Soul Matters: Book 4, Monocracy Managerie

Phil’s first priority, the next day, was Donna. His problem was how to explain the danger she was in. He awakened a little after four in the morning and lay in bed agonizing over it. By 6:30, he couldn’t just lie there anymore and got up.

Throwing on a robe, he discreetly knocked on Donna’s bedroom door. She responded groggily, “Yeah?”

“Come downstairs,” Phil said quietly. “We need to talk.”

“It’s not even light out,” she let him know and rolled over to bury her face in a pillow.

“I know,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’re in danger. We have to talk now.”

Donna turned to him, “Has this got anything to do with --”

“Yes,” he interrupted. “They want to get to me through you. Hurry up.”

He closed the door, checked to make sure Betty was still asleep, and silently made his way to the kitchen. He brewed coffee and waited.

Presently Donna arrived. She wore a robe as well, and rubbed her eyes and pushed at her tangled hair as she sat at the kitchen bar. Stifling a yawn, she said, “I’ve got the info on the Grail.”

“Not important,” Phil cut her off. “But I don’t know how to tell you what I need to tell you without sounding like a lunatic.”

“Just blurt it out,” she suggested. “We can go from there.”

“Okay,” Phil sighed. “Azazel means to eat your soul.”

She took it well -- didn’t blink, laugh, or tell him he was crazy. Instead she asked, “Who is Azazel? And why would he want to eat my soul?”

Phil relaxed somewhat and sat across from her at the bar to explain. “Azazel is a dark angel, a cherubim actually, but he was originally a desert demon. Now he’s in charge of demons under one of the Prices of Darkness, Beelzebub. His job is to seduce humans back to the Flesh. He’s good at his job.”

“I take it you’ve dealt with him before,” Donna said and sipped the coffee Phil placed before her.

“Yes. And defeated him. He doesn’t like me much, in fact. But the point is, he’s coming after you.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Phil told her. He decided as he lay in bed it would only complicate things if he told her the whole story. “What matters is for you to know how to defeat him yourself.”

She sipped more coffee and was silent for a long moment. Then she asked, “What does soul-eating mean?”

“It’s a phrase they use to mean you’ve regressed to the darkness of the unconscious self -- the animal world of drives and instincts, the Freudian id. It’s where they seduce you into choosing the Flesh over the Spirit.”

“They, who? ‘They use this phrase’ is what you said. They, who?”

“Good angels,” Phil answered. “Look, this is really complicated. I don’t want to get into theory with you. I need to help you prepare so you can protect yourself.”

Donna made a face indicating both concern and disgust. Phil took it to mean she was distressed about the actual need for self-protection.

“Look,” he said with no compassion for her state, “in a perfect world, protecting yourself shouldn’t be a requirement. Personal safety should be a given. It’s not a perfect world.”

“I know,” she said, and the grimace dissolved into determination. “Our women’s self-defense instructor said the same thing. What do I need to do?”

Phil sipped his coffee before saying, “There are two major demons you have to guard against: the demon of distraction and the demon of self-importance. Fall prey to either and your free will is all but useless.”

Manuel’s voice intruded at this point, as he materialized next to Donna, “Taking a few precautions, Phil?”

Phil looked quickly to Donna, and she was frowning.

Manuel noted, “She can sense me. I told you she was gifted.”

Phil told her, “Go back to bed and meditate on which distractions you’re vulnerable to, and which kinds of flattery or attention make you drop your guard. Go, now. We’ll talk at noon.”

Her frown deepened, but she trotted upstairs to her room.

Manuel went on, “There’s one other thing you can do for her. Provide her with a rooted self.”

“I can do that?”

“Yep,” Manuel affirmed. “Meet me later, and I’ll walk you through the process.”

Then the angel disappeared before Phil could berate him for putting Donna in harm’s way in the first place.

Phil sat at the counter, drank his coffee, and pondered the newest mess he was in. So far, these adventures in Spirit had produced rather dubious results. He learned in the first episode, evil was a function of being drawn back to the unconscious Whole -- the Ground of Being all living things shared in common. The Great Mother was the archetypal ruler of this level, birthing all in spring and consuming all in the winter. In the second episode, he learned various forces resisted the break for ego-consciousness -- Typhon was the ruling archetype here. As an agent of the Great Mother, he guarded the gates to individuality. In the last episode, he learned many things. Chief among them was another kind of evil existed as well, the evil of entropy. Additionally, he came face to face with the sturdy structure of the ego. If used as a vehicle to transcend itself, the ego was a powerful ally. If used for self-gratification, the ego could strip-mine all lower developmental plateaus; this produced a third kind of evil. Then, if the narcissistic agenda clothed itself in religion (as Azazel so recently pointed out, it had), the failure of the human experiment was virtually assured. A fourth type of evil was the result -- global suicide.

