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Seth on “The Origins of the Universe and of the Species” – An Integral Conscious Creation Myth, Part 1 of 15

Foreword
by Paul M. Helfrich

“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” – Children’s Song

Religious and scientific belief systems currently dominate our worldviews in the West. They contain officially accepted views about ourselves, our universe, and how we can all get along. They also provide a subset of beliefs called “creation myths” that explain the origins of our universe, planet, and all life, including the morals and laws that “govern” each. Religion and science’s unique creation myths have competed for prominence over the past three hundred years.

In the biblical story, our universe was created in seven days by a Causal Consciousness, conventionally termed God, who placed humans as the caretakers of all living things along with a moral code to govern all behavior. The first man – a fully formed adult – “poofed” into existence in a Paradise called The Garden of Eden. He served as a progenitor for the first woman, and thus had dominion over her. However, a demon in the guise of a serpent tricked this woman to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, thus committing the first sin. Ever since, humanity as been cursed as the descendents of these original sinners, but can be redeemed in a spiritual domain ruled by Causal Consciousness.

In the scientific story, our universe was created by a random Big Bang followed by a process called evolution guided by the principles of natural selection and “selfish” genetic mutation. Evolution, and thus our universe, is basically meaningless and amoral because science deals only in facts, objects, and processes from the objectivity of third person perspectives. Humanity is neither cursed, nor blessed, just challenged to adapt as best it can to overall life conditions. There is only physical life, and death is the end. As such, there are no spiritual domains or beings.

We can broadly characterize the religious story as premodern, and the scientific story as modern. According to German sociologist Max Weber, modernity is defined by the separation of three premodern “values spheres” – science, art, and morals. In premodern times, they were controlled and enforced by the Church. If you broke the law, your soul could be damned to an eternity of punishment in Hell. Thus, moderns saw the separation of “values spheres” as a healthy sociological step forward, one that allowed all three disciplines to develop independently. Art and literature, in terms of the 16th century Renaissance, and science, in terms of the 17th century Enlightenment, blossomed into new and exciting forms.

So, the modern worldview slowly began to emerge over five centuries ago. By the 17th century, Descartes reduced the idea of Casual Consciousness, found in all premodern religions, to a body/mind. In the 18th century, Newton outlined the mechanical laws that governed this body/mind. By the mid-19th century, Darwin and Wallace detailed biological evolution and natural selection that randomly produced this body/mind. In the mid-20th century, as students of William James in America, and Sigmund Freud in Europe codified modern psychology, the consciousness of this body/mind – now with a very small “c” – was reduced to a byproduct of brain chemistry. Body in the form of quantum fields, DNA, genes, and hormones caused mind.

However, there was a problem. As modern science produced centuries of discoveries that shredded premodern religious claims of scripture as Absolute Truth (e.g. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, etc.), it declared its way of knowing through third person objectivity as the only real way to know truth. The notion of first person subjectivity was marginalized, replaced by third person facts, objects, and processes. As the modern “values spheres” splintered further into extreme forms, Scientism and its subset Evolutionism were born. This modern “religion” relied on the same faith as premodern religion in that it could not provide a valid scientific proof that scientific method was the only way to know truth.

Scientism and Evolutionism thus took their place next to Creationism in various institutional forms. Though the premodern religions remained intact during the modern era, they lost political, military, and economic power. The value sphere of morals and ethics were still linked to the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and even science. Thus, today we still have premodern and modern worldviews competing with each other. For example, witness the efforts in the United States to have Creationism, in the sophisticated guise of Intelligent Design theory, mandated in public schools as a viable alternative to Darwin and Evolution. There are currently seventeen states with attempts to legislate Intelligent Design into high school curriculum. This is misguided, of course, as modern science has proven that Creationism based on The Bible is empirically false.

However, the strength of the great premodern religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, etc.) was that they conceptualized the universe as a “Great Chain of Being” – a series of nested fields reaching from body to soul to Causal Consciousness. The Great Chain was mapped over thousands of years by the great mystics (e.g., Buddha, Plato, Christ, Plotinus, Shankara, Patanjali, Lao Tzu, Nagarjuna, Padmasambhava, etc.). They relied on first person subjectivity to discern The Great Chain from within. Thus, the premodern notion of Consciousness – with a capital “C” – remains today, but it’s been completely dissociated from the modern disciplines that define consciousness with a very, very small “c.” Efforts, like Intelligent Design, show that while Causal Consciousness has taken a beating in modern worldviews, it desperately seeks a comeback. The main problem is the religious baggage that accompanies Intelligent Design.

What begins to define postmodernity, then, are criticisms of the excesses of modern science, art, and morals that emerge in force during the 20th century. For example, important critiques issued from philosophers like Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, and Lyotard. They showed brilliantly that all languages carry hidden assumptions, power drives, and subconscious agendas within all three modern “values spheres.” Further, they showed how the interpretation of any text, artwork, or equation was based on highly subjective first person perspectives and social contexts, and contexts become very relative, not absolute. Still, the postmodern era is embryonic in relation to its predecessors and began to gain prominence only fifty years ago.

By the beginning of the 21st century, then, we have three broad worldviews vying for dominance in the West: premodern (religious), modern (scientific), and postmodern (relativistic). (1) Each has its own creation myths. According to developmental psychologists (Beck, Cowan, and Wilber) roughly 40% of the global population still hold premodern worldviews based upon religious scriptures, 30% hold modern worldviews that include the Big Bang and Darwinian Evolution, and 25% subscribe to emergent postmodern worldviews with no central creation myth. For example, when Bill Moyers asked Joseph Campbell what the world needed during a mid-1980’s interview, Campbell replied, “a new myth.” He didn’t know the specifics, but he knew it had to be holistic and worldcentric – encompass the entire planet and all people, not just one region, set of chosen people, or Holders of The Way.

Developmental sociologists have shown that human evolution, while far from a linear process, consists of worldviews that gradually unfold hierarchically in stages of increased complexity. Thus, each subsequent stage is built upon the foundation that preceded it. Each stage, in turn, creates new challenges that can only be solved by more sophisticated approaches or risk regression, as in the case of a catastrophic nuclear war, global warming, religious fanaticism, etc., in the present day. Albert Einstein intuited this when he said, “The significant problems we face can never be solved at the level of thinking that created them.”

Seth, channeled by Jane Roberts (1929-1984) , put it this way:

“Consciousness, by its nature, continually expands. The nature of consciousness, as you understand it as a species will, in one way or another, lead you beyond your limited ideas of reality, for your experience will set challenges that cannot be solved within your current framework. Those problems set by one level of consciousness will automatically cause breakthroughs into other areas of conscious activity, where solutions can be found.” (2)

In 1949 Swiss social anthropologist Jean Gebser detailed five very general stages of the average mode of cultural development: archaic (foraging), magic (horticultural), mythic (agrarian), rational (industrial), and integral (informational). Thus, current variations of premodern worldviews (mythic/agrarian) originated over 9,000 years ago and simultaneously exist with modern (rational/industrial), and emergent postmodern (integral/informational). The global dynamics between these three main worldviews fuel current social, economic, religious, political, and spiritual challenges. The scale of complexity is unprecedented, and many writers have detected emerging postmodern worldviews in this frothy mix. For instance, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero of a Thousand Faces, Michael Murphy’s The Future of the Body, Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson’s Cultural Creatives, Willis Harman’s Global Mind Change, Peter Russell’s Waking Up in Time, Marilyn Ferguson’s Aquarian Conspiracy, Mark Woodhouse’s Paradigm Wars: Worldviews for a New Age, Don Beck and Chris Cowan’s Spiral Dynamics, Ken Wilber’s Boomeritis, and many, many more (some are featured throughout).

