Decoding the Butterfly Promise: Regaining Our Sacred Power.

By Dr. Gail Siler PhD

Haunted by an urgent voice she hears each time she reads a book by Carlos Castaneda, Gail seeks out Castanedas apprentice, and she finds herself catapulted into a strange world of shamans, metaphysics, and ancient beings. She is thrust forward onto a dangerous path that takes her from the safety of her everyday world into the radiant landscape where true power lives. Here, she is introduced to an ancient couple, who have lived and loved beyond time itself. She offers up her heart to become a co-conspirator with them in an unbelievable task. She must journey into the ancient records and retrieve the knowledge that broke this ancient couple and humanity itself apart. The death-bed promise this ancient couple made to each other eons ago is also the key to humanitys own resurrection. It is thisthe Butterfly Promisethat will return us to our true powers and to our wholeness once again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jul 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452516066

Dr. Gail Siler PhD

Gail Siler, PhD, has been a social scientist and change consultant to governments and corporations for over two decades. She creates programs and workshops to help people navigate change in their personal lives. Midway in her professional career, Gail became connected to an unusual group of beings who, for over twenty-five years, have been teaching her what the real world offers us once we take our blinders off. Stones have also been Gail’s teachers. She specializes in finding heart-shaped “talking” stones along White Rock, British Columbia’s beaches.

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Introduction to Part 1

Be Careful What You Ask For

A s far back as I can remember I had a long term plan for marriage. After all, my job as a girl was to grow up and get married. Just like the princesses in fairytales, I assumed I would marry my prince. My first prince-in-waiting was Jerry Blescoe. In grade one he and our two sisters and I would play after school up in our attic. We played husband and wife, and our sisters were our children. We knew that married people slept in the same bed, so we made a bed on the floor and climbed in together just like big people do. That became our traditional way of starting the game. Our game was fun; we were good parents and hatched new stories as the game unfolded. Until, that is, that fateful day Jerry had onions for lunch. Smelling onion breath in our makeshift marriage bed put an end to that game for me.

By the time I had grown into a young woman my goals had matured and so had my expectations for my prince. I planned to marry a New York City lawyer who would become Senator and then President and I would become First Lady. When I met an heir to Thomas Jefferson, I thought, ‘YES! This could be the one."

He wasn’t and I didn’t become First Lady. Not only did I give up becoming First Lady, but I learned I could be something on my own.

I began my work career as a nurse. I went to university and became a nurse because when I told my high school guidance counselor I wanted to be a doctor, he told me I was a woman and therefore not smart enough to be a doctor. Honest! I didn’t know any better and he was a guidance counselor after all, so I studied nursing in university.

With the ink still drying on my BS in nursing, I landed in NYC where I worked for six months on a pediatric unit at a major hospital. That is, until a little girl died because the doctors wouldn’t read the nursing notes in her chart. They didn’t think the nursing notes were worth their time. As it happened I was finishing the book Atlas Shrugged at the time. It seemed natural for me to shrug too and I did!

I walked in to the supervisor’s office that day and quit. I told her I didn’t want to be part of an organization that was so out of balance that one half wouldn’t listen to the other half and their actions harmed the safety of the patients.

They were able to bring the little girl back to life, but resurrecting her didn’t change my mind. I walked away from the hospital, got on the subway and got off on Wall Street.

Years later I would come to understand the true message of the little girl dying and then being brought back to life, and why it upset me so. But that day with my righteous anger, I closed the door on my nursing career.

I hit Wall Street about the same time as Gloria Steinem hit the press and the second round of feminism hit society. In fact, without knowing it consciously, I had switched from a traditional pink ghetto career of nursing and cruised into the deeply defended male bastion of Wall Street, the ultimate men’s room.

That was the beginning of opening my eyes to the world. Gender bias in the workplace was still strong. Goodie! Now I had a university degree so I could be a secretary for an investment banking company. Only we got called Administrative Assistants in honor of our university degrees. I went from serving bedpans and medicines to serving young men with Harvard degrees typed letters and coffee.

