Decoding the Butterfly Promise: Regaining Our Sacred Power

By Gail Siler PhD

Haunted by an urgent voice she hears each time she reads a book by Carlos Castaneda, world renowned anthropologist-turned-writer and TIME magazine man of the year, Gail seeks out Castaneda's apprentice and is catapulted into a strange world of ancient beings, aliens, native shamans, invisible teachers, and the world of metaphysics. Dr. Siler

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Dec 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781948262507

Gail Siler PhD

Gail Siler, PhD is a social scientist and change consultant in positive health. She has worked for over two decades with individuals and groups including governments and organizations to help them create personal or policy changes necessary to embrace positive health and maximum wellness. Then, midway in her professional career her life changed. The change consultant became a client experiencing the personal side of the change process itself. Dr. Siler became connected to an unusual group of beings who tore away her view of the world and pushed her beyond the box of what she thought was reality. Her 'treats of the week' opened her to the wonders of our amazing multidimensional world. Over time her inner studies combined with her achievements earned her the title of Pattern Seer. Stones have also been Gail's teachers and friends. She specializes in finding heart-shaped "talking" stones along British Columbia's beaches.

Book preview

Decoding the Butterfly Promise

Regaining Our Sacred Power

Butterfly_icon_black.jpg

Gail Siler, PhD

Copyright © 2017 by Gail Siler, PhD.

Hardback: 978-1-948262-49-1

Paperback: 978-1-948262-48-4

eBook: 978-1-948262-50-7

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover, book design and graphics by Kathryn Lee Busch

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Printed in the United States of America

Dedications

This book is dedicated to WJS.

I kept my promise to you, dear friend.

I also dedicate this book to my wondrous son Fraser

who found me again and brought back with him

a piece of my heart.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Notes on Language Conventions

Preface

Part 1: Answering the Wakeup Call

Introduction to Part 1

Chapter 1 The Empress of the Universe Baits the Hook

Chapter 2 Taking the Bait and Meeting the Man with Crossed Arms

Chapter 3 Solstice Decisions and Mergers

Chapter 4 Annabelle Brings Gifts

Chapter 5 Tools for My White Water Journey Kit

Chapter 6 Learning to Trust My Heart

Chapter 7 Empress of the Universe Course 101

Part 2: Rebuilding the Future

Introduction to Part 2

Chapter 8 Making the Right Move

Chapter 9 Awakening Butterfly in the Earth-Sky Ceremony

Chapter 10 Meeting the Carlos Look-alike

Chapter 11 Alice-Gail visits the Western Wonderland

Chapter 12 Ancient Archetypes Square off with Me in the Middle

Chapter 13 Charley Chestnut Sends a Message

Chapter 14 Coming home in the Stone

Chapter 15 Butterfly Guides Me Forward

Part 3: Moving Forward and Travelling Back

Introduction to Part 3

Chapter 16 The Place of New Beginnings

Chapter 17 The Mark of My First True Love

Chapter 18 Betrayed

Chapter 19 A Dead Man Returns

Chapter 20 The End Creates the Beginning

Chapter 21 I find Him in Dreaming. At last!

Chapter 22 But Finding Him in Real is a Bigger Challenge

Chapter 23 The Touchstone and My Partner Reappear

Chapter 24 Rewiring the ‘My Love Kills’ Inner Script

Part 4: Resurrecting the Knowledge of the Ancients

Introduction to Part 4

Chapter 25 The Real ‘First Love’ Story

Chapter 26 Reliving the Experiences of Isis

Chapter 27 Re-membering the Promise

Chapter 28 The Curriculum is Revealed

Chapter 29 Love and Orgasms Create the World

Chapter 30 Honoring Our Promise

Chapter 31 Creating A New Participatory Fairytale

Appendix A: The Last Watch - Gift of the Elder Women

Bibliography and Reading List

Acknowledgments

I want to express my thanksgiving to the Empress of the Universe who picked up my cheeky message years ago and sent her crack chrysalis-cracking team to boot me out of mine and into my butterfly wings. Thank you to my invisible team who’ve had their hands full, but who have danced circles around me and with me to help me grow forward. My heartfelt appreciation to the First Peoples’ elders and the Ancient Ones who carried the burden and shared their energy with me and this team I’m part of as we undertook our task. My appreciation also extends to Mark and David who played their parts as the unwitting and witting hosts and place markers for the other half of me. Loving the messengers was also a wondrous experi ence.

