The Twelfth Insight: The Hour Of Decision Part 11

"What are you going to do about them?" I asked.

He looked away. "I don't know. What are you learning from this Doc.u.ment?"

I thought for a moment about whether to answer, then decided to just tell the truth. "The Doc.u.ment is describing a way to stop the escalation of violence."

"The templates," he said.

I was startled. "So you're actually reading this thing."

"It's my job."

"But do you understand what you're reading? Did you see we were protected?"

He chuckled. "I saw you were lucky. If we hadn't come along, you wouldn't have made it."

"I don't think it was luck," I said.

"It doesn't matter," he pressed. "Listen to me. Things are accelerating, just like I said they would. Even with the action that's been taken with Iran, nothing has changed. Iran is still working on nukes. We think they may already have the capability to give them to terrorists."

I looked at him hard. "I heard the Apocalyptics already have a plan to create a war."

He straightened his sungla.s.ses. "I'm still hoping this crazy Doc.u.ment might give us another way out. As I told you, no one is going to like what we'll have to do to stop this threat."

In that moment, I realized that contacting us and following the progress of the Doc.u.ment was something he was doing much more on his own than I had thought. And as we exchanged looks, I could also tell he knew I knew.

"I'm way out on a limb here," he said. "And we're both running out of time."

He looked at me as though asking for more information. So I began to describe as best I could what the Breakthrough on the mountain felt like, and the idea that the Templates of Understanding could somehow create a wave of influence that might dispel the Apocalyptics' intentions, although we didn't fully understand how to do it yet.

He shook his head, looking at me as though all was lost.

"That's what this Doc.u.ment is talking about, some crazy idea like that?"

I knew how he felt. From the perspective of the secular worldview, it would seem illogical and silly. There was no way one could just read the words of the Doc.u.ment and understand, unless one had also encountered the experiences it was describing.

"Listen," I said, "I know it sounds crazy to you, but there's an esoteric connection between people. It's a real influence. If this catches on, it could work."

"Well," he said, shaking his head, "keep looking. And you'd better do it quickly. I told you: measures are being taken domestically in every Western-leaning country to deal with this problem. And if the plans go forward, it will happen before anyone realizes it's under way."

"Wait a minute," I said. "You act like you can just take over nations that have a long tradition of democracy."

He looked away. "Unfortunately, it's not that hard, especially during difficult economic times. Look at Venezuela. All you have to do is get a majority of the population hooked on government subsidies, and then threaten to take them away. They'll vote for the people who promise to take care of them, especially if you co-opt the world's largest corporations at the same time and get them to buy media companies.

"You just have to make both Left and Right think you're doing it to support their ideology, then everyone looks the other way while you hide the power to do it in bills n.o.body reads, and gradually plant your own judges in key places. Once you nationalize the polling booths, the rest is easy. You just wait for the right time, the right emergency."

His certainty at being able to pull off such a ploy chilled me. He seemed to realize he'd said too much and quickly reached into a satchel and pulled out a large folder.

"These are copies of the Seventh Integration," he said, moving to leave.

I reached out and took the folder. "Where are you getting these copies?"

"This one was sent to the office of the CIA in Langley. Do you believe that? If you were releasing parts of a doc.u.ment like this, would you send one to them? I managed to get them forwarded to me through a friend before anyone upstairs noticed, then ran a full investigation. It went nowhere. We don't have a clue who's distributing these translations."

He headed farther into the bushes. "You have five more days to give me some information I can use."

I hurried back to the house where I found Coleman, Adjar, and Hira gathered around Wil, already sensing something was wrong. Rus.h.i.+ng up to them I rapidly relayed what Peterson had said, including that the extremists were still here, looking for us.

"I think," Wil said, "that we need to leave as soon as we can."

Adjar leaned in. "And go where? How will we know how to proceed until we find the Seventh Integration?"

I lifted up the folder I had tucked under my arm, which surprised everyone.

They grinned at me as if I had produced a miracle, and then each took a copy to read.

"Where's Tommy?" I asked Wil, still thinking the Mayan Calendar would shed more light on all this.

"His mother sent a friend to bring him to her. She's in Egypt."

"What? Why? Isn't it dangerous there?"

"I know the person she sent," Wil said. "He's reliable. He said Tommy was needed."

I stood up, feeling angry.

Wil walked closer. "Look, Tommy is not an ordinary child. There's another template group there that his mother is part of. Tommy's been there with her many times before. He'll be fine."

I nodded. "Where's Rachel?"

