BALLAD 6, MORE SONGS FROM THE FIRST WAVE

 

IT'S NATURAL

 

Running Man, just like a master conductor, allowed the music, the light, within us, to come out, weave together, creating something sturdy but etheric. He, with song and dance and intention, danced us to a rock face.

 

We found ourselves, Lily, Sam and I, perched impossibly, in the blink of an eye, on top of that rock face. We had to have been up six or seven stories. I'd like to tell you we levitated, but in this ceremony, it was a more now-you-see-it-now-you-don't feel. One moment we were on the ground, and quite literally, the next moment found us standing on that cliff.

 

It would have been weird to the point of distraction had Sari not been just floating around, up there in the moonlight, waiting for this moment in the ritual.

 

Sari gathered us together, and we took positions in the shape of a square. We held hands. We swayed.

 

And then Running Man was in front of us. Sabrina was a far northern position, Eddie, far south, but all of us were now high above the ancient site we'd come to explore that afternoon.

 

Running Man now had in his hand a long, gnarly staff, and at the tip, little shiny bells glinted off the moonlight. He shook his staff, and clunked it on the ground three times.

 

We all came to a natural attention, all eyes focused on our master of this ceremony.

 

IT'S TIME

 

Chief Running Man began to talk in a language that was so enchanting and so very familiar, that a part of me felt like approaching him and babbling on and on making delicious sounds, reminding me of far away lands.

 

As he talked, it seemed as if he was invoking celestial help. Each time he did this, there was a shock of whiteness that would pop and sparkle, out there in the darkness.

 

By the time Running Man had done the whole invocation, the mesa on which we were celebrating was alight, awash in light.

 

Rings and rings and rings, ever expanding rings of white light came to be with us.

 

Running Man stood in front of us, in his exalted super-size, glimmering and with a face savagely on fire with God's love. He was a transformed and exalted being, having gathered in and partaken in a very pure energy invocation.

 

Sweat tumbling from his chin and elbows, he quietly gathered the intentions of we three, the only humans standing on that plateau, readying himself for the next step.

 

MEETING AN ANGEL

 

Sabrina approached Lily, in the stillness Running Man created. Eddie came over and held Sam's hand, then mine.

 

We stood in our little teams, looking deeply into each others' eyes, contemplating the stillness of the night air. And then there was a sound I'll never forget.

 

It sounded like a fog horn, but it had such a deep, deep bellow that it felt like the sound was originating from my molars, from my lungs, from my bones. An odd sound, one that one must see as foreign, but something which feels, once again, so very familiar.

 

I'd like to say that a regular woman did this next bit, but I'd be lying.

 

Next, into our gathering, walked a very tall, beautiful woman angel, wearing a chiffon number with lots of purple and rose in it. She had wings, and the wings were not what we've been told angel's wings are, so I want to tell you about that, but mainly, I want you to know that once we were in this angel's midst, all bets were off.

 

I don't know if you are aware of how weird an angel's energy is compared to we humans. I like to think of myself as a fairly advanced humanoid creature, enlightened and open minded, even. Able to assimilate any experience at all.

 

Well, I thought that was the case, but angel energy is so weird.

 

Angels have no hooks, no areas of turbulence, so angels just shine out love in such a pure way, that all the excuses we give ourselves, and each other, for the “way things are”, just do not apply. All equivocation ceases around an angel. All prevarication, and I mean all of it, ceases, around an angel.

 

Within this very pure space, our miracle took place.

 

NOW OR NEVER

 

The angel lifted a horn to her lips, and that nether-worldly horn crashed into each of our awarenesses in the way it did when she first blew her instrument. Long and deep, pure and strong, it was as simple and clean a call to the universe as I'd ever heard.

 

The swirl of white which had gathered around us slowed, solidified, and we were there, it became clear, standing in the midst of the company of heaven.

 

Of course, the Judeo-Christian imagery popped and rolled in my head, but there was a ancient aspect to these guests, to the ceremony, which defied simple translation.

 

Our angel spoke, “I am Amit-el. I am the one who has been working with your group, assisting you to this moment of creation.

 

“Tonight, on this mesa, your family and friends await you,” and with that she bowed, and Eddie and Sabrina came to stand in front of us.

 

Eddie said, :You have waited your lifetimes for this event. Each of you has had an arduous journey, to find yourself of this night, under these stars, with this company, coming home.”

 

Sabrina said, “In just a moment, we and the elders will gather in prayer. We ask that you set your intention.”

 

“Um,” Sam said, his voice stating his utter frustration, “Intention? For what? You haven't told us what's even going on.”

