Well at least some of it.  Like most maps it folds out and the more you pull it apart the more you see.  Like any country or city anywhere there’s pockets of fascination on side streets and alleyways that main street would rather you’d ignore.  I’d had the chance, the privilege if you like, of uncovering the hidden legend that lies beyond faith and doubt.  On two occasions believe it or not.  The first was around that thirty five mark, when I was still seduced by the charms and distractions of youth & moderate good looks and assumed life was a good luck charm hanging around my neck.  I’d been dealt a good hand by most standards: loving indulgent parents who let me grow and make my own mistakes.  A public education accessible with a minimum of effort leading to a career that kept me occupied but short of the stress that stokes the anxieties and addictions we see all around.  Maybe I was just calm.  Or blissfully ignorant of my white boy bourgeois privilege.

     I was relaxing in one of my favourite patios, Sunday morning in spring, reading the paper and sipping my pistachio latte.  The group of seniors beside me were chatting away and I overheard one guy saying that ‘you might as well enjoy every day as it could well be your last.’  I joked that on a day like today that seemed a long way off.  The man, quite dapper and laid back I thought, replied ‘Maybe for you young fella’ and we all chuckled.  Not long after I remember some tedious work that had to be attended to before Monday and thought that if I got to it soon my afternoon could be free for some playtime with Amanda, who had hinted her own schedule might be cleared by three or so.

     As I was crossing the street a sudden burst of horn honking surprised me and I collapsed.  A bit of overreaction you might say, but it was then my heart arrhythmia was discovered.  By an off duty paramedic who just happened to have a defibrillator in his car.  He said I was out for about two minutes but let me tell you it felt like about two hours.  I was up above the rooftops looking down at some bundle on the sidewalk.  I was hovering but itching to fly away.  Who knows why, maybe I sensed my time was limited.  I thought I knew my neighborhood but this was more like a continuous drone shot with something close to 360 degree vision, an eagle with eyes all round the head.

    To say I was jazzed, buzzed, grinning from ear to ear, it all falls short of the mark.  I’d known of the shocks and surprises of the near death experience from a couple of articles and docs, but never thought it would happen to me.  Like those people who say to the media that this neighborhood is so quiet and friendly a triple murder was just unimaginable, my life was comfortable and predictable, the paychecks taking care of the bills and necessities while the weekend were reserved for a riot of fun.  Psilocybin had given me a taste of wafting around the room while the house plants oozed and murmured their so far secret language.  But this, this was something else.  The freedom of flight matched with the magic of thought.

     Ben on the west coast surfing and his endless endorphin thrill. My envy leaked out for a moment and I was there beside him feeling the energy of his full flight.  Then Claudia, obsessed with hiking all the trails on the continent, last heard from somewhere in Georgia by text, I found her cooking over an open fire, waiting for the rain that not arrived.  Not that I was looking, I was suddenly there, the fleeting image of the last party we’d connected at, her laughing at yet another of my investment scams.  Of course it was legit, but life on the island of short selling always looked dubious to the uninitiated.  She thought I’d go blind from excessive screen time and I suspected broken ankles would leave her as protein in some bear’s dinner.  Busted ribs and dislocated shoulders were the norm in her crowd, mine was more all night cokehead craziness.  Ah, the white stuff, many a trader’s downfall, many a marriage split asunder.

     I had the peculiar feeling she knew I was there squatting beside her, though how I knew was as much a mystery as the fuel behind my sudden spurt of flight.  I wondered about brother Bob.  I assigned him a place in heroin hell, such had been his habit.  We’d more or less given up on him years before his passing.  If you had him stay over he’d steal something and be gone.  Once but never again despite his promises.  Well the mere pinch of a thought and I was standing watching him at someone’s bedside, commiserating with the patient.  The body language spoke of the heart of compassion, something I recognized from an ex who worked with quadraplegics.  But Bob, a lifelong major in me economics, that was a surprise.

