Chapter 9. 8 – A mystical interlude

Zingdad: 8?

8: Yes?

Z: I’m struggling a bit.

8: Uh-huh? What with?

Z: Well… actually I’m struggling quite a lot.

8: Alright. What with?

Z: Well this is hard for me. You see I have this issue that… in the last chapter you spoke about how I had overcome my doubts and fears such that I was able to receive this work, The Ascension Papers and, when you said that, I felt quite good about myself. But between finishing that chapter and starting this one I’ve had some time to think. And I feel a bit like a fraud. Because I STILL have doubts. Loads of doubts. And the more I think about it the more doubts I have. And then I get worried that doubt itself is going to mess everything up. And why can’t I just believe… you know… why can’t I just have faith?

And then I feel like an even bigger fraud because… here I am writing this book… here I am channelling this material… and even I don’t have absolute faith in it! And if even I have my doubts how can I possibly expect my readers to believe this stuff? And then I think I must be insane because I KNOW I couldn’t have come up with all the stuff in the previous chapters. I KNOW it is not within my capacity to do that. And so I MUST be channelling but then why do I still feel this doubt?

And round and round I go… And so I am struggling. And I’m not sure how to move forward. But I DO know that… before I can resume writing the book I need to have SOME kind of resolution to this. I simply can’t just keep holding the dichotomy in my mind that says “it could be true or I could be deluded”. I need some resolution on this before I can go back to writing the book.

8: (long pause) Are you quite done?

Z: yes

8: Good. Then let’s sort some things out. Firstly: In the last chapter I said that you have MOSTLY released your doubts and fears… and that it is as a result of this that you are now able to undertake the writing of The Ascension Papers. And this is true. You could not have received these words even one month before you actually began. You began when you were ready. And I also said that it will be as a result of writing The Ascension Papers that you will release the rest of your fears and doubts so that you can awaken to your true creator nature.

Do you not remember me saying that?

Z: Yes. That sounds about right.

8: So now. If I said we were going to release the rest of your fears and doubts it must mean that I knew there were still some to release and that I intended to help you with them. And here we are today and you find you need to talk about this very subject. Well that is perfect. If comes at the perfect time. And no… you don’t need to resolve this with me BEFORE you can get back to writing the book. Resolving this with me IS writing the book. It is an essential part of the book as vitally important as any other topic we might address.

Z: Really?

8: Joy-Divine said it:

“If you cannot see the perfection then you are standing too close to the picture.”

Remember how it was true for you in the chapter about the Darklanders?

Z: I do.

8: Well it’s going to be true for you in this chapter too. This chapter is about doubt. Sort of. It starts with doubt and it ends with you realising that you are a mystic.

Z: A what?

8: A mystic.

Z: Sorry. I know you said “a mystic”. I was registering my confusion. I’m not even completely sure what a mystic IS let alone how I come to be one by talking to you about my feelings of doubt.

8: Okay. Well, you have access to the internet on this laptop. Take five minutes to get a quick definition of what mysticism is and then report back here.

(I do that. I literally take five minutes and get the briefest idea.)

Z: From what I have been able to glean from the ‘net, a mystic seems to be someone that seeks direct, personal union with the divine. Someone that seeks (or finds) contact with God without the intervention of things like religious doctrines. There is also something about a mystic being an adherent of the “mystery schools”. Now I do vaguely recall having heard that term before but beyond that I haven’t a clue as to what these schools are or what they teach.

So mysticism seems to be all about some great mystery.

Which is appropriate because it’s all a bit of a mystery to me!

8: That’s fine. You have gained just enough understanding for the purposes of this discussion.

Next we need a brief definition of the word “mystery”, if you’ll be so kind.

Z: Okay. I’ll go look it up.

(Which I do)

What I find is that the word “mystery” broadly means:

A secret. Something that is not known or is unexplained. Something that causes curiosity. Something that is only knowable by divine revelation.

And interestingly enough the word derives originally from the Greek word mustēs, which means “an initiate”.

8: That IS interesting isn’t it.

Alright. Knowing this will come in useful later in the discussion. For now I want to move on directly to your difficulty. You say you are struggling with doubt. Can you tell me where you think doubt comes from?

Z: I think it’s from fear.

8: Fear is one of its parents, yes. But doubt mainly originates in uncertainty. It comes from that which you do not know. Right?

Z: Oh, yes. That’s right. For example I don’t know if the Singularity Event is going to happen. So I doubt.

8: And then you judge yourself for doubting?

Z: Yes. I do. Because I am supposed to have faith. Isn’t it?

8: No! Why do you expect yourself to believe in something that you no experience of whatsoever?

If someone came up to you tomorrow and proposed to sell you a magical substance that would turn everything it touched into gold, would you believe him and hand over the cash or would you demand a demonstration first?

Z: (laughs) I’d insist to see it in action first, of course.

8: I should hope so. Otherwise you’d be very quickly separated from your money by all manner of charlatans. So why then do you expect yourself to behave differently when it comes to the Singularity Event?

Z: That’s interesting. I’m not sure why.

