The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure (18 page)

He didn’t reply. He was staring up the road. A hundred feet ahead, a large four-wheel drive vehicle blocked the way. A man and a woman stood on a rock precipice fifty feet from the vehicle. They returned our gaze.

Sanchez stopped the truck and looked them over for an instant, then smiled. “I know the woman,” he said. “That’s Julia. It’s all right. Let’s talk with them.”

Both the man and woman were of dark complexion and appeared Peruvian. The woman was older, appearing to be about fifty, while the man looked approximately thirty. As we got out of the truck, the woman walked toward us.

“Father Sanchez!” she said as she approached.

“How are you Julia?” Sanchez replied. The two embraced, then Sanchez introduced me to Julia. Julia, in turn, introduced her companion, Rolando.

Saying nothing else, Julia and Sanchez turned their backs on us and walked toward the overhang where Julia and Rolando had previously been standing. Rolando looked at me intensely and I instinctively turned and walked in the direction of the other two people. Rolando followed, still looking at me as though he wanted something. Although his hair and features were young, his complexion was ruddy and red. For some reason I felt anxious.

Several times as we walked to the edge of the mountain, he looked as though he was going to speak, but each time I turned my eyes away and increased my pace. He remained silent. When we reached the precipice, I sat on a ledge to prevent him from sitting next to me. Julia and Sanchez were above me about twenty-five feet, sitting together on a large boulder.

Rolando sat as close to me as possible. Although his constant stare bothered me, I was slightly curious about him at the same time.

He caught me looking at him and asked, “Are you here for the Manuscript?”

I took a long time to answer. “I’ve heard of it.”

He looked perplexed. “Have you seen it?”

“Some,” I said. “Do you have something to do with it?”

“I am interested,” he said, “but I have not seen any copies yet.” A period of silence followed.

“Are you from the United States?” he asked.

The question disturbed me, so I decided not to answer.

Instead I asked, “Does the Manuscript have anything to do with the ruins at Machu Picchu?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “Except that it was written about the same time they were built.”

I remained silent, looking out at the incredible view of the Andes. Sooner or later, if I remained quiet, he would divulge what he and Julia were doing here and how it concerned the Manuscript. We sat for twenty minutes with no conversation. Finally, Rolando stood and walked up to where the others were talking.

I was perplexed as to what to do. I had avoided sitting with Sanchez and Julia because I had the distinct impression they wanted to talk alone. For perhaps another thirty minutes, I remained there, gazing out at the rocky peaks and straining to overhear the conversation above me. None of them paid me the slightest bit of attention. Finally I decided to join them, but before I could move, the three of them stood and began walking toward Julia’s vehicle. I cut across the rocks toward them.

“They have to go,” Sanchez remarked as I approached.

“I’m sorry we did not have time to talk,” Julia said. “I hope we see you again.” She was looking at me with the same warmth Sanchez often displayed. As I nodded, she cocked her head slightly and added, “In fact, I have a feeling we will see you soon.”

As we strolled down the rocky path, I felt the need to say something in response but I couldn’t think. When we reached her vehicle Julia only nodded slightly and said a quick good-bye. Both she and Rolando got in and Julia drove away toward the north, the way Sanchez and I had come. I felt puzzled by the entire experience.

Once we were in our vehicle, Sanchez asked, “Did Rolando fill you in on Wil?”

“No!” I said. “Had they seen him?”

Sanchez looked confused, “Yes, they saw him at a village forty miles east of here.”

“Did Wil say anything about me?”

“Julia said Wil mentioned being separated from you. She said Wil talked mainly with Rolando. Didn’t you tell Rolando who you were?”

“No, I didn’t know if I could trust him.”

Sanchez looked at me in total bewilderment. “I told you it was fine to talk with them. I have known Julia for years. She owns a business in Lima, but since the discovery of the Manuscript she has been looking for the Ninth Insight. Julia would not be traveling with anyone untrustworthy. There was no danger. Now you missed what could have been important information.”

Sanchez looked at me with a serious expression. “This is a perfect example of how a control drama interferes,” he said. “You were so aloof you didn’t allow an important coincidence to take place.”

I must have appeared defensive. “It’s all right,” he said, “everyone plays a drama of one kind or another. At least now you understand how yours works.”

“I don’t understand!” I said. “What exactly am I doing?”

“Your way of controlling people and situations,” he explained, “in order to get energy coming your way, is to create this drama in your mind during which you withdraw and look mysterious and secretive. You tell yourself that you’re being cautious but what you’re really doing is hoping someone will be pulled into this drama and will try to figure out what’s going on with you. When someone does, you remain vague, forcing them to struggle and dig and try to discern your true feelings.

“As they do so, they give you their full attention and that sends their energy to you. The longer you can keep them interested and mystified, the more energy you receive. Unfortunately, when you play aloof, your life tends to evolve very slowly because you’re repeating this same scene over and over again. If you had opened up to Rolando, your life movie would have taken off in a new and meaningful direction.”

I felt myself becoming depressed. All this was just another example of what Wil had pointed out when he saw me resisting giving information to Reneau. It was true. I did tend to hide what I really thought. I looked out the window as we followed the road higher into the peaks. Sanchez concentrated again on avoiding the fatal drop-offs. When the road straightened, he looked over at me and said, “The first step in the process of getting clear, for each of us, is to bring our particular control drama into full consciousness. Nothing can proceed until we really look at ourselves and discover what we are doing to manipulate for energy. This is what has just happened to you.”

“What is the next step?” I asked.

“Each of us must go back into our past, back into our early family life, and see how this habit was formed. Seeing its inception keeps our way of controlling in consciousness. Remember, most of our family members were operating in a drama themselves, trying to pull energy out of us as children. This is why we had to form a control drama in the first place. We had to have a strategy to win energy back. It is always in relation to our family members that we develop our particular dramas. However, once we recognize the energy dynamics in our families, we can go past these control strategies and see what was really happening.”

