Mutant Message Down Under (11 page)

T
HE SUN
shone in such a scorching glare I could not force my eyelids fully open. Sweat, produced in every cell of my skin, escaped to run in minirivers down the creases of my chest to moisten my thighs as they rubbed together with every step. Even the tops of my feet were perspiring. I had never seen that before; it was an indication to me we had lost the 110-degree comfort and were experiencing nearly unbearable temperatures. The bottoms of my feet had also formed a strange pattern. There were blisters from toe-to-heel and side-to-side, but blisters had formed underneath the already bubbled surface; my feet felt dead.

As we walked, a woman disappeared into the desert for a few moments and reappeared carrying an enormous bright green leaf. It was about a foot and a half wide. I saw no plant in sight from which the leaf could have come. It was fresh and healthy. Everything surrounding us was brown, brittle, and dry. No one questioned where she found it. Her name was Bearer of Happiness; her talent in life was conducting games. That evening she was to be in charge of our sharing time, and she said we were going to play the game of creation.

We came across a mound of ants, big ones, probably an inch long, with strange, distended centers. I was told, “You are going to love this taste!” These creatures were to be honored as a part of our dinner. They are a variety of honey ant, and the distended stomachs hold a sweet substance that tastes much like honey. They never become as large and sweet-tasting as the ones that inhabit ground closer to lush vegetation. Nor is the honey a thick and creamy, bright yellow goo. Instead, they seem to have extracted their substance from the colorless heat and wind of our surroundings. These ants are probably the closest thing to the sweet taste of a candy bar this clan ever experiences. The people put out their arms and let the ants crawl on them and then stick their hands in their mouths. As they are withdrawn the insects are sucked off. Their expressions told me it must taste wonderful. I knew sooner or later they would think it was time for me to try one, so I decided to be daring. I took just one and plopped it in. The trick was to crush the critter in your mouth and enjoy the sweetness, not to swallow it whole. I couldn't manage either. I couldn't get past all the legs wiggling around on my tongue and the ant crawling up onto my gums. I spit it out. Later, when we had a fire, they put ants into a leaf enclosure, buried it in the coals and, when cooked, I licked it off the surface of the container like a melted Hershey Bar off the wrapper. For anyone who hasn't eaten orange-blossom honey, it probably would be a treat. However, it wouldn't sell very well in the city!

That night Game Woman tore the leaf into pieces. She didn't count them in the traditional sense that we do, but she provided one for each person in her own method of keeping track. While she did this, we were making music and singing songs. Then the game began.

While chanting continued, the first piece was laid on the sand. Then another and another until the music stopped. We all observed the design forming like a jigsaw puzzle. As more pieces were put on the ground, it became apparent the rules included moving any portion, if you felt your piece was better suited to that spot. There were no specific turns. It really was a noncompetitive group-oriented project. Soon the top half of the leaf was completed and back to its original formation. At that point everyone congratulated everyone else, we shook hands, hugged, and whirled around. The game was half over, and everyone had participated. Concentration began again, and we were down to serious business. I walked up to the pattern and laid down my part. Later I walked to the design again but couldn't locate which piece was mine, so I returned and sat down. Ooota read my mind and, without asking, he told me, “It is okay. It only appears the pieces of leaf are separate, as people appear separate, but we are all one. That is why it is the game of creation.”

He interpreted as several people advised me. “To be one does not mean we are all the same. Each being is unique. No two occupy the same space. As the leaf needs all the parts for completion, so each spirit has its special place. People can try to maneuver, but in the end each will return to the right place. Some of us seek a straight path, while others enjoy the weariness of making circles.”

I became aware that the people were all looking at me, and in my mind came the idea to get up and go to the pattern. When I did, there was only one space left uncovered, and the portion of leaf needed was laying a few inches away. I put the last piece into the puzzle, and a shout of joy resounded through the uncluttered surroundings and out into the vast expanse of open space that encircled our small group of human beings.

In the distance a group of dingos raised their pointed faces upward and howled into the black velvet sky dotted with the sparkles of celestial diamonds.

“Your finish confirms your right to this walk. We journey a straight path in Oneness. Mutants have many beliefs; they say your way is different from my way, your savior is not my savior, your forever is not my forever. But the truth is, all life is one life. There is only one game in progress. There is one race, many different shades. Mutants argue the name of God, what building, what day, what ritual. Did He come to Earth? What do his stories mean? Truth is truth. If you hurt someone, you hurt self. If you help someone, you help self. Blood and bone is in all people. It's the heart and intent that is different. Mutants think about this one hundred years only, of self and separateness. Real people think about forever. It is all one, our ancestors, our unborn grandchildren, all of life everywhere.”