8: Then I shall tell you why. In your mind you separate “real” stuff from “spiritual” stuff. And “real” stuff needs real proof whilst with “spiritual” stuff you feel you must just have faith and believe. And the reason for this is that you are suffering from one of the effects of religion. Most of the religions of your world work quite hard to propagate the notion that doubt is “bad”. Well it isn’t. It’s just bad for business. Their business. If you belong to a religion and then find yourself beginning to doubt what is happening is that you are finding that the answers they provide do not satisfy you. If you pursue your doubts you might very well find answers that DO satisfy you elsewhere. Not in that religion. And if you find better answers outside of that religion you might very well leave that religion. Then you cease to do as it tells you. Cease to be controlled by their greater agenda. And, of course, cease to give them money. So obviously they aren’t too fond of people asking questions and even less so of people seeking answers. So they develop quite a cunning strategy. Tell people how bad doubt is. Make them feel really rotten about doubting. Then… when the do have uncertainty and questions they will feel so bad about them that they won’t go looking for answers to the questions. They will simply take the fact of their doubt as proof of their inherent sinfulness. And then they work extra hard to be “good”. Clever huh?

Z: Maybe. But it’s not very nice, is it?

8: If you are of the opinion that religions come into being and propagate around your world by being “nice” then you are extremely unobservant. I don’t say they have not also been responsible for a great deal of good. But if you ignore the fact of religions ALSO being used as a political tool of power, control and oppression then you are missing a big part of the picture. But this topic is not about religion. And I am not actually against religion per se. When we talk about religion in a follow-on topic you’ll get my broader perspective.

Right now all I am indicating is that religion has had a pervasive effect on shaping your planetary psyche. And given that it is very much contrary to the interest of religion that you question the tenets of your faith it is no surprise that you have an almost instinctual negative response to doubt.

“Do not doubt… just have faith!” they tell you. But in any other sphere of life if you just believe what you are told you end up getting cheated out of your possessions. And so a little neuroses is born:

“I MUST just have faith and believe in relation to ‘spiritual’ matters but I must keep my wits about me and trust my own experience everywhere else,” you tell yourself.

But this is patently silly! Surely there should be nothing more REAL than your spirituality? Your own truest nature – your spirit self – should be the most real thing of all! So why should you not ALWAYS simply trust your own truth and your own experience?

So now we have to un-do some of this programming. We have to reconcile spirituality and real life. We have to disintermediate these clergymen and their doctrines from between you and your soul, between you and The One… the Source-God of which you are, in truth an inseparable part. Because really, what silliness is this that you should have to go to some other person with ancient texts in order that you should know that which is within your heart… that which lies as close as your own breath?

Z: That does seem like an odd notion.

8: It is appropriate for ones that seek to enter more deeply into duality to do so for they are creating a victim state for themselves. They enter duality more deeply by saying “I do not hold my own truth someone else must hold it for me”.

And so they always seek experts to tell them what is true: clergy, politicians, lawyers, doctors, scientists and so forth. These authorities must tell them what is in their own reality. But for ones that seek to arise from this density it is not so. For the awakening ones you might take another’s perspective into account… you might share with them and learn from them. But your connection with God, Divinity and The Oneness can only occur directly and personally.

For the ascending ones it becomes appropriate to cease attempting to separate “spirituality” from “life”. For the awakening being all of life will become a spiritual thing. For example, for us here in the higher dimensions there is no such concept as “spirituality” or “religion” because EVERYTHING is “spiritual”. And religion – being a set of doctrines and beliefs to which we must adhere – is utterly pointless to us. You see everything is done in relationship to The One. It is ALL in service of God. We don’t have to think about it or try to be pious or set aside some time for it. We can, quite simply, do no other.

So let me then complete my point here and say this: release your judgement of yourself for doubting. To do so is counterproductive. You doubt, quite simply, because you do not know. Let me use the Singularity Event as an example to illustrate the point. You do not hold anything like the Singularity Event in your experience. When Joy-Divine first told you about it and you got excited and happy. But then you began to wonder. You found you didn’t know. This is doubt. If you focus on the doubt you get stuck in what I call “debilitating doubt”. Remember one of the derived truths was “what you put out is what you get back”?

Z: Yes. I remember.

8: And the corollary of that is the equally true statement: “what you resist persists”.

Z: Right.

8: So if you feel doubt you can either do something about it or you can focus on the doubt itself. If you focus on the doubt itself and wrestle with it then it “persists”. You get more of it. And holding a judgement about your doubt that tells you that the doubt itself is wrong is pretty much guaranteed to make you focus on the doubt. You are quite likely to get an attack of “debilitating doubt”.

Round and round and round you go. You keep doubting and you keep feeling bad about it. All because somewhere inside you there resides this originating thought that you may not doubt.

Perverse. Odd. And not very useful.

Z: Wow, huh? I see that. Okay. So then I’d like to let go of that judgement. Maybe it IS okay for me to feel doubt about the Singularity Event!

