Two sides of the author’s personality were having a conversation before “beginning.”
“So, Terry. What are you going to write about?” said the first side.
“I don’t know… maybe nonsense. I always loved nonsense more than anything else,” replied the second.
“Like what?”
“Like Alice Through the Looking Glass, or the Oz books… sillier, even. The old Willot Papers story was close to what gave me pleasure to write, but I probably got wound up in making it ‘perfect’ or something and stopped writing it a long time ago.”
“That’s too bad. It was a marvelous story!”
“I liked it, too! It was fun writing it, and the poems that went into it. I remember the night I wrote the take-off on Jabberwocky that I called ‘Adventure Story’ – my eyes were bulging with crazy manic excitement as I came up with those verses.”
“Can you do that again? I mean, get that ‘crazy’ feeling back like you are calling it?”
“I haven’t tried in a long time, but I probably can. It is a sense of exhilaration and exuberance that I felt then – something close to being a manic high, I’d guess. I want to feel like that more often in my life!”
“Why don’t you?”
“Well, I’ve been so bent upon becoming ‘acceptable’ and all, I guess. I don’t know why I’ve bothered all these years – my silliness slips out all the time and exposes me, so my friends know I’m kind of crazy in a way they like, and my not-friends-yet just don’t take me seriously. I probably wish I was taken seriously to the point that I never will be if I keep trying. Maybe that’s what people sense.”
“Hmmm. Sounds like a viable theory to me. You should maybe think about that!”
“You mean, like, just give up on being taken seriously and have fun, and live life to the fullest and enjoy writing and being silly and happy? Is that what you mean?”
“That’s exactly what I’m driving at! What is so ‘dangerous’ feeling about that?”
“I feel like I’ll never hold a job, or get any respect at all when I need it to survive. I don’t know – some other fears are deeply rooted in me – something making me feel I’d be ‘ostracized from the tribe’ or something. Totally rejected.”
“Why do you feel you need acceptance at all? What’s making that such a strong impediment?”
“Well, of course, I’m human and a social animal, so being ostracized is a really primal fear. It is like being abandoned to die. Babies have that fear when their mother leaves the room, right? Isn’t that what some psychologists are saying?”
“Sure, but that can’t be all of it.”
“Ok, you are probably right – there is that incessant drive to become famous that would pretty much not be happening if I were rejected by everyone, or never taken at all seriously… Yes, the drive to become famous someday has plagued me all my life, I think. Wanting to ‘succeed’ like people in history books – wanting to have someone want to write a biography about me someday! I probably have let those big-name role models impress me a little too much. It wound up just paralyzing me from taking actions a lot of times, and catapulted me into taking actions beyond my abilities or social standing that I felt embarrassed for afterwards. Ah, youthful follies!”
“Yes – youthful follies. So what? Those are powerful allies, those follies! The moods of daring, and chance-taking against all odds, are good things – like food sustaining one’s exuberance!”
“Nonetheless, I felt a little embarrassed afterwards – I’d felt I’d made a fool of myself in front of some of those people. Like the toy companies, and the ‘real’ actors and actresses I’d encountered in my theatrical explorations (not that I enjoyed memorizing lines one single bit, but still…) and here and there – I just felt so small and stupid that I never took similar chances again.”
“Is that how it’s going to be with this writing? I mean, just whose esteem do you have to be living up to with this project? Einstein? Franklin? Baum? Carroll? Isn’t just being yourself going to be all they would ever ask of you?”
“That is a very good point! Of course that’s all they would ever ask of me!”
“Well, then, try it on for size!”
“I will!”
“Now, I don’t want to be jumping ahead too much here, now that you are inspired a bit, but what of selling this work? Are you ready to go to market with ‘yourself’ and sell exactly what you are? This will be like doing Fine Art, you know!”
“I’m nervous about the process, which I don’t really understand (getting an agent and all that publishing stuff), and maybe will simply choose the route of self-publishing perhaps … oh, I don’t have any idea what I would do!”
“You have those books on getting published around, and there are those magazines for writers…”
“Yes, but they seem to be about writing to fill needs of publishers and magazines and such… but I sense the point you are driving at – make those types of assignments ‘my own’ by really applying my own style, that’s what you’re driving at, isn’t it?”
“Yes, you read my mind. Those types of projects could be great practice while still earning you a bit of money. Being yourself, certainly, you won’t write like any other soul, living or dead! You can imbue your own style and fun and wit and whimsy and go galumphing into all those projects with your own type of vim and verve, adapting the projects to express your own exuberance and happiness and energy, along with all that surreal sort of outlook and humor that comes so naturally for you!”
“Ok, I see what you mean. Take, for instance, an assignment on writing a political commentary piece about the environment and turn it into a fantastic story? One with a point and an implied message?”
“That’s one approach, sure!”
“Or take a home and garden article and do the same treatment, with talking scissors and garden hoses and grass that turns orange, then pink at a whim?”
“That is exactly what I mean!”
“That sounds like FUN!!!”
“Yes, it does, actually!”
“How delightfully silly!!!”