Then Gloria Steinem and the other feminists created a wave and the second women’s liberation movement bloomed nearly over night and opened up all kinds of new possibilities for women in the western world. Thank you, Gloria and Betty Friedan.

When I stepped out of the water a few years later, after that wave, none of my goals fit. I remember the awkward moment when people started to get it. I was the only woman in a small group of fellow Wall Street security analysts. As we entered a restaurant we all stopped in a clump in front of the door, nearly running into each other. We couldn’t figure out who was supposed to open the door. Once we negotiated that awkward moment, we sat down at the table and everyone grew quiet and looked at me. They were deferring to me to chair our lunch food ordering ritual. At least we got the door thing right before we got caught up on Mom role stuff! Things were beginning to change. We had more work to do!

As I left the restaurant that day I had a realization. I didn’t want to be the grown up princess called First Lady any more. But at that moment I didn’t know who I was let alone what I wanted to be. A few weeks later I was at a party and someone jokingly asked me what my career plan was. With drink in hand I felt a sly smile spread over my face and out popped, I am going to be Empress of the Universe. We all had a good laugh even as I wondered where in the world that comment had come from.

Well, you know the saying, ‘Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it!’

The Empress of the Universe Calls My Bluff

Maybe I could blame the booze. Maybe I was still a bit giddy from realizing that I no longer had to settle for being in the traditional female support role. I suppose the number one support role women could aspire to then was First Lady. But in my newfound empowerment I rejected the support role and I picked the one feminine power role I could imagine: Empress of the Universe.

Apparently the real Empress of the Universe was listening in and decided on a plan of her own. Over the years she’d been sending me inner-mail (i-mail, a precursor to email no doubt) in the form of intuitive flashes (IFs). I got the really obvious ones like the time in grade 8 I looked up at the full moon and got a kerblam! Two IF’s came through in that instant as I stared at the moon. I ‘knew’ my aunt and uncle would be surprising my family with a visit (they lived 500 miles away) and would arrive that same night. They did.

The second IF told me that Mark, my new boyfriend was going to call and ask me to go to the movie with him the next night. He did and we shared our first dreamy ‘adult’ kiss.

Those were bookmarkable i-mails and important reference points, it turned out. As time progressed I gained more formal education, and commensurate with it, I seemed to lose my conscious connection to the Empress of the Universe’s i-mails.

Then one day about ten years after my Wall Street days the time arrived when the Empress decided I was ready to begin her curriculum at a conscious level. She sent her emissaries to recruit me using the one kind of bait she knew I’d take. A man. With no apologies to Gloria or the other wondrous women who were changing the world, in addition to being equal, finding my completion partner was hotwired into me. In fact my sister has a frog she named ‘Gail’s Prince.’ She would say it is a fitting testimonial to my enthusiastic attempts at finding said partner.

The Empress of the Universe introduced me to a special man, and then she tricked me. She used him to keep me moving forward. I now understand why she had to result to trickery. Without her tricks I would have run screaming away from the course a few lessons into it.

Frankly, at first I didn’t even know I was enrolled in her course. I was busy trying to get to the man. Trust me, the Empress used that lever shamelessly in order to drag me by whatever means necessary into my right mind.

So I guess you’d like to hear about the Man she used to trick me!

CHAPTER 1

The Empress of the

Universe Baits the Hook

Wagging the Bait in Front of Me

I t was the last part of a very long Saturday. I had just managed a training program for close to two dozen high profile people we were training to facilitate an upcoming government sponsored health planning conference. The training was over, thank heavens! I was dragging and exhausted but happy at the success of the day’s session. We had recently adjourned to the bar and were milling around with our pre-dinner drinks in hand, waiting for the restaurant to call us to our tables. Under the best of conditions I’m a cheap drunk, and as tired as I was, I’d sucked back my `Dubonnet on the rocks with a twist’ on an empty stomach, and in record time.

I really wanted to be home, but as the host I was stuck. Although I am personally shy, as the host I couldn’t afford to show that, and my little inner voice nagged and badgered me to mingle, mingle. So I obediently picked a small, safe group of colleagues and I was mingling. They were engaged in a discussion of recent books they were reading. Someone brought up the new Castaneda book and my ears perked up. Jane, one of the facilitator trainees, was explaining to the group that she knew a man who was an apprentice of Carlos Castaneda and he lived right here in the city, disguised as a regular businessman.