What is the Role of Myth in a Postmodern World?

What kinds of postmodern myths are struggling to be born? How do they deal with Consciousness with a capital “C” and small “c”? As we will see, currently emerging myths seek to integrate the gems of truth found in premodern and modern worldviews to bring Consciousness and consciousness back into the picture. They attempt to heal what some see as the pathological fragmentation of the modern value spheres into a more integral and holistic worldview.

Myths are belief systems in narrative form that contain intellectual, intuitive, and emotional qualities. Myths provide an important social framework, sense of continuity, and deep meaning that permeate cultural identities.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines mythology as:

“1. An allegorical narrative, 2. A body of myths: as a. the myths dealing with gods, demi-gods, or legendary heroes of a particular people, b. mythos.” (3)

According to Joseph Campbell, one of the 20th century’s leading mythologists:

“Mythology is an organization of images metaphoric of experience, action, and fulfillment of the human spirit in the field of a given culture at a given time.” (4)

In terms of political and economic capital, the dominant creation myth that currently pervades Western society is based on scientific beliefs. According to philosopher, scientist, and futurist Willis Harman the following is a summary of Western Society’s Central Myth:

“In the beginning was the Big Bang. Following that were something like 15 billion years of evolution of stars and planets; the coming together of certain chemicals to create life on planet Earth; the further evolution of more complex life forms, and their sorting out through natural selection; the resulting formation of increasingly complex neuronal networks culminating in the human brain with its fantastic capabilities. Thus the essential characteristics of human nature are to be understood as the consequence of an evolutionary succession of random events (from the origin of life to later mutations) and natural selections, and hence accidental – without purpose or meaning.

“The essence of ourselves is to be found in a material substance, the DNA with which we are born. Since our basic drives appear to be survival, pleasure, and procreation, it is only natural that the economy should have become the paramount institution of modern society, around which everything else revolves, and that economic logic and values should be the primary guides to our individual and collective decision making. It is only natural that we should treat the Earth and our fellow creatures as ’resources,’ to be used in the service of the economy, and that we should view controlling nature through technology as one of modern society’s most impressive achievements.

“This central myth infuses and informs our education, healthcare policy, legal justice system, business, and other social institutions. If it were to be found fundamentally in error, the implications are far-reaching.” (5)

As we begin the new millennium there is strong evidence that this central myth is morphing before our eyes. Physicists report that our officially accepted view of space-time is changing. A recent headline in the L.A. Times announced “Time, Space Obsolete in New View of Universe.” It discussed an emerging scientific theory, called string theory, that speculates about infinitesimally small “energy strings” vibrating in a multidimensional pattern literally creating “cosmic music” that form the building blocks for our physical universe.

Further, there is evidence to support the premodern, perennial wisdom claims that our universe originates “outside” of space-time in what physicists term to be “non-local” implicate order or quantum potential (Bohm, Wolf, Goswami, Laszlo, Tiller). This process can be understood through the behavior of sub-atomic particles called photons that act as both a particle and a wave front. When observed as a particle, they can only be in one place at a time. When observed as a wave, they can literally be in two places at once and simultaneously exist in a non-local state.

Non-locality was proposed in a scientific principle known as Bell’s Theorem (1964) and confirmed by Alain Aspect and collaborators (1982). It shows how photons can be split apart and instantly communicate phase or status changes while “separated.” Non-locality implies the existence of a hidden field that is not perceivable by our physical senses and their extensions (telescopes and microscopes). It is now speculated by quantum scientists that this hidden, nonphysical field is the source for our physical universe.

Another example that supports the concept of non-locality is the work of English biologist Rupert Sheldrake. His experiments deal with morphic fields. For instance, Sheldrake did a study on rats’ ability to learn the same maze in two discrete geographical locations. The first group took a certain amount of time to learn the maze. The subsequent group, however, learned the maze in a significantly less period of time. Sheldrake speculates that the learning done by the first group was somehow available to the second group via a non-local morphic field.

Could scientific discoveries work in similar fashion? There are numerous examples of similar ideas being “discovered” at more or less the same time. For example, Edison’s and Tesla’s numerous electrical inventions, and Leibniz’s and Newton’s inventing calculus. Could these ideas “be in the air” in such a way that individuals draw on some type of non-local morphic field to accelerate invention and problem solving?

Whether or not microscopic quantum effects scale up to macroscopic effects in biological systems and human beings remains controversial. However, from Kekulé’s mapping the benzene molecule decades before it could be verified on the electron microscope, to Charles Tart’s research on psi (telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, precognition), to Stephen LaBerge’s research on lucid dreaming, to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell’s identifying common elements in premodern myths, we find evidence that personal and cultural growth may be assisted by non-local energy fields cast in the creative guise of invention, dreams, and mythos.

Thus, there are emerging postmodern myths in the air, as Joseph Campbell saw in the 1980s. But, they compete with the status quo of premodern and modern myths. At first, new myths are condemned as heretical, then marginalized as trivial, until finally they are accepted as truth. As such, we are in a transition between Central Myths. According to Roger Walsh, a psychiatrist and meditator:

“Myths are grand stories that portray, in an imaginative and symbolic manner, the basic mental structures, understanding and worldview created by a culture and which in turn create and maintain that culture. As such, myths seem to be essential to cultural coherence and well-being and much of our contemporary confusion may reflect the fact that our culture is ’between myths.’ Ideally, myths complement and harmonize with other modes of knowing and explanation such as rational knowledge and transrational wisdom. However, problems arise when symbolic myths are not recognized as such but are mistaken for empirical facts or linear logic.” (6)

Therefore, postmodern myths are not to be taken literally, but metaphorically. Premodern worldviews tend to interpret myth in literal, concrete terms. If the Holy Book says we’re descended from star brothers, then it’s assumed to be literally true. No further evidence is required. Modern worldviews tend to rely on the proof of five senses and third person perspectives. They discount all first person, transrational perspectives as psychosis or infantile dissociation. Postmodern worldviews include rational and empirical proof, and integrate subjective, first person experience. They also understand the crucial difference between prerational and transrational experience. Thus, they include emotions, feelings, and deep intuitions, but not at the expense of intellect and reason. The idea is not to throw out the transcendental baby with the religious bathwater.

Finally, the emerging postmodern Central Myth is not set in stone. It is still a matter of collective choice, imagination, and creativity. We are in the midst of a profound shift in consciousness that integrates the gems from premodern myths (Consciousness with a capital “C”) and modern myths (Big Bang, Evolution, and consciousness with a small “c”). No one knows what will unfold during this century, but it will be an incredible ride!

End Notes:

(1) Seth readers are familiar with the importance of belief systems and worldviews. So it’s a natural step to explore Seth’s ideas in relation to the excellent research done over the past seventy-five years on how they unfold in time, individually and culturally. That is, there are is now a young science of memetics, or belief systems, created by English biologist Richard Dawkins (b.1941) in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a mental counterpart for physical DNA and genes. Developmental psychologists and transpersonal sociologists, like those listed below, have subsequently begun to map how belief systems develop individually through preconventional, conventional, and postconventional stages, and culturally through premodern (religious), modern (scientific), and postmodern (relativistic) stages.

To clarify my semantics throughout, I define these individual and cultural stages in term of the developmental psychology outlined in Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (2000). He surveyed over one hundred developmental systems from the West, East, North, and South (p.197-217). Each stage transcends, yet includes elements in the preceding stage. So subsequent stages are built upon the foundational elements in preceding stages. Thus, in a “development that is envelopment” each stage shows qualities of increasing complexity, wholeness, evolution, and thus consciousness. People don’t regress backwards in term of stages, and also do not skip stages. Each stage by definition, then, is “more comprehensive, differentiated and integrated than its predecessors.”