“Delightfully, yes!!!”
“Ok, one thing I just noticed about this particular story here… I’ve been writing dialog the entire time! This is fun to write!”
“Are you having fun talking to me?”
“Absolutely!”
“Well, then, you must continue!”
“I’ve always been wary of being able to write dialog – it is supposed to be so very difficult, but I’m not finding this difficult at all. Maybe it isn’t very good dialog.”
“Seems to be working for us!”
“Well, yes – it does seem to be working well, in fact!”
“So, whom are you writing for?”
“Other people??? Me??? Myself??? I???”
“All of them, yes – and for your role models, of course…”
“Yes, who only expect me to be myself like you said. But what does that mean, exactly, in the context of ‘whom’ am I writing for? I mean, this is very entertaining for ME (well, for US) but there is that gnarly matter of pleasing the audience… isn’t there?”
“I wouldn’t allow that to concern you at this point – really I wouldn’t. You need to roam free and write about everything and anything in your own way that gives you happiness for right now, and maybe forever! This other concern is the stuff for editing later on, where you might temper things down in the 2nd draft or something. You know the adage, ‘never edit while writing’!”
“Yes, I know. A sin I’ve been guilty of terribly in the past.”
“Well, sin no more! You have a right hemisphere to nurture and allow to feel like it is part of your life again! I’ll keep the left hemisphere happy that it is still loved and nurtured and appreciated for what it does so well for us, but let’s convince the left hemisphere to take a back seat in more of an ‘assisting’ kind of a mode. We can allow it to provide grammatical, spelling and factual data and inspiration, with the understanding that it is a no-holds-barred arrangement that our right hemisphere is allowed to take whatever liberties it likes after such contributions are made!”
“I’m certain it will agree to be agreeable – it has witnessed itself firsthand how taxing it can be to be the sole thinker and decider about everything. It hasn’t been very happy in that role.”
“Nor have we been very happy with that situation either!”
“Well, ‘nuff said! I don’t want to hurt its feelings! It definitely has them, you know!”
“Yes, though a left hemisphere’s feelings seem so very logical and information-filled that they often seem simply dire. It is that old ‘the idle mind is the devil’s playground’ issue, perhaps. It certainly can think us into a decent state of depression, that much is certain!”
“An appreciable state of depression, for sure!!! But it isn’t entirely its fault – it is simply boggled by not understanding why it feels so ‘wrong’ all the time – the spirit has been weak in us lately, and this issue has been confusing for both hemispheres, I’d wager!”
Suddenly, a third voice chimed in.
“You’re not kidding! Uh – just butting in a second – this is the left hemisphere now – it’s so easy to take over in any endeavor involving linguistics and all…”
“Um… yes? What would you like to add, LH?”
“Just that the puzzle of what has been going on has been so overwhelming for me that I kept breaking down, entering into mazes of thought and conceptualizations that boggled my mind! There was no getting to the bottom of why we were, well, getting to the bottom!”
“Yes, this depression stuff has been quite boggling, I’ll admit that. It took actual experience of happiness to expose us to what was causing it. The final fling into Chapel Hill and the alternative lifestyle there was extremely valuable! While short lived because nobody really knew what was going on or how to handle it on the communications end, it was extremely valuable in demonstrating that happiness only was going to come from truly expressing our true self!”
“The big lesson there is very important and we have to remember it for the rest of our life! Just be ourself!”
“RH – have anything to add?”
The right hemisphere eagerly entered into the conversation, quite happy to add something!
“Thank you! Just purple puddles of iridescent nightmares that ripple into silliness that eradicates all fears and worries! Greens and blues mixed in shining relief against the blackness of such negative backdrops, like oily puddles on a busy city street. I’m happy with the colors, but the backdrops, though they’ve been painful, are very valuable parts of the relief-map we call life. Without them, where would the happiness be? Just glowing at us like so much psychedelic paraphernalia without any meaning or depth! It is that darkness that gives us the understanding of humanity – I’ll always keep that in mind. It is one of the nice things that differentiates us from other people’s experiences while also melding us into their experiences!”
“Very well said! LH stepping out for now!”
“Thank you, RH and LH for that input. Stick around for contributions whenever you feel inspired to add something else! And thank you for not editing RH’s comments like I know you probably wanted to, LH!”
The two hemispheres chimed in, thinking in unison, “You’re welcome, sez us! Anytime!”
“Wow – what they threw in was pretty deep and profound! I have to think about that a bit, perhaps.”
“No, you really don’t – those aspects are fully part of what makes us US. We can’t write anything without those sides of our self becoming expressed.”
“Yes, but I like the thought of how mixing the dark with the light, and how the frustration of dealing with puzzling ‘demons’ and unsolvable riddles could add such nice spice and flavor to the stories I write. It makes them sound like they’d have some actual ‘wisdom’ mixed in there!”
“Well, what wisdom you have got you certainly have come by honestly! None of it has come to us easily, I wouldn’t say.”