"She went with them."

I just looked at him, dumbfounded and slightly disoriented. Things were moving too fast.

"Why would she do that?" I asked.

"She felt that she had to. And there was no time to wait to say good-bye."

I wondered again why I hadn't turned around and come back when I had seen Tommy. Yet if I had, I may not have seen Peterson and received the copies of the Seventh Integration. I knew all this was just more Synchronicity, moving us along, but I didn't like it.

Wil was looking at the pages.

"Let's get going," he said. "We have to read this!"

I nodded, sat down by my tent, and began reading. The Doc.u.ment opened by saying that, in this Integration, we would see how Synchronicity actually worked.

Moments of Synchronistic discovery, it went on, feel like we are in just the right place at just the right time to receive important information. Yet if we observe more closely, we can see that these Synchronistic moments are preceded by an intuitive urge that directs us to go somewhere, or say something, that results in the Synchronicity. Following such guidance has happened all through history at moments of great discovery and accomplishment. But it has happened more or less unconsciously.

It is time, the Doc.u.ment continued, to wake up and bring the intuitive part of Synchronicity more fully into consciousness. The key to doing this is to broaden our habit of expecting Synchronicity to include expecting the intuitions that are part of this process. And in order to do that, we must adequately identify such guidance by learning to distinguish our "guiding" thoughts from ordinary "ego strategy" thoughts.

I looked over at Wil. "This is similar to what was said in the Prophecy at the Seventh Insight."

"Read a little further," Wil replied. "It explains how to actually do it."

Ego thoughts, the Doc.u.ment clarified, are words we say to ourselves about our situation in order to logically a.s.sess how to get things done in the world. These thoughts come up spontaneously from years of learning.

However, the Doc.u.ment says that if we observe closely, we can begin to distinguish another kind of thought, one that appears to be more spontaneous. It feels as if it merely drops into our minds, usually without any direct connection to logical a.n.a.lysis. These thoughts often come with an image of us doing something, or a feeling that urges us to take some action that we feel in our stomachs. These are thoughts the doc.u.ment is calling guidance. Once followed, they usually lead to an important Synchronicity.

I thought about this for a moment. That is exactly how it happens. How many times when we suddenly think to call an old friend, for instance, does the person say, "I was just thinking about you," and then present a Synchronicity of some kind?

I looked at Wil, who pretended not to notice but gave me the hint of a frown. I knew what he was saying to me: don't talk, hurry up and read.

The rest of the pages wrapped up the Integration by saying, again, that the key to becoming fully conscious of these thoughts is to stay as much as possible in this state of alertness for the next guiding intuition to arrive. The key was to not let a hunch or an image go by without at least seriously considering it. It did reiterate, as before, that since we were in a transition, adding spiritual ability to a rational, logic-oriented worldview, we should use logic first in finding a way to act on the intuition.

One tip for being on the alert for a guidance was to constantly ask yourself, "Why did I think that now?"

I put down the papers, realizing I already asked that question of myself from time to time. How did I get into that habit? Then I remembered: Wil had told me to do it while we were in Peru.

As I read on, the Doc.u.ment mentioned another technique to use when one needs a guiding intuition, or higher perspective, on a given situation in a hurry. Instead of just waiting, one can actively seek guidance by "tuning in."

For instance, when facing a decision whether to go somewhere or not, we can just imagine ourselves already traveling to the place and arriving there. The point of this method is to see how easily the journey can be visualized. If you can see yourself going there easily, then that means it's a good idea. If the desired images are difficult to see, or fail to appear altogether, we should take precautionary measures.

The Doc.u.ment reiterated that when we see the right course of action, there is a corresponding elevation in energy, or an "urging" feeling, as though one is "inspired" to take the action.

I stopped and thought about this process for a moment. Tuning in was already part of the worldwide vocabulary. What the Doc.u.ment seemed to be relaying is that there is a more precise way this art should be practiced.

Returning to the Doc.u.ment, I saw that it made one last point. It said we could use this method to tune in to many different life situations, but we would not discover how deeply we could tune in, until enough people returned to the Mount.

The statement threw me into deep thought. Was that meant to be taken literally or was it symbolic? And if it was literal, what Mount? There were dozens of mountains mentioned in the sacred writings of the world. Looking over at Wil, I saw he had placed his pages on his lap and was gazing into the distance. Hira and Adjar were doing the same thing nearby. When I caught sight of Coleman, he was slowly strolling down toward the big cottonwood, also appearing to be deep in thought. I immediately knew what they were doing: they were pondering our current situation and looking for guidance. They were already tuning in.

