Ray sat on the beach, looking out at the grey ocean beneath a gray sky. The incessant white noise of the surf created a hush in Ray’s ears that felt like a huge white cushion. Three pelicans sailed silently overhead, violently peaceful. They looked like travelling monks looking for penitents. Ray looked up at them and confessed silently all the ways he had damaged the world, all the sadness he caused, all the men he’d destroyed, all the women. So many women. So many homes he had broken, so much bloodless violence, internal explosions, passive aggression. Ray closed his eyes and listened intently to the crashing of the waves, the blue black curls annihilating themselves, over and over, making the tiny bits of sand into pudding.
Gulls inhabited a rock 40 yards out in the surf, the whitecaps reaching up to grasp them, angelic spray all around them like a wedding party. Why did they come out here, Ray thought. Why did I? He inhaled the scent of the brine. Slow exhale.
A lump looking like a dead body floated about 15 yards off shore. It bobbed unnaturally above the surface of the water, then disappeared for a moment. When it reappeared, he saw the silky wet head of a seal pup. It’s eye was a pool of dark, inky fluid reflecting the dull shimmer of the water. The eye moved slightly, giving the signal of intelligence. Ray realized the spirit of the creature. Where did you come from, he thought to the creature, but he received no response.
There was a wild, unadulterated power in that place. It permeated every molecule of the air he breathed, every rock structure there, every bit of sand matter. He could feel the ocean of prana washing over him. Ray realized then his place in the universe. He finally understood that the world was simply a universe of energy changing from one form to another, raising or lowering it’s vibration and frequency with each transmutation according to its level of intelligence.
Cal looked at the seal pup again and thought, what form have you taken in the past? Have we met in another life, or will we meet again in another? Perhaps next time, I will be the seal pup, and you will be sitting on the shore looking out onto the gray sea.
Ray closed his eyes and thought, the intelligence I possess is the same intelligence as that used to create the universe. I have access to all the intelligence of the Creator… in the same manner that I have access to all the intelligence of the seal pup… I have only to reach inside my mind, tap into that universal intelligence, that Collective Unconscious, and I can take hold of that knowledge, I can wield that power.
Ray thought rain, and then he stared up into the sky. He concentrated as hard as he could, rain being the only thought in his mind. He concentrated on the way the word looked, the way each of the individual letters came together in a way that produced a sound… rrrraaaaiiiinnnnnnn… he imagined each of the letters 50 feet tall, 100 feet tall, 1,000 feet tall, he imagined them like sky scrapers, touching the clouds. Ray chanted the word like a mantra, over and over and over. Rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrain.
But not a drop fell from the sky.
He looked up into the sky, then closed his eyes once more, and reached out with his feelings. He reached up and outward, until it felt like his entire being had expanded to occupy the entire beach, so that his head was in the clouds and his toes under the water. He imaged himself as a huge, transparent body… and imagined feeling the rain fall from the clouds like a single tear from his eye.
And then, he really did feel it. A single drop from the heavens hit his head.
Ray stood up and brushed the sand off his dungarees. He walked down the beach back toward his car. Before he left the sand, he turned once more, felt the cold wind against his skin. The waves continued to crash against the sand in mellow repose. Three pelicans sailed slowly overhead, violently peaceful, then they disappeared beyond the granite cliffs, silent as sentinels.
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