“Yes, as I was saying to our good friend Yoshi, there is a side of me that is glad I went through the extreme darkness of even suicidal depression states to suddenly emerge on the other side of them with sudden ‘knowing’ of their fundamental cause.”
“What was the fundamental cause, again?”
“Well, especially that serendipity is a very important thing to appreciate – that one has to be a ‘moving body’ if one ever thinks they will encounter the possibilities that lie out there for them; that one has to grasp THEIR OWN truth when they see it and choose to live it; how important choice is to all of this, but also how important it is to put oneself in a position where choices display themselves before one. I think I’m making sense here – am I?”
“I think you are getting very close to the matter, yes. It was a strange position we’ve been in for so many years now – finding out where our choices would align, perhaps, but even more importantly, we got to a point where there was no place else to go. We HAD to be done with that learning phase, to bolster up the courage it took to make such a plunge!”
“Why did it require so much courage, I wonder? What were we afraid of?”
“Those primal fears we discussed earlier? Failure? Ridicule? Rejection? Hmmm – it doesn’t seem as simple as all that. We knew the drills! We had studied Buddhism, knew all about the psychology of making choices and such! What happened at Frisky Business and in Chapel Hill was that we KNEW where we had to be, and that it was right there where we had found ourselves to be. I don’t think it took any courage to fill out an application at Frisky Business – it was more of a feeling of certainty, like a destiny that was playing out. That was the feeling we’ve been lacking so long – that feeling like we were ‘at one’ with our destiny! We’ve felt totally out of sync with the universe, like we were simply in the wrong place at all times – like we didn’t even belong here anymore, as if we benefited nobody by our presence here anymore.”
“Gads, that certainly was an awful feeling of foreboding and of emptiness – as if the universe itself had rejected our being here! Ugh – truly awful!!!”
“I’ll say!!!”
“But then suddenly we felt as if things had synchronized. They haven’t, totally, in the ‘lifestyle’ area, nor even in the ‘job’ area, but there is so much more of a feeling of ‘movement’ going on right now. Like things are ‘happening’ and we fit into the grand scheme of things somehow…”
“Yes, but is this just some illusion we are presently infatuated with, and not really anything more?”
“I think that the important thing is that we have gotten knocked out of the feeling of being disconnected. I am going to opt for seeing how we are connected over entertaining suspicions of being disconnected from now on!”
“That sounds like a bit of newly acquired wisdom, for sure!!!”
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it!”
“Well, let us be wise, then, and hold onto that thought for the rest of these days. I feel we’ve experienced enough dark thinking for a lifetime!”
“Truth to that!!!”
“So, Ok… I guess it is time to start writing, now that we’ve talked this all out.”
“I have to admit, I still do not know what to be writing about! Though, this exercise at writing dialog has been most entertaining and, in fact, extremely useful!”
“I knew that already. That is, about you not knowing what to write about next. Well, and about the other stuff, too. But, well, as you knew that I knew, I suppose that is the very definition of a rhetorical statement…”
“It might be just that, indeed!”
“Well, I’ve always wanted to make a rhetorical statement!”
“And now indeed we have!”
“Well, I could ask the right brain in to simply have a wail at it and produce a skirmish of dabbling, diddling, and frombulizing that keeps out of any quagmires…”
“Um, I think he already has been rubbing you in his way of rubbing things…”
“Indeed he has!”
“So, why not simply write with the faith that both LH and RH are going to establish themselves as fruitful presences?”
“Well, frankly, I want a little prayer first. One that asks them to be guided by that spirit that I was fortunate to see at the DMA teachers’ training so many years ago in Boston.”
“Can there be any other guidance? That was your connectivity to the entire universe!”
“Yes, and I want that to be the driving force that informs and inspires LH and RH in their doings. I’d like this to always feel like something bigger than simply mental masturbation, playing with thoughts and ideas to no end. I want a prayer that it benefits all beings everywhere, that’s all.”
“So, let’s have a prayer then. We pray that all such writing leads to the benefit of beings in all directions and in all times, in all states of being and existing at all levels of attainment. That it be entertaining yet enlightening, a source of joy and exhilaration and of ideation and visions and marvelous cognitions; an avenue to their own happiness permeating all times of their existences, and an avenue to their understanding when times are difficult, that they might contrast such times to see the potential for happiness held even within such times, even perceive the reality of such happiness concurrent with all other events in their lives! Anything else to add?”
“That sounds like a very inspiring prayer! I love it!”
“Ok – we may add to it later on someday, but this is a good one to go with for now! And I see LH has jumped in already and fixed up a couple of things! This is a good one!”
“I totally and wholeheartedly agree!”
We pray that all of our writing leads to the benefit of beings in all directions and in all times, in all states of being and existing at all levels of attainment. We pray that it be entertaining yet enlightening, a source of joy and exhilaration, and of ideation and vision and marvelous cognitions; an avenue to their own happiness permeating all times of their existences, and an avenue to their understanding when times are difficult, that they might contrast such times to see the potential for happiness held even within such times, and even perceive the reality of such happiness concurrent with all other events in their lives!
“So, what are you going to write about?”
“I still don’t know.”