To be clear, I am not using the terms preconventional, conventional, and postconventional to be the same as cultural stages of premodern (religious), modern (scientific), and postmodern (relativistic). Technically, the former were coined by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) to describe stages of moral development. So they are used here only as an example of stages of individual development in general.

Therefore, if we use Clare Graves and Don Beck’s stages of individual development from Spiral Dynamics (1996/2000), premodern corresponds roughly to BEIGE, PURPLE, RED, and BLUE vMemes. Modern corresponds roughly to the ORANGE vMeme, and postmodern corresponds roughly to GREEN, YELLOW, and TURQUOISE vMemes. Post-postmodern, representing worldviews on the distant horizon, corresponds roughly to the CORAL vMeme.

If we use Jean Gebser’s stages of cultural development from The Ever-Present Origin (1949), then premodern corresponds roughly to archaic, magic, and mythic. Modern corresponds roughly to rational, and postmodern corresponds roughly to integral. Gebser didn’t identify a post-postmodern stage.

If we use Wilber’s stages of cultural development from Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality (1995/2000), then premodern corresponds roughly to uroboric, typhonic, archaic, magic, and mythic. Modern corresponds roughly to rational, and postmodern corresponds roughly to centauric. Post-postmodern corresponds to psychic.

The point, then, is that there is a general, discernable progression in evolutionary terms of individuals within overall cultural worldviews. For example, a sixteenth century Aztec shaman who engaged in ritual human sacrifice is less complex, less whole, less evolved, and thus less conscious than American Christian evangelist Rev. Billy Graham, though both hold premodern worldviews (the Aztec is PURPLE/magic and Graham is BLUE/mythic). In turn, they are less complex, less whole, less evolved, and thus less conscious than American publisher of Skeptical Inquirer Michael Schermer who exemplifies a modern worldview (ORANGE/rational). In turn, all three are less complex, less whole, less evolved, and thus less conscious than French paleontologist/philosopher Teilhard de Chardin and American psychic Jane Roberts who exemplify postmodern worldviews (GREEN/integral/centauric).

My main thesis throughout is that, historically speaking, once the modern value spheres of science, art, and religion split from unified premodern institutional control characterized by the rise of rationality and forms of scientism and evolutionism, God or Causal Consciousness was thrown out with the magic/mythic bathwater. This is a form of social pathology that has crippled the Western world for close to two hundred years as noted by various social critics (e.g., Smith/1976, Wilber/1981, De Quincey/2002).

Therefore, what defines postmodernism is not only the excellent critiques of modernity that currently go by the name “postmodern,” but more significantly those critiques that begin to rehabilitate, rejoin, and heal the pathological split, particularly, between religion and science. That is, postmodernism is more accurately defined as all attempts by Causal Consciousness to make a comeback (the irony is that It never left!) to its rightful place within institutional sciences, arts, and religions without pre/trans fallacies (the fallacy of elevating premodern magical/mythic worldviews to forms of postmodern rationality/translogic or reducing authentic transpersonal insights to premodern irrationality and pathology).

This is the struggle we can see on multiple fronts in terms of current dynamics between premodern, modern, and emergent postmodern worldviews. Developmental psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers continue to refine ways to more accurately map the birth pangs, the leading edge of the so-called New Age, New Paradigm, or what I’m simply calling postmodern worldviews.

(2) Jane Roberts, The “Unknown” Reality, Vol. 1, Amber-Allen, San Rafael, CA, 1996, p. 165-166.

(3) Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary, December 22, 2000.

(4) Joseph Campbell, edited by Diane Osbon, Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, New York, 1991, p. 134.

(5) Willis Harmon, Global Mind Change: The Promise of the 21st Century, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, California, 1998, p. 79.

(6) Roger Walsh, Perennial Wisdom in a Postmodern World, University of California College of Medicine, Irvine, California, http://www.americanbuddha.org/article_perennial.html, November 27, 2000.

Copyright 2005 Paul M. Helfrich, All Rights Reserved.

Asleep in the Belly of God
by Judy F. Clarke

asleep in the belly of god
where there is no wrong
where i exist inviolate
in a state of eternal grace
couched ever within myself
where in and out are the same

Sethies Now Have Their Own Playing Field!
by Yvonne M. Buonamici

Explore your beliefs! Stretch your imagination! Delve into your dreams! Challenge your creativity!

Seven years in the making, I am so pleased to be able to offer you SethWorld - The Game of All That Is! SethWorld is a totally unique game, the first metaphysical board game based on the Seth material - maybe the first metaphysical board game, ever! It is designed to explore and uncover beliefs while having fun. There are no winners, no losers, and NO RULES! A 24-page pamphlet included with the game gives a probable framework for play, 6 sample "moves," and a glossary of 61 concepts.

I was asked how I was inspired to make SethWorld and how it’s creation came about.

The simple answer is that I channeled SethWorld in 1998. I didn’t realize it was channeling at the time, though. I simply woke up one morning with the game fully formed in my head, grabbed a pad and started writing. In about an hour, I had the game concept down, a suggested format for play, an initial design for the board, and a list of the concepts I wanted to use. All that remained was the fleshing out, so to speak.

Of course, that answer is just one layer of how the game came to be manifested. Basically, see, I’m lazy. A Sethie since my college days (though not a “rabid” Sethie until about 1995), I believed that exploring my beliefs would greatly benefit me. I had been using a variety of ways to do this--meditation, workshops, filling out charts and diagrams, muscle testing, etc., but . . .it was just so much hard work!

Time not being linear, we now move into the future a bit. My friend, James Thames, had hooked me up with a computer and I joined the on-line Seth community, where I met Richard from New Zealand, who hooked me up with Pulse. Simultaneously, I’d been going to see Kay Shinol (Awakening Tribe) channel Peter. Peter told me I needed to replace the word “work” in my vocabulary with the word “play.” Kay was “given” to offer channeling classes to certain individuals, of which I was one. During her classes, I began to channel that part of my larger self that the Pulse group named EVE.

So, maybe this is how it worked: I sent a need and desire out to the universe, which formed a probability of somehow exploring beliefs through play, which floated around the probability spectrum, pulling events from past and future, waiting for me to pluck it out of F2. That’s as good a scenario as any other, don’t you think?


A group of friends playing on the original 3D game board

The original board design for SethWorld was a 3-dimensional board. It was three poles of different heights, each with a circle on top, each circle divided into 10 pies, or playscapes. I made a styrofoam and cardboard mock-up of the board and began to test it with family and friends, both Sethies and non-Sethies, over a period of 2-3 years, tweaking and editing it. I found that people had a surprising amount of difficulty with the concept of a game that had no winner and no rules, so I added 6 sample “moves” to the pamphlet. Some of these I made up, and some are from actual games that were played during the testing phase.

I sent the game to Robert Butts and to Lynda Dahl. Both approved of it, but at the time, Rob’s publishers were not accepting anything new and Lynda was only publishing books. I did not want to offer the game to a large corporation, and all the smaller, alternative presses seemed only to deal in books or cards. Manufacturing a 3- dimensional board was not something they were willing to undertake. So I shelved the game for a while, pulling it out only occasionally for local Seth meetings or gatherings with friends.

A few years ago, I went to a Seth gathering in Houston, Texas, and while there, I met Rich Kendall. The game came up in the course of conversation and I promised to send Rich a copy of it, which I finally did a year later. He liked it, and so the process began again, with the same results … the small publishers all loved it, but none would undertake to manufacture it because it was a game and not a book.