     When he left what I thought was a room, he turned and said ‘You’re here too?’  I replied ‘Just on a flying visit brother.  You dreaming?  Think I’m in the midst of an nde.  Ah, you’ll be fading soon then.  You’re look like you’re doing well.  Yeah, after cold-turkeying myself in some shabby shack somewhere, they got me fixed up and counselling other unfortunates.  Where?  Here.  This is part detox clinic and part nursing home, spirit style.  I get it, I think.  Will I remember this?  You came once before in a dream, do you remember that?  I guess not.  Is it time for me to fade away.  Could be, but I’ll tell you this is not your transition time, that’s way down the line.  How do you know?  I can tell by your light, it’s way too bright.  This some kind of warning bell then?  Probably not.  More like an introduction to eternity.  Why? Why not?  Maybe you’ll get on network tv and blab incoherently about it.

     He excused himself and walked off. Turning with a smirk he added Make sure and wear a bow tie.  I was waiting for the apology for stealing my fancy camera way back when but my interview was over.  I flew over some very impressive mountains without actually thinking of anything and then up through some fluffy clouds and then felt a sort of energy fade and soon I was back in a body being driven somewhere.

     Spent about three days resting and being tested and then was released with pills and a warning to take it easy.  So far so good.  Thinking it over as I gambled with educated guesses, I saw I could make a few pals over cocktails in trendy bars, some of them svelte babes taking a break from the all-conquering career.  No more the models and flight attendants you read about as a teenager, these were MBA warriors, too smart to take a bath in some schmoozer’s promises.  Inner directed and always a girl pal lawyer who could set them straight on any bullshitese.  And in that line my nde talk was received with interest that was more than polite.  ‘I want to hear more,’ some would say crossing their legs.  ‘My cousin in Colorado went through that,’ said another.  ‘Flipped her double and then she went Baptist and then Buddhist and then, what was the other thing?  Heck it’s ways back now.  I did an ayahuasca weekend and saw a whole bunch of weird shit.’  Such is Manhattan happy hour these days.  Women with other women who get artificial insemination and wind up with twins.  The challenge of interchangeable genders. Lacrosse leagues where androgeny is a given.  Gay, that’s so five minutes ago.

     The excitement and sharing it slowly faded into the wallpaper of the everyday.  Some months later my old college bud Adam took a nose dive while working on his thesis.  The pills and booze recipe fell short and a rooming house neighbour found him and called the paramedics in time.  He called me a week or two later and wanted to spout.  We’d been long distance pals for years and I’d always admired his tenacity in shouldering poverty to pursue the dream.  Lecturing kept him afloat as he polished his prose and fantasized about a professorship at some bespoke college, St John’s being a first choice.  So I fly in, booked a room nearby and had him for dinner, spending my ill-gained earnings on a first class meal and drinks.  About four bourbons in he starts on his wild and crazy escapade while out for the count, maybe two hours, but it felt like a lifetime to him.  Knowing of my own heart stopping excitement he figured me for a welcoming audience, which I was.  It was more of the same and I nodded and chuckled as he went from shocked disbelief to amazement and back again.  His hero and thesis subject Wallace Stevens had been his first port of call.  How had he found him?  Why him and not his parents or grandparents, all passed and supposedly resting in peace?  There he was, so he said, sitting in the great man’s office, who’d been enjoying the sunbeams pouring through his prodigiously large window.  There he was apologizing for interrupting.  There he was explaining himself and pouring on the praise.  Stevens had been genial and indulgent, and spoke, when asked, of his ongoing interactions with angels.

     And how on earth could he add any of this to his thesis?  What would be the point?  No-one would believe him and many would think him delusional.  He briefly mentioned an ex who’d been somehow struck by lightning and almost lost her job through incessant rapturous babbling about all she’d seen.  They’d long since broken up but having no resentment issues he’d been happy to indulge her in what seemed like dreams at the time.  Now he knew different. No, he answered my challenge, they were not about to start a discussion group.  How about a secret society then.  I’d pitch in the start up money.  Swimming in it with no end in sight I couldn’t see why not.  Rochelle maybe but not him.