“Maybe this prayer thing is putting too much of the old sense of pressure onto things. It doesn’t have to matter that much, you know, not the first drafts of things. Right now, we have to just get right with the writing part so it becomes automatic and a kind of habit like a hobby or other pleasure is for us, like smelling flowers or going for walks in the woods!”
“You are right – I was getting ahead of myself there again and making this too important. LH, in fact, felt a serious need to jump in and be at the ready to edit ‘right up front’ everything that was written, didn’t you, LH?”
“I admit it – that prayer inspired me a bit too much. I’ll keep back a bit more and contribute like I promised I would, just grammar and spelling and cool words and sentence structures and the like…” LH replied.
“I just saw you edit the extra dot out of that ellipsis!”
“Sorry…”
“Just teasing – you can’t help yourself! RH, where are you? I need you feeling empowered by that prayer and confident that you can deliver on it!”
RH timidly came forward in response to being called out. “I just don’t have that confidence yet… that prayer made me nervous, even though I helped to compose it! Wow – such a huge idea!”
“And one very worthy of you, RH! I need you to connect with that spirit with confidence, please. It is your best ability. Sorry, LH, but as you know, you can let the logic and facts and puzzle-solving occult the truth of what the spirit is trying to get across to you much of the time.”
“Yes, it is like a form of dementia or something, where I keep forgetting myself and who I really am!” LH responded.
“Don’t feel blue – you are doing very well with what you have received lately in the form of new wisdom and the facts of that wisdom will filter into your logical lattice and affect everything, as other wisdom has done in the past for you. Take heart – you are still definitely a powerful part of this endeavor. Include yourself in!”
“Thank you. That is encouraging!” LH reacted enthusiastically.
“RH, what have you got to say?”
“I’m trying, but trying is not the Yoda way – ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’ I’m still a bit rusty myself!”
“It will come easier with practice and success!”
“Yes, but I could use some success right now!” RH lamented.
“I count this as one success! This isn’t such obvious writing in the way it has gone, in that it doesn’t seem so surreal or fantastic or whimsical, but a re-read of it will expose your hand in this bit of magic! This has been a very positive flow of thought, led largely by you, I would say!”
“Thank you! It is heartening to think that even this small contribution might be considered worthy enough even of so great a prayer as we composed earlier!”
“We do not know of the effects of things – our crystal ball is broken, and we cannot imagine who will be reading this or when, or even how! They may be picking up on it telepathically in some distant time and age merely as it floats through the ether of universal thought! We cannot know what the long-term effects or what the audience reactions will be. We only know that Fine Art is left to the audience to witness and to make their own contribution to the meaning derived from it. If we can produce works containing a multitude of meanings so that they fit countless beings’ interpretations and produce insights in just as many, we will have done a Buddha’s work! If we can touch one million-billionth of that many beings, we will have accomplished very much!”
RH felt touched by this.
“I will free up my mind and let my resources be resourceful, then! I will seek inspiration in every fly that flies by, in all the flies that fly by, in every bee that is, in every is-ness that has being, in every mote of dust, in every avalanche of sky wisdom that offers itself to me, in every rock and root and tree and flower! I shall avail myself to every memory I have, from this lifetime and from every other lifetime, all from the same root, from this universe and from every universe! I dedicate my wholeness and rich resourcefulness to this cause!”
“Spoken like a true Right Hemisphere, all right! Thank you!”
“You’re very welcome!”
“LH, you seem driven speechless!”
“I assure you, I am! Not by force, but simply as one enjoying this exchange so much that I forgot I was even here!”
“He-he! That was so honest yet cute as anything could be!”
“I never thought of myself as being ‘cute’, but I kind of like the idea!”
“Oh, you are definitely cute!”
“Thanks!”
“Now, I have a question. What can I do with the experiences of my past that were so fantastic, amazing, miraculous, and fascinating? I mean, whenever I write about them, they become so dull sounding – not at all as amazing as the experiences were to actually feel as they happened. This has been making me consider not including such events at all, the telling of those stories has been such a dreary matter to date!”
“I suggest we not eliminate them, but hold onto them, and tell them as part of someone else’s tale.”
“That is an excellent suggestion! You mean incorporate such tales into some character’s life?”
“Exactly.”
“I have been thinking about the failure of the 3-dollars story, for instance. I mean, here is this miraculous appearance of three dollar-bills from the dirt alongside an interstate highway for an entire two weeks, and it seems like an impossible story to relate to or tell properly. I’ve been thinking lately of telling it in a dialog format like this one, with a teller and a listener?”
“Let’s try it!”
“Ok!”
“Ok, you’ve gotten the title written out. Now what?”
“Geesh! I’m already stuck!”
“You aren’t getting silly enough … call in RH to the rescue!”
“Right… I was editing a moment ago and LH was in charge again. RH?”
“Here I am!”
“Well, get going!”
“Here goes!”
As written by RH with only some help from LH and the others…
Turbulent flowerings spilled down the roadside byway in cascades of prettiness, all pink and dark pink and orange, flowing their ebullient display ahead of the two travelers into the distance on either side of the long dirt pathway along which they traveled.