8: Maybe it is. Let’s look at that:

Let’s split everything into two kinds of things: those that you have experience of and those that you do not. The things you have experience of you can say you “know”. The things you have no experience of you can say you “do not know”. The more you know something the more certain you are of it. The less you know something the less certain you are of it. Which seems simple enough, right?

Z: Right.

8: So if you were to be certain of the Singularity Event then I’d say you are probably a little defective in the thinking and reasoning department. How CAN you be certain of something that you have zero direct experience of?

So obviously we are not asking you to be certain of it. Quite the contrary. We are telling you about it knowing that you will respond with surprise, amazement and wonder. And is it not so that almost all the material in The Ascension Papers is of this ilk… it speaks to things that you cannot know… that you most certainly can be very uncertain about.

So your uncertainty is right and good and healthy.

What is unhealthy for you is to get yourself full of fear about it or to stand in judgement of yourself for it. It isn’t WRONG if you choose to do that. It’s just not taking you forward to where you want to be. And it hurts you. It is, as I say, unhealthy.

Z: I understand 8. So I’d like to stop doing that then. I’d like to stop getting stuck in fear of uncertainty. And if I DO feel fear to stop judging myself for it.

8: Excellent. And that is what I am going to help you with in this chapter. I am going to do that by helping you to gain a better understanding of uncertainty. I am going to teach you of its power and magnificence. The result of this will NOT be that you will have no more uncertainty or that you will never doubt again. The result will be that you will embrace your uncertainty and learn to use it in wonderful new ways. You will come to see it as an amazing gift.

Z: Really, 8? That sounds quite hard to believe.

8: Does it? Then I’ll take that as a challenge! (he laughs) I intend that, by the end of this chapter, not only will you realise that you don’t need to fear uncertainty but that you will actually be able to embrace uncertainty as a wonderful gift.

Z: Alright. I look forward to that…

8: Then we have some work to do!

To start with, let’s create a hypothetical situation:

Imagine you are sitting next to a campfire on a dark night and moon-less night. You can only see so far as the light of the fire penetrates the gloom and you have no other source of light.

What do you do? Do you huddle close and closer to the fire and shiver with fear at every leaping shadow? Or do you respond to the dark, unknown landscape with curiosity?

If you feel fear then you stay put. You probably won’t even LOOK out at the darkness because it makes you feel uneasy.

If you feel no fear – or indeed if your heart is filled with a love for the place you find yourself in – then you stand up and venture out into the darkness. You begin to explore and to open yourself to new discoveries. And in so doing you expand your knowledge of your environment. And as you learn new things so you actually expand yourself!

Now this is obviously just a hypothetical situation. I am not saying one should be foolhardy and stumble around in the dark of night. I am simply illustrating a point which is about the way you respond to the unknown. If you respond to it with love you get expansion of the self. If you respond to it in fear you get a contraction of the self.

Now the thing you must understand is that there is, and always will be, a great amount of “unknown” in your experience of life. There will always and forever be a great deal to be uncertain about.

Z: Really 8? Always? Even for someone like you?

8: (laughs) Oh my goodness, yes! Let me explain: The One is infinite, right?

Z: Right.

8: And within the one is an infinite multiplexity of manyness, right?

Z: Yes…

8: And all of that manyness is eternally and infinitely changing and expanding and growing. Right?

Z: Right.

8: Do you understand what that means? It means The One is infinite and is infinitely expanding at an infinitely fast rate! It is simply mind boggling to even try to comprehend it. And this of course means that there is an impossibly huge amount of stuff “out there” beyond the periphery of any one being’s perceptual field. And what is “out there” just gets more and more! And no matter how fast you grow, learn, experience and understand the “unknown” will always grow faster than you. Because the faster you “expand” the more you expand The One and the faster you help all other aspects of The One to grow. It’s really awesomely beautiful. The mystery just deepens and expands.

So yes, assuredly, there is ALWAYS uncertainty. The question is quite simply how you will choose to respond to it. Will you shrink back from it in fear or will you explore it with love? That is up to you. And, as always, you will get exactly what you are creating and you will experience the results of your creation.

Do you follow?

Z: Yes. Thank you for the patient explanation. That makes sense.

8: So let’s see how this has worked in your life. Let me ask you this: That boy that first sat down with a pebble in his hand (see Chapter 1: Introduction to Zingdad) and asked me if I was “out there”. That boy that asked me if I loved him. That boy that sat there night after night asking his questions and laboriously finding a path out of his incomprehension with yes/no answers…

Was he venturing out into the darkness or was he sitting close to the fire?

Z: He was venturing out.

8: And how did that work out for him?

Z: Quite well, it seems.

8: You think?

I think it was one of your finest moments!

If you think about it The Ascension Papers and all the other processes and questing that you have done all flowed from that moment. Certainly, along the way you developed and refined your ability to listen. But in that moment with the pebble in your hand… In that instant there… You stood up from your comfortable, safe spot at the fire. You turned to face the darkness of the unknown and you stepped forth boldly for the very first time. With no precedent… with no cause to believe it would work… with no-one to show you the way… you chose love over fear in the face of uncertainty.