It became obvious I would have to use a flat board. I decided I would find an artist who could create the suggestion or illusion of a 3-dimensional board and I would take the risk of self-publishing the game. I looked first among friends and family, with no luck, and then hit upon the idea of actually asking someone in the Seth community! (I know! I know!) Enter artist extraordinaire, Annette Shacklett.

Annette had an image pop into her head while we were speaking, and agreed to undertake the design of the board. She has been invaluable. She is not only a talented artist, but she knows all the computer things that the printer needs.

Not only did I want to find a way to explore beliefs through play, but I also wanted to make a contribution to the Seth material. I believe SethWorld accomplishes both of those goals. I’m very proud of it.

SethWorld is a totally open-ended game, with NO RULES. It is designed so that the players can create the game in the same manner we create our realities -- individually and en masse. I believe it is totally unique among board games and will enrich the players in their conscious creations. It is designed to explore and uncover beliefs while having fun. There are no winners, no losers, and NO RULES! A 24-page pamphlet included with the game gives a probable framework for play, 6 sample "moves," and a glossary of 61 concepts.


To order Sethworld, click here.

"SethWorld is a board game like no other. The possible outcomes are limitless. Probabilities are explored. One truly gets a feel for creatively constructing their personal reality while being given an opportunity to closely examine their personal belief system. I'd recommend this game to anyone with an interest in the Seth material as a delightful way to explore and deepen understanding. The best part is, everybody wins!" ~ Jimbo9, Curator of The Sethworks Mooseum

"SethWorld provides us with a unique opportunity to explore the nature of beliefs, and to have fun while doing so. I BELIEVE Seth would highly approve." ~ Richard Kendall, original member of Jane's ESP class

Through God's Loving Eyes
by Dan Scranton

If you could see you
Through God's loving eyes
I think you'd be in
For quite the surprise

Just between you and me
Yeah, on the down low
God sees you as perfect
Like pure driven snow

God sees you as healthy
He sees you as whole
He sees just your beauty
Your essence, your soul

But I hear you've been peering
With a critical eye
Seeing flaws God does not
And I must wonder why

You are the one you
On this great green earth
Do you know what that means?
Can you fathom your worth?

To go from self-doubt
To the absence of fear
Is your life's true journey
It's why we're all here

So take out a pen
And some paper too
Write down your good points
Till you know the real you

See yourself as God does
And you will soon feel
Your heart beating true
As its sorrow you heal

Marion the Magnet’s First Mission
by Sharon Hackleman
Illustrated by John Blair Moore

Marion the Magnet is chosen to travel to the planet Earth with his wise grandfather to teach the children about their own magnetic powers…the magnetic power of thought!

In the book Marion helps a young girl, Katie, understand the importance of thinking and daydreaming about what she wants to attract with her magnetic powers of thought. When the other children are using their magnetic powers to attract fun things such as skateboards and new video games Katie is trying to use her magnetic powers to help her family through a challenging situation. Her father has been out of work for sometime and they are close to the point of becoming homeless.

Excerpt

The next day, Marion and Cassie returned to school to teach the children lesson number two.

“Did anyone see what they thought about in our first lesson yesterday?” Marion asked.

Almost everyone’s hand went up in the air.

“We saw Tyler on a scooter before he even left school grounds!” Cassie said.

“I saw what I thought about six times before I got home,” one boy shared.

Marion noticed Katie’s hand wasn’t in the air.

“Katie, did you see what you wanted?” Marion asked.

“I guess so - if I want our family to become homeless.”

“Is that what you want, Katie?”


“No” Katie’s eyes started to tear. “I want my dad to find a new job. But he’s been out of work for three months and he is ready to give up! My mom and dad said soon we would all be living on the streets.”

Marion walked over and touched Katie’s shoulder. “I think I can help. When you thought about what you wanted, did you think about how bad it feels when your dad isn’t working or how good it feels when he is working?”

“How can I not think about how bad it is?” she muttered. “It’s just so hopeless.”

“This is a common mistake on Earth, Katie.” Marion said gently. “People think more about what they don’t want and they attract what they don’t want.”

“You mean if I want to help my dad find a job, I have to think about how good it feels when he is working?”

“Yes! Remember, you attract what you think about, so think about what you want.”

Then Marion turned to the class. “Maybe we can all help Katie by doing today’s lesson with her. Lesson two is to daydream about what you want to attract.”

“Daydream!” The children looked joyfully surprised.

“Oh boy!” Tyler shouted. “We get to daydream in class.”

“When you daydream about what you want, you attract it much quicker,” Marion explained. “So class, does everyone know how to daydream?”

“Yes!” the children quickly answered.

“Let us begin our lesson my doing a group daydream,” Marion began, “Let’s all daydream about Katie’s father finding a new job. If that is okay with you Katie?”

She nodded and smiled shyly. “Anything that will help my dad is okay with me.”

“All right, then everyone close your eyes and listen as Katie tells us how she feels when her dad is working.”

Katie closed her eyes, let out a deep breath and said, “I feel safe and happy. Our refrigerator is full of yummy food and I can invite my friends over for snacks. And my dad is happy because now he can take care of us. And my mom is happy because all of us are happy. And we have extra money to do fun things, like go to the movies and the ice-cream shop.”

Katie was smiling now. “I love it when my dad is working.”

“Good job, Katie! See how much better you feel when you think about what you want to attract with your magnetic powers of thought?”

“Yes Marion, thank-you!” Katie said with a big smile on her face. “Now I’m getting how my magnetic power works.”

Marion the Magnet will be a series of ten books that address issues that are important to children. Marion the Magnet and the Fearful Bully will be published in the spring of 2006. In this book Marion teaches children what a bully really is and how they can feel safe when they are around. The storyline will focus on the vibration level of a bully and how we seldom ever see a bully pick on a child with confidence. Marion will teach children to raise their vibration to a level where a bully is unable to reach them.

Teaching children how to use their magnetic powers of thought to attract what they want is the purpose of my Marion the Magnet book series. I believe Marion the Magnet is a powerful character for teaching today’s children to keep their thoughts pure and positive!

To learn more about Marion the Magnet's First Mission or to order the book, Click here

Reviews of Marion the Magnet’s First Mission

This is a wonderful little book for children that teaches all of us about the power of our thoughts and the limitless abilities hidden within our minds. Too often we subject ourselves to the notion of "I can't." Read "Marion The Magnet's First Mission" and learn to attract the things you want, just like a magnet. Realize the power of "I can!
"You have a very important concept here, Sharon, not only for children, but for adults as well." ~ Sara

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With all that's negative in the world today, it's a pleasure to read something that will positively affect children. The book, "Marion the Magnet's First Mission," by Sharon Hackleman, is a cute story about a happy little magnet who is sent to earth to teach children about their "magnetic powers." Marion teaches children to think positive thoughts instead of negative ones, to keep an open mind, and helps children to realize that they can accomplish anything they set their minds to. Brightly colored illustrations are scattered throughout the book, and help to explain the important moral of the story. MyParenTime.com recommends this book -- my daughter and I both enjoyed it and she learned a valuable lesson. She learned that she held the key to a wonderful power inside herself. ~ Joi M. Lasnick

My ParenTime August 2002

The Girl Next Door
by Thomas Way

"God is not the Creator. No, my dear friends, the mind, yes, I said the MIND, that, indeed, is the Creator. You hear what I'm saying to you? You sweet people out there are God, each and every one of you! God be praised!"
~ "The Hour of Power, with Dr. Rudy Camparis," a nationally-syndicated morning television show.

