Have You Found the True Story?

A Story Teller in Apache tradition is someone who listens carefully to the details of an experience, then takes those same elements and reframes the experience from a cosmic perspective. Maybe the Point of View shifts. Maybe the Story Teller sees things the person missed. The Story Teller’s job is to make you the center of the experience in a way that heals and empowers you. That is the power of story.

Many years ago I worked with an Apache Story Teller, Woody Baily, to understand my experience on a 3-day Vision Quest on Mount Diablo in California. My invalid husband had died and I wanted to make sense of that darkest night of my soul. Mount Diablo in Northern California is a beautiful place a short drive from the San Francisco Bay Area and one of my most sacred mountains. It was the end of January, right before the anniversary of Sean’s death in February, but Northern California never gets very cold, right?

The Quest was cold and challenging. I lay in my sleeping bag under the stars, shivering. A mischievous raccoon made incredible racket in the camp kitchen. I was fasting using the Master Cleanser formula, and the little stinker reached under the latched door of the storage cabinet at the campground and in its efforts to pull out food, punctured the plastic jug. All my nourishment drained onto the dirt. Hungry, cold even in the weak winter sunlight, I did not feel even remotely spiritual. (This is often the case when seeking, I have learned.) I was still confused and frustrated when I returned home. I called my friend Woody.

After I poured out my tale of grief and challenge, Woody, the Story Teller, launched into a dramatic rendering of my Quest experience, his voice and vision a powerful connection to the sense of the Divine I sought. He told my story back to me in detail, and the pivotal moment came when one sentence pierced my heart. In the voice of a Shakespearean Oracle, Woody announced to the multiverse, “But she wasn’t done suffering!” Though he continued with the story, my attention stopped right there, riveted by what he had just said and the implications for my future.

What? Wait just a bloomin’ minute! The hell I’m not!

And that was the beginning of a major shift in my life. 

This is what we do as writers. We find and record the meaning in stories. Often we write to create stories that bring forth the meaning for which we hunger. This may help us see states of being in our own lives and suggest possibilities for our readers.

It takes courage to go to the places inside that need healing. It takes guts to dare to change or to dream big. You’ve got this. Here you have all the support you need to complete your Quest and move into the next phase of your life.

My writer’s privilege and pleasure

…is to introduce you to another favorite character from The Protectors of the Grid/The Crystalline Vision. Here you go!

Charusheela “Beautiful Jewel” Sardana

Shhhh. Charlie’s finally asleep, so I’ll introduce you here, quietly. Let me close the door.

There. That’s better.

Charlie crashed just a short while ago, after nearly all night in the lab making sure everything is good for the final mass-live presentation of The Ferry tomorrow. She says sometimes she dreams she’s a robot, her mind a computer that chugs away no matter what she’s doing, even sleeping. But back to the demonstration.

Everyone’s going to be there, you know. The investors, the press, the employees. The only difference between this test and prior ones is the scale. This one will be enormous. If everything goes as planned tomorrow, The Ferry, Cybershark’s electricity-free global communication product, will be ready to launch worldwide. That’s what “mass live” means – big scale – fully working prototype. Then everyone on the planet can communicate with anyone, anywhere, without electricity – for a small monthly subscription fee. For Charlie, it will be the crowning achievement of an illustrious career.

That’s saying a lot. Charlie has always been an achiever. Science and math came easily to her, as easily as the spiritual studies with her father, who took her with him to visit his gurus. Charlie was lucky. Not many females in India are privy to such training. She already knew that spirituality is the flip side of quantum physics. Made sense. No biggie. Charlie likes to play in both arenas, which meant when Terra needed spiritual support to deal with CEO Ben Boyce, Charlie was right there with her.

This success will be the next best thing since Kachi and Ben made her head of R & D at CyberShark. She was so happy to have work she could believe in, a project that will allow people in even the most remote places on earth to connect with everyone else for an astonishingly modest subscription. Acknowledgment of her abilities and a fat budget to draw on – yes, it felt incredible.

The fact that Kachi believed in her meant even more. As they worked together on the project, the attraction between them built and built until the night after the first successful test, it exploded. They were both surprised – but it felt natural and right. And passionate and deep and loving. True love smacked them both up-side the head. Neither of them could stop grinning, or think straight, so they went away for a few days to simmer down their sensuality before everyone in the company figured out what had happened. Ja! Like people hadn’t already picked up on it. And all that time together did was to amp things up. But CyberShark wasn’t Kachi’s end game.

Charlie knew Kachi’s plan to leave the country before the purchase of the island was even complete, but that didn’t make it hurt less when he actually left. The whole company was in turmoil, especially Ben Boyce – especially when the 2d test bombed. So Charlie just laid low and kept quiet until things turned around. They found the problem – it was Ben! – and subsequent tests worked beautifully. Now if this demonstration works as well, CyberShark has a powerful flagship product that everyone in the world will want.

Kachi wants Charlie to come to visit, but the timing just hasn’t been right yet.

Maybe it will be after tomorrow’s dress rehearsal, but meanwhile, Shhhh. Let her get some sleep. She’s got a big day tomorrow!

~.~.~

You can read all about the big demonstration and the evil that fights to capture the technology beginning in Chapter 58 of Protectors of the Grid/aka The Crystalline Vision.

Can shamanic tools save us?

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