Conscious Conversation.

This stuff is coming fast now, I thought. Maybe Wil was right in saying we were beginning the downhill run through the remaining Integrations.

I reminded myself that the Eighth Insight of the old Prophecy had predicted we would learn to uplift others in conversation by intending to connect with and uplift their higher self or soul. This uplifting was intended to lift the other person into a higher consciousness, where, along with getting more insight into his or her own life, the person would be more likely to provide Synchronistic information that we individually needed.

At the time, there was some confusion about the mechanics of this procedure, but most times merely the intention worked. The people being uplifted would suddenly become more alert and seemingly gain access to an unconscious part of themselves. They would often preface their remarks by saying, "I don't know why I'm telling you this," or "I've never thought of this before, but ..." And then the information they presented would often be exactly what we needed to hear at the time.

I looked back at the pages in my hand and moved to the next pa.s.sage. It seemed to be saying that this uplifting could now be expanded, in light of the other Integrations, by consciously merging minds with the higher self of the other person. Merging minds?

At this point, I was interrupted in my reading as we entered the northern outskirts of Phoenix and began our own search for food. After about thirty minutes, we found a health food store where we stocked up. And as fortune would have it, immediately next door was a small shop where Coleman could buy more clothes.

Afterward, we took a back way to the airport, where Wolf pulled up very cautiously to the international concourse. We were all on the lookout for anything unusual and tried to be hypervigilant for any intuitions meant to guide our way. However, nothing of note happened, so Coleman and I jumped out and collected our gear.

Finally, I walked over to the window and shook Wolf's hand and thanked him.

"Get to Sister Mountain as soon as you can," he said cryptically. "You'll be shown what to do."

In less than an hour, we were on an airplane headed for Cairo, taxiing out to the runway. I checked my cell phone and found no messages, then quickly shut it off as the plane lifted into the air.

Coleman was already asleep, so I pulled out the Eighth Integration and began reading again. It went on to explain the pa.s.sage about merging minds by saying we could initiate this merging by applying what it called the "Oneness Intention."

This term, the Doc.u.ment went on, meant much more than the abstract idea, voiced by many religious traditions, that we are all one. It defined an entirely new way that humans could relate to one another, the effectiveness of which could immediately be proven to oneself. Further, the best way to understand this new way of relating was to look closely at the phenomenon of people finishing each other's sentences.

I thought about this for a moment. I'd always concluded that this ability resulted from how much time one spent with a particular person, primarily because it seemed so common among husbands and wives, executives and their secretaries, and roommates and office mates.

When I turned again to the Doc.u.ment, it said that while this ability is common, it could be more readily facilitated, even among strangers, by practicing the Oneness Princ.i.p.al, which was to go into every human interaction with the intention of joining higher minds.

Wait a minute, I thought, putting on the mental brakes. Would we really want to do that? I was suddenly feeling a real resistance to this idea. In fact, I was so perplexed by my reaction that I woke up Coleman and told him everything I'd read, and the trouble I was having with merging minds with others, especially strangers. Perhaps because the idea was planted, I couldn't help seeing him in a totally different light. In fact, he seemed to behave in a slightly different way, as though he was more thoughtful than before.

"As a guy with a strong ego myself," he said, "it comes to me that perhaps you don't like the idea of merging minds with other people because you're afraid they will pollute your thinking with gibberish."

I laughed, and then thought about what he was saying. Was that it? Did I just want to feel special and unique, and that led me to think merging minds with someone might dilute my creativity?

"On the other hand," he continued, "you can't deny that our group has been joined, in a way, already, and acting in unison. Remember how powerfully that was happening on Secret Mountain?"

I did remember. We were in that connected state for hours. And the fact was, I felt no diminishment or loss of energy from the Connection at all. If anything, I felt enhanced. We were somehow all coordinating our actions and decisions at light speed, like a flock of birds in flight do when they change directions at precisely the same time. And we experienced the same phenomenon at the homestead as well.

I looked at the Doc.u.ment again, and it clarified that the joining is not of egos but of the higher mind, which is linked with the Divine. To further explain, it said when two people merge in this manner, both feel enlarged because they have access to not just their own higher self, but to the other's higher consciousness as well. The net effect is to feel more clarity and guidance overall. The clarification made me feel better.

"Seems to me," Coleman continued, his eyelids looking heavy again, "that since it says you can prove the power of the Oneness Intention for yourself, you should just try it for a while." With that, he was suddenly asleep again.

Looking out the window, I mused over the succinctness of his suggestion. In fact, it sounded like something I might have said to myself, if he hadn't beaten me to it. Why not try it now? I thought. I quickly moved everything off my lap and walked up to the attendants' station to ask for some more water.

Only one of the attendants was there, an older Egyptian woman with short black hair, dressed in uniform, who had served us earlier. I decided to do just as the Doc.u.ment said. As I walked up, I silently affirmed the intention to join higher minds.

She immediately turned around. "Need a refill?"

"Yes, please," I replied, handing her my empty cup. "It's going to be a long flight, huh?"

"Yes, but it's not too bad. I crew this flight several times a week."

She was looking at my shoulder. "Is that for me?"

I looked down and realized that I still had the copy of the Doc.u.ment under my arm. I had placed it there when I was moving everything so I could get out of my seat, then forgot to put it back in my pack.

"Oh, no, it's just a copy of an old ... well, just something I brought with me by mistake."

"An old what?"

She looked at me with total earnestness, and I realized I had to tell the truth about it.