One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.

Albert Einstein

Chapter Four

The Mystics

      I sat quietly that night in the blue casting of a full moon, gazing vacantly at the reflection of plants off the glass tabletop in my kitchen. The time I spent with the nun reminded me of an experience I had years before with another nun from St. Agatha’s parochial school, which was adjoined to the church of my upbringing.

       I recalled one morning in 1962 when I bolted from the sidewalk and into the street with that nun in pursuit. I froze at the sound of screeching rubber until my palms stung on the hood of a hysterical woman’s Chevrolet. Then a claw-like hand emerged from the black and white cloth I fled and snared me by the scruff of my shirt.

“Where were you at nine-o’clock mass Sunday?” Shouted Sister Clementus as she shook me unmercifully.

“I was there, Sister,” I replied, still stunned from my first near-death experience.

“You could have given that woman a heart attack,” screamed the irate nun.

I thought, St. Agatha’s isn’t even my school and I have to put up with this?

 She chased me regularly as I made my way to the public school I attended two blocks away. Her talk about the devil, sin, and hell, assured me of my due punishment for blasphemy—the only unpardonable sin. “BLASPHEMY” flashed in my mind’s eye nightly before sleep as I envisioned hellish lakes of fire. But that was only one of many disturbing experiences laying the groundwork for me to explore and ask why?

Fourteen years later, I could see how the nun at St. Mary’s had a heart, but Sister Clementus was cold, and the memory of her left no wonder why I preferred to be alone in churches. I went to sleep that night with the comfort of knowing someone was praying for me.

When I reached the age of twenty-two, my quest led me to the teachings of universal law by the masters of an ancient mystery school. I was introduced to metaphysics as a pathway leading to what they called Christ Consciousness.

Through their instruction, I could see I still served a habit of viewing almost everything through the beliefs and opinions of others—making for a displaced sense of self. The teachings explained the dynamics of belief, and how what is believed reflects from the screen of life as the believer’s reality. For example, if I changed my attitude about any given situation, my perception responded like the turn of a kaleidoscope.

 They taught that human beings are electromagnetic and spiritual in nature, rather than becoming so, with minds having the ability to either project superficial thinking, or extend from a deeper truth.  

My mystical teachers told me I was privileged to have a powerful spirit guide who shone every color of the rainbow—symbolic of great wisdom. They said he was a Native American Chief in a recent incarnation, whose tribe roamed the plains. I wondered why this guide chose me, but despite my intrigue, apprehension grew shortly before the arrival of each successive lesson. I would eventually discover how this uneasiness was directly related to long-forgotten events in my past, which through the lessons were being slowly uprooted. I wasn't aware of it then, but time would show the truth so often left uncultivated is a foundational one having to do with core-identity.

I arrived home from work and joked with the postman as he placed the familiar envelope from the mystery school into my mailbox. I stood there thinking for a moment about the lessons and knew they were transformative, but why were they lifelong? I believed transforming one’s life was what the teachers meant by metamorphosis, but the notion the terms had different meanings began to arise.

 The more I processed and eliminated negative belief patterns, the more I felt like the walls around my thinking were crumbling into starting lines of newness—or the horizon of a beyond I couldn’t see. My intertwined mental, emotional, and physical states fluctuated between a sense of freedom, and feelings of dread brought on by letting go of the familiar and looking toward the unknown. I sometimes wanted to go back to my old self and pull the covers over my head, which was another paradox since through the process of the teachings, much of what I had identified with as that self—was gone.

I pondered over just how much of a change I was looking at here while exhaling through pursed lips. Then I whisked the envelope from my mailbox and climbed the stairs of the Victorian I called home up to the third floor hallway leading to my room.

 After tossing the unusually thick envelope onto my desk, I glanced at it curiously before sitting to open it. Supplemental to my biweekly lesson was a sealed blue scroll encircled by a golden ribbon. Information in an attached fold described its contents as an offering, and that to read the solemn truth inside was optional.

Like Pandora with her box, I removed the ribbon and broke the seal. After sipping water poured from my carafe, I unrolled the fine paper of the scroll and read these words:

You are about to embark on an inter-dimensional journey where you will receive solvency to what has caused you great tribulation. Remember to focus on the seed of truth growing within you when in the face of opposition; for when you know truth, you will see there is nothing to fear.

The implications of that statement crossed the limits of my sensibility, and I thought before long my closet will be filled with unopened envelopes.