ISBN-13: 9781500361112 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 726 str.
I met a beautiful woman whose interests lay in the design of destiny, miracles, and apparently me when Jeanette needlessly dangled mystical intrigues from her novel-in-progress to secure my help formatting it for the screen: As an average-looking man whose naivete had been savaged while working for television news in places like San Salvador and Beirut, I reasoned that a romance between us was no less absurd an idea than the premises she already seemed to embrace, and I decided to pursue her affections while assisting her. Portentously, learning her plot was like sucking gelatin through a straw before she confessed that she needed help researching the progression of a critical element in her screenplay-how a character would respond to specialized training. She subsequently explained only that her story involved a rescue mission of such massive proportion and intricate design that rescuers had to undergo rigorous training, without which the mission, and so her story, would sound like pure fantasy. For this reason the precise target was kept from students until they were ready to hear it. Jeanette then asked me to go through some lessons, so that she could accurately portray a trainee's development. We worked closely, often competitively, as she kept me at bay like a bemused fox playing with a myopic rabbit, and the friction between us grew exponentially as my beliefs became examples of why the mission was necessary. Finally she made a claim too ridiculous to contemplate, even within the context of our unfettered debates. She said that mankind's failure to recognize what we are really like has led us into an evolutionary cul-de-sac, and that an ancient teaching Spirit was telling her how this had happened through the proliferation of our damaging beliefs. We were on the cusp of a universal intervention in our ways, and our return to sanity would begin by awakening masterful emissaries to their purpose. Realizing I had been chasing a brilliant lunatic, I decided to cut my losses. However, while gathering the courage to abandon her otherwise delightful companionship and our challenging discussions I had what would have been inexplicable experiences had she not surreptitiously prepared me for them. With no choice but to believe her, she dropped another bomb. Jeanette explained that Spirit intercedes in our ways by sending individuals into physical life in the traditional way, but whose experiences are designed to become the basis of future endeavors. Of necessity, and as it is with all of humanity, to have pure experiences they could not be aware of their missions, so there comes a time when they need to be awakened to their purpose. This was not a simple process: Throughout the ages mystics of various backgrounds had kept alive, and refined, a teaching scheme known in our time as Stalking. In this instance, the term does not refer to the aberrant persecution of another's welfare; the literal opposite is the case as the stalker's goal is to free their apprentice from apparently reasonable behaviors that will cause harm down the road. Without exception, this is an excruciating process that comes with no guarantee of success. Typically the failure rate is high because there is no compromise in the teachings, and no candidate is allowed access to knowledge of true power lest they have acquired the disciplines to handle it. Otherwise, the teacher would be creating a tyrant. In the case of emissaries, there is always another to take up the task. This is the story of a reluctant "apprentice's" journey to discovering the purpose of his experiences before and after meeting Jeanette.