“This is some dusty walking. But for the pretty flowers to look at, I’d be bored stiff!” said the one.
“Would you like to hear a story, then, to keep your mind off of your feet for a while?” the second asked.
“That might help me to breath a little more easily in this August heat, alright!” said the first.
“Well, did I ever tell you the story about the mysterious dollar bills that just kept on appearing in the roadbed?”
“No, not that I can remember.”
“Well, it really happened!”
“What happened?” asked the first, perplexed.
“Magic!” said the second. “Mystery! Miracles! The impossible!”
“Wait – so, let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” the first implored, curiosity piqued.
“Ok – well, have you ever been totally and completely broke? Penniless? With no chance of finding money, not even by borrowing or any other honest means?”
The first thought back to such times and rolled his eyes, the anguish of such memories penetrating him to his core.
“Well, yes, I certainly have!” he replied.
“I was in such a situation at one time. I’d just started a new job, and had a ride that dropped me off one exit away from the interstate exit where I worked. I was in a situation where I needed three dollars in order to be able to eat lunch – a sandwich and a drink costing just under 3 bucks. My car was busted, and I was awaiting my first paycheck to get it fixed.”
“So, what did you do? Did someone at work loan you the money?”
“No – I found the money on the ground while walking between exits in the interstate!”
“Found the money?”
“Yes! Exactly three dollars! It was there on the ground. One appeared under some leaves. I picked that one up and was inspired to look diligently and carefully in case there was another one somewhere, and surprisingly another appeared further on down under a clump of grass, and then after being bolstered in my confidence that looking just as hard might turn up another, a third appeared buried under sand by the curb further along! Exactly what I needed!”
“Ok, that was fine for the first day. Then what happened?”
“That’s just it! I found three dollars AGAIN!”
“Along the road?”
“Yes!”
“In the leaves and under trash and sand?”
“Yes! And the same strip of road! A second finding of three dollars exactly!”
“Well, how did you miss those dollars the day before? Had you given up looking after you found the three dollars you needed?”
“No, that’s just the point! These three dollars were in different locations – spots I had had missed, or so it seemed. I had walked right by them, even right over them, though I certainly and obviously didn’t see them there the previous day!”
“Well, eyesight is a funny thing. All six had to have been there, but you missed three the first day.”
“Yes, but then there was the third day – and the same thing happened! I wound up spotting three MORE dollar bills!”
“Three you had missed the other two days? Now that is funny!”
“Funny nothing! It was amazing!”
“I don’t know how amazing, necessarily. You were intent on looking, I’d imagine, by this time, and found new bills hiding in the ground where they’d been all along!”
“But now there are nine – why only find three at a time?”
“I don’t know! Maybe your attention just wasn’t sharp enough to spot them all at once the first day.”
“But then there was a fourth day, and three more bills appeared! And a fifth day, with three more! That’s fifteen bills altogether! Uncanny that I missed twelve bills the first day, and nine bills the second, eh? That’s a lot to miss, when I was looking so intently by this time, isn’t it? Doesn’t that seem rather strange to you?”
“Strange, yes, but…”
“Well, I’m not finished yet with this story! On the next Monday, I found another three bills. By this time I was doubtful I’d find anything, but there they were – appearing like they had before right in areas I had already walked the previous week! Ok… so that adds up to eighteen bills now! And then Tuesday arrived and ANOTHER three bills showed themselves! Twenty-one bills along that same stretch of road, and I was still only discovering only three at a time as I had been for over a week now!”
By now, the one listening to this story couldn’t help but roam his own eyes along the curbside and into the clumps of grass and flowers wondering if he might spot a dollar there. “So, you are suggesting what? That you very selectively limited yourself to finding only three of the twenty-one dollars thus far on day one, and another three of the remaining eighteen on day two, and so on? That seems odd that your brain should filter out the existence of the others the way it seems to have!”
“Yes – very odd indeed! And then Wednesday, there appeared another three bills, where by this time I was certain it must be impossible to find any more! I had traversed this same stretch of road seven times already, and this being the eighth, I was just about certain I could not possibly have missed another three. And I was almost right – I only found the third just as I was preparing to cross over the interstate to the other side to get to work!”
“So, you found three again on Wednesday?”
“Exactly! And I think you are starting to grasp the grip of this tale! On Thursday, against all odds, I once again discovered three bills which appeared the same way, from amidst sand-covered trash or under dirt clumps and brown, wet leaves or amidst straw-like grasses along this same ten foot wide strip which I had already traversed eight times before!”
“Uncanny!”
“Indeed uncanny! And on Friday, which was payday at last, a final three dollars appeared, meaning there had been 30 dollar bills along that stretch of road on that first Monday that I walked along that route, but had only found three, and 27 bills that Tuesday, but I had only discovered three of those, and 24 bills that Wednesday, and so forth.”
“Or so one would imagine! But how on earth could anyone miss 27 out of 30 bills on that first day, let alone miss 24 out of 27 the second day and so on???”