      We shared the alarming and exciting details of our trips and joked about forming a secret society ourselves.  That depression had lead him down that path seemed not to be bothering him. Although I was looking for signs:  The twitch, the downcast eye, the quick change of subject.  But no, he felt enlivened, emboldened, perhaps the receptive audience of one.  The relief of reassurance.  No, you’re not going crazy.  Maybe it’s one of those shared hallucinations like that psilocybin trip in the snowstorm.  Cross country skis, appropriate outerwear, flask of rum that we barely tasted.  The snowflakes as tiny rainbows rippling the air and revealing another world that we both fell into, that fairyland of little, umm, beings dancing by.  And that was long before those DMT elves dotted the psychic landscape.  Let’s face it, we’d been bonded and though we’d tried to break free, each on our own paths hundreds of miles apart, the glue would not give way.

     Such was our chatter.  I could tell when we got to the pricey brandy, me assuring him the tab was taken care of, that no one was leaving. We sashayed to my suite and had not trouble foregoing the customary washroom rituals.  Nice couch you got here was his last remark.  The breakfast buffet and the young lady replenishing our coffees more than pleasant. Unable to get her number Ben scribbled his on a napkin, commenting ‘Anytime Emmy’.  Both being beanpoles I could see the attraction.  They even did a quick rendition of Randy Newman’s ‘Don’t want no short people around here’.  Standing up was something of a challenge but we pulled it off.

     I drove him back to his apartment in one of those college town genteel/shabby neighborhoods, return the rental and waited, in complete hangover denial, for my shuttle.  A month or so later they were taken out by a skidding truck.  Just like that.  Was it fate?  Maybe part of God’s plan, as one relative of Emmy’s told me at the celebration of life.  They had enough time for two dates and a family dinner.  The devastation was palpable.  I wasn’t in the mood and tried to let it bounce off of me.       

      Jabbering on about the wonders of being out of body didn’t seem like a smart option, so I limited myself to fond recalls of our college years, edited for family viewing.  Ditto for the Wallace Stevens connection, although his advisor Beatrice whispered some mystifying lines in my ear as I inched towards the door.  You’ll not be surprised to hear I soon began dreaming of them, a couple in some condo serving me tea and cakes.  There was talk of tragedy and taking it all in.  Emmy felt it was all fated, their meeting and their passing.  Adam was keen to let his love of Emmy carry him through the mystery of it all.  Plus he wanted to finish up his thesis. He’d been told that institutions of higher learning existed there and teaching positions were available.  That pleased him as he couldn’t think of anything else to occupy himself with.  The afterlife myths and legends he’d studied early on in cultural anthropology didn’t seem like much help here.  It was all so very human.  Emmy held his hand and said she wanted to agree but couldn’t make up her mind.  Waitressing had been a placeholder until law school became affordable.  Didn’t seem to be much use for the law here.

     Yup, that was a dream.  Talk about detailed recall.  Amazed, I wrote it down on a lunch break, which for me was a stroll down the block to a diner with great smoked meat on onion buns with delicious homemade coleslaw.  Never could squat in front of the screen all day, no matter how much money there was to be made.  Plus I was still cocky from scoring a bundle on the previous year’s flurry of short selling and got out in time.

     Life as we l know it went on, the energies of forward motion eddying around the rocks of tragedy.  Okay, I read that somewhere and thought to regurgitate it.  Sounds good though, huh?  I invested, made some profit, took some falls, found some interesting dinner date material.  Tried not to obsess on that bumpy ride with my heart.  What’s that line between obsession and denial?  When you find it do let me know.  Shifting sands my friend shifting sands.  Even here where answers lie all around you and everyone’s got an angle: the Jesus angle, the Krishna angle, the smiling Buddha angle, the ‘science-solves-it’ angle, the God angle, the ‘this don’t prove nothin’ angle’, the ‘who-cares-it’s-all-fun-and-games’ angle.  You hear it all, one way or another, usually after you give up your earthly habits, which for me was investing and accumulating.