Thank you to Mom, Fay, Jeannie, Harriet and Dottie; to Miss Hofelich and Miss Bowlus and to Natalia who have all been my role models as well as mentors of the ancient feminine wisdom.

Thank you to my dear friends Lenore Mills, Evelyn Bastien and Val Davis who midwifed me through my long birth process with constancy, love and giggles. Thank you also to Val, Judy Dunn, Vildan and Stephen Harvey, and Roger Yellow whose support created space for me to write the book.

My appreciation is extended to my editor, Sue Chambers for her commitment, organization and excellent work on the first draft of the book; and to proof readers Louise Finlayson and Erin Mogul and other readers of various drafts of the book. Last but not least my thanks to my high school friend Kathy Busch for not only her powerful graphics and book design but also her encouragement to keep at it.

Notes on Language Conventions

Throughout the book, I’ve used certain words to indicate both their mundane and their mystical meanings. I differentiate them by using lower case for their regular meaning and upper case when I’m speaking of altered states. Examples: I see your point; I See the energy pattern with my third eye. I had a dream. I was in Dreaming on the astral l evel.

When I use the words feminine and masculine I use them to refer to qualities and not to women or men. I am speaking of our inner female qualities or right brain functions and our inner masculine or left brain functions.

The words positive and negative are used in reference to descriptions of feminine and masculine and refer only to polarities (as in receptacle and plug or magnetic and electrical energy), and do not involve a judgment of good or bad.

Last but not least, when the information is presented by the Empress of the Universe or Butterfly woman, I have italicized it.

Preface

I will always be with you in the form of a butterfly.

Gail’s Partner

This book tells the true story of how the Monarch Butterfly befriended me. I don’t mean it as a metaphor, it was real. Some cultures believe that butterflies represent the spirit of someone who has departed. As it turned out, that real physical butterfly is also the spirit of someone very important to me whom I’d all but forgo tten.

As my relationship with Butterfly developed I was surprised to learn that the power of the Monarch Butterfly is beyond measure. It carries the code of wholeness and vibrates that code ceaselessly to us. It sings its wake up call as soundlessly as the aurora borealis, simply by flapping its wings through the invisible air. Where do I get the audacity to say that? I got it from Butterfly itself.

Through Butterfly’s tender and sometimes tough prompting and with a cast of unbelievable characters, I began a personal journey lasting more than two decades to resurrect my energy to its original level. The journey led me right out of life as I knew it in Normalville. I was pushed beyond my safety zone into a deeply personal space where I experienced an amazing story on a personal level.

Finally I reached a critical stage in my energy that allowed me to enter ancient hidden records. There I was lead to a long guarded ancient place where missing information was revealed to me about how we as humans got to be who we are. I was shocked to find out that what really happened to us is not the pablum history books have fed us. You know that unexplainable jump in the evolution science keeps talking about? In that ‘place’ of records, I was able to find out what REALLY happened.

At the bottom of it all I was surprised to find a love story and the promise these lovers made eons ago. The love story isn’t new to us. In fact you could say it’s THE ‘first love’ story behind most of the world’s fairytales. Their love and the promise they made to each other has been and remains a beacon broadcasting hope to us along with the subliminal memory of the part we humans play in keeping this promise.

On my journey, I met and experienced the love of Isis and Osiris, not as divine archetypes but as our beloved ancestors. I went behind the archetype of these original beings and we spoke person to person, not gods to person. Not only did I learn why their experiences have tied us together but they lovingly showed me how we are their future. In fact, this is the essence of the butterfly promise: we become their future selves.

Butterflies, it turns out, are important reminders of that promise. I was amazed to find out that we actually carry a butterfly along with us right inside our heads. It’s called the sphenoid bone. When you look in the mirror it is right behind and around your eye sockets.

I write about this experience now so calmly but to tell the truth, I was scared witless as one outrageous experience after another presented itself. But my outrageous traveling companions were kind enough to offer me lots of delightful magical happenings to counteract my fears and stimulate my curiosity.