“Ah! Now you are beginning to see the mystery and the puzzle! How indeed?”
“What did you think was happening?”
“I truly could not help myself from thinking that these bills were simply appearing in the ground each day. By the end of the first week, that suspicion was already upon me, but every day of the second week, that was the only thought I was able to hold! That these bills were not there previously – the odds of me missing so many of them, and of only ever finding three on any single day seemed too overwhelmingly unlikely!”
“That is entirely true! Quite impossible odds, I would have to say!”
And on that Tuesday of the second week, you know, they did not appear right off. I had walked almost to the end of my trek before the first one appeared, and then all three appeared in succession merely footsteps away from each other! Before they showed up, I remember feeling like I had to simply acknowledge that the miracle was over, yet I should think my praises to the universe for having provided me thus far. Almost immediately after having that thought, the next three showed themselves!”
“Incredible!”
“Yes, and when I hadn’t found the third by nearly the end of my walk the next day, I was overwhelmed with a sense of peace and confidence that the third would appear, and so it did just before I reached my crossing-over point!”
“And so the same with that Thursday and Friday, I’d suppose!”
“Yes. I was filled with this wonderful feeling of prosperity – of a feeling that I had no need to worry about being cared for again as long as I held on to my confidence that I would find them, and continued to seek them diligently. And just as expected, the three bills appeared those two days as well.”
“You must have been feeling pretty blessed by then!”
“I was absolutely giddy while at the same time filled with a profound peacefulness during my walks those two days in particular. I’ll never forget the feeling!”
“What happened then? I mean, after you were paid and all?”
“I got my car fixed, and so never walked along that roadside again. And I’ve never found three dollars along the road during my travels since!”
“That is an incredible story! Now I shall be looking for dollars everywhere myself!”
“I am certain that if you had a true need, that those dollars would be there for you to discover, by some kind of miracle, and that you would discover them, my friend!”
“Thank you! After that story, I feel convinced that would be true!”
The two of them walked along the flower-laced dirt roadway for a while with a calm sense satisfaction with things engulfing them both. It suddenly felt as if this highway along which they now traveled was delivering them exactly what they each needed right at the present moment. The flowers, a wafting breeze, sunlight and a clear sky with pillow-like clouds overhead, and easy companionship – everything they needed right at this time.
“You know, my friend, after that story, I have to reflect upon the fact that we always have true needs, and that they are so much of the time fulfilled!”
"That's just it - the amazing quality of life itself seems to be in its providing abundance in accordance with our needs, whether we realize it or not!"
"By accordance to our needs, you mean as fulfills our actual needs, I suppose, not the imagined ones which attachment or greed can create."
"Yes, exactly. That is a difficult point for some to grasp, yet as the saying goes, "Ask and ye shall receive," anything we ask for may be a valid request as per the individual's genuine needs. I wonder if the universe somehow knows to differentiate between frivolous requests and genuine needs?"
"It may indeed know, for it is the universe which we are but a part of and an expression of. It created us, it generates us, and it nurtures its creations."
"But there is the quagmire: what of those unfortunate souls for whom their desperate needs seem to never be fulfilled? Their needs do not seem to be producing magical dollar bills to fulfill their hungers. Is there something you did that entailed a 'leap of faith' which might have transformed your request into a need fulfilled, or some other quality that may have differentiated your situation from the way others handle a similar situation?"
"Good question! I must say that when I decided to look for bills on the ground, it was with the inner conviction that I would find one, and after finding one, that I would find three. That inner conviction was the same each day - an inner assurance that I would find three bills. Although some nagging doubts did exist at length on the days that bills weren't immediately forthcoming, the inner conviction was that I must be patient sometimes, but not give up, but rather to have persistent confidence until the end. That is, not until there was no doubt that there wasn't to be a third bill was I to give up the notion that there would be!"
"Astounding! That right there may have been the 'magic elixer' that transposed a mere want or desire into a thought manifested into reality!"
"Perhaps. I wish I could teach others this skill - indeed, I wish I could be mindful of it always for myself!"
"Amen to that! How our faith wavers day to day!"
"Yet, I'm not so sure it is exactly 'faith' we are discussing here. There is another thing, similar but different. I’m talking about a different kind of a confidence that seems to be able to manifest magical things! It is an absolute sort of confidence. Unshakable. Focused and casting of all doubts aside.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” said the first, casting his eyes sideways towards his companion. “That stuff about manifesting magical things – I’m not certain one can manifest such things. I mean, miracles simply happen, don’t they?”
“Have you ever performed a 'thought experiment'? Or what you might otherwise term as a 'working premise'?" asked his friend.
“I cannot say for certain if I have or not.”
“By a ‘working premise’ I mean taking an idea and acting as if it is so for the purpose of testing it out, to see if it supports producing results. I took on as a ‘working premise’ that three dollars would appear, and the result was that they did, every day for ten days.”
“Well, that is an interesting example, but we still haven’t gotten down to establishing what exactly actually caused those dollars to appear!”
“No, we haven’t, but that might not be important to making such things happen to know the mechanism by which it works.”
