Eye of the Beholder

Chapter 3.7 Dutch

She was gone. Tengri looked at the faces before him. Pensive faces. "Is she right?" he asked. "Do we know the rest?"

Dema spoke. "As she said, we each know only what we know. For myself, I had remembered back almost to the time she spoke of. We were primitive then. I did not truly discover who I was until much later. And I did not discover this. But for those of us who are shamans, and shifters, it makes sense that we were once them. We were the Annunaki."

Sedna nodded to the woman who was both her mother and her granddaughter. "It does ring true. I have not often had access to those ancient memories, but the visits to Mars brought me back. I felt I knew things I could not know if I hadn't been there. For me, those times became real, if only faintly so. Now it is coming back more strongly."

As if themselves waking from a long sleep, all the shamans began to realize they too were Annunaki before they were human. In this waking reverie they were learning to delve deeper into their past than they had thought possible. 

Together they began to recall that many Annunaki had chosen not to waken from their own long sleep, and left Niburu to dwell in the world of dreams. When they saw that Gaia did not demand the long years of hibernation between a few short years of life which had made them leave Niburu, they took up lives in her realm.

Tengri said, "Unlike many of us, I was born into a culture that recognized my shaman nature. I was introduced to experiences that demonstrated the realm we now call the Q. I was guided into the understanding that my awareness would be both narrow and deep. That a shaman could be of value only to a small community, one that he could aid directly.

"Although new communication technologies dramatically expand the size of that community, it remains true that communication must be reciprocal to be honest and effective.

"The overlords, the old Annunaki who came here for earthly gold, demanded our worship, denied that reciprocity. They denied the dream world. They survived in body. They in fact were lesser gods than we are."

He paused. Someone said, "What are we to make of this, this Niburu connection?" Other heads bobbed in anticipation. So he thought for a moment, then began.

"Learning that we may have come from Niburu puts a much wider perspective on our existence. Becoming more open to the Q has already broadened our vision. But what of before Niburu? The older realms it must have come from? 

"My suggestion? Go and see for yourselves, if you will. If you can dream it you can do it. No dream need be less real than any other to the dreamer. All is in the eye of the beholder. The inner eye.

"It is in the shared eye, the common eye, the eye of agreement, that the physical universe exists. When that eye closes, the inner eye, the third eye, is all that remains. It is what this inner eye has seen that defines who you are, what you know.

"What is real for you, and only that, is real for you. The rest is stories, and stories are like dreams. Once you have made them yours, internalized them, they begin to shift.

"The reality of the physical universe lies in its ability to repeat a story, over and over, and convince us that it doesn't change. But it does change, if subtly. It changes in context if in nothing else."

Bear gently squeezed Xayna's hand, reminded of something her father Ghandl once said. Tengri went on.

"Each instant offers a different perspective, a different view, to the eye of the beholder. No two views are ever exactly alike. If they were they would collapse together and become one. This is the most fundamental truth we can know about the fabric of the universe."

"Okay. But then who are we, really?" someone asked.

"We are the story tellers. It is what sets us apart.

"Remember, each of us, in body, is already a community. A community of cells, of atoms, that share a common reality. And we are witness to other such communal dreams.

"To every atom, every spirit, there are but two realities. Itself, the viewer, and all else, the viewed.

"When an individual spirit adopts this present shared reality, it is but a step on a long path that meanders through the dream. There is no past. There is no future. There is only this vast web of agreements about what is shared, what is common to all.

"But none of these common realities encompasses all realities.

"You are but a trickle that has joined into a stream, a river, an ocean of shared experiences, each trickle part of the ocean but truly comprehending only its own narrow path, however that path may have meandered to accompany others for a while now and then."

Tengri looked at his audience. He was not completely sure of any agreement with what he had said. Particularly of those who were not there in body, but only by QAR links. But he had nothing more to add. So he said, rhetorically, "Any questions?"

Everyone was silent. Dutch stirred slightly. Tengri noticed, and said, "Dutch?"

Dutch looked surprised to have been singled out. He said, "That's all fine. What I want to know is, how did they write on the rocks? I mean, cuneiform is marks on clay. Those walls were never clay. How did they do it?"

Dema spoke up. She said, "Bear, go get me a smooth stone and a sharp pencil." He did. It did not take him long. Both were plentiful on Coon Island.

She held the stone flat side up in her right hand and the pencil in her left. She shut out everyone in the room and went into the stone dream. When she had the stone's agreement she pressed the pointed end of the pencil into the stone a dozen times, turning the stone this way and that to orient the deep marks.

Then she held it up for everyone to see. The marks spelled DUTCH, each curve constructed of two thin triangular indentations. Dutch gave a low whistle.

Dema said "The stone is malleable, just like everything else in the physical universe."

Dutch seemed satisfied.