After the game was over, one of the men asked me if it was true some people live their entire lives and never know what their God-given talents are? I had to admit I had patients who were very depressed, who felt life had passed them by, but others had made a contribution. Yes, I had to admit, many Mutants did not think they were given any talent, and they did not think about the purpose of life until they were dying. Big tears came into his eyes as he shook his head, showing how difficult it was to believe such a thing could happen.

“Why can't Mutants see, if my song makes one person happy, it is a good job? You help one person, good job. Can only help one at a time anyway.”

I asked if they had ever heard the name Jesus. “Certainly,” I was told. “The missionaries taught: Jesus is the Son of God. Our eldest brother. Divine Oneness in human form. He receives the greatest veneration. Oneness came to the earth many years ago to tell the Mutants how to live, what they had forgotten. Jesus did not come to the Real People tribe. He certainly could have, we were right here, but it wasn't our message. It didn't apply to us because we have not forgotten. We were already living His Truth. To us,” they continued, “Oneness is not a thing. Mutants seem addicted to form. They can't accept anything invisible and without a shape. God, Jesus, Oneness for us is not an essence that surrounds things or is present inside of things—it is everything!”

Life and living according to the tribe is in movement, advancement, and change. They spoke about alive and nonalive time. People are nonliving when angry, depressed, feeling sorry for themselves, or filled with fear. Breathing doesn't determine being alive. It just tells others which body is ready for burial or not! Not all breathing people are in a state of aliveness. It's okay to try out negative emotions and see how they feel, but it certainly isn't a place one would wisely want to stay. When the soul is in human form you get to play—to see how it feels to be happy or sad, jealous or grateful, and so on. But you are supposed to learn from the experience and ultimately figure out which feels painful and which feels great.

Next we talked about games and sports. I told them that in the United States we are very interested in sporting events, that in fact we pay ballplayers much more than we pay schoolteachers. I told them I could demonstrate a game and suggested we all make a line and run as fast as we could. The one who runs the fastest will become the winner. The people looked at me intently with their beautiful big dark eyes, then they looked at each other. Finally someone said, “But if one person wins, everyone else must lose. Is that fun? Games are for fun. Why would you submit anyone to such an experience and then try to convince him he was in truth a winner? That custom is difficult to understand. Does it work for your people?” I just smiled and shook my head “no.”

There was a dead tree nearby, so I asked for assistance, and we constructed a teeter-totter by placing a long limb over a tall rock. It was great fun, and even the oldest members of the group took a turn moving up and down. They pointed out to me there are some things you just can't do alone, and using this toy was one of them! Seventy-, eighty-, ninety-year-old people had released the child within and had fun playing games not designed for winners and losers, but for everyone's enjoyment.

I also taught them to jump rope using several flexible, long animal-gut ropes tied together. We tried marking off a court in the sand for learning hopscotch, but it was too dark and our bodies were demanding rest. We postponed that treat for another time.

That night I stretched out on my back and looked up at the incredible sparkling sky. Not even a display of diamonds on a jeweler's black velvet showcase could be more impressive. My attention was drawn like a magnet to the brightest one. It seemed to open my mind in realizing that these people do not grow old like we do. True, their bodies wear out eventually, but it is more like a candle burning down slowly and evenly. They don't have one organ giving out at age twenty and another at forty. What we call stress in the United States seemed a cop-out now.

My body was finally cooling off. Lots of sweat was going into this learning, but it was indeed powerful instruction. How could I share with my society what I was witnessing here? People would never believe me. I had to be ready for that. People would find this way of life hard to believe. But somehow, I knew that the importance of healing physical health must be coupled with the real healing of humans, the healing of their wounded, bleeding, diseased, and injured eternal beingness.

I stared at the sky, asking myself, “How?”

T
HE SUN
popped up, and with it came instant thermal heat. That morning the daily rituals were special. I was placed in the center position of our semicircle facing east. Ooota told me to acknowledge Divine Oneness in my own way and send out my prayer for the goodness of the day. At the conclusion of the ceremony, while we prepared to walk, I was told it was my turn to lead. I was to walk in front and lead the tribe. “But I can't,” I said. “I don't know where we are going or how to find anything. I really appreciate the offer, but I just can't lead.”

“You should,” I heard. “It is time. In order to know your home, the earth, all its levels of life, and your relationship to everything seen and unseen, you must lead. It is fine to walk for a while as the last one in any group, and it is acceptable to spend time mingling in the middle, but ultimately everyone must at some time lead. You have no way of understanding leadership roles until you assume that responsibility. Everyone must experience all of these roles at some time, without exception, sooner or later, if not in this lifetime, sometime! The only way to pass any test is to take the test. All tests on every level are always repeated one way or another until you pass.”

