STEPS Chapter XVI

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(1971-1975)

XVI

15 MAY 73 - There once was a little boy who lived near a great swamp. Each night there were great croakings, cries, slushings, oozings, chirpings, and buzzings from that very lively place. One day, after a great, heavy rain that had lasted all night and was even louder than the swamp, the water spread far beyond its normal territory, the moist banks and bogs, and stealthily crept its way clear up to the little boys’ front porch. As soon as he had finished breakfast he bounded out the front door to play, excited to find some puddle left by the storm. But there before him was a great sea! The wind made tiny ripples that lapped lightly against the bottom porch step and the sun sparkled and shone in a million places and danced on the water as far as his eyes could see, from over the swamp to all the way up in his yard and even part of the yard next to his! A black-suited bird with bright red shirtsleeves eyed him from the top of the young tree in his front yard and cawed at him nervously, as its light feathers were ruffled gently in the breeze. Then it flew off, a flash of black and red. He’d never seen such a beautiful creature in his own yard! He spent the entire day in big sloshy rubber boots going here and there, discovering countless new wonders at every turn. Snakes and bugs and turtles and birds and mud ripples and waves and drowned things. He wished it could go on forever. But, by the next day, the swamp had already started shrinking back to its home and only left one great big pond in a low part of the yard. He made boats out of wet sticks left on the lawn and floated them until time for supper. On the third morning, he ate breakfast in a rush and ran outside before his mother even had time to yell "Don’t forget your rubbers!" It was still there! A little down but as yet a really nice-sized pond right there in their front yard. And this morning he saw the miracle! There in the water were all kinds of little squirmy black things with funny squiggly tails that made them move in the most delightful way whenever they wiggled. He ran in hollering to tell his mother and she came and looked and said those were "tadpoles" and that they would grow up to be frogs. Frogs? Those funny things!? And so they got a big empty jar and put some of the pond in it with the little taddypoles and fed them with cheerios and things and watched and watched and watched and watched and pretty soon, but long after the pond had already dried up and gone away from his front yard, they really did grow tiny little legs and lose their tails. When they started to breathe in the air and got bigger, they had to be given a larger bowl with a rock in it to hop on. Then, before all of them could have time to grow up and go away on their own, one morning, as his mother was cleaning the bowl, while he was outside again exploring, she accidentally poured them all down the drain.

I’ve been here and there, there and here, rolling, rolling, rolling down the road, miles sliding by, hills rolling by, rivers flowing by, valleys, plains, mountains, canyons, deserts, seas rolling, roaring by. Blazing sun and pale, full moon. Stars by the million and millions of millions, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling on by, rolling, rolling, rolling down the road, miles sliding by. I’ve been here and there, there and here, for years and years and years. I remember! I remember! This afternoon, ten million times around the sun! The furrows they crept across my face, the crop did start up to sprout. I’m going now. With a wintry wind blowing through these drying bones, I’m going. It’s been a good old view from up here. The tide came in, is going out. The sap’s done flowing now. The last ray has streaked on off out of the west. I’ve been here and there, there and here, but never, not like this! Now they’re roaring, roaring, roaring by, the light so bright, so very, very bright, as I rush on. The sea is surging upward now, higher, higher, higher than houses, higher than cities, higher than mountains, than moons and suns and milky-ways, higher, higher, higher than dreams! I’m going now. I’m going home!

My lingering doubts and skepticism seem appropriate at this stage. If LW is not actually a way to God-realization, taking one in full consciousness back to higher spiritual regions beyond this life, then of course that doubt will be vindicated. However, if it is that True Path, continuing beyond the death of these bodies, then, being on such a Path, my doubt shall fall away before the proofs revealed "within;" and these will vindicate my commitment.

For me now The Lifestream Way seems very like Don Quixote’s "impossible dream," yet one deliberately chosen, as being far superior to the world’s limited vision, so thoughtlessly and arrogantly called "reality."

17 MAY 73 - Lilly, one of my fellow sales clerks at work, reported last night having an out-of-body experience. She said it had been somewhat frightening, as if her "soul had been roaming around" outside of her. She also described recent instances of clairvoyance by her daughter, as when she had been chided for telling lies when she said her grandmother was in the hospital, but had insisted she was and the following day, indeed, Lilly's mother had had to enter the hospital with what turned out to be a bad gall bladder.

20 JUN 73 - "Gradually perplexity...turned to anger, that most faithful ally of those who fail to understand." Krumnagel by Ustinov.

