Red Robe, seated with his same two assistants, was waiting for me as I lurched into consciousness. “Hi!” he ventured, in a friendly and warm way, “Can you see…yet?”

Stalling, I blinked a few times. In truth I could see remarkably well under the circumstances. I struggled to remember what I had programmed myself to look for, what I was supposed to ask. What I had tried to give myself as autosuggestions was not readily available, and yet I was aware that I had given myself input, autosuggestion, if I could just access it, just activate it…

“Excellent!” stated Red Robe brightly, overriding my attempted self-search, “My next question begins where we left off last night, “Have you had any second thoughts about taking this journey? This ‘guided’ journey into wisdom?”

“I have had second thoughts, third thoughts--many, many, many thoughts. My mind was reeling all day as I struggled to integrate what happened last night into my everyday life. Thought after thought after thought after thought.” I was off and rambling, trying to say fourteen different things at once, “The bottom line is yes. Yes beyond any self-inflicted doubts, beyond this tsunami of useless thoughts. And the reason that I must make this journey is that, not only for me, but for all humanity, your way is full of hope. Your proposal was so eloquent, so overwhelming, that it had the effect of making me feel like a small boy under an incredibly vast sparkling star-filled sky. And as I stand gazing upward and outward into this awesome humbling celestial glitter I hear an inner voice which says, ‘Come on this journey, young man. Come on this journey and two things will happen: firstly you will be given everything, everything in the way of knowledge and wisdom that you can assimilate. Secondly you are given the task of saving humanity!’ Wow!” I was sailing into an ocean of my own self-importance.

Red Robe brought me back to earth. “You are not responsible for saving humanity. You do not have the capacity to save humanity, so relax yourself about that issue. We will freely give to you knowledge and wisdom that is beyond your current ability to comprehend or receive. Once you have been given a series of lectures, given this schooling, given practices, then you will have to do the hard part. The hard part is assimilating and integrating all of these various downloads. Once you have accomplished this task things will only get somewhat easier. Why? Because the reward for having journeyed so far from where you are today is that then you will have the task of offering to all humanity this knowledge and wisdom, and the reward for offering will be ridicule and hate.”

Red Robe paused. It was not a dramatic pause, it was a pause of genuine concern. He did not want me to take this project on without fully understanding where it would likely go. He had made his point. I felt like a child that had just been slapped awake. In my dream I was the small Dutch boy with my finger in the dike, I was at least saving the local village, if not all of humankind, and now SLAP, SLAP. SLAP, I was despised and rejected by most of humanity, I was going to come back from the “Ancient Cave” and be ridiculed and spat upon. This was difficult to take in, this scenario was not one that I had considered.
“That is apparently difficult for you comprehend,” said Red Robe evenly, “Probable realities are not solely guided by our personal fantasies.”

That sounded truly profound but I had absolutely no chance to wrap my mind around it, I was still trying to make an adjustment, an inner adjustment, from perceiving myself as a knight in shining armor to a reality where I would be an outcast. That was a major adjustment and my mind was not working well, not working well at all.

“Very well,” Red Robe continued, “We do not need to come to a complete standstill here. I will extend the timeframe for you to consider, and reconsider, and re-reconsider.” There was that “smile” again. “If at some point you decide to drop out, all that will occur is that your memory of these meetings will vanish. The truly important thing is that you came here this time of your own volition with the conscious intention to go forward. Once this new input is processed by you in your normal consciousness, we will approach the subject again. In the mean time let us give you a practice to begin with.”

I experienced great relief at not having to respond or make some giant commitment with a mind that was apparently in shock. I breathed deeply, gratefully, and turned my attention to what followed.

“When we think, our breath changes. When we are afraid, our breath changes. When we are excited, our breath changes. When we are angry, our breath changes. Be aware of it. Upon the awareness of breath, many practices are built. Breath is the cornerstone of true magic. It is the entryway to all aspects of reality, to every corner of possible experience, the doorway to our full potential. Amazingly, this commonplace activity goes almost unnoticed, although it is essential to our moving around at the bottom of this atmospheric pool. Furthermore, it is a bridge stretching all the way from the physical body, through realms of lower and higher energy, through the realms of lower and higher mind, through the lower realms of spiritual existence, all the way to the most subtle manifestations our awareness can perceive.

“If one is agnostic or spiritually inclined, you can start here just the same. If what we are recommending here is legitimate, you will get a result, and it will be a result that makes you hungry to learn more, to experience more, to be more. Once your feet find the path, you cannot live without it; it will not make you discard the existing facets of your life, rather they will be enriched by you cultivating aspects of your being that you previously did not know existed. Just ask people that think they are too busy to meditate for six seconds a day. Why six seconds? Because a typical breath lasts three seconds, and in the space of two breaths now and then, say once a day, we can get something done--actually we can get quite a bit done, truth be told. I am going to ask you for one minute of your time. Oh, not all at once, don’t worry! More precisely, the request is for six seconds once a day for ten days in a row. That will be our trial period.

“Choose a time that fits your schedule and install a little prompter. Let us say that you always take the subway to work. You get on the train and you grab a metal bar to stabilize yourself. At that moment you now remember that as soon as you are safe from pickpockets and other immediate distractions it will be time to turn your attention to taking two breaths, two deliberate breaths. Ready? Okay, so am I. Bring your full attention to the tip of your nose. Now follow a full breath as far down as it naturally goes, and back up, and release it naturally. Okay, that was easy. So easy we are going to do it again. One more time. Our attention goes to the tip of our nose, we follow our breath down naturally as deep as it goes, and back up, and release. Great! You have now ‘done practice’.”

Red Robe paused, and seemed to peer at me. I was making an effort to follow each breath with awareness and something about the struggle seemed to please him.

“I will talk in the future about what is going on here, about some typical results, and why such a simple little exercise is so powerful. It is okay to repeat the six seconds at various times during the day if you wish. This is not essential, as even once a day gives us the continuity we need. Other times that you might like to insert this practice are immediately upon arising or immediately before going to bed. Also anytime during the day that you feel stressed, or upset, or in any other way are reminded that it would be good to step back for a moment. This can be empowering in the simple sense that you now have something constructive to do when you feel overwhelmed. Okay? Well then, let us put this little ship in the water and see where it takes us!!!”

And I was gone before a sudden flood of questions could travel from the depths of my mind to the tip of my tongue.