It was a moment of yours that I will always treasure.

And in continuing these conversations you continue to broaden your search. You expand yourself into the darkness. In fact you turn the areas of darkness you encounter into areas of light by the very act of exploring them. You bring YOUR light to them.

And THIS is what you have done with uncertainty.

In fact The Ascension Papers are entirely a product of your uncertainty.

Now – I ask you – do you wish for us to take away your uncertainty? Do you wish to cease to experience it?

Z: Good grief, 8, that is a very surprising perspective on all this. Wow. No, I guess I don’t want to stop having uncertainty.

But I have to say that this uncertainty that you are speaking of now… the stuff that inspired me to ask the questions… it feels different from these other feelings of doubt.

8: Let’s look at this. You say you feel doubt. But still you keep asking questions. Still you keep talking to me. Still you move out into the darkness in ever greater arcs searching the unknown. And THAT is what I meant when I said to you previously that you had done enough work with fear and doubt to allow The Ascension Papers to come through. What I meant was that you had come far enough not to let it debilitate you. Not to bring you to a halt. Because that is what happens when you feel uncertainty and you respond to it with fear and then judge yourself for feeling the fear. This is what I was telling you when I spoke of “debilitating doubt”. It is quite okay to feel some fear of the unknown but when, as a result of the fear or your judgements about it, you choose not to search the unknown then you enter an area of difficulty. You then make it impossible for yourself to begin to find answers for your doubt. So you remain in a state of doubt and you cannot get out. You find you are debilitated by it.

So the first thing to do is to choose to LOOK at the unknown. If you feel a fear or a doubt or a question then go and LOOK at it. Make a decision that you will try to find answers. As soon as you do this you find you have options. And as soon as you become aware of your options then you realise you are no longer stuck. Then you move into a process of creation. This is immediately a lot healthier. And let me tell you something that is true: There are ALWAYS options. If you can’t see any then you have simply not looked hard enough.

For example. If you are stuck you could try putting your faith in what you are told by one of the religions. You can try that and see if it works for you. Many do and many find great benefit there. Nothing wrong with that. Unless you desire to ascend, of course, in which case I firmly contend you will be better served by putting your faith in yourself… in your own inner truth… in your own heart… in your personal connection to the divine. You can try that and see how THAT works.

Choosing the latter will often entail quite a bit of work. You will have to learn to listen to your inner voice and so forth. You will have to learn to trust yourself. To love yourself. There is… as I say… a good bit of work to be done. But you will find, as you progress, that you begin to lose your fear of the unknown. You will venture out into those areas of unknown questions with greater and greater courage. You will begin to enjoy the process of searching your heart, your psyche and the whole universe for the deepest meaning. Slowly your fear will transmute to love. And when you approach your uncertainty with true open-hearted love then you will discover a very magical thing…playful curiosity.

Playful curiosity allows you to enact your most creative self in the search for answers without attaching your ego to the outcome. You play. You have fun. You create. The most amazing and marvellous answers will come to you if you are able to reside in a state of playful curiosity. If you don’t fear being wrong. Because “wrong” just means an answer that didn’t work. And therefore is another opportunity to PLAY AGAIN!

You see?

And it all starts with uncertainty and how you choose to feel about it.

Z: That’s awesome 8.

8: And there is more. Let’s look at the opposite of uncertainty. Let’s look at “certainty”. Things that are certain are fixed. We say we are certain about them precisely because we feel they are unchangeable and immutable. We use these “certainties” and build upon them our reality and our perceptions of ourselves. They are our deepest truths and as such they are the scaffolding upon which we can create. And they are therefore very valuable to us. Without them we would have a hard time creating anything of any meaning or significance. I mean – how would you go about experiencing life on your planet without, for example, all the rules of physics. It would all be chaotic. Life as you know it would not exist.

And how would you begin to understand yourself if nothing about you seemed to remain fixed for any length of time?

Z: Very difficult. I can see that.

8: So these Truths of ours, these “certainties”, have great value to us and we love them dearly. But they are, in fact, transitory. Given sufficient time every single thing that we hold to be true will come to be less true and then eventually untrue. It is thus for whole civilisations and it is thus for individual souls. The things you now believe about yourself and your reality will inevitably come to change and evolve. You will gain new beliefs. The old ones will eventually cease to serve you. You will let go of them. Or you will replace them with far greater truths. That is the nature of “The Truth”. Like everything else, it always changes. And so it is for the things we are certain of. In time we will come to be less certain of them and then eventually we may even come to be certain that they are NOT so!

Z: Everything, 8?

8: To the very best of my rather exhaustive effort to be able to discern I will say this is so of everything other than the one immutable truth which was…

Z: “The One IS.”

8: Correct. And as for the rest… “Change is the only constant”.

And if there is only change then, given sufficient duration of experience, you will experience great change. Given infinite experience you will change infinitely. Hardly sounds like there is much room there to hold onto small truths about your current reality, does it?

Z: No, I guess not. It sounds like uncertainty is certain.

