Maia looking for a distraction, opened their burlap bag of supplies and took a sip of water and then offered some to Simon. "Why're we doing this, Simon?"
"Trying to speak with the Oracle?" he asked between measured sips of water Maia nodded.
Simon looked up to the sky, mostly hidden with tree branches and leaves, his hood partially covering his sculpted, but weathered face. "Within the infinite realities, of which this is only a tiny part, there's one vital constant: the need to be wanted. Not because you have something that others lack, but simply because you're one piece of the whole and you know it. You know that everyone else is like you: they're peers. There's mutual respect and appreciation. There's equality.
"The Oracle, when it first dictated its original prophecy to me, I asked it when it would end?"
"The Oracle, when it first dictated its original prophecy to me, I asked it when it would end?"
"You mean the Oracle itself?"
"No, the Oracle's service to this planet... to our species."
"What did it say?" Maia asked.
"It told me that it couldn't predict such a thing, because it related to it personally. Its creators hadn't given it the ability to answer such questions. But I kept on asking the same question in different ways until I got an answer, however circuitous, and its fulfillment is what I've been waiting for... for a very long time."
"What?"
"It told me that it would, in time, break down and a door would open that would enable it to become human."
"What do you mean: break down?"
"All systems break down, Maia", Simon answered. "Entropy. The oracle could see this future change, not so much for itself, but for all of humanity, and it would be caught up in this shift and be affected by it in its own way."
Maia crinkled her forehead, looking confused. "Shift?"
"The equality I spoke of earlier —that constant in the universe— it's not the view of everyone. There are those who aren't satisfied with being equal, and instead desire superiority, putting their value and contribution above the rest. Respect and appreciation aren't what happens after this collision."
"But haven't these always been in conflict?" Maia asked.
"Of course, but not when the dynamics of the planet —its entire universe— were also changing. This is what creates the intersection, wich makes the collision, ans subsequent shift, possible.
[...]
Maia frowned, and glanced at Simon. "I still don't understand the shift. What is it? how will it change anything?"
"A profound change is occurring, Maia, but people don't really see it or sense it... yet. They would probably chalk it up to natural cycles —corrections of nature, nothing too significant. But the Oracle said it was the time when equality would win our. It was the time when brotherhood would evict servitude; when those corrupted in power would take notice of the power of equality."
"How? How could something like that happen? I mean: who's behind it?"
"Everyone's behind it", Simon answered cryptically. "This is the culmination of hundreds of thousands of years; since man and woman first stepped on this planet as corporeal beings it's been planned".
"But by whom?"
"By us", Simon answered. "By humanity. It isn't imposed from some outside force. It's our collective freewill, as a sentient species, to become a force of oneness; a collective consciousness that rises through the infinite realities, and seeks out other species elsewhere in the universes that have done the same. And if we don't find any, then we will cultivate them".
Maia looked at Simon with a degree of uncertainty, as if questioning his sanity. "And this is all according to the Oracle?"
"Yes", Simon responded.
"Why would anyone want to prevent this?"
"They've tampered with the most basic provision of the universe of realities —the freewill of sentient beings. They've resisted the oneness of equality because they desired personal power more than they desired to build collective intelligence. And in this desire for power they fractured the human spirit into a mosaic of ineffectiveness. They've imprisioned humanity just as someone would clip the wings of a bird to prevent it from flying away.
"Once this structure of enslavement had been ingrained in the human species it moved from one generation to the next —in a blend of heredity and culture— like a perpetual motion machine, and?"
"So this collision will happen soon?"
"Yes", Simon nodded, "but it's not like it'll happen in a single event that occurs in one day. It might take fifty years. Perhaps less, but these shifts lure us deeper and higher at the same time. They stretch humanity. They create a breadth in the human spirit that can reach past the monarchy of power and find our collective voice —not a physical voice that speaks words, but an inner voice that speaks as a collective vibration of one because it understands that all of us are parte of One Being that's not ruled by any thing or any external force."
"Even God?"
"Even God".
"This frightens me", Maia admitted softly. "The collision that comes before yhis shift, what's it going to be like?"
"That's what I want to ask the Oracle", Simon said.
"But it's not the end of the world, is it?"
Simon shook his head and chuckled in a friendly manner. "It's the birth of a new world. Everything that comes to an end will usher in a new beginning. This new beginning is the promise of our new awareness as a collective. The Oracle explained it as an awakening from a prison that you'd previously never noticed, and then one day you awaken to see the bars of the prison and the guards at the door."
"We're in a prison, but we don't know it?"
"It's more like living in a constellation of mazes that've become so familiar that few, if any, seek to escape. The borders of the maze touch other dimensions of being thet feel so foreign that they invoke fear, but these borderlands are our future. They're more rarified, and so require a certain preparation to touch and experience in a way that's useful to the individual and that doesn't unbalance them. But unless one seeks to leave the maze, there is no preparation."
"And how does one do that —leave the maze?" asked Maia.
"It's different for everyone, but that's intended, because it requires each of us to rely on our own perceptions and sense of navigation. Each must awaken to the reality that a maze exists, and then begin the work to create a map of the maze. Why?... to learn its structure, its purpose, and remain open to the possibility that much of what they believed will be jettisoned as superfluous, untrue or simply outdated. Once they have a map, even a dimly conceived map, they've begun their preparation. When they begin to navigate out of the maze, they'll reach a borderland of a higher world, a world of awareness, not objects or imagery.
"This awareness is the new world of equality and oneness. It doesn't live behind images, sounds, feelings, calculations or polarities. It's not fueled by faith or piety. It's not responsive to the devotion to external personalities no matter who they are.