The fresh sea air bristled in his nostrils. This was the way he liked to wake up in the morning. The calm steady beat of the waves lapping the shore. His own bare feet slapping the wet sand as he ran along the beach. There was a rhythm to the waves, to his legs and feet, to the deep breathing his morning jog required. "Breathing is the key to the door of life." That's what Dr. Rudy always said. "Open that door, my boy, and walk right in." Anything you say, Dr. Rudy, anything you say.

Rory Kendall sped across the strand of beach at Golden Cove, his dark-tanned face and rippling muscles welcoming the first shafts of sun as it rose over the mountains. Chuck, his new personal instructor at the Funky Hunk Gym, had brought Rory along nicely. Just a little more work on the triceps and the calves and Rory would be assured the perfect male body. Clear beads of sweat and salt spray mixed into his thick, jet-black hair. Mazda, his new hundred-bucks-per-visit hairdresser, had removed any traces of gray. She then chopped at his hair roughly, in a hipsurfer cut, making him look ten years younger. Maybe even fifteen. One small drop of sweat skied down his nose. He flicked it off with his left index finger. The finger lingered a moment over the smooth end of his perfect nose. Dr. Connelly did such a wonderful job on that nose. The good doctor also botoxed Rory's little wrinkles and creases, a bonus thrown in for free. Connelly was, of course, like Chuck and Mazda, a disciple of Dr. Rudy.

Breathing, that was the key. Rory took in huge gulps of briny air and forced them out with a violent push of his diaphragm. In, out. In, out. Slap, slap went the waves. Slap, slap went his feet. The sun rose higher, and for the first time that morning it felt warm on Rory's face. He flashed two rows of sparkling incisors and canines. A nearly priceless smile. Dr. Chung's meticulous bonding work had not been cheap.

Rory neared the old lighthouse. The turning point. He had it timed now. When he reached the rocky pier where the crumbled white ruin stood, he would turn around and head back to his beach house with the sun in his face and everything would be perfect. "What a way (pause, then crescendo) to begin the day!" That's how Dr. Rudy would have said it. Like Alex Trebek on "Jeopardy."

As Rory turned around, jogging in place, he looked down at the sand for the first time. When he first charged out into the gray beginning of morning, he concentrated on his dreams, on his ideas, on his breathing. He noticed nothing along the beach. Now, as he returned into the growing sunlight, his eyes picked out some of the debris that had washed ashore overnight. There was a large silvery fish, bloated with death and rot, lying in his path. He leaped over it lightly. He had once been like that fish, his life beached, over, going nowhere; the same as being dead, he was sure. Before him was another object washed ashore: a jellyfish, now bulbous and watery, but by noon it would be like cellophane, dried-out, transparent. That, too, had been Rory. A jellyfish. No backbone. Transparent.

One more object caught Rory's glance. A broken clam shell. He skipped over it effortlessly and as he did he remembered himself two years ago, like the clam shell, a broken man. But then he met Dr. Rudy Camparis and Dr. Rudy found a pearl in the broken shell. Dr. Rudy polished the pearl carefully and it turned out to be a perfect Rory Kendall.

Back when he was twenty-eight, Rory Kendall hatched an idea for a moderately successful sit-com and even wrote a few of the first episodes. But then his ideas dried up. Rory's second marriage ended in divorce like his first, his drinking increased in quantity and decreased in quality, and he'd do any drug you had, from Ecstasy to black tar heroin. But few people who could afford drugs had anything to do with Rory by then. Even now, he didn't really know why his life fell apart so suddenly. Dr. Rudy said it was his image of himself that fell apart and that "the image is what you must rebuild." Well, if Dr. Rudy says so, thought Rory, it's must be so. As the tall, blond Dr. Rudy shouted every morning, at the end of his television show: "Soooooo...let's do it!"

He was the beached screenwriter that day, two years before, a bloated, red-eyed whale struggling to walk down Hollywood Boulevard, clutching a nearly empty bottle of Safeway brand port in a wine-stained paper bag. A clean-cut young man stood outside an old theater that Rory vaguely remembered being boarded up the last time he passed it. He barely noticed the fresh paint splashed over the entire building. Bright, blinding yellow paint. The boy asked Rory if he wanted to change his life. Rory looked up at the yellow theater and muttered, "Canary, fuggin' biggest yella canary 'ever saw." Somehow the boy steered Rory into the theater and slumped him into a seat. There was a movie being shown every hour on the hour and Rory fell asleep through four of them. Dr. Rudy later told him that he might have reached Rory subliminally while he slept because, after Rory woke up, he sat in the theater for four more shows and watched Dr. Rudy Camparis talk about changing one's life. "And Oh! it could be Soooooo easy!" That sounded pretty good to Rory then. He didn't want to have to work at changing his screwed-up life toooooo hard. He needed the extra time for drinking.

After a few weeks at The Center, high in the hills above Santa Barbara, Dr. Rudy showed Rory how to utilize his inner self. How to tap his inner creativity, how to tap into the mass subconscious, how to draw from within the strength that could then be shown outwardly. Rory stopped drinking and became healthy. He started to write again and he sold what he wrote instantly. His brain surged with so many ideas that the written page couldn't hold them. He painted watercolor seascapes as an outlet for the overflow of inspirations. His new friends arranged a gallery show, which sold out immediately. He improved in every aspect of his life. "Imagine what you want and it will be yours," intoned Dr. Rudy in that early film. It seemed too easy at first, but it worked. "Breathing is the key."

Dr. Rudy asked nothing of Rory at first. "When you are a success, my boy, then give us what you can so our work may prosper and help others." But when Rory started rolling in dough, he forgot about the Church of Creativity. Until he was shown the contract he signed once, two years before, inside the giant yellow canary. He didn't remember signing it, but then he didn't remember much of those days anyway. Dr. Rudy smiled benignly. "These are just words on a piece of paper, my boy, what counts comes from the heart." So Rory gave the Church of Creativity twenty percent of his income, dutifully, happily. A small price to pay for perfection.

Rory continued to jog. Big breath in, big breath out. He glanced off to his left, across the Pacific. A large yacht seemed to be anchored off Merganser Point. His writer's imagination began to bubble. Within seconds he had the bones of a story. The yacht was owned by Nick Nictorious, a retired shipping magnate from Greece. Not really, just a character in the story, understand. And Nictorious was about to commit a murder. His girlfriend, Angie Tonneau, Academy-award winning actress, would be the victim. Jealousy, the motive? No, something more. She witnessed an earlier murder, of Senator Thompson, during a party the previous night... Rory became excited as the thoughts danced in his head. HBO or Showtime Original. Oh, yes, for sure. He would write the beginning of his new movie as soon as he got back to his cottage. Before scrambled eggs and bacon even.

As Rory ran back up the beach he saw the hazy silhouette of his cottage. It wasn't really a cottage by the usual standards, it had three bedrooms and a built-in studio with eighteen-foot ceilings and a skylight and..."well," as he would modestly tell his family back East, "you get the idea." But everyone, including the real estate agent, called it a cottage. So Rory called it a cottage, too. He dreamed of this kind of cottage since he was nineteen years old. Now that he possessed it (a lease-option-at his present rate of success he could buy it in a few years) he still lost none of his admiration for it. Two stories, completely constructed of water-resistant redwood. Painted a milky-white, nearly the color of sand around this part of the beach. Built in the late 'fifties, when carpenters took pride in their trade. It still looked almost new. Rory renovated the interior slightly. Plush new carpets instead of bare wood. Digital stereo, high speed Internet access and satellite TV in every room-bathrooms included. Tough new glass to withstand a major storm-those picture windows facing the surf were eight feet high. And what sunsets!