So we began to walk with me assuming the lead position. It was a very hot day. The temperature seemed higher than 105 degrees. At midday we stopped and used our nightly sleeping material to make shade. After the peak of the heat was over, we walked again, long past our usual time for making camp. No plants or animals appeared along our route to be honored as our meal. We found no water. The air remained a hot, motionless vacuum. Finally I gave up and called the day's journey to a halt.

That night I asked for help. We had no food, no water. I asked Ooota, but he ignored me. I asked others, knowing they could not understand my language, but knowing they could understand what my heart was saying. I said, “Help me, Help us!” I repeated it over and over, but no one responded.

Instead they talked about how every person at some time walks in the rear. I began to wonder if perhaps our street people and the homeless in the United States are allowing themselves to remain victims. Certainly mingling in the center is the position most Americans seem to lean toward. Not too rich, nor too poor. Not deathly ill, but never quite healthy. Not morally pure, but somewhere short of serious crime. And sooner or later we must step out in faith. We must lead, if only to become responsible for ourselves.

I fell asleep licking my cracked lips with a numb, dry, parched tongue. It was difficult to tell if my light-headedness was from hunger, thirst, heat, or exhaustion.

We walked a second day under my leadership. Again the heat was severe. By now my throat was closing; it was becoming impossible for me to swallow. My tongue was so dry it was almost stiff, and it felt swollen several times the original size, a dry sponge between my teeth. Breathing was difficult. As I tried to force the hot air down further into my chest, I began to appreciate how these people had described the blessing they received sharing the nasal shape of the koala bear. Their broad expansive nose and large nasal passages were more adept at dealing with the soaring air temperature than my European pug nose.

The barren horizon grew more and more hostile. It seemed to defy humanity, to belong to something other than humans. The land had won all battles against progress, and now it seemed to regard life as alien. There were no roads, no airplanes overhead, not even the tracks of creatures could be seen.

I knew if the tribe did not help me soon, we would all certainly die. Our pace was slow, each step painfully forced. In the distance we could see a dark, heavily laden rain cloud. It tortured us by staying just far enough ahead so we could not walk fast enough and far enough to receive the bountiful gift it held. We could not even get close enough to share the benefit of the shadow. We could only see it in the distance and know that life-giving water was riding out in front of us like a carrot dangled before a donkey.

At one point I shouted. Perhaps to prove to myself I could, perhaps merely in desperation. But it was of no avail. The world merely swallowed up the sound like a ravished monster.

Cool water lay in wet pool mirages before my eyes, but when I arrived at the place in the sand, it was always only sand.

The second day passed without food, water, or help. That night I was too exhausted, ill, and discouraged to use even the pillow of hide; I think I passed out instead of going to sleep.

On the third morning I went to every individual in the group, and on my knees I begged as loudly as my dying body would permit, “Please help me. Please save us.” It was very difficult to speak because I had awakened with my tongue so dry it was stuck fast to the inside of my cheek.

They listened and looked at me intently but only stood there smiling. I had the impression they were thinking, “We are hungry and thirsty too, but this is your experience, so we support you totally in what you must learn.” No one offered any help.

We walked and walked. The air was still, the world totally inhospitable. It seemed to represent defiance against my intrusion. There was no help, no way out. My body was numb from the heat and had become unresponsive. I was dying. These were the signs of fatal dehydration. This was it. I was dying.

My thoughts jumped from subject to subject. I recalled my youth. Dad worked so hard all the time for the Santa Fe Railway. He was so handsome. There was never a time in my entire life he wasn't available to give love, support, and encouragement. Mom was always home for us. I remembered her feeding the hobos who knew magically, out of all the houses in town, the one where they were never refused. My sister was a straight-A student, so pretty and popular that I could watch her for hours dressing for a date. When I grew up I wanted to be just like my sister. In my mind I could picture my little brother, hugging our family dog and complaining about the girls at school wanting to hold his hand. As children, the three of us were very good friends. We would have stood by each other regardless of any circumstance. But over the years we had drifted apart. That day, I knew they would not even sense my desperation. I have read that when you are dying, your life flashes before you. My life wasn't exactly going through my brain like a video, but I was grasping at the strangest memories. I could picture myself standing in the kitchen drying dishes and studying spelling words. The most difficult word I ever wrestled with was air-conditioning. I could picture my falling in love with a sailor, and our church wedding, the miracle of birth, first my baby boy, and second, having my daughter born at home. I remembered all my jobs, schooling, degrees, education, then realized here I was dying in the Australian desert. What was it all about? Had I accomplished what my life was intended for? “Dear God,” I said to myself. “Help me understand what is happening.”

