Chapter 13 - in which I finally meet Master Wu

I’m having this recurring dream – I’m standing on the edge of a huge precipice with someone – I can’t make out clearly who, which is bizarre as I must know this person really well because it’s my teacher – and I’m ready for the last lesson. Today’s the day when I get to say goodbye to the world as I knew it – to cut my ties by leaping into the void.

To a 3D rational mind that may look like suicide, but appearances can be deceptive. I have no intention of dying – quite the contrary – I’m leaping from the clifftop because it’s one of the most effective ways to say goodbye to the old me, the old world in which things seemed to matter, and to return to the quantum stream – in which there’s no up, no down, no gravity or weight as such – just presence and awareness. As long as I’m fully present in the moment I cannot die. I do not have to learn to fly or try to dematerialise because as soon as I sever my ties with physical reality I revert back to the wave form. I stop being potato or cabbage and become photon - until somewhere down stream my higher-self decides to re-emerge from the isness of the quantum stream, and that’s where my body will appear.

This ain’t anything new – shamans have been practising it since time immemorial, but seeing it as a more than vivid dream is certainly new for me – and indicates that my preparations for g-nome portal reconnection are a) going ok and b) amount to something similar to the old shamanic leap.

“I’ll have the electric blue one,” I tell Gill after flicking through her catalogue of beetles. Er... no idea why – I just feel drawn to it. Gill had told me to use my intuition in selecting my first set of wings. At first I’d assumed she was referring to some kind of plane or copter – then a catalogue of beetles appeared on my I-screen. I was kind of nonplussed – “Why would I want a beetle?” I’m thinking. Well the beetle, she informs me, is a great way of getting into the nitty gritty of3D reality to do some coding – adjusting the matrix, reprogramming the Seem of Is, as we call it.

As for the I-screen – that’s a nifty bit of g-nome technology, which like everything else they use is biological. So, it’s a kind of third eye display. If you have trouble visualising that – it’s like a dream screen – where you can turn your gaze inwards and daydream in high resolution whatever it is you’re being shown. And teachers at school used to tell us off for day-dreaming! If they’d only known...

But before I can get my wings I need to go for “combat training”, as I call it. Actually, there’s not going to be any fighting but I like to make things sound dramatic. Before proceeding I have to warn you, dear readers, that space and time as you know are relative terms. Once you’ve made the conscious decision to reconnect g-nome portal they become considerably more relative. So, if you find to your surprise that I’m now in a completely different country or town for my combat training, or the time of day is different, take a chill pill and repeat seven times “I’ve agreed to suspend my disbelief – it’s only story after all.” Now, in your heart you know that’s not true – that we’re in fact redefining reality much as Galileo or Christopher Columbus did, but that’s ok – tell the mind what it wants to hear and don’t fall behind if you can help it.

“Me?”

Good question. The part of me that would have freaked out – that would have said “What the hell am I doing in Manhattan when I live in Tunbridge Wells and er... how did I get here?” you know – that part of my brain – it’s getting kind of used to the fact that I’ll simply alpha it and put it into a “just accept this coz it’s not gonna make any sense whatsoever” frame of mind. So the mind is learning to let go of its old way of thinking. In fact, half the time I don’t initially notice, it’s only afterwards I start scratching my head and wondering – was I really in Manhattan just now? Well, once you realise that Faery comprises numerous interconnected realities, crossing from one to another becomes second nature. In actual fact, all realities are stacked right next to each other on a kind of shelf – like CDs on a disk changer, so crossing from one to another doesn’t involve a great journey. It’s more like cutting and pasting on your computer – you’re simply inserted into a parallel window. And, because all realities are one – nothing is created or destroyed – you’re just a transposition of yourself, like transposing music from one key to another, or translating from one language to another.

“I can handle that,” I like to affirm. It seems to work.

So I make my selection, and then the gnomiki reconnect me to g-nome.

Yes, I know, you’re not too clear on what g-nome might be. Me neither. Er, it’s like we’ve got this DNA stuff and our scientists thought a lot of it was “junk” serving no useful purpose, and they were right – it could serve no useless purpose in our 3D world of “what matters”, but charges up and electrifies vast areas of our conscious-awareness just as soon as we flip the switch and re-enter Faery’s quantum stream.

...Well that’s the theory anyway. Quite what Faery or the quantum stream may be I have little or no idea. Gill frequently tries to explain but I give up when I feel my eyes turning to marbles. As she herself says – these things just need to be experienced... Ever the practical beetle!

So here we are, preparing to embark on our first field mission into Faery with a brand new set of wings awaiting.

“Timing is the essence,” Gill tells me. This is because there are gateways... doorways from 3D that come and go, as the whole of reality is breathing, pulsating, swaying. There are countless cycles at work – the most important being the lunar cycle, but the sun, the planets, stars, seasons and many more all play a part. Fortunately I’m not the one doing the timing calculations – that’s up to the gnomiki. They’re perfectionists and pinpoint the best moment to flip the switch. In fact, they say that with perfect timing anyone can reconnect to Faery single-handedly – it’s never ceased to be our natural state of being – we have intuitive knowledge of how to do this and a kind of magnetic attraction that can overcome 3D’s gravitational field. But I’m doing it with the best support available, and an electric blue beetle lined up, waiting to take me to infinity.

Gill gives me a list of recommendations which, though not strictly necessary, are known to make the process somewhat easier. Salt baths two or three times a week, a veggie diet that doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement, but I cut down my meat intake as a gesture of compliance, regular exercise and meditation classes twice a week with Master Wu.

Master Wu?

Yes, I know, you couldn’t make it up, could you? but Master Wu really exists in a fashion of sorts. I go to a beaten up alley in downtown Manhattan, climb up a rickety staircase on the outside of the building and enter a corridor that doesn’t appear to be on any floor in particular. There I find apartment number 17 and ring the bell. A moment later the door opens a chink. “Master Wu?”

“Yes, come in. Not a word please.”