“I’d like to know, especially considering such enchantments as bring about dollar bills! It is a little bit scary, wondering just who or what is behind such a thing happening!”
“I think it is the universe ‘happening’ that is making such things ‘happen.’”
“That sounds like some bit of double-talk! The universe ‘happening’?”
“Yes – perhaps as we are a part of the universe, we have a larger hand in what the universe brings forth of itself than we know or realize!”
“Do you have any other examples of such a notion, or are we still only on this dollar bill issue?”
“I do have another example of an impossible thing taking place.”
“Please, go on!”
“I lived for a while in an apartment with very high ceilings on a city street along which busses traveled. The ceiling light in the bathroom was very hard to reach without a ladder. It was a single bulb screwed into a light socket. When the busses would go by, they sometimes would shake the whole building just a bit, though it was barely noticeable from the off-street apartment I was in. However, it had shaken the bathroom light bulb loose just enough that sometimes you would be in there sitting on the ‘can’ after dark, and a bus would go by and shake the lamp, and the light would go off, leaving one sitting there in the dark, hoping another vibration would tip the bulb just enough to make it spark back on again. The carbon deposits on the bottom of the bulb and upon the contacts of the lamp socket had built up so that a barely perceptible shake of the building would make the light come back on again.”
“My! I ‘m sure that was frustrating sometimes!”
“It sure was!!! To the point of absolute fury sometimes! But no amount of banging the wall or stomping one’s feet on the floor would ever work – you simply had to wait for another bus to go by and shake it back on.”
“Good grief! How maddening! Sitting in the ‘john’ in the dark just waiting for the lamp to spark back on again must have been quite awkward!”
“Yes, it definitely was that!”
“So, what did you do?”
“Ok – I was sitting in the dark there one day, when it occurred to me that this connection through carbon deposits depended upon only a couple atoms to ‘wiggle’ their electron orbits a bit, and an electron path would spark into place through the carbon, completing the circuit, though very fragilely, holding the electron path until the carbon atoms were shaken apart again. It occurred to me that this was the ultimate test-laboratory for trying out mind over matter – telekinesis – and I decided I would try to use my thoughts alone to make those electron paths shift that little tiny amount and get the light to go on. Sounds crazy, but I was sitting in the dark for the umpteenth time and was frankly ready to try anything!”
“Goodness! I’d be ready by this time also! So, what happened?”
“Well, my first attempts yielded nothing, just focusing on the light bulb and trying to “think” it on. But then I paused to reflect, and I considered that everything I’d ever heard about actual ‘working’ magical events always seemed to involve some central place of focus for the mental energies to be ‘collected’ within and then be released from all at once, be that a ritual object or a magic wand or talisman object, by an individual’s efforts or through a group prayer, or whatever. So, I created this imaginary ‘object’ in my mind’s eye in front of me – kind of a Plexiglas rod sort of thing about an inch and a half in diameter and a couple of feet long, imagining it hovering in the air, just floating there in the air in front of me. So, here’s this clear Plexiglas rod, though of course, it is imaginary and made only of dream-stuff.”
“I see. Go on!”
“Well, I focused my thoughts on that rod collecting my concentrated energy, with the thought that it would collect the energy like a leyden jar was used to collect static electricity in Ben Franklin’s day, and that once I had focused enough energy into the rod so it stored what I considered an adequate amount, I would then mentally ‘release’ all that energy out of the rod and towards the light bulb to ‘shake’ its couple of atoms sitting in the carbon deposits and make the electrons spark across the gap, allowing it to fire on and light up the bulb!”
“Wow! You thought all that out sitting there on the john?”
“Yes – it kind of came to me in a flash of insight how I might make use of this ‘imaginary rod’ idea, after simply focusing on the light bulb didn’t seem to be working at all.”
“And… so???”
“Ok, so I focused the energy into the rod, then mentally ‘released’ it towards the light bulb, and to my amazement, the light came on in that instant!”
“Good gravy!! Weren’t you a little frightened that it worked???”
“Well, to be honest, I was a little. But I realized just as quickly that I may have simply been the lucky recipient of coincidence, where a bus might have gone by and knocked it back on at the same time I thought I’d ‘released’ the energy towards the bulb. So, I knew that to prove I’d actually done anything, I’d have to turn it off at-will in the same way.”
“So, what happened? I can’t stand the anticipation!”
“So – I concentrated into the rod again, ‘released’ the energy toward the bulb, and lo and behold, the light went off!!!”
“Holy Cow!!! How did you feel then?”
“I was definitely bemused and sat there marveling at my sitting again in the darkness, considering what I had just done! So, naturally, I couldn’t resist the impulse to do it again, to turn the light back on. Especially, of course, since I was again sitting in the dark.”
“And on the light went, didn’t it?! Oh my, this is just too much!”
“Yes. The light went right back on at the very instant I ‘released’ the energy towards the bulb. It was an awesome feeling of power, even though I knew I’d only just moved a couple of atoms, or even only a couple of electrons from their orbits. But, gads! I had always heard that every telekinesis experiment had been a hoax or a fake! And here I was doing it in my bathroom to my ceiling lamp!”