Instantly the answer came to me.

I had traveled over ten thousand miles from my American hometown, but I had not budged one inch in my thinking. I came from a left-brain world. I was raised on logic, judgment, reading, writing, math, cause and effect; here, I was in a right-brain reality, with people who used none of my so-called important educational concepts and civilized necessities. They were masters of the right brain, using creativity, imagination, intuition, and spiritual concepts. They didn't find it necessary to verbalize their communications; it was done through thought, prayer, meditation, whatever you might call it. I had begged and pleaded for help vocally. How ignorant I must have appeared to them. Any Real Person would have asked silently, mind to mind, heart to heart, individual to the universal consciousness that links all life together. I had up until that moment considered myself different, separate, apart from the Real People. They kept saying we are all One, and they live in nature as One, but until then I had been the observer. I had been keeping myself apart. I had to become One with them, with the universe, and communicate as the Real People did. So I did. Mentally I said “Thank you” to the source of this revelation, and in my mind I cried out, “Help me. Please, help me.” I used the words I heard the tribe say each morning, “If it is in my highest good and the highest good for all of life everywhere, let me learn.”

The thought came into my mind. “Put the rock in your mouth.” I looked around. There were no rocks. We were walking on fine hour-glass sand. It came again. “Put the rock in your mouth.” Then I remembered the rock I had chosen and still held in the cleavage of my chest. It had been there for months. I had forgotten it. I took it out and put it in my mouth, wallowed it around, and miraculously, moisture began to form. I could feel the ability to swallow being restored. There was hope. Perhaps I was not meant to die today.

“Thank you, Thank you, Thank you,” I said in silence. I would have cried, but my body did not have enough moisture left for tears. So I continued mentally asking for help: “I can learn. I will do whatever is needed. Just help me find water. I don't know what to do, what to look for, where to walk.”

The thought came to me: “Be water. Be water. When you can be water, you will find water.” I didn't know what it meant. It didn't make sense. Be water! That isn't possible. But again I concentrated on forgetting my left-brain society programing. I shut out logic; I shut out reason. I opened myself up to intuition, and closing my eyes, I began being water. As I walked, I used all my senses. I could smell water, taste it, feel it, hear it, see it. I was cold, blue, clear, muddy, still, rippling, ice, melting, vapor, steam, rain, snow, wet, nourishing, splashing, expanding, unlimited. I was every possible image of water that came to mind.

We walked across a flat plain, level as far as the eye could see. There was only one small tawny mound in sight, a sand dune about six feet high with a rock ledge on top. It appeared misplaced in the bleak landscape. I walked up the side of it, my eyes half-closed in the blazing light, almost in a mental trance, and sat on the rock. I looked down, and there in front of me, all of my supportive, unconditionally-loving friends had stopped and were looking up with grins that spread across their faces from ear to ear. I faintly returned the smile. Then I stretched back my left hand to steady myself and felt something wet. My head jerked around. There behind me, in the continuation of the rock ledge I was perched on, was a rock pool about ten feet in diameter and about eighteen inches deep, filled with beautiful, crystal clear water from yesterday's taunting rain cloud.

I truly believe I was closer to our Creator with that first sip of tepid water than with any taste of communion I have ever received in a church.

Without a watch, I cannot be certain about the time, but I would estimate it took no more than thirty minutes from the time I started being water until we were putting our whole heads into the pool and shouting with joy.

While we were still celebrating our success, a giant reptile came walking by. It was enormous, something that looked like it was left over from prehistoric times. It was no illusion, but very real. Nothing could have been more appropriate to appear for dinner than this science-fiction-looking creature. The meat brought the euphoria that overwhelms people at feasts.

That night I understood for the first time the tribe's belief in the relationship of the land to characteristics of one's ancestors. Our giant, rocky cup seemed to burst through the flat surroundings and could easily be a nourishing breast of some past relative, her body consciousness now put into inorganic matter to save our lives. I privately christened the mound—Georgia Catherine, my mother's name.

I looked upward into the vast expanse of world surrounding us and, giving thanks, finally understood that the world is truly a place of abundance. It is full of kind, supporting people to share our lives if we let them. There is food and water for all beings everywhere if we are open to receiving and open to giving. But most of all I now appreciated the abundant spiritual guidance available in my life. Help was available in every stress, including a brush with death and the very act of dying, now that I had gotten past “doing it my way.”