     What, I said, no money, no credit, no bank accounts, no tax havens, no real estate?  Nope not a one.  Yeah there’s homes of all shapes and sizes, museums, libraries, churches, temples, theatres, stadiums, research facilities, but it does not require purchase, merely interest and a love of creation.  Space? We got loads of that.  Homelessness, none of that, except for the nature loving hermits in the forests and mountains who can’t do without the quiet life in nature.

     You’re probably guessing that another heart attack was my one way ticket to eternity, though that’s always up for debate around here.  I was walking past a construction site when an unbelievably loud metallic clang rang out.  I was already on edge after a phone call with, let’s call her a meet-up candidate, pushing for a paternity test.  Next thing I knew I was up above the buildings looking down at a bump on the sidewalk, some poor slob the worse for drink I guessed, you see them all over here.  When the paramedics turned the lump over and I could see a pale me being schlepped into the van, I knew the game was up.  What I didn’t know was this: another game was beginning.

     And that’s the game I’m still playing.  With considerably more sophistication I might add.  Sure I  got off to a good start with my surprise spurt of flying about, but my adjustment period was only a tad shorter than average, whatever average was.  My guide assured me that I was adapting well.  Guides you may ask, where did I find him?  Well he bumped, carelessly on purpose as it turned out, into me at the Stock Exchange.  I’d gone to satisfy my curiosity that it was still there and functioning.  And it was!  Like nothing had changed.  All these dead traders carrying on as usual.  I’d already been to a couple of casinos with similar results, people going through the motions, pretending, hmm, to some kind of pleasure that might permeate their obsessions.  He apologized for his carelessness and then asked for directions to someplace I hadn’t heard of.  We ended up going for lattes nearby.  He acted like he was a bit of a newbie himself, asking questions that verged on dumb.  Had I checked out churches and museums?  How about sports stadiums and arenas?  I had not, but he assured me they were much the same.  Full of folk following their habits as if their transitions were nothing but a minor annoyance.  An irritating hurdle blocking their pleasures or devotions.  And speaking of pleasures had I been alerted to all the casual sex around?  Talk about meet-up culture. 

     Nothing offensive or sleazy, just gals trying to make a meaningful connection, assuming or maybe just hoping, that things could go more smoothly up here.  Maybe I thought the same, recalling how income and status were really the hidden motivators.  Funny part was, both them were named Melissa and made no bones about what exactly was required.  The hungers of appetite, the fires of desire.  We met, we were intimate and we parted making vague plans.  And here it’s the transition stories that are frequently, if not always, traded.  Rather than how they escaped their family/small town/religion it’s more accident/disease/dope/depression.  Somewhere on that spectrum.   My own libido seemed to be lagging behind and I seemed reluctant to lay catch up.  Not sure why.

     Thus I tried not to be thrilled at the prospect, and accord with his measure of disapproval.  Or what seemed like disapproval.  Maybe I wanted a pat on the back for admirable restraint.  Maybe it was a test.  See if I was a prospect for his brand of sacred.  They were always looking for new recruits back on earth, so why would they give up here.  We were all in some kind of heaven but maybe theirs was the deluxe package.  Another habit forming activity maybe?  Well it was a test, but of another kind.  He played his cards so carefully I took ages to catch on.  Of course, he wasn’t the newbie he acted like.  He’d been around the block a couple of times, to say the least.  When I called him out on it he chuckled: ‘Okay, you got me, I’m a spy in the house of love’.  Then I responded that it sounded like a book or a song, and he chuckled again, replying ‘Both actually’.

     Long story short he got me working with traders.  Successful ones with guilt complexes.  He trained me on how to tune into their thoughts and see ‘the pause’ as he called it, where they justified their endless accumulation of wealth and their surreptitious use of tax havens.  Then he showed me how to insert the various charitable options at their fingertips.  All that green renewable stuff I’d shrugged off myself.  Then the homeless funds and affordable housing plans.  Then the underground railroads for oppressed minorities in authoritarian states.  More than a few wealth accumulators could be reached in this way, especially the ones who valued a life of spontaneous travel over collections of possessions and homes.  And a few who wanted to wreck the expectations of their spoiled brat kids, make them sweat or even sue for their trust fund goodies.