Castaneda’s books were about native shamanism. As a point of context here, Castaneda’s writings didn’t fit with science at all. He talked about seeing the world as energy and vibration. His teacher, don Juan taught Carlos and a group of apprentices how to regain their energy and live in a world that was, well, magical compared to the everyday world.

I was a social scientist working hand in glove with the government and its health care system so I had to be very careful about maintaining my credibility. At that time, during the mid-80s in Canada, one (at least this one) tended to stay in the closet if one had any spiritual inclinations.

But the drink made me say it. I blamed it on the little Dubonnet on the rocks with a twist—that’s what made me do it. My mouth flew open and words that didn’t even go past my brain tumbled forth.

I’d like to meet the apprentice who lives here, I said. I’ve always felt I had something to give to Castaneda, I blurted out to Jane and the little gathering of people.

It was actually the truth. I’d been reading Castaneda’s books about the spiritual world and energy beings for over 10 years now, and a strange thing happened to me each time I read his books. After reading the first book, I was chased in dreams by crows and other animals. By the time I’d finished the second book, I got the feeling (and it was a very strong feeling) that I had to give him something. I didn’t know what the something was, but the pressure continued with every additional book of his that I read.

Until that moment, what my mouth had just told the group had been my deepest, darkest secret. My embarrassment at what I’d said was cut short, thankfully, by the call to dinner. Like lemmings, we swarmed hungrily into the dining room and the incident was forgotten by everyone except me. I left the restaurant with the telephone number of the shaman’s apprentice who was disguised as a local businessman.

I didn’t know what to do with the name and phone number of the man who knew Carlos Castaneda, so I put it in one of my files. It was nearly a year after the training session that Castaneda published another book in 1984, The Fire from Within. As I read the book, I remembered I had the name of the man who was his apprentice. Without knowing why, I found myself dialing the telephone number, but after one ring I hung up. Why in the world do I even want to speak to him? What would I say? I laughed at myself and decided I was being silly to call him. Then a little pixyish voice said, Why don’t you just go to him in Dreaming, just like he did with Carlos. If he can do it, you can do it! The part you don’t know is that during the cocktail conversation after the training session, Jane had told the little group that the apprentice living in Toronto found Carlos by going to him in Dreaming.

Well, I love a challenge and so I decided to give it a try. I instructed myself, a bit self-consciously to go see Mr. Greene, Carlos’ apprentice, in Dreaming. I don’t remember deciding what I would say to him, should I succeed in reaching him. For several nights in a row, I programmed myself to go to him. Having no apparent success after a few days, I reassessed the situation. I also wondered why I was working so hard to get to Mr. Greene. If I was going to work that hard, why not just Dream directly to the source? It was Carlos Castaneda I wanted to get to, after all. So I changed my strategy and spent each night trying to send myself to Carlos Castaneda in my dreams. I had the same amount of success trying to get to Carlos in Dreaming as I did with his apprentice. I got bored after a few weeks, and finally forgot it.

About four months later I called Jane on a business issue. I heard a male voice in the background. She said she was with Mr. Greene. According to Jane, Mr. Greene said I had contacted him in my Dreams and it was time for me to call him. Jane also said that each of the four times in the past year I had called her; she had been in a meeting with Mr. Greene!

Her message had both a disquieting and exhilarating effect on me simultaneously. I was afraid to call him; afraid of meeting a person who might really be able to do the kind of things wizards can do in books and movies. Would he put a spell on me? Or make a monster chase me? But I was devilishly hooked by my curiosity, too. Did I really get to him in Dreaming? And how did that happen? How come I didn’t remember it? Besides, I’d given up trying to get to him. It was Carlos Castaneda that I was instructing myself to go to in Dreaming. How did I end up contacting Mr. Greene?

