Quantum Shaman: The Waiting Room

It had been a long weekend, though not particularly eventful. After so many years of doing these renaissance faires as a merchant, it all starts to blend together, and at times I find myself not quite remembering what city we're in or what day it is. Most of the time, that's okay - it allows the internal dialogue to stop almost naturally, and quite often I realize I am simply gazing up at the sky or watching the wind stir the leaves of the trees. Unless something happens to disturb that assemblage point, I tend to exist in a state of almost perpetually heightened awareness - on the bridge between first & second attention. Prime real estate, if you ask me.

This is also true when driving home from these long weekends, particularly when I find myself alone in the motorhome as I did on Monday morning. Because the motorhome is a noisy beast of burden, I don't tend to play music while driving, much preferring to let my mind create its own entertainment. So as we drove through north Escondido, through border patrol checkpoints and areas once-green, but now scarred with the signs of more and more new housing developments, I realized I was communing with Orlando (my double).

Can't really say what we were discussing, if anything - though the communion was pleasant and alluring. I was aware of other traffic moving past me as I crested a large hill outside of Escondido, when suddenly a small black boxy car - the type most preferred by shaved-headed rudesters in the age bracket of 21-30 - went zooming past me at such a high rate of speed I was instantly jolted back into hyper-awareness. Because he cut me off when he zipped in front of me, I was forced to slam on the brakes and swerve to the left to avoid smashing him like a bug on the windshield.

What I could not have seen was that ANOTHER rudester - probably "the other guy" with whom Rudester #1 was road-racing - was already moving into the same lane I had just swerved into, and the laws of physics being what they are (two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time), I was pretty certain Rudester #2 was going to end up as a greasy red smear on the side of the motorhome - a real bitch to clean.

Somehow, though, the collision didn't happen, and both rudesters went racing off in the direction of the wind when I suddenly found myself "out of body" in a manner that tends to happen in moments of great danger. Much to my surprise, it was not much different from this world. I was in a nondescript house, with a sense of being in an upstairs bedroom. The walls were grey-white, no decorations that I could discern, silver-grey carpets, and one window that seemed to face north. The only furniture was a king-size bed with a white chenille spread, and a single nightstand where a pile of old hardcover books were stacked at least 2 feet high.

All of this I observed in a split second, as I became aware that Orlando was standing next to the bed, dressed in jeans and a white long-sleeve shirt, arms folded over his chest as he regarded me with a knowing little smile that was almost sinister. Just seeing him in that manner brought my heart into my throat. I wondered briefly if that collision had happened after all - if not in ordinary awareness, then certainly in some parallel reality. Was this all there was? Just a nondescript room in a nondescript house on the edge of nowhere in particular? And the Nagual man standing there like some dark spirit of a night that never ends? Despite the fact that it had been daytime in the motorhome, it was night here - black like silk velvet, with a star hanging on a thin thread in the open window.

As if hearing my thoughts, Orlando laughed. "This is just the waiting room," he said with a shrug. "When I'm not manifesting as a little boy in Greece or a pirate on the old seas, or a prince in the leg irons of responsibility, this is as good a place to wait as any."

I didn't need to ask what he was waiting for. I had almost just experienced it - that last dance with the eagle that may come in the form of a car wreck or a heart attack or simply closing one's eyes and never waking up. I didn't bother asking if I were dead. Didn't seem to matter much, either way. To my amusement, I was okay with that.

"So what next?" I asked, sitting on the edge of the huge white bed. The chenille was soft against my palms, every bit as real as anything in first attention. He knew what was on my mind, but I spelled it out for him anyway. "Just seems these past few months haven't exactly gone according to plan. And frankly I've even started to question the path. We like to think things happen for a reason, but the only meaning is what we assign to it all, and the only path is the one behind us."

Though he had been standing by the bed, I realized he had moved to the window. I say "moved" because that's how my first attention mind defines the results, but the reality of it was that he had simply shifted his assemblage point from A to B. No real "movement" occurred in the traditional sense. It made me smile. So he stood there at the window with his back to me, gazing out at the vast expanse of infinity while his chest rose and fell as if he were just an ordinary man breathing in a slow, even manner.

What he said next rattled me to the core of my foundation. "You've come to the end of the path." Now he turned and met my eyes, and in his gaze were galaxies and universes and entire vistas of the nagual glittering like diamonds just out of reach.

I forced myself not to look away even though it was like gazing into the depth of the abyss itself. I was reminded of the first time I spoke to this "man" when he was in manifestation almost 20 years in the past. He had scared me then. He scared me a lot more now. And yet, at the same time and in the same breath, I was without fear, for none of it mattered anymore.

"Creation rises out of the nothing at the command of those who follow no path, you see. Every action you have taken on the journey has led you to this moment, when the road disappears beneath your feet and you realize it has led you to the source of all power... and that source is only yourself." Though his words held a twinge of melancholy, the irony appeared to amuse him. "What you do next is a matter of intent - but far more importantly, it is a movement of Will."

And then, before I could argue or agree or even think, I was back in the world of first attention, on a freeway that was too brightly lit and too noisy and far too coarse and vulgar somehow. The motorhome was still lumbering down the road, the rudesters were long gone, and for a strange moment outside of time, it was as if I were looking at a movie playing out on the windshield - two-dimensional, flat-line, unreal. A quick vision of The Matrix reminded me of the character who, after a lifetime of staring at it all, only saw the coding.

I realized that's how I have felt for quite some time. Having stripped away the illusions and the programs and the role-playing games, we are left with the code that runs it all, but appears to have no real source other than the code itself. Suffice it to say that the coding is every bit as visible as the sunrise, and every bit as predictable. It's why I have been able to predict every unpredictable turn of events that has occurred over the past few weeks - and it is in the coding itself that I begin to realize why I have felt powerless at times to alter the course of that coding in my own life.

"...what you do next... is a movement of Will..."

That movement of will has to do with operating at a level above or beyond or simply aside from the code - for as long as we are part of the code, as long as we are stuck on any "path", we are not truly free to create from the heart of the nagual. As long as we are part of the code, we are playthings of the eagle, extensions of the tonal.

Over the days that followed since this incident in the waiting room, I thought at length about Orlando's words. When we come to the end of the path, we begin to see that each of us is "the one."
What's next is always what we create.

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