It seemed the further along one got in spiritual development, the more dangerous the territory became as new categories of evil announced themselves. He must have sensed this all along, and this sense prompted him repeatedly during his adult years to refuse to mature any further so he wouldn't have to face it. Manuel, however, called him back to the quest. And now, Manuel sealed Phil’s resolve to do whatever it took to move even higher. Donna’s safety surely depended on his abilities in Spirit. He definitely couldn’t trust the angels to keep her safe.

Phil finished his coffee and went outside to get the morning paper. Scanning the headlines, he turned to the Sports section. He would rather read about man’s triumphs than their cruelty to one another.

Since it was Friday, Phil could take off at noon from work. He called Donna and told her to meet him at the beach around 1pm. Phil planned to get there around noon and meditate his way to Manuel’s patio.

When he got to the beach, it took a while to find a parking place. The summer heat was driving the inland dwellers to the cool ocean and the cleaner air. Phil scrambled down the bluff to the ledge and slowly calmed himself.

He popped into Manuel’s patio a few minutes later.

“Hi,” Manuel chirped from where he was in the flowers of the garden. Today the predominant color of the blooms was white.

“I can’t believe you gave Azazel my daughter,” Phil charged without acknowledging the angel’s greeting.

“I told you she’d be fine,” the angel replied.

“And I’m supposed to trust your judgment?” Phil advanced closer. “You led us into more than one ambush: twice with Azazel, once with Sammael, and if I count how many times we’ve made it to the Council of Punishment -- well, you see my point.”

“This is different,” Manuel assured him. “She’s an Indigo child.”

“A what?”

Manuel’s aura underwent a series of changes, which Phil tracked with some anxiety. The angel’s aura registered his emotional state, and in the beginning, the glare of angelic presence hurt Phil’s eyes. He also heard musical accompaniment to those aura-emotional-shifts. Lately, he experienced neither.

However, the angel’s limits (if he had any) were still a mystery to Phil. He was never sure how far he could push Manuel; nor was he sure what would happen if he pushed too far. Manuel reacted to Phil’s ‘stupidity’ in a genuinely abusive fashion on more than one occasion.

Manuel seemed to ground himself, though, and answered, “Remember how definite she was as a child?”

“So?”

“And guilt-trips never worked,” Manuel went on. “She showed up with an innate sense of belonging and entitlement. Nor did she struggle with peer pressure. She just made herself okay with being alone.”

“And so? Lots of kids are like that.”

“She’s different, Phil. Of course, you weren’t around much to track those differences. Now were you?”

Phil blushed, but recovered and said, “All parents think their kids are special.”

“And Donna is,” Manuel confirmed. “Bobby isn’t special in the same way.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Orientation,” Manuel explained. “Indigo kids are oriented to ‘beingness.’ Yuppies, on the other hand, are oriented to the practical. What does it do? How can I use it? Does it give me leverage? Indigos milk each moment for its unique experiential potential -- not because it might be parlayed into money, status, or power.”

“She does surprise me,” Phil allowed.

“She ought to. She’s taught herself a whole lot of what I’ve taught you -- not the exact system, but she’s learned to navigate in two of the four realms you have some experience with. More importantly, she knows she’s in exile.”

Phil paused a few feet from the angel, who continued to tend his flowers. After a moment, during which Phil unconsciously dressed himself in cut-off jeans and T-shirt, he spoke, “Mother Theresa said the greater poverty is loneliness. The phrase stuck in my mind. I did notice Donna’s loneliness. It’s why I got her into soccer.”

Manuel turned from the flowers to face Phil, “You can do whatever you want to help her. We’ll do the rooted self today. One caution, though, she already knows the basics. Be prepared to give her more advanced instruction. But enough of her, have you figured out why the ontological argument works against idolatry?”

“No,” was Phil’s reply. “I still can’t figure out why these logical arguments don’t work in the first place.”

“Well, you can’t add two and two and get five,” Manuel said. “The precision of logic is what you’re having trouble with. Or, more accurately, the yuppie need to have reason as supreme falls apart when you understand the limits logic places on reason.”

“You lost me.”

Manuel sighed and sat on the marble bench, “Yuppies are committed to self-development so they can get more than everybody else. It’s their -- your -- form of salvation, your religious practice. Other than its narcissistic roots, your value-system also demands the scientific method must reign supreme. If science isn’t the final answer, the whole self-centered structure falls apart.”

“And science is based on logic,” Phil commented. “Mostly inductive reasoning.”

“Yes,” Manuel confirmed. “For millennia, logicians have accepted the limits of reason, but now you don’t even teach logic until college, and then it's an elective. Because so few understand logic, you get into the ridiculous arguments between Creationism and Evolution. They’re apples and oranges, to quote Azazel.”

The reference brought Phil back to his reason for being here today. He jumped in, “You never told me why you sacrificed Donna.”

“Because it would work.”

“You just trashed practicality as a yuppie vice.”

“No, I didn’t,” Manuel corrected him. “There’s nothing wrong with being practical. There is something wrong with not out-growing primary narcissism.”

