Excerpt from Laenif: Book 1, chapter one: "The Village on Laenif."
“Not much longer, Ghoid. When we get to where we are heading, this walk from the township will seem almost like a fading dream…” The stranger paused to ponder on his statement. “Now that I think about it however… life in general is somewhat just a fading dream, hmm? One must wonder who it is who gets to wake up from it.”
Ghoid slightly smiled. “Perhaps the beginning of the dream is when this one fell asleep, and so all individual life is a derivative perception of that one dream. This means we all get to wake up. Begin as one and then fall into infinity. Something like that?”
The higher being contemplated this for a little and finally replied, “Well if what you’re saying is that every life is a solitary perception of the same dream, then one can conclude that whoever doesn’t awaken themselves won’t get their own world.”
“But what if one isn’t mature enough to have their own world?”
“Then that person must earn it or they will lose it. Sadly though, we are all worse off for everyone who doesn’t reach their potential.”
“I know what you mean,” Ghoid commented.
They arrived at a door that led inside a hollowed-out tree. “I could have meant anything, kid.” The elder opened the door. “Go down the steps after you walk inside.”
Ghoid had little time to circumspect the tree, but he felt almost obligated to. He could sense a surprise arising in his future, like this would be the last time he was to come through this door.
He walked down roughly textured wooden steps into a very comfortable space. There were turquoise pillows scattered across the soft ground. A small red candle provided light to the tiny spherical room. “Where did you get this stuff?” Ghoid asked.
The larger one sat down. “You see, individual planets and individual animals have many similarities with one another. As creatures roam surfaces of their planet, planets orbit suns in the space that they are given in similar, but more abstract, ways. And much like how creatures search for those who resemble themselves, planets do the same.”
Ghoid listened attentively, nodding to show he understood so the higher being could finish: “Our planet has a very strong connection with another called Earth,” he continued. “Our planet and this one have evolved in a combination of consciousness. As they grow, we grow with them. That is to say that everything we do here on Laenif is felt on Earth, and vice versa. And this planet Earth and ours have been evolving in congruent directions ever since the Prophet of Laenif ventured there and found the source of life.”
Ghoid was mesmerized. “How did the Prophet travel there?”
“She used her mind. She concentrated on the cycle of what some refer to as divinity and she closed her eyes on our planet to open them in a distant galaxy. When she arrived there, the reaction of her godliness from Laenif with the source of life on Earth led to the incarnation of existence for all complex plants and animal life on both worlds. Then, after millennia of coexistence, the two planets received intelligence simultaneously. While Laenif is supposedly home to many advanced intelligent species, Earth’s only keeper of it is now a massively spread animal called human beings.”
“Aren’t these just myths?” Ghoid wondered. “Was it the humans who actually gave you these strange pillows? Did they build you this basement beneath this tree?”
“No,” the stranger responded. “But our ancestors did acquire the ideas to do so around the era of our interaction with the humans. Are you familiar with the myths?”
“Barely.”
“I see,” the elder remarked. There was then a quick silence as he snatched a green plant, which bore a strong healing chemical, and ate it with a piece of bread. His third eye seemed different from Ghoid’s. It looked swollen and appeared murkier outside the circumference of its iris.
“What exactly is happening?” Ghoid asked while his elder chewed.
Silence endured for a small moment. The elder held his chest as he swallowed, instantaneously noticing that his heart had become possessed by a quick racing beat. Finally he said, “Even mere myths hold some truth. Us shamans used to be able to go to Earth, but the humans grew weary of us and they banished us.”
The pace of Ghoid’s pulse quickened as well. “What does this have to do with me?”
“It is the moment we are sharing. This shroud of existence we are currently perceiving and remembering. It is holy.”
“Why?”
“Because of your new, beautiful eye,” the tall stranger proclaimed. “It is as much of a gift as life is… but like life, it is accompanied by grave responsibility. With your new holy eye, you can journey to Earth, which is why I brought you here. Right now.”
“What am I supposed to do there?”
“Help our spiritual brothers. They have been consumed by whirlwinds of violence and desire. They have forgotten about the true power of love. So now, you need to go there and teach them something beautiful. Help them find their way. Give them a better view of our single vibrating consciousness.”
“No. No, I can’t. I have family here,” Ghoid argued. “All I know is here.”
“Listen kid, you have to understand the sacredness of this situation. What you know or whatever you used to know about life doesn’t matter anymore.”