     First you get them to bookmark some of the deserving websites and then later some vagrant oh-hell- what’s-it-matter clicks and bob’s your uncle.  Sure this process took months to master, but his penchant for the even distribution of wealth was infectious.  He claimed to be the Mrs. Dalloway of charity streams.  The thrill of organizing a party for money.  Let’s throw it up in the air and make sure the right people catch it.

     Even when I was ‘alive’, as I used to call it, the tilted playing field of wealth distribution seemed grossly unfair, but I never was able to see a realistic way to change it.  Other than occasional donations to a local food bank, usually after a week of smart trades, which was not, to be honest, every week.  It takes years to learn that dancing with the market is smarter than trying to direct it.  The market does not take orders.  It charts its own course and doesn’t give a shit what you think.  About anything.  You might as well try to cage the wind.  Which some do of course.  And do it for years until they catch on.  I know, I played the game that way, certain my smarts were honed to a fine edge.

     Claude, as he liked to be called, though I have my doubts, having trained me to infiltrate the thought processes of others for the benefit of many, asked if I wanted to up my game.  Liking the notion of a challenge in this world where there often seemed to be none, so much falling into your lap with little or no effort, I said Sure, show me.

     Well Claude had this ability to shift in a flash.  I was still at the stage of thinking and planning, but he just went there.  With me in tow.  A dark neighborhood with abandoned buildings from the century before that someone had made a half-hearted effort to upgrade with second rate materials and shoddy workmanship.  My first thought was the entire place should be razed and rebuilt.  Inside what might have been, once upon a time, a small commercial enterprise with offices and storage areas, were tough looking hombres hunched over their work, which seemed to involve the use of keyboards and screens of a quaint vintage, like those companies that suffer along with ancient software, convinced it saves money.  I looked about for rolodexes and metal file cabinets.  It reminded me of some movie where the bureaucracy of some authoritarian state pursued its nefarious activities while their society went on regardless.  It was bizarre, Kafkaesque and verging on the ridiculous.

     Claude asked for my impressions.  I replied ‘You’re kidding right?’  He smiled ‘Only slightly’.  These folk are demented.  Psychic slaves of some kind.  Makes the stock exchange look positively sane.  What the hell are they up to?  Compiling reports on files that no-one can find?  Claude chuckled, Nice try.  I wondered out loud why none of the drones could see us.  Were they that focused on their work?  No, Claude had thrown some kind of invisibility shield around us.  But, he added, the overseers are more deviously talented and will likely sense our presence.  If they come around.  There could be a battle of wills, he smirked as if relishing the prospect.  Some Disney-style fireworks?  He nodded.  We moved down dark hallways, walking not floating.  Claude advised that the vibration was too low to permit any kind of flight.  I glanced at all the closed doors as we passed, feeling like I did not want to go in anyway.  Immediately I recalled breaking into an abandoned mansion in our neighborhood as kids, set off in its own little forest.  It was excitingly scary and full of closed doors we daren’t tried to open as we crept about whispering.

     Out of nowhere a hunchbacked ogre confronted us and demanded our immediate departure from the premises.  Although a walking cliché straight from central casting I thought it smarter not to laugh derisively and looked to Claude for direction.  He seemed to grow about a foot in height, looming over the little guy, who, in turn, hissed his disapproval.  Yes, hissed.  Then he turned his attentions to me, the poor fool who’d come along for the ride.  I based my calculations on some tacky horror novel I’d been given years before by some Stephen King fan.  But much to my disappointment there was no invading hoard of zombies about to overrun us.  The cartoon ogre did not disappoint:  a growly hiss with green smoke as breath was projected at me.  I couldn’t say it hurt but it did cause something like discomfort and I felt that there was more in store should I resist.  Claude suddenly took a swipe at the decayed remains of the head and the little fella screeched and ran off.

