The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision (27 page)

“Look over there!” Curtis yelled.

Fifty yards away, barely distinguishable in the moonlight, was a narrow fissure, shaking the bushes and small trees, extending
slowly in our direction.

I looked at the others.

“It’s up to us now,” Maya shouted. “We have enough of the Vision now; we can stop them.”

Before we could act, the earth under us shook violently and the fissure accelerated toward us. Simultaneously several vehicles
pulled to a stop in the underbrush, their lights shining through fuzzy silhouettes made by the trees and dust. Unafraid, I
maintained my energy and focused again on the hologram.

“The Vision will stop them,” Maya yelled again. “Don’t let the Vision go! Hold it!”

Embracing the image of the future before us, I again felt the group marshal energy toward Feyman, as if holding our intention
like a giant wall against his intrusion, imaging his group being pushed back by the energy, fleeing in terror.

I glanced at the crevice still racing toward us, confident it would soon stop. It accelerated instead. Another tree fell.
Then another. As it sped into the group, I lost my concentration and rolled backward, choking on the dust.

“It’s still not working!” I heard Curtis yell.

I felt as if it was all happening again. “Up this way,” I shouted, struggling to see in the sudden darkness. As I ran, I could
barely make out the dim outlines of the others; they were veering away from me to the east.

I climbed up the stony ridge that formed the left wall of the canyon and didn’t stop until I was a hundred yards away. Kneeling
in the rocks, I looked out into the night. Nothing moved, but I could hear Feyman’s men talking at the canyon entrance. Quietly
I made my way farther up the slope, angling northwest, still watching carefully for any sign of the others. Finally I found
a way to climb down to the canyon floor again. Still no movement anywhere.

Then, as I began to walk north again, someone suddenly grabbed me from behind.

“What—” I yelled.

“Shssssssss,” a voice whispered. “Be quiet. It’s David.”

I
turned and looked at him in the moonlight, observing the long hair, the scarred face.

“Where are the others?” he whispered.

“We were separated,” I replied. “Did you see what happened?”

He moved his face closer. “Yes, I was watching from the hill. Where do you think they’ll go?”

I thought for a moment. “They’ll head toward the falls.”

He motioned for me to follow and we started in that direction. After several minutes had passed, he glanced back as he walked
and said, “When you were sitting together at the entrance back there, your energy pooled, and then swelled far out into the
valley. What were you doing?”

In an attempt to explain, I summarized the whole story: finding Wil and entering the other dimension; seeing Williams and
running into Joel and Maya; and especially meeting Curtis and trying to bring in the World Vision to defeat Feyman.

“Curtis was back there with you at the mouth of the canyon?” David asked.

“Yes, and Maya and Charlene, although I think there are supposed to be seven of us…”

He gave me another quick glance, almost chuckling. All of the tense, pent-up anger he had displayed in town seemed to have
completely disappeared. “So you found the ancestors too, didn’t you?”

I hurried up to walk beside him. “You reached the other dimension?”

“Yes, I saw my soul group and witnessed my Birth Vision, and just as you, I remembered what happened before, that we’ve all
come back to bring in the World Vision. And then—I don’t know how—when I was watching all of you back there in the moonlight,
it was as if I was with you, was part of your group. I saw the World Vision around me.” He had stopped in the shadow of a
large tree that blocked the moon, his face rigid and cast back.

I turned to face him. “David, when the group of us were together back there, and we brought in the World Vision, why didn’t
it stop Feyman?”

He moved forward into the light and immediately I recognized him as the angry chief who had rebuked Maya. Then his rock-hard
expression shifted and he burst out laughing.

“The key aspect of this Vision,” he said, “is not the mere experience of it, although that’s hard enough. It’s, how we
project
this Vision of the future; how we
hold it
for the rest of humanity. That’s what the Tenth Insight is really all about. You didn’t hold the Vision for Feyman and the
others in a way that would help them wake up.” He looked at me a moment longer, then said, “Come on, we have to hurry.”

After we had traveled perhaps half a mile, a bird of some kind cried out toward our right, and David stopped abruptly.

“What was that?” I asked.

He cocked his head as the cry again filled the night. “That’s a screech owl, signaling the others that we are here.”

I gave him a blank expression, remembering how strange the animals had been acting ever since I arrived in the valley.

“Does anyone in that group know the animal signs?” he asked.

“I don’t know; maybe Curtis?”

“No, he’s too scientific.”

I then remembered that Maya had mentioned following the sounds of birds when she had found us in the cave. “Perhaps Maya!”

He looked at me questioningly. “The physician you mentioned, who uses visualization in her work?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s perfect. Let’s do what she does and pray.”

I turned and looked at him as the owl cried out again. “What?”

“Let’s… visualize… that she remembers the gift of the animals.”

“What is the gift of the animals?”

A trace of anger flashed across his face, and he paused for a moment, closing his eyes, obviously trying to shake off the
emotion. “Haven’t you understood that when an animal shows up in our lives, it is a coincidence of the highest order?”

I told him about the rabbit and the flock of crows and the hawk, which had shown up as I had first entered the valley, and
then about the bobcat cub, the eagle, and the young wolf that
had appeared later. “Some of them even showed up when we saw the World Vision.”

He nodded expectantly.

“I knew something significant was happening,” I said, “but I didn’t know exactly what to do except to follow some of them.
Are you saying that all these animals had a message for me?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“How do I know what the message is?”

“It’s easy. You know because of the particular
kind
of animal you are attracting at any one time. Each species that crosses our paths tells us something about our situation,
what part of ourselves we must call upon to handle the circumstances we face.”

“Even after everything that’s happened,” I said, “that’s hard to believe. A biologist would say animals are primarily robots,
operating on dumb instinct.”