8: (laughs) Exactly. And it is a very good thing it is. Because the areas of uncertainty are the areas we can grow and change in. The areas we temporarily hold to be certain are the areas we stop looking at and stop growing in. And so here is the important realisation:

Without uncertainty there is no creation. There is nothing new.

If you embrace uncertainty then you embrace creation.

If you open your heart completely to uncertainty then you allow your greatest most divine self to play with it. You actually move into “genius”.

Uncertainty is the greatest muse of all!

Cherish it. Seek it out. Explore it. Love it. And most of all HAVE FUN!

Z: 8, that is brilliant. I feel quite excited by this. It feels right to me. Thank you.

8: You are most welcome.

And yet I can sense that you are still not completely at ease about this…

Z: Yes. You are right. Maybe I just need to internalise what you have said. Or something. Because I still feel like I have some issue here.

8: Talk it out with me.

Z: Okay. Let’s see. I think it goes like this: So I have uncertainty. If I fear it enough then I will get locked up and I won’t move forward. So that’s not healthy. If, on the other hand, I love it then I begin to create. And I have fun creating. First I begin to define the questions inherent in my uncertainty and then I begin to find answers that seem to fit the questions. In so doing I find I’m beginning to really have fun. And then I begin to create some really amazing dialogues and have really astounding, awesome answers come back at me and I find I am totally loving the process and it just feels so RIGHT.

8: But?

Z: Yeah. But!

But I STILL don’t know if these answers are right or true. No matter how much better I am feeling about myself and my life I still don’t know if all this that I have been getting has any validity outside of the confines of my imagination.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am astounded at the information I am getting. I am blown away at the internal consistency of the messages. I really, really don’t believe it possible that I could – in the normal sense of it – have imagined all this. It is so for me that there MUST be something “paranormal” going on here. But I STILL don’t know if it is all true.

8: Alright. I want to say a few things to you.

The first is an issue I have already addressed here but I will state it a little differently. I want to say to you that it is YOUR JOB to hold a degree of uncertainty… to “hold lightly” onto your view of reality. For it is in so doing that you are able to do the work that you are now doing. It allows you to write this book and do the many other creative tasks that will follow. You decided to create your path home in this way. That was your choice. In order to do that it is imperative then that you continue to hold some uncertainty. Otherwise you cannot create this path and will have to find another.

Secondly: How would it be if I waved a magic wand and you had complete certainty? If you KNEW with absolute conviction, and certainty and had not a shred of doubt in your soul, that all that is spoken of in The Ascension Papers is absolutely true. If you KNEW that the Singularity Event was going to occur and there was no possibility of it not occurring. How would that be?

Z: Uhh… on the face of it that doesn’t sound so bad. I mean I’d still be able to write all this down and tell folks about it, wouldn’t I?

8: Okay wait a minute. Let’s get something straight right now. You are not doing this for all these other folks. You are creating your own way home. That is what you are doing. Because you can do no other. Yes, you are allowing that your path home should be available to others to use if they so choose. Yes, there is some beautiful and magical co-creation that can flow out of this. That is all true. But you are NOT rescuing anyone. If you begin to see it that way then I assure you, you are going to get hurt. You will develop a saviour complex instead of seeing this as your own path home that is simply being put to some greater use. Okay?

Z: Thanks 8. Phew! That’s right and I’m really glad it is. I don’t want to be responsible for rescuing anyone else.

8: I’m glad that’s sorted out. Now back to the issue at hand. Let me ask you again. How would it be if you had absolute certainty that the Singularity Event was going to occur?

Z: I’m thinking about this 8. But I still don’t think that would be so bad. I’d still just continue with my ascension path but this time without the doubt. And yes, I’d still write about it for others to share in my process if they wanted to.

8: I see. Yes, maybe you would. Provided they gave you access to a computer and the internet.

Z: Who? Provided who gave me access?

8: The nice people in the home for those with mental delusions. You see in the reality that you currently inhabit, if you have complete certainty of something that everyone else would regard as unknowable, then you are considered delusional. If your “delusion” is about something huge and life-changing… exactly the kinds of things we are talking about… then you will be driven to express your message everywhere to all people all the time. This will put you at such violent odds with your society that something will have to break. And that something will almost certainly be you. Society is a powerful thing. It has ways to make members that make it uncomfortable stop what they are doing.

So if you stubbornly refuse to change your views after gentle interventions then you are likely to end up being separated from society and placed in a facility for the mentally disturbed. There you will almost certainly be given large doses of powerful chemicals to make you stop being the way you are. To destroy this certainty that you have.

Maybe after being there a while you’ll begin to find some doubt.

That would be the sensible thing to do.

Z: Sheesh, 8. You paint a bleak picture. But sadly I know you’re right.

8: You live in a very peculiar part of All That Is. It is marvellous and amazing in all kinds of ways. But it is disastrously unkind to those that are sufficiently “different”.