     Shrinking back to normal Claude commented: You see what we’re up against?.  I nodded.  He’ll be back with reinforcements.  We ducked into an empty room, cold and damp and fit only for shivering. He launch into this: “A quick backgrounder:  these minions busy at work are, as you guessed, not doing much of anything, putting together reports and reordering files on non-existent issues.  The point is to get them on board with the dark agenda their elders are fully committed to.  They start out as timid, obedient slaves to authority, any authority really, any hierarchy that loves to hover over their flock and feed off their fears.  Convinced that staying within prescribed boundaries and obeying the kind of rules that keeps society functioning smoothly, they die, as we all do, and are most comfortable in a situation that replicates their earthly behaviours.  Their fears have often shifted down to outright paranoia and are easily persuaded to join the fight against the degenerating chaos of internationalism, race mixing, unfettered individualism and pretty much anything that can be portrayed as anarchic chaos.

     He went on citing the angels of our better nature, the brotherhood of enlightened beings who were guiding us, step by painful step, to that paradise on earth that would be available to all, not just some version of the elect or elite.  That tower of babel could be rebuilt as some luxury condo for every race, creed, colour, gender and species.

     So these trolls are being whipped into shape?  Indeed they were.  Many would end up as dark spirits glomming onto politicians, business, military and religious leaders, pushing their tendencies to tribalism, nationalism, any kind of separatism, repression of dissent and free thinking, all the local potentates that see the brotherhood of man as a threat to their zones of power and the emancipation of women as a fate worse than death.  Yes I got the picture Claude.  The kind of folks that assume kindness and compassion is for the weak kneed and foolish.

    I’d assumed we were safe in this decrepit room, plaster peeling and floorboards squeaking, but a rather impressive gentleman appeared at our side, his business suit and tie a little worse for wear.  Genial and almost gentle he assured us that a decent tailor was hard to come by in these parts, but they were hoping a move to a more upscale vicinity would change all that.  Gesturing around the room he grimaced, Look at what we have to put up with now.

     Claude suggested another line of business might help with that.  Ah, but they had made some commitments to the project that could not be cast aside.  Investments and all that, you understand. He glanced in my direction with this and I felt obliged to at least nod.  Claude seemed quite at ease with this fellow, as if he knew how to play him.  He asked a couple of pointed questions about ‘the project’ basically calling it’s usefulness into question.  The gentleman, Gerald apparently, became quietly insistent on the project’s necessity.  Did we want the madness, both economic and political, to continue spiraling down into irreversible chaos of race war, environmental collapse and ethnic genocide?  This one world concept was surely a rush to extinction.

     Claude asked if whispering poisonous messages in men’s ears as they slept was any kind of a solution.  Gerald answered that having an agenda was not a crime against humanity.  But keeping them imprisoned in all the old myths and prejudices surely was.  Gerald challenged that immediately, insisting that this brotherhood of man stuff was nonsense, destructive nonsense, our cult’s mantra with which we hypnotized ourselves.  He seemed to be losing his cool which had struck me as kinda shabby to begin with.  I suspected he’d swallowed the kool-aid but was close to spitting it up.  Claude asked if he’d rather we quit the premises forthwith.  Gerald smiled in what I took to be relief and we took our leave in a dignified manner, which I took to be a bit of posturing.  On the other side of the door Claude grabbed my hand and we disappeared from that location and instantly reappeared in a museum like situation.  More a sculpture garden close by an architectural wonder that I could barely take in as Claude manifested two very fine snifters of whisky and toasted me.  I had enough presence of mind to ask why and then why me.  Sipping that most magical elixir and running the entire episode through what I assumed to be my mind, I half listened as Claude detailed the organization of which Gerald was a deluded minion.

     The hierarchy was, apparently, a gathering of rebel angel types dedicated to keeping our species from its full flowering as gods in training by reinforcing our doubts and fears about everything other, whether that be cultures, religions or species, a sort of divide and continuous conquer approach which had worked like a charm for much of what we thought of as history but was quickly outgrowing its usefulness.  These dark operatives, black magicians, masters of the left hand path, whatever one liked to call them, had been committed to their agenda for so many millennia they’d completely forgotten that they volunteered in the first place.  For ages they’d been the demons that distracted us with ego, pride and ambition while the better angels of our nature went largely unregarded.  Our growth beyond all these restrictions had always been on the cards and now was coming to its time, but they could not accept their redundancy and kept plugging away, pulling in subordinates like Gerald and all those trolls we saw.