Rory also installed a sauna and jacuzzi and a high breakwater around his patio on the sand. The white concrete wall jutted up from the sand and surrounded the property. "Fort Rory Kendall," joked the contractor. Though still a half-mile away, Rory no longer needed glasses to see it-or even contacts. Dr. Munson, the ophthalmic surgeon, performed a keratological procedure that gave Rory 20/20 vision. When Rory balked at the steep cost of the operation, Dr. Munson grinned. "Well, why don't YOU tell me exactly how much your sight is worth, Mr. Kendall?" Rory smirked knowingly when he heard that question. You see, Dr. Munson had been recommended by Dr. Rudy.

The cottage appeared closer. He chose this house because of its seclusion. In fact, this end of Golden Cove was the last section still unviolated by condominiums. There weren't any other buildings close to his at all. Rory looked up to the far sand dune that spread out from one side of his wall. He was, at first, startled. He racked his brain. Of course, he thought, of course. There was one other house. It was painted green and stood on heavy stilts so storm waves would wash beneath it. The sand dune partially blocked it from view. In a sense, Rory had partially blocked it from his view as well. He never ran in that direction. The beach was severed by some high, jagged rocks-rough on bare feet, certainly. But was there some other reason he never went around that last sand dune? "Self-confrontation is the heart of self-analysis," Dr. Rudy would say. "And contradiction is not paradox." Those little sayings seemed to fit this situation perfectly, thought Rory. They eased the uncertainties he often pondered. He was always glad to remember any saying by Dr. Rudy Camparis. "Memory is like the ocean surf, always coming back." Rory really related to that little gem.

But one part of Rory's life wasn't perfect, of which he was painfully reminded as he approached the house near the sand dune. In a large window above him he saw the unmistakable image of a woman staring off toward the ocean, or perhaps at Rory. She drank from a mug, coffee he supposed. If he could only meet her he would convince her to drink herbal tea, he mused. Caffeine was bad for The System. "And avoidance is preparatory to denial." Yes, thought Rory, when I daydream like that I'm avoiding my problem.

This was how Rory's mind usually worked.

He met quite a few women in the past two years of his New Life. None matched his ideal. Mary was pretty but talked incessantly about meaningless drivel. Victoria was brilliant but was always trying to put him down. Elizabeth was sexy but didn't want any "permanent relationships." The list seemed endless. Rory was in search of the perfect woman to compliment his own new-found perfection. Rory hadn't received any clues from Dr. Rudy about this little problem. He hated to admit it to himself. So how on earth could he ask Dr. Rudy?

He suddenly realized he had nearly run up to the sand dune and the green house, missing his own earlier footprints, the ones leading away from his cottage, by thirty or so yards. Where the hell am I going? Rory glanced up nervously at the window as he stopped. He could see her ivory face clearly now. It radiated like the face of an angel. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a pony tail, his favorite style, and her eyes seemed to sparkle like emeralds. A Japanese kimono wrapped itself tightly around an obviously voluptuous body. She smiled broadly and changed the mug from one hand to the other. She waved.

Rory almost stumbled. He had been trying to change direction, act as if he hadn't stopped abruptly before her window, act as if he didn't really see her. But that was impossible. His grin flashed, the one he patterned after Dr. Rudy, the one whose appearance he knew with confidence, as if his mind's eye could see it in a mirror. He waved back, awkwardly at first, then with more authority. He inhaled and exhaled deeply to calm himself, to center his thoughts. He wanted to shout something, but he doubted if she could hear through the closed window. The woman made no further movement, just kept smiling down at him. Finally, embarrassed at not knowing what else to do, Rory waved again and jogged back towards his own house.

By the time he reached his door he somehow forgot all about writing the story concerning Nick Nictorious and the yacht. He couldn't eat breakfast, either. He padded around his house absent-mindedly, moving from one room to another, shuffling papers for a moment at his desk, re-ordering his watercolors in the studio, pulling food out of the refrigerator in the kitchen, then replacing it. He walked into his bedroom and opened his closet, staring at his Armani sport jackets and Prada trousers, all neatly hanging in silent rows. He thought about the woman in the window. What was she like? She was right next door and he's lived here for almost a year and never met her. How could that be? Was he so wrapped up in himself...? For the briefest second Rory had an inkling that he actually did know this woman.

The following morning, after a restless night of sleep, Rory bounded out of his cottage and down the beach. He glanced only once back at the green house, at the window. It was dark and empty. He proceeded down the beach, his bare feet once again slapping the wet sand. After a half-mile of listening to the waves and the occasional squawk of a gull, he heard another sound. Flap, flap, flap. It was lighter than his step, more delicate. Someone jogged behind him. But, thought Rory, there were never any joggers out this early. The sun was still behind the mountains. The sound became stronger and he could hear steady breathing. Its rhythm nearly matched his own. He slowed a bit and turned his head.

"Hi!" she smiled.

It was the woman in the window.

Rory jogged in place, fighting off a growing tremor that nagged at his muscles. She wore bright yellow sweats that seemed brand new. Thin waist, long legs, full breasts. And her feet, like his, were bare. He liked that a lot. It told him things about her that made his heart beat faster. She ran up beside him and they both continued down the sand.

"Hello," he managed, though weakly. "I haven't seen anyone jog out here this early since I started."

Her smooth white skin, flushed by the exercise, appeared darker, almost tan. Her cover girl smile persisted. She glanced over at him with what, it seemed to Rory, to be admiration. Her features were artificially even, like those new, life-like mannequins he saw in department store windows. For a moment, her perfectly round, bright green eyes hypnotized him.

"So when did you start running here?" she asked.

"Last year, soon as I moved to Golden Cove."

Rory no longer felt the moist granules of sand spreading beneath his feet. It could have been burning hot tar. His mind was oblivious to everything except the girl.

"I just got here a few days ago," she said. "Though, you know, I feel like I've been here all my life."

"What's better-should I ask you your name first or where you are from?"

She laughed wholesomely, like a little girl. It went with the pony tail bouncing behind her.

"My name is Sara. And actually I'm a native Southern Californian."

Sara was his real mother's name. She died during Rory's birth. All he knew of her were fond remembrances by his father and a few faded photographs. This Sara reminded him of the photographs.

"Don't meet too many native Californians around here," he coughed.

She just grinned. As they rambled down the beach, Rory consciously slowed himself to her pace. He looked over at her often. Sometimes she looked back at him, sometimes she looked straight ahead. Even then, he felt she watched him secretly, but it wasn't like an evaluation. He hated that kind of look.

"I saw you jogging out here yesterday and I thought I'd join you today. Don't mind, do you?"

Rory shook his head, trying to keep his breathing at its usual rhythm.

"It just makes me feel safer, this early in the morning. Jogging with someone."

Rory nodded and smiled. Boy, did he like this girl.

They remained silent all the way to the old lighthouse. He sensed she was quiet in deference to him. He appreciated it. He liked to jog quietly and he liked women who didn't talk too much, who seemed to speak just at the right times. And he was too tongue-tied right now to do much talking anyway. The tension between them, he in his black shorts and blue sweatshirt and she in her yellow suit, as they ran down the beach, would have been impossible to detect from a distance. But to Rory, well, he felt "like my ol' rubber band is gonna snap right here and now." He kept trying to think of what Dr. Rudy would have to say in a situation like this or just about a situation like this. "The mind is its own creator" floated through his brain.

"The mind is its own creator." He mumbled the phrase as they turned around at the lighthouse..

"Huh?" she asked, her eyes still full of sparkle.

"Um, nothing. I'm so used to running alone I guess I've started talking to myself."

She nodded her head vigorously as they moved back towards the burgeoning sunlight. She really seems to understand, thought Rory, not just faking it.

When they returned to the tracks leading back to his house, he slowed down.