I’m not universally decrying the mental health professions. They often do great work in helping people to be less self-destructive. But I most certain of that this firm, unshakeable KNOWINGNESS that you think you might want will inevitably bring you into contact with the sharp end of this profession. It will undoubtedly be viewed as being “for your own good” and maybe they won’t even be wrong. There will, quite simply, be no way for you to integrate into society with such a conviction in place. So, really, you DO NOT want this kind of firm, unshakeable conviction while you reside in that reality. It is your very doubt that keeps you “normal” enough that you can carry the message that you are now carrying and still function... and still be considered “sane” in that very… interesting… place.

Z: Chilling. But yes. I see it. I agree.

8: But, as valid as that argument might be, that STILL does not bring you a feeling of resolution about your doubts, does it?

Z: Uhm. No. But I AM a little less keen to have unshakeable conviction. (laughs) That’s for sure!

8: Quite so. Alright then let us finalise this. I have made the contention that uncertainty is not the problem; it is the way you feel about it that can be problematic. If you love the uncertainty then there is no problem. So clearly you still feel a little fear of the uncertainty. You so badly desire this outcome because it sounds so fantastic. But you have no way to “make” it happen. And you cannot find any experience in your reality to tell you that it WILL happen. So what to do? You want it very, very badly. You can’t procure it. You certainly can’t be certain of it. There you sit. So you come back to the good ol’ stalwart… you must have faith! And that holds you for all of about 25 seconds until you realise you just DON’T have faith! So now you doubt and you fear that your doubts are going to somehow “uncreate” this. That if it DOESN’T happen it will all be your fault because you just didn’t have enough FAITH.

Z: Wowee, 8. It seems you really and truly DO know me inside out. That is EXACTLY what was going on with me.

So what should I do?

8: Again. The problem is not uncertainty the problem is the way you feel about it. Which is just as well, given that I have made the contention that it is your job to hold some uncertainty. And given that the removal of your uncertainty would get you institutionalised. So it pretty much seems like you are saddled with the uncertainty. And as long as it doesn’t debilitate you, you will use it to keep creating your path home. And, as we have discussed, you have chosen to share your path home and this will be used to some great good as the seed for co-creation. And here, finally, is some possible resolution to your difficulty.

You see you don’t HAVE to share your path. You COULD keep it all to yourself. You’d still get home. But in sharing it you open the door to co-creation. And do you remember what happens with co-creation?

Z: Remind me?

8: It is when you allow yourself to experience the results of someone else’s creation with you.

Z: And how exactly will that help me?

8: Well… you see it isn’t necessarily everyone else’s job to hold the same uncertainty that you do. By co-creating with others you will begin to experience some of their creation as they will begin to experience some of yours. Then you may begin to feel quite differently about your uncertainty. You can begin to feel the love that they will bring to it.

Let’s have a look at a few particular examples.

Your co-creators will know that they are your co-creators because they are drawn to The Ascension Papers and will know that it is right for them. Their very knowingness will be the first bit of “right feeling” that you will get from them. And you have already felt some of this, haven’t you?

Z: Yes, I have. It surprised me a little at first how positively people were responding. And you’re right. I did feel love and encouragement from this.

8: And as you get to know these co-creators on the forums and in other interactions, so you are going to see again and again that these are wonderful people. You will come to feel a growing sense of community and belonging with them. You will find you respect them for who they are. It will be clear that these are not simple-minded people that are easily lead astray by silly flights of fancy. These are intelligent, thinking, highly spiritual people. And the fact that THEY know it is right for them – that will give you some further positive feeling.

And then they will begin to co-create with you. You will begin to see the magic unfold. In fact you can expect to see some really beautiful co-creation begin to unfold very soon now. That will give you a great feeling of excitement and rightness. You will really begin to love your uncertainty then.

And then you will begin to find more and more independent confirmation. As more and more people come to read The Ascension Papers so your readers will share with you more and more other sources of information that correlate with what you have received in ways that will… “blow your hair back” is the phrase I think you use. What I am saying is you will hear the things that you have typed here in these pages coming back at you over and over again. Sometimes it will be phrased in startlingly similar ways and other times it will be expressed quite differently but you will know that all these things speak to the same essential ideas. It will be abundantly apparent to you that such repetitive and powerful corroboration cannot be mere coincidence. This will engender in you even more excitement, more joy and more love for the process!

And soon you will also begin to communicate directly with a number of others who are also message bearers or who are in other similar ways shining their light. As you do so you shall realise that the message you bear is but one strand in a “rope of truth” with which you shall all hoist yourselves up into the light. Each strand is unique. Some will speak to a different audience. Some will take a very different approach. But each is essential and each is perfect in its own way. And meeting and conversing with these other message bearers will bring you a great sense of rightness and powerfully motivate you to keep creating.

Z: And then I will at last resolve my doubt?

8: Yes and no. You resolve your doubt whenever you stop fearing uncertainty, by simply trusting yourself and loving the process. Then you can feel no doubt. But it will always be possible to bring it back at any moment you again decide to fear. That will always be your choice.

And the uncertainty will also always be there. Which is wonderful because that means you will always have options. You will always be able to create. There will always be scope for growth and change.