Once upon a time…

The truth is I was born with a vague memory of this hidden ancient story swirling around inside my head. I could feel that something happened to the feminine in each of us. How was it as women we were forced to be less than who we are: to give up our birthrights; to be submissive; to be called chattel and treated like beasts of burden; to bear the male heir; and to be traded by kings, warlords and corporate fathers to secure them power. It sounds a lot like the story of Cinderella. On the internet I found that this same theme appears in over 1500 versions around the world.

It has always bothered me because I got born knowing in my heart we are all equal, women and men. Yet here I was living in this world where women weren’t allowed to be equal.

There was another story I got born with too. I knew that somewhere out there lived the other half of me in male form. When I was twelve he was of course the Prince they were talking about in all the fairy tales. But as I grew up and life overtook fairytales, my true Prince remained there inside my heart talking me forward on my quest to find the truth behind the story.

Over the years it became clear that these two memories were actually part of the same story. But it wasn’t until I started reading the books of Carlos Castaneda that things happened to set me on my quest in earnest. Castaneda’s writings are not fairytales but rather true stories of a group of Mexican shaman’s apprentices. But as time passed and I read more of his books I began to see a bigger story. Not only that but I heard a voice.

The voice repeatedly informed me I had a message for Carlos Castaneda. When I met Carlos Castaneda’s apprentice several years later, I realized since I had found a way to deliver the message I’d better make tracks to deliver it. With the help of Carlos’ apprentice, David Greene, not only did I deliver the message, but I was led to believe that I was actually part of an unusual group of people.

But by the end of the first year, we realized that I had different ideas from the rest of the group about how things should be done. I was always complaining about how the males were doing things. I complained, too, about their fear of love and their difficulty with compassion. It was warrior this and warrior that! It just didn’t sit right with me. Carlos’ apprentice David said he agreed with me, so we took a right turn away from the way this group had been operating. Unbeknownst to me we were beginning a new path.

It turned out Carlos had been waiting a long time for me to come along. Well, it wasn’t specifically me he was waiting for; it was the energy configuration within me. He was waiting for someone to bring information that would change things. At first, his group thought they could use the energy I had for their old ways. But my companion energy convinced Carlos to take the right turn along with us, away from the love of power, and instead embrace a path that emphasizes the power of love.

What does Carlos have to do with butterflies? Actually there is an amazing connection between Carlos and David and Butterfly, but I will let you find it out for yourself when you read the book.

It was years later on my journey when I realized that David and Carlos were working under the direction of someone else, namely the Empress of the Universe. She’s Big Mama, Source Mother, the Feminine Face of the Force, She-Source, The Great Goddess, the female aspect of ALL that is. She will also answer to BFF, as in Blessed Feminine Force, and says she likes that a lot, especially because BFF also means best friends forever in our human speak.

FYI, I like to refer to her as Empress of the Universe for a particular reason I describe in the introduction. It’s a little joke between us. But there’s also another reason. Calling her the Empress of the Universe has helped me identify with a strong female Source energy role model. If we have a Mr. God - and we have obviously had one of those for many millennia - there must be an equal Mrs. God out there somewhere. It’s simply illogical to have a he without a she. So the Empress of the Universe has become my word for the wondrous female face of Source.

Of course, in reality we are talking polarities here, but we need to get more honest with ourselves and get off the Mr. God bandwagon to the exclusion of Mrs. God. It’s time we get a little balance here, don’t you think?

Pushed Out of the Box of Normalville

In my case, my Normalville card said social scientist, doctor of philosophy and the venue I played in was helping people create positive change in organizations or in their own lives. My playground was delightful and I zoomed to the top in record time. I published a book on Canada’s changing health care system. I consulted for different governments, companies, and even the World Health Organization. There I stood, a woman at the top with PhD and contacts; an international consultant, complete with keys to special airport lounges, access to business clubs – even some exclusive men’s clubs, and access to University of Toronto’s Hart House private spaces. I’d learned the resume dance, the ultimate left brain male dominant game. I was damn good at what I did. I was proud of myself and had a right to be. I’d made it as a woman in the man’s world. I had an 11 page resume proving it, for heaven’s sake!