“What do you mean, really happening?”

“Each person must reinterpret his family experience from an evolutionary point of view, from a spiritual point of view, and discover who he really is. Once we do that, our control drama falls away and our real lives take off.”

“So how do I begin?”

“By first understanding how your drama was formed. Tell me about your father.”

“He is a good man who is fun-loving and capable but…” I hesitated, not wanting to sound ungrateful toward my father.

“But what?” Sanchez asked.

“Well,” I said, “he was always critical. I could never do anything right.”

“How did he criticize you?” Sanchez asked.

A picture of my father, young and strong, appeared in my mind. “He asked questions, then found something wrong with the answers.”

“And what happened to your energy?”

“I guess I felt drained so I tried to keep from telling him anything.”

“You mean you got vague and distant, trying to say things in a way that would get his attention but not reveal enough to give him something to criticize. He was the interrogator and you dodged around him with your aloofness?”

“Yeah, I guess. But what is an interrogator?”

“An interrogator is another kind of drama. People who use this means of gaining energy, set up a drama of asking questions and probing into another person’s world with the specific purpose of finding something wrong. Once they do, then they criticize this aspect of the other’s life. If this strategy succeeds then the person being criticized is pulled into the drama. They suddenly find themselves becoming self-conscious around the interrogator and paying attention to what the interrogator is doing and thinking about, so as not to do something wrong that the interrogator would notice. This psychic deference gives the interrogator the energy he desires.

“Think about the times you have been around someone like this. When you get caught up in this drama, don’t you tend to act a certain way so that the person won’t criticize you? He pulls you off your own path and drains your energy because you judge yourself by what he might be thinking.”

I remembered the feeling exactly, and the person that came to mind was Jenson.

“So my father was an interrogator?” I asked.

“That’s what it sounds like.”

For a moment I was lost in thought about my mother’s drama. If my father was an interrogator, what was my mother?

Sanchez asked me what I was thinking.

“I was wondering about my mother’s control drama,” I said. “How many different kinds are there?”

“Let me explain the classifications spoken of in the Manuscript,” Sanchez said. “Everyone manipulates for energy either aggressively, directly forcing people to pay attention to them, or passively, playing on people’s sympathy or curiosity to gain attention. For instance, if someone threatens you, either verbally or physically, then you are forced, for fear of something bad happening to you, to pay attention to him and so to give him energy. The person threatening you would be pulling you into the most aggressive kind of drama, what the Sixth Insight calls the intimidator.

“If, on the other hand, someone tells you all the horrible things that are already happening to them, implying perhaps that you are responsible, and that, if you refuse to help, these horrible things are going to continue, then this person is seeking to control at the most passive level, with what the Manuscript calls a poor me drama. Think about this one for a moment. Haven’t you ever been around someone who makes you feel guilty when you’re in their presence, even though you know there is no reason to feel this way?”

“Yes.”

“Well; it’s because you have entered the drama world of a poor me. Everything they say and do puts you in a place where you have to defend against the idea that you’re not doing enough for this person. That’s why you feel guilty just being around them.”

I nodded.

“Anyone’s drama can be examined,” he continued, “according to where it falls on this spectrum from aggressive to passive. If a person is subtle in their aggression, finding fault and slowly undermining your world in order to get your energy, then, as we saw in your father, this person would be an interrogator. Less passive than the poor me would be your aloofness drama. So the order of dramas goes this way: intimidator, interrogator, aloof, and poor me. Does that make sense?”

“I guess. You think everyone falls somewhere among these styles?”

“That’s correct. Some people use more than one in different circumstances, but most of us have one dominant control drama that we tend to repeat, depending on which one worked well on the members of our early family.”

It suddenly dawned on me. My mother did exactly the same thing to me as my father. I looked at Sanchez. “My mother. I know what she was. She was also an interrogator.”

“So you had a double dose,” Sanchez said. “No wonder you’re so aloof. But at least they weren’t intimidating you. At least you never feared for your safety.”

“What would have happened in that case?”

“You would have become stuck in a poor me drama. Do you see how this works? If you are a child and someone is draining your energy by threatening you with bodily harm then being aloof doesn’t work. You can’t get them to give you energy by playing coy. They don’t give a damn what’s going on inside you. They’re coming on too strong. So you’re forced to become more passive and to try the poor me approach, appealing to the mercy of the person, guilt tripping them about the harm they are doing.

“If this doesn’t work, then, as a child you endure until you are big enough to explode against the violence and fight aggression with aggression.” He paused. “Like the child you told me about, the one in the Peruvian family that served you dinner.

“A person goes to whatever extreme necessary to get attention energy in their family. And after that, this strategy becomes their dominant way of controlling to get energy from everyone, the drama they constantly repeat.”

“I understand the intimidator,” I said, “but how does the interrogator develop?”

“What would you do if you were a child and your family members were either not there or ignored you because they were preoccupied with their careers or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“Playing aloof would not get their attention; they wouldn’t notice. Wouldn’t you have to resort to probing and prying and finally finding something wrong in these aloof people in order to force attention and energy? This is what an interrogator does.”

I began to get the insight. “Aloof people create interrogators!”

“That’s right.”

“And interrogators make people aloof! And intimidators create the poor me approach, or if this fails, another intimidator!”

“Exactly. That’s how control dramas perpetuate themselves. But remember, there is a tendency to see these dramas in others but to think that we ourselves are free from such devices. Each of us must transcend this illusion before we can go on. Almost all of us tend to be stuck, at least some of the time, in a drama and we have to step back and look at ourselves long enough to discover what it is.”