Sensitive New Age Guy

It’s just not happening tonight. We were supposed to be focusing on connecting with our star guides, and Star Kissed Warrior isn’t responding with his usual speed. (That will happen sometimes with the more temperamental guides, especially if anybody around you is sending out any negative vibes. I just knew that blonde haired surfer type, who had joined the group only three weeks ago but already the women were gaga over him, was setting up some self-cherishing revelation of the type that really pisses Star Kissed Warrior off. It was causing all sorts of negativity within the harmonics of the space-time communication framework.) Then whammo.

One second there was nothing, I might have well been staring at the back of my eyes, the next there’s a Voice! I almost opened my eyes to see who was talking to me, it was so clear and conversational. He didn’t sound like any of the others I thought I’d heard, who have usually sounded a lot like me, but having far more interesting stuff to say than I would any day of the week. Nope, he sort of sounds like that guy who used to read the news for one of the big TV stations a while ago: fatherly and trustworthy.

I was so stunned that I didn’t hear anything of what he said for the first few seconds, and so got him to repeat it.

“Excuse me, you’d think if we go to all this trouble to contact you people the least you could do would be to pay attention.” He sounded a little put out.

“Sorry about that, but you sort of surprised me, I wasn’t prepared for anything.”

“Not prepared. What have you been doing here for the last six months, besides scoping out the redhead’s cleavage? Oh yeah, I’ve seen what you’ve been doing when everyone else’s eyes are shut.”

That was really unfair. It had only been once, when reception was really bad, and anyway, just cause I’m a new age sensitive type guy doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good rack when I see it. Besides, Star Wing’s cleavage is sometimes the brightest thing in an otherwise depressing week.

“Alright, there’s no need to get all defensive, just because I’m ethereal doesn’t mean I’m dead, and before you ask, yes, I can read your mind. Don’t worry, it’s usually so boring I don’t bother, unless it’s pertinent to the conversation.”

Usually? How long has this guy been…?

“Hanging around? Oh I started checking you out your second week here. I try and peek in on everyone their first week or so to see if they have potential.”

“Potential for what?” I’m a little confused, not to mention slightly freaked. Okay, this is what I had come here for, to try and commune with some spirit types (as well as a chance to spend more time with a certain redhead’s accessories) but to be honest I wasn’t quite sure that this guy was what was supposed to happen. For one thing he was a little too… well he sounds just like everybody else, not anything mystical or special or what was described in any of the books. Hell, he hadn’t even mentioned dolphins or Atlantis yet. Weren’t they all supposed to talk about that shit?

“What did you expect you fuckwit? (he was beginning to sound a lot less like a newscaster and more like a shock jock) Robes and chimes and other faggy nonsense? Damn, you haven’t been reading those books have you? I thought with the way you’ve been drooling over Ms. Mystic Brick Shit House over there you wouldn’t have bought into any of that crap.”

“Hey what do I know? It’s what everybody’s told me to prepare for, I can’t help it if you’re not what your supposed to be.” This is starting to piss me off. Can’t he tell how genuine my commitment is?

I’m wearing enough semi precious gemstone jewellery (one different coloured piece to correspond to each chakra colour and four more representing the colours of my aura as shown in my own genuine Polaroid aura photo taken by an official representative of the “Auras Are For ‘U’ Corporation” [AAFUC] at twenty dollars a pop) that I could set up my own pawnshop; I have my own personal certified mantra from “Downloadable Ultra Magnificent Mantras.com” (DUMM) and if that isn’t enough for him, why I had even paid out the three hundred dollars to buy my own personal guardian angel from “Guardian Angels Granted” (GAG).

“Well goody for you. You want a mantra; I’ll give you one for free. Dumb fuck! Repeat that twenty times a day while hyperventilating and you may get a clearer picture of yourself. At least if you’re passed out you won’t be able to act like an idiot.”

Well, I don’t need this kind of shit. So I go to break the connection.