After the call from Jane, I sat at my desk staring at the work I had to do, unable to focus. The more I thought about calling him, the more nervous I became. I had put it off for a year. But he caught me! He knew I was looking for him and he was now expecting me to call. A thousand questions seemed to zoom around in my mind at the same time. I had an ominous feeling as if something inside my chest was pushing to get out. I felt that if I did call, I would be starting something I had no control over and my whole life would change. What if I would never be able to go back? But curiosity won out over fear and pushed my fingers into dialing the numbers.

It felt like the floor dropped out in an elevator when someone answered the phone. My heart was beating like a caged bird about to be dinner for a cat. So, how do you start a conversation with a sorcerer and act cool? Hi, my name’s Gail. You don’t know me but I have been Dreaming you, and…

No, that won’t work. I thought.

‘Hello. Mr. Greene’s office, I heard a woman’s voice say. I sputtered out my words, something totally cool like, Is he there? She put me on hold. When I took a deep breath, I was certain my heart was at the level of my mouth and ready to fly out.

Hello, this is David Greene. What a gentle voice he had! My heart relaxed instantly and slid back down into my chest while I tried to get my words out. I didn’t get farther than my name and that he’d told Jane I should call him. He said he was in a meeting and would call me back. What a letdown. And what a relief! I sighed as my shaking hand put the receiver back on the hook. Jane told me that he was disguised as a normal business man, and that no one knew of his alter ego as apprentice to Carlos Castaneda. His voice felt so kind and warm. In my mind, I saw him as a tall, thin, dark haired man with a sensitive and kind face.

When he finally called back that day, our conversation was so normal I don’t remember much about it. Somehow it was decided we would meet and a time was set. At one point, he asked me to sit quietly for a few minutes and not say anything. I did it, with mild paranoia, wary that this was the place where he might try to hypnotize me—or worse.

It was what happened immediately after the call that was more impressive to me than the call itself. My office was in a high rise building, and the view from the 18th floor was perfect for day dreaming. I often found myself gazing across the cityscapes and Lake Ontario when I had difficult problems to solve. After I hung up, my eyes automatically went to the window, seeking relief in the open blue space of the sky. My attention fell on a seagull circling on the wind currents high in the sky, close to my window. I watched as the gull circled three times. Each time it swooped, it seemed as though something was pulling on me in the pit of my stomach as the gull glided and circled. I felt myself becoming dizzy, and for a brief flashing instant. It felt as the bird would pull me out the window if I kept watching it. Feeling nauseated and somewhat embarrassed, I scolded myself back to work and calmed myself down by saying to myself there was no correlation between the experience with the bird’s actions and the phone call I’d just completed. Strange things like that only happened in Castaneda’s books! What about synchronicity? I heard myself counter. I had too much work to do and was too embarrassed to give it any more thought. I decided I should get back to my scientific self, and filed it away as a question for Mr. Greene when I met him.

Sorcerer’s Apprentice in a Double-knit Suit

It was several weeks later when we finally met. Waiting for him to arrive, I felt like a person split in two. One half of me was waiting in child-like nervous excitement to see what a real sorcerer’s apprentice looked like. The other half, my social scientist self, was eager to test him to see if he was a hoax, a weirdo, or a fruitcake. Drawing on the experience Carlos described in his books, I had decided I needed a test to make sure he was actually here in his physical body and it wasn’t his double (his Dreaming body.) My plan was that I would offer him something to drink. Since, according to Castaneda, the double or the Dreaming body doesn’t eat or drink, if Mr. Greene accepted and drank the beverage, then it would confirm it was really him and not his double. Of course, if he didn’t have a drink, I still wouldn’t be sure, but I was prepared with a back-up plan. I would find some excuse to brush against him and touch his body to feel if he was here ‘in real’ or not. I hadn’t figured out how to test for the other traits—hoax, weirdo, or fruitcake—and decided I’d just wing it. I was also worried about how to protect myself from being hypnotized. But deep inside I wanted him to be a real wizard who could conjure up lightning from his fingertips. I’d also formed an image of him from his voice and expected a tall, dark man with a gentle, healing nature.

