A month ago I took Tomer and Alon
down to the Succah for 2 days and 2 nights.
We traveled by train & busses
and finally walked the 7 km to the Succah like pilgrims.
In Mitzpe-Ramon we passed by Gadi's and Efrat's house.
I hoped, this would stir up Gadi from his too long lethargy.
And it did.
On the last day of the year 2002 Gadi sent me a document.
It was surprisingly satisfactory.
With only minor corrections and a better edition of the graphics I sent it back

This bad photo, Gadi, the professional photographer,
made with his first digital camera.
"But I want you to remember this meeting with your grandkids and my sons on 2002_12_27."

I decided to walk to the highest ridge of the crater,
not along any path, but up and down the stony hills.

What did I want to achieve with Gadi and Avi?
Just to sign the document was not satisfactory.

Drawing clarity from the clear desert
I felt, how pieces of reality coalesced.

Ascending the ridge and descending to the path back,
I kept composing and rehearsing these pieces -aloud.

"I do not aspire any longer to heal your pain.
I don't even ask you to face each other.
What I want is that all of us face our fear.
For it is fear, what runs the world:

"What you, Avi, did, was clearly in the interest of the Succah:
Without you the Succah had not survived and will not survive.
But instead of overriding Gadi, you should have won him over.
Why did you make Gadi feel, he was deceived like Esau?
Because you, Avi, were afraid of Gadi.
Or better: afraid of your own weakness.
Afraid you couldn't cope with Gadi's feelings.

"Is Avi exceptional among humans?

"Look at yourself, Gadi!

"We agreed, that you would call Avi before he returns to the Succah,
so that you can really reach him and fix with him our meeting today.
But instead of calling him before 5 PM, you left a message at 10 PM.
For you are too afraid to meet him on the phone rightaway.
You prefer to leave a message, so that he has to call YOU.

"On January 1, I urged you to not fax your document to Avi,
but to go and see him and stay next to him, while he reads.
But you only called Avi with regard to that Succah dinner.
On January 6, after the dinner of the group you'd brought,
you gave Avi the document without awaiting his response.
Since I had prepared Avi for this encounter,
he was a bit pissed off by your fast depart.
Still he promised to call you after digesting.

"Some days later he met you at the supermarket.
He approached you: "Hi, Gadi!"
But you, instead of opening up to this opportunity,
hardly lifted your head and voice and Avi felt hurt.
Did you want to take revenge and hurt him? - No!
Your terrible shyness, i.e. fear ruined your interest.

"'I should have gone after him up to the cash counter,
but I'm not that great yet," Avi had admitted to me.

" Before you went abroad, Gadi, you and Avi agreed,
that before the middle of November we would meet
 for bringing our peace-process to an official closure.
You returned home and called neither Avi nor me.
It was me, who after 2 months took the initiative.

"You justified yourself saying: 'I needed time.'
If you needed time, you could have told us so.
What you needed, was -
to express your fear.

"And now remember, how in 2001 you said to Avi:
'I want to stay away from the Succah for a while.'
You were afraid to tell him, why, how, until when.
You just disappeared, for months on end.
If not for Avi's "guillotine" ten months later,
you may still be fretting silently in your house.
When you ran into each other at the gas station,
you faked not to notice Avi, and so did he.
None of you could cope with the other.
Both of you were nurturing your pain.

"You, Gadi, at least got tools from me to cope.
while you, Avi, were never trained by me,
except in that one day workshop in 1999,
to which I came to you from the Dead Sea.
But the effect of that training vanished fast.
You had adopted the defense-mechanism,
that anger, pain and fear are best ignored.

"Gadi and Efrat never heard from you,
why you showed such unfriendliness.

"Why? Because you were afraid,
you could not handle the outcome
 of making them face what you felt.

"And what about Gadi's bomb - his son's Bar-Mitzwa,
telling you to leave the Succah during the celebration?
You feared to cope and preferred to let rage destroy.

"That was a big fear, but what about the small fears?
Hadn't we agreed that you would visit me last week?
You couldn't make it, but why did you not tell me so?
When I asked you on the phone, you were defensive.
Wasn't this fear?
Face to face you admitted you should have told me.

"And now to all of you the centerpiece of fear:
Nov. 1999: my quest to be the Succah's guest,
in silence& solitude, not to be seen by anyone.

"You invited me into this tent and - refused me.

"You, Avi, at least expressed your fright openly:
"You'll sit like the Dalai Lama on the hill of the Angels' Flight
and folks will flock to you and lift their hands in adoration."

Also Dorit, your partner, was honest about her fear:
"I can't be around all these emotions, which you radiate."

I don't remember, how you, Efrat, justified your refusal.
But when we met again after almost 3 years, you said:
"We had hardly gained some balance with Avi & Dorit.
We feared that your presence would ruin this balance."