Then, at the top of my game in my fourth decade around the sun, I was kicked off the podium. The Empress of the Universe decided it was time to get on with the real business of why I was here. My ride in the masculine left brain world stopped. I didn’t slow down; I didn’t even pass go and collect. I was slammed into a wall. No amount of squirming, pushing back, swearing or strategizing would move me or the wall.

The laugh was on me. The Empress of the Universe walked onto my stage and threw me out of my role as facilitator of the change process and into my new role. I was the changee! It is much easier to coach other people about change than it is to go through it oneself, I have since learned. It is also a very humbling experience.

Now I was pressed into the women’s world. The women took over and for fourteen years I was dragged crying and complaining into the depths and corners of the women’s world, and into my own right brain. I earned the equivalent of another PhD on the feminine side. The research for this PhD was most definitely of a participatory kind, and I learned first-hand about the inner strength of women who have learned to stretch every penny as far as it will go; trudge along on foot with a heavy bag of groceries at the end of a grueling work day; watch ex-husbands zoom by in their cars while we boarded the bus with our children; bow to the social assistance system and taste humiliation from society’s welfare system prejudices; and yet still be there to share with and support other women in their struggles. I found out who really keeps the world turning, and as all women know, it isn’t the guys in the fancy suits in corner offices of tall buildings.

The Empress of the Universe wasn’t finished with me yet. It wasn’t enough for me to travel into the men’s and then the women’s worlds. The problem was my wussie energy and my rigid clinging to the nice neat box of Normalville. She was about to take care of that!

I had to break out of the box in order to raise my energy, I was told by her messenger David, the man you will soon meet. I had to do that in order for me to hear her and then recover and retrieve bits and pieces of myself that I had thrown away, given away or scared away. Women get a constant barrage from toddler-hood on telling us what we cannot or should not do, primarily because we are not men. The end result is that we either lose or give away vital pieces of our selves to satisfy expectations set by our partners, family and society, in order to make them feel comfortable with us.

For the longest time, the Empress of the Universe had to use messengers to get through to me. The foremost and first messengers she used were known to me as Carlos Castaneda and David Greene and Butterfly. She also used my dreams when I was too low in energy to actually hear her voice. Then after I was out of the box of normality, I was finally able to resurrect a lot of the information she had been giving me, but not in a week or a year. It took close to twenty years for that process to play out. But in her time, which isn’t time, who’s counting, eh? Well, frankly I am! Am I whining? I think I’m whining.

And as timing goes, the EU (Empress of the Universe) finally said it was time for me to share what I have learned and what she wants me to tell you. So nearly every day for five years I sat down at the computer, minimized the screen so I couldn’t see it and downloaded our story onto the page.

A Roadmap to Navigate this Book

First, this is not fiction, the story is real. Everything I write about I have personally experienced. If you think some of the experiences sound odd or unbelievable, just imagine what it felt like for me, as a social scientist living the experiences first hand.

Second, the book presents information in a manner that speaks to both your left brain and right brain. Some information may sound confusing, weird or even frightening to your logical brain, but trust that it will make sense to your intuitive brain and just keep reading. The information will percolate through your body and suddenly an ‘aha!’ will flash through you and you will get it. There’s a purpose inherent in the meanderings in the book. This assists you to shift more into your right mind and hopefully begin to awaken to the voice of your own butterfly beacon.

The book is divided into four parts. The first three parts explain the energy recovery process I was lead through. You could call it the Empress of the Universe’s Wake-up Course for me. The first parts also set the stage for the information presented in the last part of the book. Part 4 reveals the original love story recovered in the ancient records and its important significance for humanity. Everything comes together like pieces on a puzzle board or like the ending in a fairytale. Only in this fairytale we all get to choose whether we want to live happily ever after or keep struggling along.

In Part 1. Answering the Wakeup Call I describe how I got hooked and engaged in joining this project. The section is filled with magical treats of the week and outrageous experiences that helped to break me out of the small box I’d labeled reality. In a word, it’s outrageous! But it’s true. My favorite part is when David helps my guide appear to me. Talk about scared skinny! I was terrified, but I was fascinated in equal measure. It is in this section that I also experience what being equal really feels like and I begin to see a bigger picture of what life really offers us.