It doesn't care if you profess faith in God or spirit, or if you demonstrate your holiness by abstinence. It doesn't evaluate your intellect for worthiness.It responds only to the expressions of the heart —the coherency of its virtues outpouring from the center of your being.
"It's as if a world exists outside this maze, and we're living in both places simultaneously. In the world of awareness, we're One Being; in the constellation of mazes, we're billions of fragments divided by ethnicity, faith, social standing, gender, and a hundred other things that only weigh on the scales of importance within the maze.
"As the One Being we can look into the maze and see the fragments of our self, and call them home. Some listen more carefully than others, but the voice calls. It has always called, and this voice can help you find your way out as well."
"Why can't the fragments look out from the maze and see the world of awareness?"
"They can!" Simon exclaimed. "There's nothing that prevents it apart from our faith in that which is illusory. Faith is the most powerful commodity of the human spirit. With faith you can direct the masses to believe that the maze and its fragments are the most important part of the entire universe. And that wich is outside the maze, well, that's insanity, satanic, ill advised, and nothing more. So it's better not to talk of such things lest you become exiled as a social outcast.
"But there are those whose valor requires them to probe, explore, and reach out from the maze into the world of awareness and live without the uniform of a divided humanity. They simply allow the heart virtues to guide them, uncaring about a particular creed, ritual, rule or incarnation. They know that their faith is their most precious energy and they invest it within, in the centermost part of themselves, because that's where they connect with the One Being.
"How does this give them the way out of the maze, as you put it? Maia asked. "It seems to me that the real world should be accessible to us. In other words, if we're supposed to make up and get out of the maze that separates us, there should be someone who turns on the light, wakes everyone up, and shows him or her the exit. Wasn't this the purpose of the Oracle?"
"We live in an expanding multiverse", Simon replied. "There are worlds within worlds within worlds. The maze is structured across worlds. There isn't a single exit door that everyone can go through. As for the Oracle, it told me that it wasn't the destiny of any external force to save humanity or to wake us up to the reality of our oneness.It was our own plan —the Being of Oneness— to inhabit densities of polarity, and survive and evolve, and in this evolution, we would gradually become aware of our collective soul.
"It may seem like a slow awakening —it certainly does to me— but its timing is not calibrated to a single human lifetime, but rather the collective lifetime of our species."
Maia shrugged and sighed. "I still don't understand why the One Being is unable to awaken quicker. What's caused humanity to squander its oneness for the sake of individual expression? Why does it have to end up as one faction trying to kill or manipulate another? It's such a terrible waste."
"You're right in one way", Simon commented, "but the human family has been manipulated by their gods. This manipulation has been pervasive in channeling the fear and faith of the human family to the waiting bellies of those who are, in a very real sense, feeding off of humanity. These self-professed gods fear the One Being will eventually eclipse them. They want the human family separated into fragments of fear and faith, because this brings them sustenance and job security?"
"You're saying God is responsible for our fragmentation?" Maia asked with irritation evident in her normally crystalline voice. "I don't understand. Of all the things I've heard you say, this is the most bewildering. God, first of all, is one. We are one with God. Thus, the One Being must be God. Right?"
"Which God?" Simon asked rhetorically. "The God of vengeance? The God that smites humanity for its sinful nature —the very nature that God, through his omniscience, endowed us with? The God that demands worship from its imperfect, sinful creation? The God that inhabits religions that ignite holy wars and inquisitions? The God that destroys that which disagrees with it? Which God, Maia?"
Simon paused as he read Maia's face, which was growing in frustration. "What we call God, what we're bred to believe, serve, and give our faith and fear to, is a manipulation, an imposter. Most of our prophets, messengers, and messiahs have given voice to this fear-invoking Triune God —the Father, Son, and Spirit. The Triune God is tendered as the Creator of all things. It is not the Creator of all that is".
"Just as the human instrument is the imposter of First Source, and Its Heaven is an imposter of the Grand Multiverse in which First Source both created and inhabits.
"The old definitions of God must be recast. The Church's messiah tried to make this message clear, but it remained caught up in the old paradigms like a puppet that became self-animating, but whose strings couldn't be completely severed.
"So many layers of manipulation", Simon said, shaking his head. "So easy for confusion to reign".
He looked around for a moment, eyes glistening with the liquid of a spirit capsized by sorrowfulness. "There's a state of creaturehood between man and God... you've heard of them as angels, and they became adversaries with one another.
Within the angelic realm, as evolution's trajectory on earth became clearer, and the human vessel emerged, some of their leaders believed this collective —the One Being— could one day be more powerful than the angelic realm and supplant it.
"And in this point of disquiet —about the destiny of the human consciousness as a collective being— the angelic adversaries chose sides. One side wanting to nurture humanity and provide it guidance, and one side wanting to be nourished by its energies."
Maia had listened carefully, but seemed hesitant to ask another question for fear that more of her reality could not endure the dismantling force of Simon's words. She felt a need to protect her remaining beliefs, and one of them that was particularity precious was the topic of angels.
"It'll be late before we try to enter the Oracle's site tonight, we should try to get some rest now", Simon suggested, as if reading Mais's thoughts. It was late afternoon, and the air was warm and slightly muggy with a light breeze that angled through the dense pine forest like a celestial breath with a thousand layers. Every layer a different breath, of a different soul.
"It'll be late before we try to enter the Oracle's site tonight, we should try to get some rest now", Simon suggested, as if reading Mais's thoughts. It was late afternoon, and the air was warm and slightly muggy with a light breeze that angled through the dense pine forest like a celestial breath with a thousand layers. Every layer a different breath, of a different soul.