Uncertainty will always come bearing its two children: debilitating doubt and playful curiosity. You must choose which you shall play with.

And now I shall finish where I began. Now we shall make of you a mystic.

Are you ready?

Z: (laughs) I guess so. But how?

8: Do you agree with me when I say “you always get exactly what you create”?

Z: I am seeing that to be more and more so in my life as I go. Yes. I agree that it must be true.

8: So then you’ll agree that the more you focus on something the more you will get of it?

Z: That is logically correct and also my own experience. Yes.

8: So what will happen if you LOVE the uncertainty? Really love it with an open heart and so focus on it and stare deeply into it?

Z: Uhh… you’ll get more of it. A LOT more of it.

8: Yes. Exactly. The mystery will deepen. It will enfold you. You will come to touch and experience more and more of the great unfathomable mystery. And because you do not fear it, you do not feel you need to handle it, control it and manage it… you do not feel you need to have a comfortable explanation for it… you can allow the experience to be what it is and just BE in it. You see?

Z: Yes…?

8: Okay. So then. Can you agree with me that the infinite Source-God is way, way, way beyond your capacity to even begin to comprehend in Its fullness? And is therefore in greatest part a profound mystery?

Z: Obviously. Yes.

8: Then you should be able to make the logical leap which is this: embracing the mystery with an open heart is bring yourself closer to experiencing direct union with the Divine!

When you really open yourself to the mystery you bring it forward into your experience. And you do so without the need to make it less than it is. You release your need to dissect and reductively understand that which you experience. You let it BE. You let yourself BE. You let God BE. You allow yourself to experience God with all of your being instead of trying to fit it into the tight little confines of your mind.

You experience God with ALL your being.

And THIS is the beginning of the path to true ecstatic union with The One.

Z: Oh my God!

8: Yes! Exactly!

And so? Is that what you seek? Do you seek ecstatic union with the Divine?

Z: Yes! I do! I have had hints and tastes of this in some very deep meditations. But my heart yearns for more. I want to KNOW God. I want to feel a more permanent sense of oneness with all beings and all things. I have been striving for this for quite some time now… trying to find a way to experience it deeply and fully.

8: I’ll take that as a firm “yes” then (he smiles). And of course your spirit-family and I know of your striving and your yearning. It is a part of your ascension process that you feel this and that you desire it. And The Ascension Papers are our way of responding to that. You ARE going to experience the complete union with the Divine that you desire. But first there is some work to do. And that is EXACTLY what we are doing here. We are doing the work. And this particular chapter is us working with doubt and uncertainty.

And I am here to tell you that your uncertainty is not only where your areas of creativity lie but is also where you will find this experience you so deeply desire. It is where you will, in a sense, find God.

Z: Wow, 8, that’s gorgeous. I have never thought about it like that.

8: Such thinking is NOT encouraged in the system in which you live. It causes people to cease to be manipulable. Not only do you go cold-turkey on religion but you also give up on things like politics and war and hatred and violence and… all that stuff. Such thinking takes you out of the system. It causes you to ascend. So it isn’t taught or encouraged.

Some of the only places it was systematically taught in your reality were the mystery schools that you were wondering about. Thousands of years ago these schools were established to transmit the knowledge of the ancients. Information that came from the remnants of older civilisations. Individuals that sought profound spiritual training could go to these mystery schools. Different schools took different approaches but one of the cornerstones of all of them was training in understanding fear. Learning that fear is a tool that can be used. But that it is not to be the controlling principal. As the initiates in the mystery schools came to truly master their fear they would be willing to approach the Great Mystery also without fear. They would be willing to experience the Divine directly. But in so doing the mystery schools’ adherents – or mystics – would lose their fear of death and would cease to serve the wishes of those that held temporal power. They would cease go to religious leaders and their doctrines for the truth. What interest could religion hold for them once they had experienced the Divine directly within their own hearts?

And so it came to be that these mystery schools were driven underground for that very reason. Those in power identified the mystery schools as threatening their status. They struck back with vigour. The mystery schools were either crushed and silenced or they became secret, hidden organisations. A number of them hid their true teachings behind layers of secrecy. The outermost layers appearing to be ordinary societies of guildsmen or groups of “spiritual enquiry” and the like. There would be tests and pledges and secret swearings-in that would indoctrinate members deeper and deeper into the organisation. Until eventually, after greatly proving yourself, you might slowly become privy to their true secrets.

The problem with this is that the very act of hiding the mystery teachings and making them the sole property of the secret, select few changed its nature. The ones that held the knowledge in these now very secret societies became enamoured with their own egos and they ceased trying to share what was known. They felt important and special for the fact that they had attained the lofty heights that allowed them access to this information. But you see the teachings themselves are hollow. They are just ideas. They must be lived and loved and experienced and shared to have any meaning. And so it all contorted into near meaninglessness. It is so that wisps of the great teachings of the mystery schools live on today hidden in secret and arcane groups but the process of unlocking them essentially invalidates them. Which is ironic and sad.