 

Sam began to pace. “It's clear something is happening, something big, I mean. Mom, I'm sorry if I'm ruining your moment or whatever, but, this is just making no sense to me!”

 

Running Man then approached Sam, took him under his arm, and laughed.

 

“My brother is right!” Running Man declared. “This group requires more transparency, less ceremony. Shall we all adjust accordingly, brothers?”

 

An interesting thing happened then.

 

HOLOGRAM, OR DOES IT MATTER?

 

We knew, the three of us, that we were standing on a cliff in the middle of a New Mexico plain in the middle of the night. We really did know that. However, as soon as Running Man said his words, the scene around us changed dramatically.

 

We were instantly in our living room.

 

Sabrina, Running Man, Sari, Lily, Eddie, Sam and me were suddenly at home, in the same positions and configuration we'd been in while bathed in moonlight.

 

Just to make it really weird, our cats came up to the group and started loving on us. We were home, and yet, and yet.

 

Running Man continued, “Sam, once again, you are correct in your assessment. We failed to take into account your age and abilities. You among the group understand best that what this is is an energetic shift, that's all, not something to be cloaked in mystery.”

 

Sari floated to the center of the group and told everyone to take a seat. We did. She is quite a commanding presence once she gets going.

 

Seated in our comfortable, familiar chairs, smelling the aromas only one's own home can provide, we settle in and listened to Sari explain.

 

SHIFTS

 

“This ceremony is an old, an ancient, one,” Sari explained. “We invoke our own soul family, then the ancients. And then we use techniques with which you, dear Samuel,” Sari touched Sam's arm, “are well acquainted. We move the energy that comes through with our minds but more, with our hearts, and we, in essence, create a structure into which you all transform.”

 

“Transform?” asked Lily. She looked, just then, for all the world, like a seven year old whose training wheels have just been taken off, due to the child's demands. “Do you mean, we finally get what I've heard about?”

 

Lily had gone through an interesting phase after the solstice. She'd expected to just light up that day, and when the light just never went on, as hard as she tried, she got a little downhearted.

 

After the solstice, on the blogs, many people who'd disappeared did post testimonials. Unbelieved and put down as fantasy by the mainstream media, all the testimonials had common themes.

 

Each person had been initially overcome with heat. They all described a furnace or a deep, dry, overwhelming heat that rose from their belly. Each of them related being overcome with a white light. Many explained that the light was in fact consciousness.

 

And then came the shift. Each person seemed to translate the light differently, uniquely, but no one who encountered this light remained unchanged.

 

Lily would read the accounts and get real sad. I'd find her in our green house, tending to her violets, after her foray into first hand accounts of solstice miracles.

 

Lily, of all the people I have encountered in this life, is the most committed warrior I have ever met. She's dainty enough to only reluctantly admit to donning this warrior energy, and that's what I love about her the very best. Watching her come into her own steely determination, and really own it, wow, that has been a trip.

 

Lily is a magnificent healer, a glorious light, a hub around which our stars turn, but she didn't deliver something to herself, and that drove her a little made, these last seven years.

 

And here in our living room, or was it a cliff?, it felt like, looked like, seemed like, Lily was finally gonna get what she wanted.

 

NOW

 

Amit-el, in our home, was not in her angel regalia, but instead, dressed in jeans and a knobby, white sweater.

 

Her wings, like I was going to tell you, were still there, impossibly sticking out of her sweater.

 

The thing is, angel's wings are not physical, of course, and they are more like energetic appendages than things to make a person fly.

 

An angel's wings are there to move energy, intention, emotions, around somehow, those wings. They fluff energy, light. So, there were her wings, clearly a part of her, just emanating from her back.

 

Amit-el settled on the floor in front of the fireplace. I thought it would be great to have a raspberry iced tea. One appeared on the table beside me. I then thought an orange shirt would be pretty, and my shirt changed color.

 

Holy crap.

 

“It's time,” Amit-el announced.

 

And without another world, we were forever changed.

 

DIAMONDS

 

What the blogospheres reported was accurate.

 

When Amit-el said, “It's time,” a whole lot of things happened all at once. Of course, each of us had our own experience with it. I'll tell you what it was like for me, and then I can give you the variations. What matters most, though, is the individual's translation of this information. Keep that in mind.

 

She said her two words, and then I felt like I was being cut in half by heat. It felt really good, the same feeling you get when you're in the sun, really super happy, and you're just baking.

 

Then, it was as if all that light that had been called in earlier, all those ancients, well, around me burst a shining, brilliant tableau, everything clear and clean and shiny, and the ancient energy began to come into resolution.