     In such a beautiful garden with odd but enticing sculptures, gorgeous tropical plants and fountains it was easy to chuckle and call it ‘all too cosmic for little old me’ but I sensed something was afoot and my life here, wherever here actually was, was about to be, I dunno, shifted.  The first step was watching from a distance how the ragged recruits tried to amplify the fears that the status quo could easily be wrecked by (a) uppity women the world over, all charged up with western feminism, (b) the homosexual and gender poker players, (c) the service industry losing their cool, downing tools and striking (d) the mixing of races producing degeneracy (e) the chaos that dissidents and rebels made easy (f) the sanctioned rebuking of authority.  You recognize that agenda?   Their targets were men and women in positions of power, wealth and influence, corporate and military types, the card carrying members of the elite who loved being movers and shakers hiding behind clouds of PR that confused any issue and kept the plebs entertained.  Those pudgy white boys trying not to snort with derision.

     I’d learned to accept that class sequestered in their fabulous closets and dashing about in their private jets to surf, ski and shop.  It’s a rough job but someone’s gotta do it, right?  Decimating their ranks would only give space for the next group of hustle graduates.  Those fentanyl laced coke fantasies of the haters would stay just that.  Our aim was to outwit their dark guides and win their hearts with feel good, what’s to lose projects, local or bigtime grand.  Local was more and better funded food banks, smart housing for the homeless, that sort of thing.  Bigtime was filtration plants to render deserts inhabitable, international cooperation rather than competition.  Sounds peachy but how to bring it about?  Get those billionaires online with inspiration.  Guilt inspired if needs be.  Rope in the wives and mistresses.

    The real biggie was getting that alien energy production and propulsion systems, blue prints etc, out of the protection of the military industrial types and into the hands of smart teenagers everywhere mucking about in basements and garages.  All that zero point energy stuff.  Prototypes online suddenly with underground manufacture sprouting up like weeds.  I was told that nanotechnology would play a big part, you know all those tinier than tiny components thinner than hair.  I had to admit, eliminating scarcity, poverty and disease was an intoxicating prospect despite all its pie-in-the-sky impracticality. The visitors were keen to see it all implemented, knowing I suppose that the advance would move us out of that danger-to-the-universe stage.  Shutting down nuclear missile systems around the globe was getting a bit, you know, boring.  You should know that they move quite freely hereabouts.  Morphing themselves into more likeable shapes is quite do-able here, just like the old and young dead move toward radiant middle age, and that makes interaction a lot easier.  Having, say, a giant reptilian or praying mantis hover over you is not exactly conducive to the comfort zone that sociability requires.  They pick up images from your subconscious and appear just like your cousin Cory or aunt Martha at Thanksgiving, toasting your good health.

     Maybe I’ve said too much too soon and blown your circuits.  Sorry about that.  I’d have found it all a bit Spielbergian sci-fi when I was there too.  Nice for a couple of hours on Netflix but really I’ve got a life to live.  But now that I’m here having the secrets unraveled and given a role to play I get it, I really do.  Get what exactly?   How spirits, from ghosts to guides, continue to influence others to do their bidding.  Family, friends, neighbours, strangers.  On one level it’s booze, drugs, gambling, sex, on another it’s religion, nation, class, race.  It might sound like the classic divide and conquer control mechanism, but the ones who are occupied in furthering that control see it as wise, as where the smart money is going, as the welcome security of the status quo, as the absolute necessity of respect for authority.