He called me about 15 minutes before he was due to arrive and asked me to think of my address but not tell him. It sounded pretty silly, but I did it. About five minutes after he should have been here, I received an exasperated call from him asking me if I was giving him incorrect information. I assured him I hadn’t and then I suddenly realized that in my nervousness I’d given him only the street address and not the suite number.

I’d just assumed that Jane had given him my address, since he’d never asked me that when we made the appointment. It didn’t dawn on me that Jane had no idea what my new address was! Could it be that he was trying to get here by having me tell him my address mentally?

When I answered the door, for a fraction of a second I saw an alien looking hawk-beaked man. When I blinked again, instead of Don Juan or Gandalf the wizard, there stood Colombo, minus the wrinkled trench coat but complete with double knit pants! For those who don’t remember, Colombo was a TV character who was a private eye, with wandering slightly crossed eyes. He always wore a wrinkled trench coat and acted scattered, incompetent and non-threatening, as if he couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag, as my mom would say. I hoped he didn’t hear my mental sigh of disappointment as I took his coat to hang up. Even though my balloon of excitement burst, I heard my mother’s voice in the back of my mind warning me to be wary of quiet men because, she said, they were the most dangerous! I was too busy being disappointed that he didn’t look like Gandalf, worrying about not being hypnotized, and trying to see if he was in his Dreaming body or not, to heed her wisdom. When I remembered, it was too late!

To tell you the truth, he was shorter and heavier than I expected; not the tall, dark, thin man I had imagined when we talked on the phone that first time. He really did look like a businessman, and certainly not a shaman! He looked like an insurance salesman, actually. His telephone voice didn’t match at all with his appearance. (I noted but didn’t pay attention to this!) When I took his coat, I made sure I brushed against his hand to see if he was solid or not. Having assured myself that he was here `in the flesh,’ I showed him to a chair in my office.

After we were both seated, a period of nonsense conversation took place and I only remember I was nervous in spite of his benign appearance. All I remember is watching him closely and constantly wondering if he was really a sorcerer. He looked too normal. How disappointed I was! I was sure Jane was completely wrong about him being Castaneda’s apprentice.

I apologized for mentally giving him an incomplete address and explained that I was nervous about meeting him. He seemed a little nervous too, and talked on and on endlessly while I became more and more discouraged. At one point, I heard myself say to myself, Oh boy, what a motor mouth he is.

As he continued to rattle on with what seemed superficial nonsense conversation, I began to think it was all a hoax and he and Jane were playing a joke on me. My fantasy and excitement at meeting a real live sorcerer was melting away with each minute that passed. Instead, I was now embarrassed with myself for wanting to believe there were such things as sorcerers and for creating a silly fantasy in my mind. My hopes were sliding away as I decided that what sat opposite me was a shy but talkative salesman in a mundane double-knit suit.

He brought me back to the room and out of my meandering when he looked at me and cocked his head to the side like a bird. I guess I’m talking too much.

Yes! I thought to myself, as my mind chattered away loudly in various judgments of him. But I mumbled something polite to him. That was odd, I thought. It’s as if he’s reading my mind.

Will you do something for me right now? he asked. My mind jumped back into the room in fear of what he was going to ask. But at least he wasn’t droning on with the nonsense talk! Is he going to hit me on the back like don Juan did to Carlos and put me into an altered state? Is he going to hypnotize me or cast a spell? How will I know if he does? I could feel myself getting roiled up and nervous. Oh dear, what did he want me to do?

Then in a very gentle voice he said, Here’s an envelope. See? It’s sealed. He pulled it out of his pocket and held it out to me. As he showed me the envelope, I watched suspiciously, and wondered if it was a covert way of hypnotizing me. Will you just answer three questions for me and write your answers on a piece of paper? I have already written my own answers to these questions. They’re sealed in this envelope which I’d like you to hold.

Ah, I can do that. It’s safe enough. No tricks, no magic, I thought as I relaxed a little and began breathing again.

What was the name of your kindergarten teacher? I had to think a minute but it suddenly popped into my mind, and I wrote it down. Miss Schelkopf was a very tall, angular woman with short, straight, dark hair, and an aquiline nose. She seemed very pretty to me when I was a kindergartener. I could see her in my mind as I wrote down her name. I’d really liked her. She was kind to me.