“Not so fast, dung for brains. It took me three weeks to break through to your so-called “inner self” and you’re not getting rid of me that easily. You new agers are all alike; desperate to make contact with other beings, but the moment its not all sweetness and light on gossamer wings, you get all offended. What did you really expect to find out in the Universe, a bunch of fairies?”

“Speaking of which, who was it that came up with the notion that the fae or the sidhe were a bunch of sweet little winged creatures? What stories have you guys been reading anyway? There’s not a bunch of fouler soulsuckers anywhere than those guys. It’s not personal or anything, but that’s what they are. You should hear them once they get a couple of pints of mead into them and start talking about those cute little pictures. It would make your blood run cold.”

I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this. This guy sounds like he has some serious issues he needs to deal with. At least attuning his chakras to a different energy field, because he’s completely caught up in negativity. I ever-so-tactfully point this out to him.

“Negativity. Why ever would you think that? I’m not negative, I’m pissed. God damn it, I though there might be some hope for you considering that you at least had some normal emotions like lust and envy happening in the that thing you call a brain, but I’m beginning to wonder now. Negativity, don’t make me laugh, cause I may start crying and you won’t like that.”

OK, I’m confused. None of this jibes with anything I’ve read in any books. Wasn’t everybody who’d gone to the light supposed to be beautiful and ethereal? Isn’t the point of all this to get beyond human emotions? You know, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, all that good stuff?

“What would be the point of being human if you didn’t feel anything?”, was his reply to that. Well I know there are a million answers but off the top of my head I can’t quite come up with any. It’s all tied up with transcendence and going beyond and some other such stuff. Anyway what did he know about life in the twentieth century, the stress, the noise. He was probably some king or something where he came from without a worry or care in the world.

“You know I’ve never met an Age more self-centred than this one. Even the Victorian British with all their up tightness were able to get their heads around the idea that it wasn’t only the high and mighty who crossed over. Why is it whenever any of you people nowadays claim to have past life experiences or channel anybody, it’s always someone important? If everyone who claimed to have been Cleopatra in their past lives really was, she would have set a record for Multiple Personality Disorder.”

“How can you be so vain as to even think that any of them would even trouble themselves with peasants like you people. They’d be bored to fucking tears in a second.”

“Let me tell you about my soft and glorious life. I was the high and exalted excrement receptacle and flue pipe cleaner. Due to the smallness of my stature I was able to crawl up and clean almost right to the seat of any of the exalted butt holes that were present in my lord’s manor. Even in those days the rich didn’t like to be reminded that they smelt as bad as the rest of us.”

Well, nothing’s prepared me for this. I guess it’s not something they’re going to go around advertising; channelling a janitor, no matter what age he’s from, just doesn’t have the marketing appeal of a star being from the Pleiades. How many books would someone sell titled The Teachings Of Joe: Revelations From The Bottom Of A Toilet?

“Probably nobody”, replied the voice in my head. “What I really don’t get is why you people are all so hot to trot for this shit anyway? What are you looking for when you sit around in your circle jerks? What do you want from us dead folk and aliens?”

“Well, you know, information and stuff. Any messages or clues about the divine plan that will make us better people, you know, stuff like that.”

Silence. Maybe we’ve lost the connection. Maybe he’s gone, good. But no he’s back.

“What’s with all you post industrial age people? You’re always looking for short cuts or quick fixes. Putting in the work required to obtain enlightenment doesn’t seem to have crossed your minds as something you should have to do. It doesn’t seem to matter to you that some gurus spent lifetimes attempting to achieve Brahmin status. You deserve the knowledge served up on a silver platter because… well, why exactly should you be given instant insight when so many others have sat in prayer for hundreds of years?”

Well that was easy, didn’t everyone know people like us were the last best hope of the world. If it wasn’t for people like us, spreading our positive energy and beaming pure white light and love into the universe, think of how fucked we’d really be. We’re fighting the good fight here and all we want is a little help in saving the universe; is that asking too much?

