When Lights Collide Chapter 29

“This changes everything”, Daniel whispered, still thinking back over his life with this new information ~ this new truth ~ filtering over all the moments that he felt ashamed of himself, or broken somehow.

Suddenly, he could see how it all made sense, it all felt so right.

He turned to Estelle and to Cara and stated matter-of-factly, 

“So, whoa, wait, this means that I am not actually a factory screw up, I’m not broken…?”

His statement had quickly become a question and he stood, shaking his head trying to clear the confusion that was threatening to overcome his senses.

Both women stood smiling at him, waiting for Daniel to be ready for the response.  It was Estelle who spoke first, which he noted helped to clear some of the confusion,

“No baby, you ain’t broken.  You just didn’t know why you are the way you are.”

Cara nodded in agreement with Estelle’s words and added,

“When we grow up not knowing about who we are, not knowing about the special gifts and talents that we were born with, many of us fall into a sadness that we cannot explain, we only know that we feel empty, incomplete somehow, and that leads us to begin to believe that we are broken. 

When in reality, we are not ~ nor ever were ~ broken, we were just uninformed.  Being uninformed, and not knowing about our gifts, leads many of us to spending our lifetime trying to fill that emptiness with whatever helps to make it feel better, the only problem is, we are trying to heal the empty feeling with man made solutions.  And our spiritual nature can only be healed by spiritual truths, which many of us do not know and therefore many of us become addicts of a man made society.”

Daniel stood staring at Cara, listening carefully to all that she said, being fully aware that he was unlearning a lot of false truths about his own life, in a very short time.

When Cara finished speaking, he stood, just staring at her, letting all the words settle in while carefully trying to understand how it all applied to him and his own life.

He nodded and then asked “So, you mean to say that people who become addicted to drugs or alcohol are people who have gifts and talents, but were never taught and so they drink or get stoned to fill a void that they don’t understand, because they were never taught about this?”

Before waiting for Cara to respond, he continued, shaking his head, “so many lives have been lost to drugs and alcohol, it hurts that they could have been saved if they only knew their truth.”

Estelle spoke next, “partially, yes.  Also partially no”

Daniel looked to Estelle and snapped, “Ok, this is getting confusing, are we yes or are we no?” he demanded.

“Let's finish up getting the soup going and make some coffee, then we can sit and talk.” Cara interrupted, hoping to help keep the peaceful conversation going.

They all nodded in agreement as Estelle turned to the soup pot and stirred, Daniel returned his attention to the potatoes and Cara turned to prepare the coffee maker and start the dishes.

Together they worked in silence and soon the coffee was ready, the kitchen cleaned and the soup was on to simmer.

Each poured themselves a cup of coffee and made their way to the living room and settled in for a long chat that was long overdue.

Just as Daniel was about to sit down, his phone vibrated in his pocket.  He fished it out and checked the screen.

“Uuumm, I have to take care of this first.” He muttered as he left the living room and headed for the front door.

Once outside, he again checked the phone, this time opening the message to be able to respond.

He re-read the message, two simple words, no caller id, no number, just two words, “u good” , which caused Daniel to giggle, 

“Good ol prez,” he thought to himself, shaking his head, then added, ‘the man never uses punctuation.”

Daniel knew who sent the message, he knew that the club was getting antsy that he’d been gone so long, and he felt bad that he hadn’t checked in yet, but Daniel also knew that he could not leave, at least not yet.

He hit the reply button and sent a simple ‘thumbs up’ sticker.  To send anything else, would have them all on high alert and ready to roll.  Daniel knew that the last thing he needed was 500 bikers and their Harleys rolling in on a mission to rescue him.  He shook his head again, “I'd never hear the end of it.” he chuckled to himself.

Daniel thought for a brief moment, then wondered if he was needed for another mission and sent “U good”.  He stood on the front step, waiting for a reply and breathing in the fresh air.  Daniel always loved being outside, even as a child.  He loved the trees and grass and the way the wind seemed to whisper along from tree to tree.  He was looking at the trees that surrounded him when he noticed a flicker of movement from under one of the trees, just beyond the shadows.  Daniel tried to focus on that spot without actually looking at it, just as he phone buzzed again.

He looked at the screen and saw a thumbs up. “Good,” he thought to himself, “that takes care of that, but what's going on over in those shadows?” he wondered to himself.

He sat down on the top step of the porch and tried his best to look like he was waiting for something and fiddled with his phone. Daniel flipped open the camera, flipped over to video and hit ‘record’, aiming it where he had noticed the movement, then he watched the screen, pretending like he was checking something while he recorded in hopes of catching whatever was over there.