"I guess this is where I get off," he said, almost glumly.

"Tomorrow?" she called, passing him, jogging towards her own house.

"Sure." It was a confused sure. An unsure sure. But he was sure, wasn't he? His mind's voice mocked him.

He stopped and watched her run on down the beach. A hot tingle passed along the muscles and nerves of his inner thighs as he gazed at her. The way her bottom moved, those high arches in her feet, the calves perfectly outlined by the tight sweat pants. He gulped and shook his head. If something came of this, he would personally go out and thank Chuck at the gym and Mazda the hairdresser and Dr. Connelly the plastic surgeon and Dr. Chung the dentist and Dr. Munson the ophthalmologist. And, of course, Dr. Rudy Camparis. Hell, he might increase his contribution to the Church of Creativity voluntarily, say twenty-five percent instead of twenty. Thirty even?

With these crazy thoughts racing in his head along with the images of her face and smile, her nipples hard and pushing against her sweatshirt, her supple rear end grinding up and down and those high arches springing along the sand...he let out a yell and skipped across the dune and into his house. For the second day in a row he was unable to write, paint or eat.

He thought of her constantly. He worried that she wouldn't be there, on the beach, the next morning. He worried that he forgot to tell Sara his own name. She didn't ask, but why should she? That'll have to be the first thing to do tomorrow when he sees her. Make her ask.

Late into the night Rory drifted off into a fitful, nightmarish sleep. He forgot to set the alarm and when he finally woke up with the sun streaming into his eyes, he lurched upright in bed, panic-stricken. Almost 9:30 am! He had missed The Girl, he had missed Sara. Rory was usually out of the house and on the beach by 5:45. He jumped out of bed and washed his face, threw on some trunks and a sweatshirt and was heading downstairs when he passed an open hallway window that faced the beach. She stood there, out on the white sand just past the breakwater, in soft pink sweats. She gazed out across the ocean, toward the black form of the yacht still anchored a half-mile offshore. He suppressed an urge to yell through the window. What could he say?

Rory first ran down the stairs, then slowed before he reached the bottom. What, indeed, would he say? Hi, there, hope I haven't kept you waiting. I overslept because I was so hyper thinking about you all day, all night, just all the friggin' time, I just couldn't sleep. No way. She'd think I was a real turkey. But he couldn't wait any longer. He leaped off the stairs and rushed out the sliding glass doors. He slowed when he reached the retaining wall and furtively watched her through the opening that led to the beach. "Breathing is the key." The thought surfaced momentarily, then receded. She stood as if entranced, gazing silently at the ocean. Her hands were placed comfortably on her hips, her back erect. Her silky blond pony tail hung down the middle of her back. Rory felt that hot tingle again as he strolled out across the sand.

Just as he could almost reach out and touch her, she turned smoothly, like a ballerina, and smiled. Even Dr. Chung would have been impressed with those teeth.

"I'm so glad you came out," she said. "I didn't want to just go up and knock on your door."

"Uh huh," replied Rory, mesmerized by her presence.

"I know you probably already went jogging. I just want to apologize for not getting up earlier to join you. I had a rough time falling asleep last night."

"You mean...you mean you weren't..." Rory didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the irony of it.

Sara looked seriously into his eyes and then registered understanding.

"You too?" she grinned. As he approached closer, she smoothly interlocked her arm in his and pulled him towards the surf. They both broke into a steady gait.

He started to talk, became garrulous, in fact. He told her all about himself. She answered his own questions generally, almost abstractly. But always just the right answers. The size of her family: Mom and Dad and a brother. That she was an interior decorator. (No competition with me there, thought Rory, gratefully.) That her parents owned the green house with the stilts, but rarely used it anymore. She also had heard of Dr. Rudy Camparis and watched his television show, well, almost religiously. She complimented Rory on his appearance, the sound of his voice, his smile, his manner. She liked him a lot, he figured. He could barely cover his joy.

When they approached the house on their return, she invited him over for breakfast. He accepted, nervously at first, but without making her think that he was reluctant. Scrambled eggs and bacon. "Just what I usually have," he told her. The green house was roomy and comfortable. They shared a belief in over-stuffed, utilitarian furniture. No knick-knacks. Nothing useless or corny. Except fine art, the good stuff. He noticed a number of watercolors framed on the walls.

"One of mine!"

"Yours? You're also a painter?"

"Kind of..."

"Of course, how foolish of me. Rory Kendall. I bought that at the Portnoy Gallery several months ago.

"Yeah, I had a show there."

"I brought it down here, to the beach house, because it made me feel, well, alive."

He noticed his novel, "The Mindbenders," on her bookcase. She nodded from the kitchen.

"I do know you wrote that," she laughed.

"But how...?"

"You just told me, Rory, while we are on the beach."

"Oh, of course."

During breakfast she asked him if he was still married.

"No, I just haven't found the right girl. Of course, I was different then, when I was married. I didn't do much to keep it going. How about you? You married?"

"Never found the right guy." Her jade eyes sparkled with promise.

He breathed deeply, steadily.

They began to see each often, every day for their jog in the morning, breakfast at her house or his, sometimes a lunch, sometimes a movie in the evening or just out to a cozy restaurant for dinner. By the end of the week, as they watched television on her sofa late at night, they slipped into a long kiss, longer than their usual goodnight kisses at her front door. Their hands explored each other hungrily and soon they pulled at each others' clothes. Rory never before reached such levels of ecstasy.

Sara and Rory spent more and more time together. Sometimes Rory sat down in front of his word processor, but couldn't think about what to write. Sometimes he didn't bother to turn the computer on. Later, he thought. I'll come back to it later. His agent called to plead, Steinman the film producer called to beg and his editor at Viking Press called to complain rancorously that Rory would have to repay his cash advance on his new book contract if Viking didn't receive a rough draft soon. Rory occasionally picked up a paintbrush and stared blankly at a canvas. Sometimes he would even dab here and there on the gessoed surface. But nothing was ever completed. He spent most of his waking hours thinking of Sara. He dreamed of her as well. Sometimes he had nightmares, but he could never remember what they were about. When he awoke, crying or screaming, Sara held his head close to her bosom. She spoke softly and hummed a lullaby. He usually fell back to sleep that way, cradled and mothered.

After two months of this bliss, Rory woke up one day to a financial crisis. Viking's lawyer wanted their advance back and bills had piled up on his desk. Then Dr. Rudy Camparis called, his stentorian voice booming, but friendly.

"We haven't seen you at The Center in months," he said. "Just hope you're alright."

"I'm okay, I guess."

" 'I guess?' " Remember what I always say, Rory, 'Let's take the guessing out of living'."

"Of course, Doctor."

"The mind is the creator."

"You're right there, Doctor."

"We also miss your monthly tithing. The Church depends on all its children, Rory."

"I've got writer's block."

"I see. 'To lie is to tell the truth.' Do you follow me?"

"You got me, Doctor. You've always had my number."

"Tell me about it."

"I've met the perfect woman."

"Say no more," interrupted Doctor Rudy. "Perfection is imperfect and the discovery of a flaw leads to perfection. That is what you must ponder. You do believe in me, don't you son?"

"Always."

"Reflect on those words, Rory, and clean this matter up as soon as you can. I expect to see your shining face at The Center very soon."

"Okay, Doctor."

"Not just okay, boy. What do I always say at the end of my television talks?"

Rory was quiet a moment. "Let's do it," he answered softly.

Doctor Rudy bellowed back into the phone, "Soooooo...let's do it!"

A click and a dial tone followed, but Rory only heard Dr. Rudy's final pronouncement echoing over and over in his mind.