7 JUL 73 - Staying out at my folks’ place while they’re on vacation in Hawaii.

Dusk came after 9:00 P.M. this evening. The views out here are stupendous! One sees at such times what he is missing closed up in a little room in the center of the city.

Nature out here is a rustling, warm blanket enveloping this sprawling house. The air is athrob with the pulse of this vital chaos. Chaos? Perhaps it is, rather, a symphony, wrapping our globe in its lively, vibrant chords.

In a dismal dream last night I lost my infant daughter somewhere in a huge, ugly, empty building and, though we ran to and fro, neither my wife nor I could find her.

The radio just belched: "Phhssszzzt!"

15 JUL 73 - Master, through His Representative, Gen. Glacier, gave me The Lifestream Way Initiation today! Now this new babe begins most awkwardly to try to walk this Path.

21 JUL 73 - Resigned from Gibson's Discount Center today. Begin tomorrow at The Orange Squeezer, a vegetarian restaurant and health food store here, run by fellow members of the Austin LW community.

7 AUG 73 - A note from my brother, Ralph, today: "All creation is a mirror. When you look into it, what you see is what you are."

18 AUG 73 - It occurs to me it may be worthwhile to set down a few things I can review from time to time, to remind myself of things on the quest for higher consciousness:

My own certain death, which may come at any moment.
The fact that our ordinary mode of being is at best but halfway along the spectrum of potential awareness, with the very next level being so profound that it is to ordinary being as waking states are to sleep.
The absurdity, the incredibility of things being as we are told and taught in consensus or common sense reality; the necessity then for some transcending truth which is not absurd but credible.
Our mechanical way of behaving and thinking, virtually from birth to death, which, taken from a more objective view, is of little more significance than that of a large colony of ants or termites.
My lack of unity or of one-pointed singleness of purpose, of will, effort, perseverance, aim, decision, or commitment - in anything!
The reality that I shall attain or express nothing of genuine value, nor ever myself be more than a purely mechanical influence on anyone or anything, so long as I have not risen above this level of consciousness.
The wisdom that the measure of one’s progress and maturity is in growth of awareness, freedom from reaction to external influences, control over oneself and one’s circumstances, consistency of effort, day after day, hour after hour, moment after moment.
The fact that I can achieve little on my own, without the direction and instruction of a truly enlightened teacher or system or school.
The possibility that higher consciousness is not only attainable but is in fact truly the pearl of great price, for which it behooves one to detach himself from everything else and regard the trade as a bargain.
The realization that if there is life after death it can best be appreciated if one will work hard now toward achieving the most lasting, highest level of consciousness one can, in this very life.

20 AUG 73 - Sirens wail. Dead cat slumbering in the ditch, flies abuzz, leaves arustling over, grins bloodily and glares glazily out on nothing. A wisp of cloud clots and hangs pouting, frustrated, halfway across the sky, taunted by a yolk of sun. The air so heavy the soft breeze eddies it about the body like hot molasses or the wave-rippled river silt against a wader’s calves. My storm-tossed stomach heaves in a gut-tide, my salty blood, sticky like syrup, throbs slowly about the unvaulted chambers of the catacomb recesses of my body’s coursing vitality. A bird screams out its rights atop a bare, disease-denuded tree. Crunch of glass beneath my shoe. The load of intellectual excreta, crooked upon my arm, shifts and threatens to topple in a heap upon the ground. My hip protrudes grotesquely ‘neath a shrunken slip of skin and jostles and pitches like a ship’s advance across foothill waves that perimeter a hurricane. What is real? The gaping jaws wait. And one day we shall glare out glazily on nothing and grin bloodily while sirens wail.

" 'No one is ever satisfied where he is,' said the switchman." The Little Prince

There’s a little worm turning, black on white. Jaws flashing, crushing. Skulls shining. Ooze of blood. Spots on the rug. Filling other people’s pictures, fresh paint running down my face with the tear tracks, spoiling my made-up smile. Eyes sparkling, twinkling in the light. Moon, what are you feeling, all alone, heart of...I want to live! --- Leagues deep, again once more, absolute darkness, together, apart, in utter, shifting gently, great boulders, rumbling apart, together, for a thousand times, a star’s eye, with the tide, crashing together, then..., then..., apart, together, and yet again, and again once more, a thousand times a thousand times, ghost-like shadow creatures, while far, far..., in the twinkling of, flit across the screen of time and..., I want to die, are gone, above...