After a few moments of nothing, Daniel gave up, decided he must have imagined the flicker of movement and shut off the camera recording.  He stood up and stretched, took another look around and turned to go back into the house.

But he didn't miss the tingling sensation on the back of his neck, the tingling that always meant someone was watching him.  Always.

As he opened the door and stepped into the house, he used the opportunity to look around again.  Still seeing nothing, Daniel entered the house, closed the door and returned to his previous spot in the living room.  He said nothing, but both women could tell that something was on his mind.

“All good?” Cara asked shyly from her spot on the couch.

Daniel nodded, “All good,” he replied.  Then he asked “Ok, so where were we, what were we talking about?”

Estelle smiled, grateful that his interaction with the club hadn’t deterred him from wanting to learn about his true self. 

“We were talking about gifts and talents and our awareness of them.” She said and then waited for him to recall the conversation and his questions.

Again Daniel nodded “Right, and how it can lead to addictions, can we cover that bit again please, because I’m a bit confused about how that all ties together.”

Estelle nodded, “Ok, let’s start from the top.”

She adjusted her position in her arm chair, grabbed a throw blanket and covered her knees before she spoke.  

Then she began from the top.

“As I mentioned, all humans are born with certain gifts, talents and abilities.  Most of us are just not aware of it anymore.  It used to be that all people knew, understood, learned and taught each other about their gifts and powers.  We, as a world, had a shared awareness.  

But, as time went on and the world grew, so too did the awareness that our gifts could be utilized for many, many things. 

After all, we did eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And, as the saying goes, it only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch.  

In our case, we are and always have been encouraged to only use our gifts for good, we are now aware that our gifts and powers can and have been used for the not so good ~ the evil.

It only took one person to destroy the way it was all meant to be.  And when that one person decided that they wanted to be in charge, in control of all the people and all the gifts and all the power, they rallied other like minded people around them and then the world changed.  

Suddenly, we were given reasons to be afraid, and many of our ancestors began to hide their true selves from the world around them so that they would not be forced to utilize their gifts and powers for the alter-power hungry ones that took charge and wanted to be in control of everything.

Parents began to suppress their own gifts and powers and they also began to withhold this very important information from their own children.  

Instead of teaching their children community and how to grow into their gifts and powers, children were taught to suppress anything and everything that made them different from other children.  Children began to be taught that being different, that is, having gifts and powers, was a bad thing that no one could ever know about.  

The world began teaching our children that being different made them ‘special’ for all the wrong reasons and being ‘special’ became something to avoid at all costs.

This all happened because of a fear of persecution for not aiding those who sought to be in control.  Those who desired to have all the gifts and powers utilized for their own benefit, retaliated against those who would not surrender their gifts and powers to the control of the ones who demanded it.

Which in turn created a world of people who lived in fear that they would be persecuted against for being any kind of different which also created a world of people who would feel like a failure when they didn’t fit in with the ones who wanted control, the ‘powers that be’.

We were never meant to be people who had to hide their true selves. We were never meant to be a people who had to work to fit in with the wrong reasons and the wrong people.  

We were meant to be, and used to be, a people that all fit in because we were each special, gifted and unique.  

We used to be a people who celebrated each other in their uniqueness, who celebrated the gifts and powers of those around us, we learned from each other and what we learned helped us to expand who we were in our understanding of the world around us, the way that it was meant to be.

Eventually, because our ancestors felt the need to hide their gifts and talents and did not share any of this knowledge with generations to come, the generations that are here now are struggling.  

They know they are different, they just don’t know why and it is the not knowing that is creating this destruction of the soul that leaves so many feeling empty and hopeless.

It's that very emptiness and hopelessness that sends each of us on a journey of trying to fill that void within our being, we want to feel whole and complete, we want to feel like we belong, yet without the knowledge of our ancestors, we instead feel broken and empty.”

Estelle paused and took a sip of her coffee before asking Daniel “how are we doing so far? Any questions?”

Daniel just sat staring at Estelle, then looked at Cara and sank back into the loveseat, “wow, thats….  Well, that's…  Wow.”

He paused a moment before asking, “the one who wanted to be in control, is that what we would call the government now?”

Cara thought about it and looked to Estelle, but before Cara could say anything, Estelle continued on and Cara exhaled in relief as she realized that she didn't have any answers to give.

To keep reading, CLICK HERE for chapter 30!