 

I saw faces!

 

It felt like everyone I'd ever had any contact with at all, clerks, best friends, people I drove down the road with, old elementary school teachers, anyone I'd ever had contact with, they were all in the room with me.

 

And then everything resolved in a most unusual way.

 

For one brilliant, shining moment, every single contact I had ever had with anyone, over thousands and thousands of lifetimes, came back to me. Like waves returning to a long dry beach, I allowed all that energy to return home to me.

 

I realized, in one shining moment, that everything returning to me was given from me, by me, for me. I was not separate from any experience I'd ever had. The experience was not separate from me. Together, even the times when I had car accidents, I had been in the flow. I had been participating. I'd never done anything wrong, even when I was making huge mistakes. The love, the freedom, the blamelessness, I rode those realities like a surfer.

 

Obviously, it is an impossibility to language this level of experience very well.

 

But once I got that there is no thing outside of me, and that there is, in the end, not even a me, in the end, then I came to some sort of emotional, energetic, spiritual plateau.

 

In my mind's eye, I was standing on the cliff, alone, with Eddie, in the moonlight.

 

Somewhere close, a coyote howled.

 

And Eddie said, “This next bit is all on you.”

 

With that, I closed my eyes, and I went to sleep.

 

HOME

 

I could smell pancakes and coffee, and I could see from my crumpled bed that it had to be pretty late in the morning.

 

Then it hit me.

 

What the hell was that all about?

 

And why am I in bed? How did I get undressed? Who is making pancakes? Are we in New Mexico? Do we get to stay home?

 

I eagerly put on my jeans and my favorite t-shirt, and headed down to the kitchen.

 

Lily was humming an old Grateful Dead tune, and had just closed the oven, having put more pancakes in there to keep warm.

 

“How are you and what the hell was that?” I greeted Lily.

 

“Oh, my God!” Lily squealed and ran to me, her arms wrapped around me. She hoisted me up into the air and twirled me around, “It happened, old girl! It finally happened!”

 

“What happened?” I asked. I had hoped Lily would know some sort of closure, and by the looks of it, she had.

 

“Well, all I know is that I remember everything,” Lily said. “Absolutely everything, Jane. And, I am enchanted by it all!” She said that last bit very loudly, and with her enthusiasm, she swept me up and began dancing me around the kitchen.

 

I sat at the table with my coffee. “Grab me a couple of those griddle cakes and tell me all about it, my love.”

 

WHERE? HOW?

 

It seems that each of us had singular experiences, events which can no more be duplicated than easily explained.

 

Lily found herself on a tropical island with Sabrina, alone, in the moonlight. There was a whole Mayan ritual, a ceremony, and then Lily had her experience. Much like me, just prior to the shift, she noticed a plasticity and weirdness to her reality, then, boom, everything was holographs and fantasy. She came to find herself in the Hall of Records, and she said she spent all night there. She said she felt like Harry Potter in the forbidden section of the library, except she didn't have to be invisible, and that section is no longer off limits.

 

We laughed about her experiences, and considered getting out the Harry potter glasses Sam got for a Halloween costume long ago.

 

Sam came into the kitchen as Lily was finishing up her story. He looked sleepy, and we both knew enough to leave him alone until he'd been lumbering around for at least a half hour.

 

“Hi, you two,” Sam said cheerfully, through his fatigue. “I'm so glad to see you both. My sweet moms.” he shook his head, a sentimental grin on his face, as he opened the oven and retrieved pancakes.

 

We looked at each other, then at Sam, then back at each other.

 

“What happened to you?” I asked him. “Looks like we each went very different places.”

 

“Yeah. Was that even last night, Mom?” Sam asked.

 

“We are in no-time now, you guys,” Lily piped in. “It doesn't make a lot of sense to use time as an anchor anymore. Maybe as a bookmark of sorts, maybe as a point of reference, but, it's not the same anymore. It has a different significance as a tool. I'm still puzzling on this.”

 

“That's exactly what Running Man told me,” Sam volunteered. “I understand so much now.” he sat at the table and reached over to hold my hand. “We went to my ancestral home. He took me home, Mom.”

 

Sam's voice cracked, and I saw that, once again, my big man was crying like a little boy. Overcome with relief, with love, with hope, I went over to him, hugged him, and then, there was Lily.

 

We stood in our kitchen, the three of us, crying and holding on to each other, a group filled with the awareness that their race is run, the crowd is overjoyed, their bodies are spent, and their hearts are already onto the next adventure.