     We’d like to see individuals strike out on their own and be fulfilled in themselves without ever being corralled into some containment others have cleverly devised.    I’ve been told that the individual rising to their fullest potential is the best way for them to see they have created their needs and ways to fulfilment, that their uniqueness is on a par with everyone else’s.   Meanwhile I have learned to observe from a distance and see for myself the interfering spirits, their tricks, their persistence in spiking all those unconscious drives that keep humans selfish, self-seeking.  It’s good to be proud, you have a right to be wealthy, charity and compassion only subsidize laziness.  Teaching them a lesson they won’t forget.  It strengthens character for all the other struggles.  I’ve also learned that spreading love to each and every spirit, whether dead or alive, helps make the above realization attainable.  It’s an intense embrace this love, one that powers and inspires.

     I know this is all heavy shit and way beyond any pay grade I attained on earth.  I would have laughed in the face of any optimist that spun out such a vision back then.  And l believe me I met a few, mostly through Ellie, who swept me up in her high energy for a few weeks.  Always on the move, always interacting, always teasing my attachment to the rituals of wealth management.  She turned hyper into an art form.  We’d go to parties where all the talk was giddy with these fantasies.  Green, sustainable, carbon free, and if you hung out long enough someone would start channeling right there by the fireplace while two or three others would be busy with hands-on healing.  Were they chanting mantras or talking in tongues?  Who knew, you were supposed to immerse yourself in it, like some hot tub of the spirit.  Or so Ellie said, just before she disappeared to Japan to immerse herself in the temples of  Kyoto.  And now that I recall that I wonder if there’s a Kyoto temple area here too.  They say there’s a replica of everything on earth, – buildings , communities, mountain ranges.  Others say the ones on earth are the replicas.  Like the pyramids were here first.  More spirited debates than arguments. 

     Here we have all that out-there stuff in spades, a lot of it cheek-by-jowl with the predictable, conventional, traditional.  You can sit in a café and chat with someone who is still following the Word of the Lord, the teachings of any number of sacred books or prophets you’ve never heard of, those who are keen to return and continue their righteous Jihad, people who regularly attend talks by Seth, the real one in a body sitting in a chair, apparently chastising everyone for listening rather than doing, others who insist it’s a fake, albeit a good one, maybe even Jane Roberts dressed as a guy.  People claiming to be from other planetary systems, Sirius and what not, checking out the human thing for a while.  People who passed totally wasted at Burning Man and can’t stop talking about how great it was, people who’ve met Epstein and say he’s really a cool guy with a lot of great plans for mankind.  People who tried to find Hitler but couldn’t and have set up their own racial purity party.  People who swear they’ve been to  a concert where David Bowie and John Lennon sang together and have film on their phone to prove it.            

     Yeah we got cells here for those who can’t do without them, despite telepathy and instantaneous travel.  We got television with reruns of old favourites,  – Friends, Bonanza, right back to Chaplin.  When you come across it, it’s like life in a retirement home with everyone looking younger and healthier but still fixated on their favourite shows.  We got all the major sports, far as I can tell.   Teams, crowds, and the excitement of rivalries.  We got liars and braggarts, mostly about their lives on earth.  You can see right though them, it’s easy when you know how and I’m no genius.  They’ll be rattling on about their career in big business and you see a basement and swat team breaking down the doors at dawn to find the stacks of plastic wrapped coke.  He talks about all the babes he scored in his day and you see a pale shy guy tapping away at a keyboard in some drab office.  She’ll be reminiscing about her beautiful spread in horse country and you’ll see a widow living about a store in small town somewhere walking to her cashier job in the grocery.  Even the truth tellers talk it up a bit.  I could go on.  Claude says it’s the level I’m on.  It’s a kind of belief system free area, set up centuries ago for free spirits to grow in peace and exchange ideas, back when the Catholics, Muslims and Hindus had divvied everything up and ran most of the show.  It attracts the escapees and the wanna-be escapees as well as the genuinely free spirited.

     Sounds about right to me, but then what do I know, only what I’ve been taught this last little while.  Claude never claims absolute knowledge, just more than the average.  He wants me to check out some of my past lives.  Nuns, hookers, pirates, farmers, so he says. I was a bit leery at first, but I can feel it coming on bit by bit, like a cold that’s going to get you soon. And eventually you just lay down and sleep through it.