They sat in silence for a moment until Manuel said, “Put your trail up on the wall.”

Phil concentrated on the blank wall to his right and envisioned the start of his trail through the forest. The trail, and what it led to, was the symbol Manuel used to aid Phil in bridging the natural world and the spiritual world.

As the trail stabilized, the two of them stepped through to start walking down the trail. It was through a pine forest, and Phil could hear birds singing, feel a gentle breeze on his face, and crunched pine needles under his feet. They reached a fork in the trail and took the right fork to a stone staircase. Down the staircase, they came to an ancient-looking archway. A curtain of silvery energy filled the archway, and they passed through.

They entered into a broad, carpeted wilderness landscape. In the distance stood rolling mountains. To his left, a river cut along before him. Trees widely spaced lined the river. To his right was a ridge falling away to a meadow. At the meadow’s edge was a wall. The wall signaled the boundary between this place, which Manuel called his Medicine Area, and the many levels of Spirit beyond.

Within the Medicine Area was a smaller patch of ground, which Manuel called the Sacred Area, and they moved there. The Sacred Area fronted the bluff and ended at the encroaching foothills. A few trees were scattered on the mossy forest floor.

Soon they came to Phil’s rooted self. It was a statue of himself half buried in the ground. Hollow inside, it was a place he could visualize when in danger and shift his consciousness here to escape.

Manuel said, “Stand on the edge of the ridge and erase the land before you.”

“Erase it?”

“Imagine it gone, empty, blank, like it’s just generic ‘medicine area’ out there,” Manuel clarified.

Phil did so, and the meadow before him became cloudy and indistinct.

“Now, imagine Donna out there,” Manuel instructed. “Have her sink halfway into the earth.”

Phil imagined this as well. Donna was dressed in jeans and tank top, and her blonde hair was pulled back in a pony tail.

“See her grow roots into the sacred earth,” Manuel said. “See light coming down. The roots grow from her belly through her feet to wrap around boulders. The light comes down and encases her to her belly. Now see her turn to stone.”

Phil’s concentration was deepening with this visualization, and he could not only see these things, he could feel them as well.

Manuel continued, “Now, from her right comes the bear. From her left comes the wolf. Above an eagle circles. And coyote is prowling the perimeter.”

Phil could now sense the presence of each protector animal as they made their appearance.

“Now, paint the landscape back the way it was,” which was Manuel’s final instruction.

Phil did so; then turned to the angel, “This is going to work?”

“Should,” Manuel said and began the return trip to his patio.

“But you’re not sure.”

Manuel shrugged and didn’t answer. Phil decided not to press it.

As they re-entered the patio, Manuel dismissed him with, “Go do your homework.”

Phil exited the patio and came back to his body. He checked his watch and noticed the hour had mostly passed. For a long few moments, he gazed out at the Pacific Ocean and watched the surfers below ride the restless waves to shore. Then he started up to the parking lot.

Scrambling to the top of the bluff, he saw Donna gazing out at the surfer-dotted beach.

“Hi,” he smiled.

She returned the smile and started in, “What happened this morning? Why did you run me out of the kitchen?”

“An angel showed up and I needed to talk to him.”

“Oh.”

Phil pushed on as he led the way to his car, “Do you know why the various rational arguments for God’s existence don’t work?”

“They’re either a priori or a posteriori arguments,” she recited. “Neither can get out of the time-space continuum to comment on the Absolute.”

Phil frowned. Manuel was right. She ‘knew’ things.

Donna was continuing, “It will work if you stipulate time as a function of consciousness. And it also works, at least the a posteriori one, if you standardize the test for Divine encounters.”

“Like Zen masters confirming Enlightenment because they know what it looks like, rather than someone else who doesn't,” Phil remarked. “It’s Bonaventure’s ‘three eyes,’ again. The eye of the flesh, the eye of the mind, the eye of spirit. I know how this operates.”

“Then, what’s the problem?” she asked as they reached the car and got in.

“The problem is in the other direction,” Phil answered. “I need to know why the ontological argument works as a refutation of idolatry.”

“I don’t know,” Donna told him and settled into the leather seat. She was wearing shorts and a halter top. As she ran a hand through her hair, she offered, “I’ll research it.”

“Thanks,” Phil said, “but now we’ve got to prepare you for the big time.”

“I think it’s already started,” she half-smiled at him. “Remember Tony?”

“Some guy you knew in high school?” Phil tried. He had no idea who Tony was.

“He was the guy I got drugs from,” Donna answered. “Until you put me into soccer. I quit doing drugs then.”

“You did drugs?”

“Why not? So were you. Anyway, he showed up at the house.”

“And?”

“It was just before I left to come here. He trotted out all the old flatteries and promises I used to fall for. Good thing you told me to identify them. Even so, they started working. I could feel myself slipping into the old patterns, but then something shifted. I could see him for who he really was. So I told him, ‘no thanks,’ and not to come around anymore.”