Clearing my mind, I attempted to do the same thing, first seeing if anything just popped into my mind. For a long time I simply looked around the area, letting my mind drift. I mused about how nice this homestead felt, and how sad I would be to leave it. Then I thought about our group's joint experiences on Secret Mountain, and whether the Mount the Doc.u.ment mentioned might be that mountain.

Suddenly, I got the image of another place, a hazy, very rocky, mountainous region. And I was there with Rachel! Which gave me a blast of energy. Barely able to contain my excitement, I looked at Wil again, who seemed to be waiting for me to finish.

He stood up and came over to me. I caught sight of Coleman walking my way as well. Hira and Adjar were right behind him. Soon we were all standing in a circle facing one another.

"I know what I need to do," Wil said. "We still have no idea where the Twelfth part of this Doc.u.ment has been released, if anywhere. Sooner or later we're going to have to find it. I'm going to my friend's place in Cairo to see if I can discover a clue."

Adjar stepped forward. "I'm going back home to Saudi Arabia. There's another mountain there that has something to do with all this."

All eyes then fell on me.

"I saw myself with Rachel," I said. "Where was she going?"

Wil gave me a big smile. "She went to the city of St. Katherine, Egypt, near Mount Sinai!"

I just looked at him as the others laughed. The energy was soaring. The Doc.u.ment said we all had to return to the Mount. Maybe we were all going to different ones.

"What about you?" I asked Coleman. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going with you," he replied.

"Are you sure?"

"Look, all this is new to me. I'm the one who went the wrong way when the extremists were shooting at us from the ridge, remember? I tried to discern what to do, and all I saw was myself with you, on another really rocky mountain of some kind." He smiled and winked.

I looked over at Wil, amazed at how much our energy was elevating.

"Do you feel this?" I asked. "We're getting the Seventh Integration, aren't we?"

He shot me a look. "Yeah, and we've felt it before!"

We looked at one another. Of course. We were recapturing this part of our Connection on Secret Mountain. We were stuck in this world all alone. We were guided. The full memory came back to me: the way I spontaneously knew what I was being led to do, the exact moves to make.

Hira stepped forward.

"Remember the template," she said. "We also have to come to agreement about guidance. Obeying G.o.d is talked about a lot in our tradition."

"Also in the Christian tradition," I said, feeling as though I was speaking for Rachel. "It's called doing G.o.d's will."

Wil was nodding. "In Eastern thought, it's best expressed in Zen, as a flow in harmony with the Divine."

"Yes," Adjar said. "But no tradition points to this ability more than my tradition. We call it surrendering to G.o.d. It is the foundation of our whole religion. The ego must be put in its proper place by the daily seeking of guidance in prayer, many times daily, so that we act only in spirit!"

He was right, and we all knew it. Islam did have the strongest emphasis on this part of our Connection.

"By the way," Hira said, "I'm going back to Jerusalem. I can't explain it, but something is happening at the Temple Mount, the place where the ruins of David's temple are located."

I felt a s.h.i.+ver. I knew somehow that her intuition was directly connected, in a way we didn't yet understand, to the Apocalyptics, and to their clandestine plan to end the world.

For an hour I helped everyone get ready to leave. Wil had managed to find a charter out of Sedona airport to Phoenix, then a flight to New York and Cairo. Adjar and Hira were driving to Phoenix and then flying to their respective destinations. Coleman and I had decided to stay the night and then leave early the next morning, primarily because we needed all day to take care of our cars and make arrangements.

Wolf had somehow secured clean cell phones for all of us, and at one point Wil handed them out.

"These will help us stay connected," Wil had said. "But remember, text only, no voice. Here is a list of everyone's numbers. Commit them to memory and then destroy the list. Everyone has a phone now except Rachel and Tommy. Just use the phone sparingly."

I followed Wil and helped take down his tent, uneasy that he was leaving again.

"What do you think is going to happen?" I asked.

He looked me up and down. "I think we're beginning a downhill run now. We're going to move through the rest of these Integrations and find the Twelfth. I just hope a lot of other people are doing the same thing out there. No matter what happens, just keep going. I'll find you at Sinai."

Within a couple of minutes he was loaded up and driving off with Hira, Adjar, and Wolf, giving me one last resolute wave.

"He has a great guide," Grandmother suddenly said from behind me.

I turned to find her standing several yards away, reaching out with a cup of tea smelling of sage and rosemary.

"This will help you on your path," she said.