My adventures continue but now a pattern begins to form in Part 2. Rebuilding the Future. Vital keys are revealed and pieced together. Many transfers happen that lead me to work with a team of unusual and amazing individuals to help rebuild something that was lost long ago. I think what we did was also pre-paving the future.

In Part 3. Moving Forward and Looking Back I move to the other side of the country and leave my ‘stuff’ and everything and everyone I’ve ever known. Think metaphor here. While I explore my new environment, the Empress of the Universe sends me back to review some of my earlier experiences which later fit together in an unbelievable way. I also find my partner in dreaming and experience an hysterical emotional roller coaster ride trying to find him in 3D reality. All of these experiences conspire to get me to shed my old ways and flip the switch on how I participate in life.

Once I flip that switch I become able to access the information the Empress of the Universe has been helping me to reach. Part 4. Resurrecting the Knowledge of the Ancients tells the true ‘first love’ story according to the Empress of the Universe, and straightens out some bad information we’ve had passed along to us. Then it deals with what it means for us now and how we break through and claim our power. Butterfly woman in her feminine aspect speaks up and tells the story of what happened to her and then shows how we keep repeating her experiences with our own lives. Wow. I didn’t want to believe it, but as soon as I looked through my life, the proof was right in front of my face. In fact I kept repeating a biggie she had…playing it again and again. Finally both Butterfly and the Empress of the Universe explain what it is we can do to stop the repeats and create our own lives, and yes, live happily ever after!

What this Book is Not About

Let me tell you what this book is not about. It’s not about how a woman needs a man in order to be fulfilled. It’s also not about how a woman needs to fix her man. Most of us have certainly tried it once or twice or even think it’s the only way to have a good relationship. It’s not! If we are to fix anyone it’s our own feminine energy by freeing her to return to her powerful essence.

This book is also not about men/male bashing or women/female bashing. I speak a lot about feminine and masculine energies being out of balance. They are. The fact is within each human being live both feminine energy and masculine energy. Feminine energy can be referred to as right brain energy and is the means we use to connect with spirit and inspiration, our feelings and creativity and seeing the big picture. Our left brain is our masculine energy and is our ability to turn ideas into action through the use of logical and linear steps. Underlying the entire book is the theme of the importance of an equal balance of feminine and masculine energies within ourselves first. Then and only then can it be extended into the greater community and world.

I have purposely chosen not to involve my family in the details of this book to respect their privacy, so you will notice you rarely hear about them even though I had a very active and parallel life with them. The purpose of the book is to illustrate what happened on my own path as I was guided to recover my original energy.

How to Get the Most Out of the Book

If you have been drawn to this book, your own personal energy is responding to the wakeup call within your DNA. Congratulations! This is a wakeup call for us women to recover and return to our original power and assist with an important task. But it’s also the same for men as they are invited to awaken to and open their own inner feminine or right brain skills. It’s all about returning to balance and wholeness individually and as partners.

If you feel overly uncomfortable, nervous, and fearful as you read the book, put it down for now and walk away. You aren’t ready for this journey yet. When you are, you will naturally want to read it and you will get what it is about and what it means for you personally.

As you read the book, suspend disbelief for the moment. Read it AS IF. Trust that it is true and don’t waste your energy being skeptical and questioning whether this really happened….it did, it is true, and just as I describe it to you in the book. If you find yourself spending more time mentally trying to prove it didn’t or couldn’t happen, you will end up lowering your own energy and robbing yourself of the energy experience you have an opportunity to have as a result of reading the book.

Personal Contract and Gift for You from the Empress of the Universe

When I heard the Empress of the Universe suggest we offer a unique option for readers to experience and feel the story in addition to reading it, it sounded a little unusual to me, but she assured me she wanted to offer this as a gift to readers.

We have free will which she honors scrupulously. So if you would like to enhance your awareness and experience the connection with her through the book, all you have to do is tell her quietly in your mind, or write it out on a piece of paper or sign in the box below. It will become a private contract between you and the Empress of the Universe. She’ll get it and will take care of the details.

From my own experience with her I highly recommend it. You will have an amazing journey! I hope you choose to accept her gift. But don’t forget to give your permission.

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The Tjet

Part 1

Answering the Wakeup Call

Introduction to Part 1

Be Careful What You Ask For

As 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 fo r 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

It 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