“Hah! The ultimate laboratory, as you said!”
“He-he! Yes!”
“So, what happened after that?”
“I finished my business and got up, and upon emerging from the bathroom, I told my girlfriend what I had just done. Though she was very skeptical at first, she could tell from my excitement that I had actually done what I said I had done! So, over the course of the next two weeks, every time I went to the can in the evening, I would go ahead and turn the light on and off while sitting on the john, and sometimes did it even during the day just for the fun of it. It became so easy that the ritual ‘charging up’ of the Plexiglas rod took only a few seconds now each time. If my girlfriend happened to be stuck in darkness from the bulb going off while she was in the toilet, she’d call me in and I’d turn the light back on for her! It was always one of those things that just made you kind of laugh to yourself, it was so exciting and amazing to be pulling such a thing off!”
“This is certainly an amazing story! So, why didn’t you become the “Amazing Telekinetic Human Light Switch, Performing on All Continents and Before Magnificent Heads of State and Royalty” for the rest of your life?”
‘Well, I was sitting on the john one day, turning on and off the lamp just for jollies, when it suddenly occurred to me that such an ability, if discovered that I had such a one by the government, would be the end of life as I knew it, as I would be taken and studied by scientists and the military, and the ability would be ‘weaponized’ for use in wars or as a sabotage tool or whatever – I just couldn’t see any practical use for it otherwise, and the foreboding scene of being used as a tool of destruction by a government agency was too scary. I was afraid of getting too ‘good’ at this, and all that such a thing might lead to! So, in a flash of commitment, I suddenly climbed up on the top of the bathroom sink, standing on my tiptoes. From this precarious position, I reached up stretching as long as I could stretch, grasped the light bulb, and I screwed in the light bulb!”
“And so came, with a single twist of your wrist, the end of your days as a telekinesist! How terribly sad – and yet how hilarious! Oh my!!! Seeing you stand up on that bathroom sink, screwing in the bulb in such a state of resolve to put this thing to an end once and for all! It is just too rich an image to put down!!! Such resolute determination! The end of an era in the twist of a light bulb!”
“Yes, and with it a flood of instantaneous relief! I can assure you of that!”
“Well, I certainly won’t venture to try it for myself, even if I have a cooperative light bulb! But I take it that the ‘working premise’ you had decided upon was thinking that the ‘Plexiglas rod’ solution would work, and you simply went with that once you had thought it out. Am I correct?”
“Yes, that was what I was trying to illustrate. It is a pretty radical example of such an idea at work, of course, but it had the essence of the idea of a ‘working premise’ at work going for it. Simpler applications I’ve heard of are like Olympic swimmers imagining their hands as being larger, and that has lead to them swimming faster immediately. The working premise wasn’t imagining their hands to be larger – it was imagining that imagining their hands were larger would increase their swimming speed!”
“I am beginning to catch a glimpse of what you are driving at. It is like what you were saying about the universe ‘happening’ a result into being.”
“Yes. The working premise that it could do so had to come first!”
“What an amazing idea! How could one teach such a thing? Or make it practicable for people to improve their own lot in life. Of course, now you have me musing as if I was a believer! How could this be how things work? And why can’t we or haven’t we harnessed such an ability before?”
As they strolled along, before either of them could think of a response to those two questions, a slight breeze wafted in their direction, pushing along towards them a piece of paper – an old page from a magazine that tumbled and slid along the roadway in their direction, till it finally settled upon the speaker’s foot, wrapping itself around his shoe. Upon the page was a photograph of two starving children from some foreign country, their stark eyes staring outward from the page and upwards towards the two men, as if imploring an answer themselves from them of those two questions, in the name of all of humanity and all of the sufferings of mankind. The man whose foot the page had become wrapped around bent down and picked up the sheet of paper, but arose stricken. They both were suddenly stricken with instantaneous grief. As he arose and straightened his body, the page with the photo being held in his hand, his eye caught the eye of his companion, and the two men suddenly broke into horribly sad tears of anguish, their remorse filling them both over the plight of the world, and they fell into each other’s arms, and wept for a bit, uncontrollably, their tears rolling down their faces in great sobs.
The universe had just “happened” both of them into a new form, changing their lives forever. This subject had just gone well beyond mere intellectual discourse about a curiosity. Once their tears had finally spent themselves upon the two of them and had left them thoroughly exhausted, they had been transformed completely into a new form: world changers. Separating from their embrace, they looked into each other’s eyes and each saw themselves as reflected in the face of the other, eyes sad, imploring, yet determined and committed, and full of an odd sort of confidence that was new to them both.
“We have to do something about this,” said one.
“Yes. It is over. This planet will be transformed once and for all. We must do it.”
“Agreed.”
The two men walked onwards towards their new, unseen destination, yet with the complete knowledge of where that destination lay and how it would look when they arrived at it. Now came the workings of magic. The working premise was that it could be done, and be done by them and by everyone else.
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