And so it is that the time now comes for these groups to see that everything has changed. It is now time for them to complete their journey and make available to all their treasure house of knowledge. In so doing they shall return to true service. This will be their final test – if they have the courage to do so.

But we shall not bait our breath for them. Whether they do or not will be of import to themselves only. Those that thirst for the essence of the knowledge will find it irrespective of what they do or don’t do. The Light is rising and it is now possible to reach you and teach you what you need to know in many different ways. The awakening is happening and there is nothing anyone on that planet can do to stop it. We will touch your heart and help you to find your way without all the hocus-pocus of secret handshakes in the dark.

Z: That’s amazing 8. Wow. But I want to back-track a bit. The mystery schools were driven underground because they undermined the power of the religious authorities? But what I don’t understand is how it came to be that we gave our power away to the religions in the first place.

8: That is a very long story. I’ll get to it some time soon. For now just see it in yourself how easy it is to fear the unknown. It is not strange to do so. Out there in the dark there might lurk a tiger to gobble you up! (he smiles) So the unknown can be scary. And it is easy to fear the unknown that lies beyond death. And so it is that you might be willing to have intermediaries tell you about God and about how Life works and what you should and should not be doing. You would then place religions and beliefs and clerics (who themselves are but confused and doubting men) between your own heart and The One.

You most certainly can do this if you wish but then do not wonder why you cannot directly experience The One. You cannot because it is nearly impossible to see anything through all those thick obfuscatory layers of demagoguery, doctrine and dogma!

Z: I understand.

8: And now before I wrap this all up I want to give you a little gift.

Z: A gift? What is it?

8: To start with let me ask you this: Have you thought to ask yourself what would happen if you DIDN’T have a singularity event?

Z: What? Where did that come from? No. I haven’t.

8: You see? Still you have fear! You don’t even want to LOOK at that possibility. And because you won’t look at it has power over you. LOOK AT IT. What would happen?

Z: Okay. I’ll look at it. The Singularity Event is our amazing happy experience of union with the divine that will precipitate our ascension into the next dimension. If that didn’t happen then how would we…

Oh. Wait a minute. You have just been telling me about a union with the divine through embracing the mystery. Is this a “different” union with the divine?

8: No. There is only one The One. And union with it is a pretty absolute concept. The Singularity Event is simply a function of the Light rising to the extent that this union with the divine almost “catches up with you” as it were. It makes it really easy and fail-safe. As apposed to the incredibly difficult process that it was in the times of the Mystery Schools.

Z: But that means we don’t actually NEED the Singularity Event! That we can do this anyway when we are ready!

8: Bingo.

Z: So then there really is nothing to fear!

8: How’s that for a gift?. And the best part is you give it to yourself.

Z: That is simply fabulous, 8. But why didn’t you just tell me that right at the beginning?

8: It is not the outcome that is important my friend. It is the process. How much have we learned and how much have we understood from doing this? A great deal! The process is where the love lies.

Now obviously we are going to have to talk about this a LOT more. You will need some training and guidance in attaining the right meditative state to experience this state of blissful union. And you’ll need help to learn to navigate it. It is one thing to experience it. It is another to use it to transubstantiate yourself.

Z: Trans-what?

8: (laughs) Don’t worry about that for now. I’ll get to all that in due course. I’m talking about you having a deep meditation then experiencing something blissful. Falling deep into a profoundly transformative experience. Then returning to a reality but choosing for it to be a reality which is different from the one you just left. That is what I am talking about. It’s the same thing as was addressed in the singularity event. I am saying it can be up to you to take ownership of the process if you like. Then you are not the victim of the Singularity Event. Then you can release all fear about it and it can just be the magical sparkly gift we give to others who are not consciously engaged in the process of their own ascension. How about that?

Z: Jeepers, 8, this begins to look like an even bigger gift that I thought.

8: It might just be at that!

But now I must wrap this all up. To do so I am going to ask you a few questions.

Tell me again. Is it true that you seek direct, personal ecstatic union with the Divine… that you seek to know God directly?

Z: Yes! That is certainly true.

8: And do you agree that you cannot accomplish this by following the teachings and doctrines of a religion and by subjugating your truth for the utterances of other men?

Z: Well – that certainly seems true for me. Maybe others are on their right path if they follow a religion. But that is not right for me.

8: Discernment in action. Very good.

Then… can you see that, in order to accomplish this goal of direct knowing and experience of The One you must be willing to approach It with your heart and not your mind? That you must be willing to plumb the mystery? To experience it as IT is without demanding to understand it and contain all your experiences in your mind?

Z: Yes. I follow that. And I agree.

8: So you embrace the mystery?

Z: I do.

8: And you understand that this implies a willingness to release your fear of the unknown. It means you actually LOVE uncertainty and embrace it as a great gift.

Z: Yes. I understand it like that. I agree.

8: Then I declare you… a mystic!

Z: Ha ha! 8, that is fabulous!

8: It is. And see what you have just agreed to: that you embrace uncertainty as a gift. Remember the challenge?

Z: Oh my goodness, yes! You have won!

8: No my friend. It is YOU who have won.

And with that this chapter is done!