Ghoid wrapped his face up with his palms. “What is going on?”
“You are going to Earth.”
He shook his head as the calming euphoria of his new third eye slowly mutated to overbearing anxiety. “I can’t,” he repeated.
His elder looked at him sternly. “You have no choice.”
“But why?”
“All you need to know is that the humans and all the intelligent beings of Laenif are spiritually one,” he said. “Our reunification with the humans’ consciousness is dire to both our planets’ fates. Generations ago, the Prophet gave those of us with three eyes the ability to contact humans. The stories from that time are too long to indulge in now. What I can tell you is that the last one of us to go to Earth was tortured and murdered by humanity. After that, the Prophet closed the portal between our worlds and it has been that way ever since. We have neither been to nor heard from the Earth in a very long time.”
“Then how am I supposed to get there?” Ghoid questioned.
“I’ve done mathematical and astrological calculations,” the elder claimed. “They have shown me that the cosmic doorway to Earth is open for a couple hours right now. It was revealed to me that the magic of your eye is alive enough to rip the fabric of gravity and time, allowing you to go to Earth for one of the first times in hundreds of years. You are the only one who can do this.”
“Why me?”
“There’s not enough time, Ghoid! You’ve had your third eye for a couple hours. You’re hardly a shaman. But the youth of your eye is the reason you’re the only one who can go. It is sadly the same reason that you can’t entirely understand this yet…”
“But why do I have to help another planet?” Ghoid begged. “I was born here.”
“I said it before. We are deeply connected to Earth. You have to do this to help our other half and to try and bring stability and peace to our one combined consciousness. For once you heal humanity’s ignorance, everything will be right.”
“Can’t I go at some other time?” Ghoid pleaded.
“There is no other time to do this. You think you will have those three eyes forever?”
“Why? Will I be raped of one and left with two?”
The elder sighed. “You’re just going to have to trust me on this, kid.” He reached out and touched Ghoid’s hand. “Humans need compassion now. Your third eye is awakened now. I remember when I received my third eye, years ago. It feels exciting, unending, and gratifying. I know. It feels like a whole new dimension can be sensed, right?”
“It feels like love,” Ghoid said.
“Exactly,” the elder agreed. “Your third eye is intensely alive and you are now aware of places where only divinity glows.”
Ghoid gazed off into the flame that lit the room with smooth flickers. “Of this feeling and awareness my eye has given me, I dare not call it anything but love.”
“And that love has so many sides, my friend. You can relish among the pleasure of it, or you can get lost in fascination, but either way, somewhere along the paths of experience, it will die and fade. The love will turn around and show you the blade of life as it stabs inside all that you are and all that you feel…”
Ghoid fell silent after finally admitting, “I understand.” His quiet contemplation filled the room along with the elder’s growing impatience. But Ghoid couldn’t leave his home world and his family’s home and his past without first saying his thought processes out loud. He had to make sure his logic was making reasonable sense: “So if I go to Earth, I may find the power of this love, which will allow me to dive into the highest potential for my life, and I’ll experience this blade you speak of further down my path. Or I can drown in pain now as I feel regret from not going.”
“You pretty much got it.” The stranger sighed again as if he had something more important to do, but then suddenly pierced his stare into Ghoid’s three eyes. “The universe wants you to do this.”
“Oh, I hope I can trust the soul that I will have to give my love away to,” Ghoid whispered to himself. “…to be patient and considerate with it. To respect it and nurture it and never blacken it with dishonesty… because it will be from such darkness that blades will emerge. Oh benevolent mercy, cradle me…”
Ghoid was unable to keep his mind straight as more memories from his life with two eyes flooded synapses. And as these recollections mixed slowly with forceful realizations about leaving Laenif, his existence started collapsing into itself. He could feel everything that was, is, or will be as one overwhelming eternal sense. His emotions were a stormy sea about to be swallowed by the universe and transformed into a sublimating comprehension from within.
“You have to eat these, Ghoid,” the older shaman said as he handed over two dried crunchy mushroom caps. “When you wake up, the spiral of divinity will have led you to Earth. You will be given no choice or hope of return.”
Ghoid closed his lower two eyes.
"I understand."
Written by BW Derge, All Rights Reserved 2024
© USA
This was an excerpt from Laenif: Book One (2013), chapter one: The Village on Laenif