“Only because animals reflect our own level of consciousness and expectation. If our level of vibration is low, the animals
will merely be there with us, performing their usual ecological functions. When a skeptical biologist reduces animal behavior
to mindless instinct, he sees the restriction that he himself has put upon the animal. But as our vibration shifts, the actions
of the animals that come to us become ever more synchronistic, mysterious, and instructional.”

I just stared.

Squinting, he said, “The hare that you saw was pointing out a direction for you both physically and emotionally. When I talked
to you in town, you seemed depressed and fearful, as though you were losing faith in the Insights. If you watch a wild rabbit
for a long time, you can perceive that it models how to really face our fear, so that we can later move past it into creativity
and abundance. A rabbit lives in close proximity to animals
that feed on it, but it handles the fear and stays there and is still very fertile and productive and upbeat. When a rabbit
appears in our lives, it is a signal to find the same attitude within ourselves. This was the message to you; its presence
meant you had the opportunity to remember the medicine of rabbit and to fully look at your own fear and move beyond. And because
it occurred during the beginning of your trip, it set the tone of your whole adventure. Hasn’t your trip been both fearful
and abundant?”

I nodded.

He added, “Sometimes it means that the abundance can be of a romantic nature too. Have you met anyone?”

I shrugged, remembering the new energy I had felt with Charlene. “Maybe, in a way. What about the crows I saw and the hawk
that I followed when I found Wil?”

“Crows are the holders of the laws of spirit. Spend time with crows and they will do amazing things that always increase our
perception of spiritual reality. Their message was to open up, to remember the spiritual laws that were presenting themselves
to you in this valley. Seeing them should have prepared you for what was to come.”

“And the hawk?”

“Hawks are alert, and observant, ever vigilant for the next bit of information, the next message. Their presence means that
it is important at that time to increase our alertness. Often they signal that a messenger is close.” He cocked his head.

“You mean, it was foretelling the presence of Wil?”

“Yes.”

David went on to explain why the other animals I had seen had been drawn my way. Cats, he told me, implore us to remember
our ability to intuit and to self-heal. The bobcat cub’s message, arriving as it did, just before meeting Maya, was to signal
that an opportunity to heal was near. Similarly an eagle soars to great heights, and represents an opportunity to actually
venture
into the higher realms of the spirit world. When I saw the eagle on the ridge, David said, I should have prepared for seeing
my soul group and for understanding more of my own destiny. Lastly, he told me, the young wolf was there to energize and awaken
my latent instinct for courage and my ability to teach, so that I might find the words to help bring together the other members
of the group.

“So the animals represent,” I said, “parts of ourselves we need to get in touch with.”

“Yes, aspects of ourselves that we developed when we were those animals during the course of evolution, but have lost.”

I thought of the vision of evolution I had witnessed at the canyon entrance with the group. “You’re speaking of the way life
progressed forward, species by species?”

“We were there,” David continued. “Our consciousness moved through each animal as it represented the end point of life’s development
and then leaped to the next. We experienced the way each species views the world, which is an important aspect of the complete
spiritual consciousness. When a particular animal comes around, that means we’re ready to integrate its consciousness into
our waking awareness again. And I’ll tell you something: there are some species that we aren’t even close to catching up with.
That’s why it’s so important to preserve every life-form on this Earth. We want them to endure not just because they are a
part of the balanced ecosphere, but because they represent aspects of ourselves that we’re still trying to remember.”

He paused for a moment, looking out into the night.

“This is also true of the rich diversity of human thought, represented by the various cultures around the planet. None of
us
knows exactly where the current truth of human evolution resides. Each culture around the world has a slightly different worldview,
a particular mode of awareness, and it takes the best of all cultures, integrated together, to make a more ideal whole.”

An expression of sadness crossed his face. “It’s too bad that four hundred years had to pass before the real integration of
the European and Native cultures could begin. Think of what has happened. The Western mind lost touch with the mystery and
reduced the magic of the deep woods to lumber and the mystery of wildlife to pretty animals. Urbanization has isolated the
great majority of people, so we now think a journey into nature is a stroll on the golf course. Do you realize how few of
us have experienced the mysteries of the wilderness?

“Our National Parks represent all that is left of the great cathedral forests and rich plains and high deserts that once characterized
this continent. There are too many of us now for the wild areas that still exist. In many parks there are waiting lists over
a year long. And still, the politicians seem bent on selling off more and more of the public lands. Most of us are forced
to draw from decks of animal cards to see what animal signs are coming into our lives, instead of being able to take quests
into the truly wild areas of the world to experience the real thing.”

Suddenly the screech owl’s cry erupted so close that the sound made me jump involuntarily.

David was squinting impatiently. “Can we pray now?”

“Listen,” I said, “I don’t know what you mean. Do you want to pray or visualize?”

He tried to calm his voice. “Yes, I’m sorry. Impatience seems to be a residual emotion I have with you.” He took a breath.
“The Tenth Insight—learning to have faith in our intuitions, remembering
our birth intention, holding the World Vision—all of it is about understanding the essence of real
prayer.

“Why does every religious tradition assume a form of prayer? If God is the one, all-knowing, all-powerful God, then why would
we have to beseech his help or impel him to do something? Why wouldn’t he just set up commandments and covenants and judge
us accordingly, taking direct action when
he
wanted to, not us? Why would we have to ask for his special intervention? The answer is that when we pray in the correct
fashion, we are not asking God to do something. God is inspiring us to act in his place to enact his will on the Earth. We
are the emissaries of the divine on this planet. True prayer is the method, the visualization, that God expects us to use
in discerning his will and implementing it in the physical dimension. His kingdom come, his will be done, on Earth, as it
is in heaven.