Ok, now what is the name, first and last, of the first guy you ever loved?

That’s easy, I replied as I smiled and felt myself fade into old memories of Mark. He was not just the first love; he was an obsession I had lived with for more than 25 years!

When I’d finished writing, he said, Now, use a phrase or a word that best describes the one thing you want most in life. At first nothing came to me, and I got a little nervous. But as I sat quietly thinking about it, suddenly the word freedom popped into my mind. Yes. That was it, for sure, I thought. I want freedom more than anything else in life.

As soon as I wrote the answer, I folded the piece of paper proudly and handed it to him. But instead of reading it, he put it in his pocket. Just for an instant, I felt annoyed that he was putting away my responses without reading them and I almost called him on it. Instead, he was urging me to open the envelope I held in my hand. When I did, I found to my complete amazement that the same three answers were written on the paper in the sealed envelope he’d given me to hold while I wrote my own answers. But his copy included Miss Schelkopf’s first name. The instant I saw her first name, I knew he was right and I remembered it. Karen was her first name, but to me as a kindergartener, she was only Miss Schelkopf. The other thing I noticed was that he’d misspelled Mark’s last name. He’d left out a letter. Since his last name was impossible to spell, I wasn’t that surprised, frankly.

How did you do that? I gasped. The joyful, child-like part of me was thrilled and completely caught up in his parlor trick. No one could possibly have known those names, and I’d even forgotten Miss Schelkopf’s first name! They belonged to my past, more than 30 years ago in another country. And even if someone was resourceful enough to track down my past to get the names, my response to the third one was untraceable. It belonged to me and only me. Besides, I’d only thought of it a moment ago.

For a moment, I was busy running over all the possibilities. Did he really read my mind? (Oh my god! I was saying all those things about him a minute ago about how he looked so funny and talked too much. Oh god I hope he didn’t hear them, oh geez…) But he handed me the envelope before he asked me the questions, my mind countered, in the midst of my horror at having hurt his feelings with my mind talk. Then two thoughts collided in my head at the same time. The first was the memory of the time on the phone when we first talked and he asked me to sit quietly. That’s when he asked me these questions and got the answers mentally.

The second was a joyful gotcha! For days I had been wondering how or what way I could judge whether he was real or fake. He’d headed me off at the pass. He proved himself to me with nothing more than a simple parlor trick! No lightning from his fingers and no spells cast, at least not that I was aware of. The names were too unusual to have just been a lucky guess. He must have known by the astonished look on my face that he’d passed my test and had risen from the ranks of yakking insurance salesman to if not a sorcerer (after all I hadn’t seen the lightning yet) at least someone with other than normal powers.

A door opened between us, the ice was broken and we chatted freely for a bit. Somewhere in our discussion, we moved beyond an introductory meeting into another stage. Then the mood changed and he launched into a mini lecture. It’s almost as if it went straight into my right brain. I remember the change in both the mood and our level of communication, but very little of what was actually said except that at some point we made an agreement to continue meeting.

I do, however, remember very clearly the first part of the mini-lecture. He was insistent and almost demanded that I see him as equal to me. I must never allow myself to be intimidated by him. The man could read my mind, and was an apprentice to a man of power; perhaps a shaman or wizard himself, I didn’t know. But I’d read about some of the truly amazing things that happened to the man he was apprenticed to, including the fact that Castaneda met beings from other dimensions. How in the world was I to feel myself equal to that, I wondered?

He really worked me over on this point. We are equal. Never give him or anyone power over me. Always trust my own heart. I must always relate to him from that basis, he commanded without really commanding. At some level, I felt both amazed and inspired by his ‘we are equal’ clause in our relationship and from that point on, I held him to those words and that request. Even more amazing, he never wavered from treating me as an equal which was something I had never experienced in my life up to that point, nor have I since.

Then we outlined the ground rules of our association. His were that he was very busy and probably wouldn’t be available when I called him but he would get back to me that day, or the next, or the next. But he made a point of telling me that he would get back to me. My ground rule was that no matter what, he must never lie to me. It was important that I be able to trust him completely.

