Part 9 (1/2)
Suddenly, we could hear the roar of a helicopter flying toward us. When it was almost directly overhead, it tilted in our direction, and I could see several men in the back compartment. One of them was Peterson. He recognized me and did a double take, just as several more shots cut up the ground closer to us. Realizing what was happening, Peterson began motioning to the pilot, and the helicopter sped ahead and buzzed the Apocalyptics on the overhang. The firing stopped.
”Let's go!” Wil yelled, and we all ran until we came to the first red rocks of the next hill. Once there, we looked as the helicopter circled the extremists a few more times and then left.
”How did the chopper know we needed help?” Hira asked.
”They didn't know,” I said. ”They just happened to be flying by.”
She gave me a puzzled look.
”It was a Synchronicity,” I clarified. ”We were protected.”
THE GREAT COMMISSIONING.
After three hours of tough hiking, we made it to the first paved road. Earlier, we had waited a long time for Coleman, thinking he might try to get across to where we were. We even thought about going back to look for him in case he was hurt, but we found our way blocked by a host of police cars and Forest Service jeeps racing in a cloud of dust toward the mountain. We were all tired and shaken except for Wil, who was buoyant about what had happened.
”You know,” he said, at one point, ”all that happened was showing us exactly what we needed to see. I haven't seen a group of people spontaneously open up to an experience like that ever. The Doc.u.ment says we can't handle violent ideologies alone, that we need to have a Breakthrough and find our Protection, and that's exactly what happened.”
I nodded, too fatigued to comment.
”There will be plenty of time to rest in Jerome,” he added. ”And I have a feeling Coleman is okay. We'll find him.”
Jerome, I knew, was an old mining town west of Sedona, now favored by artists.
”Why there?” I asked.
He gave me a smile. ”That's where the Hopis are waiting for us.”
Without talking any more, we caught a ride with a rancher to the nearest pay phone where Wil called Wolf, and within about twenty minutes, he arrived in the same Mercedes. As we all piled in, he caught my eye and grinned at my dirty clothes.
”Have any visions?” he asked, snickering.
I nodded, then collapsed into the backseat. Wolf took us up to the hilly mining town and then past it about a mile to a small homestead. The house was adobe, covered by a new tin roof with solar panels built in. Across from it was a pole barn and corral, holding three well-groomed horses. A flock of chickens scattered as we drove up.
We were greeted by two other Native Americans, an older woman of about eighty and a teenage boy who looked fifteen. They quickly served us a huge meal of corn fritters, chicken, and guacamole with onions. In an hour we had showered, eaten, and sleepily erected our tents, barely saying anything. By sunset we had all turned in.
I slept without dreaming and didn't awaken until a ray of sunlight shone through the flap of the tent and hit my face. A chorus of birds sang in the small cottonwoods over my head. As I pulled on my boots and crawled out, I saw a fire and sat down beside it. For the first time, I noticed that the landscape sloped away from the house to an acre-size pond bordered by another very large cottonwood. Several crows cawed from a rocky area beyond.
Looking out at the landscape, I felt as though the past several days had been a dream, and I was back to my old self. I deeply needed the cup of coffee the young boy handed to me.
”What's your name?” I asked him.
”Tommy,” he said in perfect English.
I nodded toward the older woman who was standing nearby. ”Is she your grandmother?”
”Yes.”
”What's her name?”
”Grandmother.”
”That's her only name?”
He nodded.
Just then she called to him and he ran over to her and hung on to her neck, beaming back at me proudly.
I sweetened my coffee with some honey from a jar sitting in a basket near the fire and then sipped it slowly, not wanting to think about our experiences. I knew there would be plenty of time for that later. Right now, I wanted only to sit and appreciate the simple beauty of the place and feel the normalcy for a while. A crow suddenly flew over the corral and landed on a post nearby to stare at me. I shook my head and looked away.
”Up already?” Rachel abruptly asked from behind me. The timbre of her voice was slightly different from when we were on the mountain.
”Yeah,” I responded, standing up. When our eyes met, I blushed for some reason and avoided her eyes again, as if we had just had a one-night stand or something.
She sat down on a burlap cus.h.i.+on near the fire and the boy served her coffee as well. Reaching into her sweater pocket, Rachel pulled out a dollar bill, which he at first refused to take, glancing at his grandmother. Rachel insisted and he smiled widely and stuffed it into his jeans.
As I watched Rachel, some of our experiences on the mountain forced their way back into my consciousness, at least intellectually. I knew I'd experienced what could only be called a Divine Connection, and real Protection, along with a deep interaction with Rachel and the others. But I knew, as well, that much more had occurred that I couldn't recall.
I remembered Wil saying it was a glimpse into what could be, one that we would have to work to regain. I still didn't know what that meant. After a moment, I let go of all the thoughts, suddenly feeling vulnerable, and began to consider leaving. My logic told me enough was enough. A group of extremists had just tried to kill us, and even though we had escaped, why tempt fate any longer?
Suddenly, Rachel slid her cus.h.i.+on closer to me and said, ”All that occurred back there was important.”
”Really,” I replied, not sure I wanted to hear it.
She gave me an upbeat look. ”The Doc.u.ment says that the opening to the G.o.d Connection happens much more frequently than most people think. It's also structured into the nature of the Universe and into how our minds work.”
Her smile was beguiling, so I flowed with her train of thought and considered the work of Jung again, wis.h.i.+ng Coleman were here. The Swiss psychiatrist, I knew, had discovered more than the phenomenon of Synchronicity. He was also famous for his notion that our brains and minds were structured by archetypes.
He thought humans, for instance, were able to learn to walk without thinking about every individual muscle involved because the pattern of muscle coordination necessary for this activity was already built into the structure of our brains-contained in what he called preestablished archetypal pathways that were genetically pa.s.sed down.
To walk, we had only to see others walking and try it ourselves, which fired up the pattern of neural pathways that help us learn the activity quickly. Because these pathways are basically the same in everyone's brain, learning to walk feels exactly the same to all human beings.
Jung argued that spiritual development was structured in the same manner, in a latent pathway that was waiting for us to fire it up. And again, this experience feels identical for all of us.
”So much happened yesterday,” I said finally. ”It's hard to get a handle on it. And I can't seem to get back that feeling we had on the mountain.”
She looked at me with excitement. ”Yes, but the Fifth Integration says we don't have to remember it. We just have to keep on integrating the remaining steps and we'll rise back into it-you know, the Rise to Influence the Doc.u.ment talks about. The only part of the experience that we can keep now, as part of the Fifth Integration, is the sense of love and protection.”
”That's what Wil said,” I remarked, nodding for her to tell me more.
”The Fifth Integration is completing what the Fourth set up,” she continued. ”If we intend to hold the truth and stay in alignment in the face of the most dangerous ideological untruth, something opens in our brains to honor that. We know we can't face this kind of danger by ourselves merely with our own strength of ego. No one can. Yet that recognition fires up a pathway that's already there, and we experience a Breakthrough-one that gives us a Divine Connection, and the premonitions and Synchronicity necessary to be protected.”
I nodded. The feeling of Protection was coming back to me. Until now, horrible things happened to people at random because we didn't have the consciousness necessary to hear the warnings that could steer us clear of such danger.
If the Doc.u.ment was correct, Protection seemed to be a natural part of our innate spiritual ability, growing, I supposed, out of the Law of Connection. With this thought, an image came to me of the future. Would humanity someday be so aware of our premonitions that we would all know, for instance, to leave a city for higher ground just before a tsunami or earthquake arrived, just as the animals do?
Rachel was staring at me.