Chapter 6 - in which actions speak louder than words

...but before Chumba Wumba can say another word or Fidgy Temoral for that matter, story imperceptibly shifts back into gear and on it streams.

Gill shrugs, takes a deep breath, then flies up into the air and engages in what looks like a display of aerial acrobatics. My eyes are glued to her and my mind completely lets go of whatever I was just thinking about. Something inexplicable is happening – Gill appears to be flying more and more slowly around the room until she’s just hovering in the air – and I can see her individual wingbeats, like time has slowed down or I’ve speeded up. I’m completely riveted. Gill is now between wingbeats, frozen in mid-air, and it’s like the safety catch has been released – I move around the room and inspect the action-still from every angle, taking it all in. It’s only after peering at a strange looking form for a minute or two that click – I realise I’m examining my own face.

I know you’re probably expecting more hyper-ventilation and melodramatics, but no – it doesn’t happen that way. I’m so much more in the mind of the observer that I no longer attach great importance to the strangeness of being able to view my self. I hover over to the mirror on the wall hoping to catch sight of who or what I am, but it’s like a solar wind repels me. Ah... I hear the message as it trickles through, that I have to look within to see my Self.

Look within? I’m not into all that inward gazing stuff. I don’t do meditation. Never could see the point. Sitting there falling asleep for ten minutes. No noticeable result. Look within? – I wouldn’t know how to if you paid me... I’m thinking, and while doing so I notice a kind of itchy-scratchy sensation “inside me” – but not a place I can imagine being anatomically possible. It seems to be too far from any known organ or limb – and I don’t mean too far in one particular direction – curiouser and curiouser – as I pay more attention to this itchy-scratchy sensation I feel myself reversing into a world of sensation, a world of feeling, a world that opens up more and more, wider and wider the deeper I reverse, until I finally decide to turn my gaze around to see where I’m going.

Jaw dropping – I was expecting to see the inside of my body – tissue, organs, blood pumping as that’s where the itchy-scratchy sensation seemed to be taking me, but no – far from it – I’m viewing multiple... I’m not sure what – screens, images or realities –all of which are directly ahead of me in different directions – like the spokes of a wheel with me at the centre. Somehow I’m able to view them simultaneously in parallel. As soon as I turn my attention to one of them it fills my line of vision and I’m completely immersed in it, but with the scratch-itchy sensation persisting I’m easily able to return to the hub were all are visible at once.

In one I see scenes that look like my life on Earth – completely unremarkable – I can zoom forwards or back in what we’d call time. In the second I’m flying through what appears to be space; in the third I’m the size of a beetle seeing things as only a beetle can and does; in the fourth I’m a plant – a young tree in an amazing forest – I’m fairly sure it’s not on Earth but who knows – it may be Earth at another time or in another dimension. In the fifth I’m in a bubbly world of energy forms that bear little or no relation to matter and form as we know them – I love that place – it feels like home! In the sixth I appear to be a road junction in South London, not far from Clapham Common – and in the seventh I’m microbial and it’s very mathematical.

Feeling them in parallel is not just a turn of phrase – I mean it quite literally. All seven are different ways of viewing and experiencing one and the same – the isness of the quantum stream.

Do I have the faintest clue what the “isness of the quantum stream” means – or how to put it in plain English. No. Most definitely not, but the amazing thing about being here within Self is that I simply know what is, without needing to trouble how I know it, or why, or anything else. It’s a nice sensation.

I know, teachers at school use to tell us not to use the word “nice”, but really there is no other word. It isn’t pretentious. It isn’t spectacular or remarkable, nor amazing or delightful. It’s just plain old “nice” – good and simple.

This realisation that I don’t have to try and be clever – don’t have to try and explain everything to myself or to others, that I can just experience things the way they are allows another gate to open in the inner-mind and now I’m face to face with what can only be described as my true Self.

“Hello!” I smile radiantly.

“Hello!” my Self smiles back – no less radiantly.

“It’s been, er, a while, hasn’t it.”

“Yes. I’m glad you’ve made it.”

“Well I had a little help you know – Roger – Gill...”

“Not to mention everyone else you’ve ever met along the way, including your terrestrial family.”

“What? They were helping me find my way back to you?”

“Yep. They were doing more than anyone else really, by mirroring everything you preferred not to see, experience or know about yourself.”

“What – you mean there were things I didn’t want to know about you?”

“Yes, many things that didn’t fit your view of the world, or your view of your place in the world. There were things that you preferred not to see because they reminded you too much how you missed being apart from me, so even when your family and friends were driving you to distraction, they were still helping you deal with the million dollar question.”

“...which is?”

“How to be your own story.”

“Story? I wasn’t being my story.”

“Yes, I noticed. You found it difficult didn’t you. You chose instead to be a version of other people’s stories – a composite of story clichés.”

“Oh – that doesn’t sound right.”

“No – but that too brought you back to me – for you never, never for one moment stopped feeling who and what you truly are – or – I am.”

“But what about my story?”

“Well – you kept putting it off. I’ll write it when I finish my maths project, you told yourself, when I finish school, when I finish university, when I get a new job, when I get married, divorced, take a year out, retire, when I’ve had my heart operation.”

“I haven’t had a heart operation or a half of what you’re talking about.”

“No Josh, but that’s where you were heading.”

“And it was all pre-determined?”

“Only if you stayed on that storyless path, for as long as you were on that path you were fixed in linear time. You could bend the course a little to port or starboard, but the general direction was fairly predictable.”

“Oh. And what’s happening now?”

“What’s happening...?  You tell me.”

“I’ve come back to...” I’m not quite sure how to put it.

“Yes, you’ve come back to Is – your multi-dimensional allness. You’ve rediscovered Faery.”

“Amazing. I... it seemed impossible... I thought I’d never make it.”

“Yes, you were good at persuading yourself it couldn’t be done – because you didn’t really want to come back – you were having too much fun experiencing Is-not.”

“Is that what you call our reality?”

“What’s in a name?”

“True. Speaking of which Merry, I can call you that can’t I?”

“Of course.”

“Nothing’s going to be the same again, is it?”

“Was it ever?”

“No, not really.”

The words, the words – what do they convey? Tune in dear reader if you will. Tune in to your own Self if you wish to know what I’m feeling, experiencing at this moment out of time, for all is one... and so am I... and so are We.

Take your time... enjoy this moment if you will. Take your time...

“You’d better be going. Can’t keep Gill hanging around forever.”

“Oh – I forgot.”

I really have forgotten. At this moment the world that we think of as “reality” has ceased to exist, quite literally. It only pops back into being as I step through the doorway into one or other versions of my existence.

“I’ve given you something to take back with you. A little gift,” says Merry as I’m leaving. This leaves me momentarily bewildered as I can’t imagine how I can carry anything back to outer self physically, but already I feel a distant yet noticeable sensation – not the scratchy-itchiness that helped guide me inwards – more a tingly-bubbly one leading me back to the outer-self.

I’m watching Gill flying round in circles and I can’t for the life of me recall what’s going on, or where I’ve just been, but the feeling that has brought me back out remains constant and I look down at my hands which are now, I notice, clenched shut. I open them and see in each a pearl. The link has been established. The circle is complete.

“Thanks Merry,” I think inwardly, and immediately recollect all that I’ve just experienced.

 “Ah...” I murmur as Gill settles down again on the chair opposite. Gazing intently at me she evaluates my shift of awareness... content.