He locked himself in his studio and pondered Dr. Rudy's words. Sara knocked but he didn't answer her. She pleaded, "I can help" but Rory still didn't answer. After several hours, she came back again. "How about some dinner?" He remained silent. As the night wore on she returned one last time. Tearfully, she announced she was going back to the green house on stilts. Rory didn't even hear her. He was breathing deeply. Inhale...exhale. Inhale...exhale. A perfect rhythm. And he thought about Dr. Rudy's new aphorism.

"Perfection is imperfect and the discovery of a flaw leads to perfection."

Several days passed. Sara had not joined Rory on his daily jog, though the first two days she watched him gloomily. He never looked in her direction. She pinned a note to her door in case he came by. It read: "You're living in another reality. Let's forget we ever met." Afterwards she noticed something peculiar was happening to her. She was having trouble remembering things. She even forgot to eat, and her body wasted away. Maybe she suffered from amnesia. She thought of calling a doctor, but she never did.

As the days passed into weeks, Sara became frail and old-looking, her hair prematurely gray and straggly. She did not bathe. The stench of food rotting in the refrigerator did not bother her. She couldn't find the telephone but she did not remember who she might call anyway. There were no longer any books on her bookcase and the walls were bare. Early one morning she sat in the only chair remaining in her crumbling house and gazed drearily out at the beach. Her head turned toward Rory's cottage. Another house, painted blue and white, sat on the far side. She did not remember it being there before, but what did she remember of the past, or even the present?

Two figures ran toward her on the beach. One was a tall, bare-foot man in black trunks an a faded blue sweatshirt, tan and muscular, his jet-black hair gleaming in the early sunlight. And alongside him, a red-haired woman, attractive but full-figured, wearing jeans, an Iowa State University T-shirt and a pair of scruffy sneakers. It was the last thing Sara ever saw.

As Rory and his new friend, Valerie, ran up the beach toward the jagged rocks that blocked further jogging, Valerie pointed toward the sand dune that jutted out from the far side of his cottage.

"I kinda remember a green house tucked on the other side of the dune," she said.

"Really? I don't usually run that far. Just cut back up to the cottage. You know, the rocks up there..."

Valerie veered off the wet stretch of sand and slowed down, walking toward the dune. Rory joined her. Valerie scanned the bleached sand for traces of a foundation.

"Guess I was wrong," she said.

"Remember what Dr. Rudy says: 'Let's take the guessing out of living.'"

"Sure, sure. But you can't take it out of my vocabulary." She was feisty, Rory thought. He admired feistiness.

Valerie's eyes fell upon a weathered piece of paper sticking up out of the sand near Rory's foot.

"Ho! And what may this be?"

Rory glanced down and silently read two words: "...another reality." As Valerie bent down to pick it up, Rory moved his large foot over it, breathing deeply.

"Hey, what gives, buster?" Valerie looked at him with a slight wad of venom in her eyes.

"There's nothing there, Val."

He moved his foot. Valerie knelt, sifting the sand with her fingers. There wasn't any piece of paper.

"The mind is the creator," smiled Rory.

"I'll say. And 'Breathing is the key'," said Valerie mockingly. She stood up and grabbed his arm. "Come on, let's get some scrambled eggs and bacon at my house. I'm starved."

Rory believed this time he could juggle both the woman and his writing. His imagination had always been powerful, but now he had full control.

Dr. Rudy would be very proud.

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A KRIS WORKSHOP -- Discover Your Passionate Self!
Hosted by Paul & Joanne Helfrich. Pre-registration required.

WHEN: Saturday & Sunday February 11-12, 2006, 10 AM-4 PM

WHERE: Castaic, California (45 miles north of Los Angeles Airport)

WHY: Take a break from Winter and explore a practical approach to living consciously. A Kris workshop always has a big turn out and will be a great opportunity to meet birds of a feather as well as interact with Kris in person over two full days!

WHO: Serge J. Grandbois is an internationally respected motivational speaker.

“Serge Joseph Grandbois is the exceptional channel for Kris, a compassionate and intelligent entity, or Energy Personality Gestalt, as he describes himself. Serge is one of the clearest vessels for non-physical communication in the world today. He has given voice to Kris for nearly 25 years, helping many people from all walks of life. He is fascinating!” ~ The Colorado Seth Conference

COST: On or Before January 12: $160 US
After January 12: $185 US

Private Sessions with Kris (a limited number are available)
On or Before January 12: $150 US
After January 12: $175 US

TO REGISTER & FULL DETAILS:
Kris Workshop

Kris Chronicles Home
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NOW AVAILABLE

WHAT A COINCIDENCE Understanding Synchronicity In Everyday Life by Susan M Watkins

Overview:

What if all those seemingly insignificant little What a coincidence! moments you've experienced were actually connected, were part of a larger, more complex coincidence story?

What if they were hinting at something very personal and important about yourself—and about the workings of human consciousness?

Would you listen?

Susan Watkins does. For more than 35 years she's been documenting and studying the coincidences that have happened in her life. What she's discovered is that seemingly simple coincidences—thinking of an old friend and their calling seconds later, for example—are often pieces of larger, more complex and meaningful "coincidence clusters."

A former newspaper reporter and the author of five books, Watkins has always been intrigued by coincidences—what they mean in our everyday lives, and in the grander scheme of things. What, she asks, do these coincidence clusters say about human consciousness and human connection? In What a Coincidence! she presents coincidence clusters that are utterly astounding. What they reveal is life- altering.

What a Coincidence! is an exciting, groundbreaking journey. Along the way Watkins offers profound insights as well as practical pointers on how to become aware of the coincidence clusters in our own lives. She also shows us how to document coincidences so that we, too, can reap their valuable rewards. We'll never brush off those What a Coincidence! moments again.

Bay Area Seth Group 2005-06 Season!

After a lovely but too-short summer we are ready to ramp up again for even more lively gatherings of the Bay Area Seth Group. We meet the 2nd Saturday of each month from 3-6pm in the Excelsior District of San Francisco (we take off December and June-August). The next gathering is Saturday, September 10th. You can read a general overview at: http://www.consciousnessarts.com/seth_group.html

This year we are going to be even more experiential and will be using the Practice Elements from The Unknown Reality as a jumping off point. We also plan to do some explorations into group dreams. Of course, we are SPONTANEOUS beings and often don't follow our plans at all, so anything can happen!

If you are interested in attending or getting notices of upcoming meetings, please send me your email address and I'll put you on our Evite list.

Blissful Blessings, Kerstin

Monthly Reminders

The Classic Seth Portrait by Rob Butts This is a low resolution scan for those interested.

See what we look like. Add your own picture! – John M. set up a webpage where we can add our photos. It also features a global map that shows where folks are located.

Announcing New Seth Books! Volumes 5 and 6 of The Personal Sessions are now available from Rick Stack and New Awareness Network! Check: http://www.sethcenter.com

DAS Handbooks - A series that explores dreaming, art, and science. Compiled by Miss Blake.

UFOs and Seth’s "Observations" - A two-part series that examines the UFO phenomenon. Compiled and comments Mark M. Giese.

A Brief, Probable History of Sethnet - what/who gave birth to this group and why? Compiled by Paul M. Helfrich.

Who is the "You" in You Create Your Own Reality? - a three-part essay that explores the nature of the Self who creates all its reality. By Paul M. Helfrich.

Greg Polson's Early Sessions Index, Vol. 9 is now available. (This completes the set of all nine books!) Alphabetical Order Page Order

Check out the Mindscapes Music CD: "A picture is worth a thousand words, but a song is worth a thousand pictures." Listen online to the Mindscapes CD, 22 tracks of new music from Paul Helfrich. Also available for purchase.