Then our meeting was over and I was walking him to the door. As we said our social farewells and I handed him his coat, I felt a pressure inside my chest. I began to feel a funny full and warm feeling in my heart, like some invisible membrane was pushing against me. It tingled—like when your foot goes to sleep—but I was feeling it in my heart. For an instant, I flashed on the movie image of ET when his/her heart started to pulse red. I also got an instant case of panic. I knew it, I thought, He’s hypnotizing me just when I let my guard down!

What did you just do to me? I demanded suspiciously.

I just pushed on your assemblage point, he said in the gentlest and most innocent voice. Something relaxed in me. I knew he was telling the truth. I had already mentally told myself he was doing that—pushing on my assemblage point—and I knew what that meant from the books, sort of. It actually felt kind of good; like I was filled with warm fuzzies. While I was feeling warm and fuzzy, he smiled, closed the door, and was gone.

I was left standing there with heat in my chest and the feeling that I had just crossed a boundary. I had no idea what that meant as yet. Then my little girl playfulness started to play hopscotch inside my body as I repeated over and over to myself proudly, I just met a shaman’s apprentice, I just met a shaman’s apprentice!

CHAPTER 2

Taking the Bait and Meeting

the Man with Crossed Arms

M y original purpose for getting in touch with David, you will remember, was to get to Carlos so I could deliver whatever it was I had to give to him, and be free of the voice that spoke to me with each new Castaneda book I read. So there was pressure in me to get to Carlos. In retrospect, both David and the Empress played this out as bait while they took me where they wanted me to go.

So the Empress introduced me to David Greene, and they hooked me, but I didn’t know that yet. Nor did I have any idea what was really going on. I trusted absolutely in what David said, not because of him but because it felt right and it seemed to correspond with what was going on inside me as well. Nevertheless, none of it made any sense at all! It was an adventure for me that I kept quietly within myself. There was no one, not even Jane, with whom I could explain the crazy scenario of things that were happening to me. Things like invisible talking guides, telepathic phone calls, or what I came to call my outrageous treat-of-the-week episodes.

After our first meeting, David and I had an almost instantaneous mind connection. Our inner phone calls had begun immediately after our first meeting and spanned the globe, whether I was on business in Europe or at my daily routine in Toronto. Boy oh boy, did I watch what I was thinking! I was too shy, though, to ask him if he heard everything that was going on in my mind!

In addition to the mind connection we seemed to have, the scientist part of me was also in frequent telephone contact with him to attempt, whenever possible, to verify our inner telephone topics, their details and follow up on my dreaming details. I even kept dated notebooks of dreams and conversations indicating when and how they were validated. In a matter of 10 years, I racked up about 198 notebooks. I know my need to validate information frustrated him because he would always complain about my mind constantly searching for validation. Half the time he’d just shut me up by saying his famous quote, That’s self importance! For some reason it always worked. I never even asked him why it was self importance. Who knows, that might have been a secret word he and my ‘higher’ self used to get me to shut up! But when I spoke of dream conversations and asked about them he did validate them. He even provided details or clarifications when I asked. Ninety percent of the time they agreed with my own memories. So I’d built a certain trust with him.

Telepathic Telephones Calls and Stalled Astral Take-off

For our second meeting there wasn’t any agenda, or so I thought. I figured we were going to continue talking and he would give me more information. But he introduced his own agenda for the day when he arrived. David said I needed to go to the Nagual woman because she would be able to help me get to Carlos. The Nagual woman was the female leader of the group that Carlos and David were part of. Her counterpart, the Nagual man was her partner and the male leader of the group. Naguals have a different energy configuration from most people. They are called double beings because of it.

It was a good thing I didn’t know about his plan beforehand or I would have been a bag of nerves! I was feeling cheeky and wanted something to happen, so I told him I was up for it. But there was a trick to it. Isn’t there always?! I had to go to her out of body (OBE), or by astral journey. (Different words for the same idea.) So it was my turn to perform and I failed miserably. It went something like this.

So there I was, getting ready to pay a visit to the Nagual