“Oooh! Well that’s a different story all together. Saving the universe. How could I have missed that? Here I was thinking it was just a bunch of self-serving nonsense designed to make people feel self-important and it’s nothing of the kind. I feel awful.”

“Guess what? The universe was getting along fine without you folk for millions of years before you decided to try life out of the trees, or even on dry land. Hell, no one would have noticed if you had remained amoeba sitting in tidal pools mindlessly reproducing. Hmm, sort of like what you do now.”

“What’s with this fixation with the light anyway? Are you all so eager to die that you can’t wait? You want to learn anything you’ve got to go into the dark and be honest enough to look at what’s inside you and deal with it; otherwise you’re never going to find “happiness”. Do you even know what happiness is?

Well of course I do. Just because he’s been dead for Goddess knows how many years this guy’s got the nerve to come here and lecture me. Hell, what does he know anyway, he was just a janitor? What’s happiness? Hah!!! That’s easy. Happiness is peace of mind.

“OK Einstein, what’s peace of mind?”

Well, this was getting silly, but I really didn’t have much choice so I played along. Peace of mind is not having any worries.

“Oh so we’re back to “don’t worry be happy” again?”

That’s not what I said. Now he’s really starting to piss me off. Twisting my words around like that so it sounded like I didn’t know what I was talking about. He doesn’t know what it’s like to live with poverty, pollution, wars and terrorism. How much stress that causes.

“No, all we had to worry about was finding food, shitty living conditions, being conscripted into armies to get run down by knights, occasional outbreaks of the Black Death, not that any of that mattered as we were usually dead by twenty so didn’t have time to get worried about too much.”

“Look at what you people have that we couldn’t even dream of. I’m not talking about material goods or shit like that but the important stuff. Personal freedom, free time, medical care that doesn’t involve bleeding out the bad spirits, justice based on laws not superstition, and yet you have to be the most dissatisfied ungrateful bunch I’ve ever come across.”

“The constant complaining and ensuing finger pointing fills the universe with so much white noise that it’s giving us all a migraine. It might be all right if you kept it to yourself, but no you’ve got to broadcast via satellite so everybody has to listen. One of these days someone’s going to snap and it’s going to rain down cheese to go with your whine. Something really stinky too: I think Zeus and Hiawatha were looking into how much Limburger they could get together and see if they could take out every capital city in the world.”

Now there’s no doubt about it, I’m pissed. He’s making it sound like we lived in a paradise, couldn’t he see all the problems in the world?

“Then do something about it, don’t just sit on your fat asses complaining or waiting for someone else to come along and solve all your problems. How many more people do you need to come down there and give you some pointers? Moses, Jesus, Confucius, Tao, Buddha; crap, the list is endless and you still haven’t got it yet.

“You’ve either ignored them or taken their words to control people. You’ve been getting all these DIY manuals for millennia but you haven’t learned how to read yet. Or that’s the way it looks from up here anyway. I’m not saying humans were any better in my day, but I’d have hoped there would be some sort of learning curve happening.

“People like you New Agers come along and pick up bits and pieces of everything under the sun, trying to find something that will help you shirk responsibility even more. You sit cross-legged in circles suppressing all normal human emotions and think that’s going to entice somebody to come down and solve all your problems for you with some amazing revelation or message.

“Well, here’s the message: Do It Yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you. It doesn’t matter how many “Ys” you spell womyn with, whose faith you’re ripping off today or how many rocks you wear around your neck. (Or are in your head for that matter.) What does matter is you begin to accept who you are and work with what you got.”

He’s just finished that bit of rant when I realize I’m hearing my name being called; I’m going to ask him who’s calling when I realize he’s gone. Before I can feel any relief at his absence, the name-calling became more persistent. I finally realize that it was from outside of my head.

I’ve become so wrapped up in this guy that I’ve forgotten where I am. When I open my eyes, everybody’s looking at me with interest. Looking across the circle I see a look of concern on Star Wing’s face, something I’ve never seen before.

If I play this right maybe the night won’t have been a total waste…

Way off in the distance I hear a voice laughing.