"You, Gadi, said, you didn't mind me being a guest,
but that you felt you needed to join the majority.

"There you have fear in its full monstrosity:
Couldn't you two have come and said to me:
"Rachel, we are ashamed to refuse you!
But we are so afraid of Avi and Dorit,
can you understand us and forgive us?"
And you know, I would have understood.

"You were terrified of your partners,
and you were terrified of facing me.

"There you see, fear on all parts.
Fear is also, what now threatens the planet's survival:

"And for you to see, that I don't see myself above you,
let me tell you two experiences, which dictated my life:

I "grew" up with being smacked and screamed at.
As a result I developed a strong phobia of grownups.
I was ten, when a 14 year old boy said: lets fuck.
Since he was a grownup, I did not dare to resist.
When I was 22 and returned from my scholarship year in Israel,
I, one of the first Germans, during the year of the Eichman trial,
invited my mother to Venice, compensating for my long absence.
Sleeping beside her in the hotel, I woke up from a nightmare:
In a Nazi jail, my fiance Martin Fincke was about to be hanged.
It was not fear for my life, which paralyzed my interfering,
but terror of opposing "the grownups".

Up to this day I may catch myself crawling before anyone
who is older in age or "higher in rank" or simply "popular".

"I do not know, how to heal your fear, Avi, Gadi, Efrat.
But I believe, that more awareness of our common fear
will make us compassionate with our own fearful selves
and therefore with those who hurt us out of their fear."

[See also puzzle piece 48b: FEAR]

"I do not know, how to heal your f

ear, Avi, Gadi, Efrat.
But I believe, that more awareness of our common fear
will make us compassionate with our own fearful selves
and therefore with those who hurt us out of their fear."

I then gave each a scrap of paper with two of my songs.
Songs about self-acception
I didn't sing but read them, looking into everyone's eyes.

I felt, they had listened intently and understood deeply.
I then asked Gadi to read the document aloud.

The discussion of some points made me see with great joy,
that our consensus about the Succah's character & message
was perfect and total!
Three of Avi's stories may exemplify this:

1) The ordeal of achieving legalization has ended lately.
17,5 hectare are registered at the Israel Land Administration.
This includes the absurdity, that 0.4 ha are "building space".
The mayor of Mitzpe-Ramon, who is informed of this fact,
now brings along real estate agents with all too known aims.
Avi shoves them out of the Abraham succah:
"In 10-15 years you will visit with your grandkids
and still discover the same relation and proportion
between human structures and untouched nature.
For they make Desert Hosting Economy possible."

2): Last Sunday the Succah was closed down.
But, as it happens, towards the evening guests arrived.
They pleaded to not be turned away and Avi agreed.
Later he found out, it was the US deputy ambassador
and probably a CIA man, with their wifes.
In one of the succahs the gas-heater stopped.
The guests came down for help and were told,
that the empty gas tank needed to be replaced.
"It was 9 PM and the team-workers had gone to sleep.
I fetched the tank and started to carry it to that succah.
The guests were perplexed.
'But why YOU? Aren't you the boss?'
'There is no boss here. We all do our share of work.'
They were pleased and insisted in helping me carry."

3): Among all the touristic enterprises here,
only the Succah has to pay Arnona [municipal taxes].
The others have too many debts already.
The hotel, which belongs to a man who owns 4 hotels in Eilat,
got exempted, and received a large sum of money in addition,
since he threatened to close the hotel and fire 70 workers.
I asked: "So how much do you pay for taxes, licenses etc?"
"6000 NIS per month, among a budget of about 30000.
It's like a salary, but since I don't take a salary, I manage.
People think, I'm an idealist, they don't understand,
that I just love to live here and love to do, what I do."

We signed the agreement, wholeheartedly, I think.

Then Avi offered his thoughtful gesture:

"The Purim festival is not too far away.
It's the only Jewish festival,
that starts with sorrow and ends with joy.
If it suits you and all your kids, and Rachel too,
you'll be not just Succah guests, but MY guests.
Before you'll go to sleep in the Ismael succah,
We'll do, what tradition asks for: drink wine,
until we can't discern between enemy and friend."

Efrat said: "A stone fell from my heart."

Gadi said the same, but only at the end of the day.
During the meeting Gadi's face showed pain, especially later,
when he entered "Nebo" to take back some personal stuff.
I had erected "Nebo" as an open structure,
from which visitors could view the succah,
like Moses on Mount Nebo could view the Land,
but without entering it, unless they were guests.
When Gadi's family moved to Mitzpe-Ramon,
he wanted to live in a succah of his own,
and turned Nebo into a closed geodesic structure.
Like the Tent of Appointment - Nebo was wrong.
1) Its structure and interior were beautiful,
but too hot in summer, too cold in winter.
2) It exceeded the appointed number of 12 sleeping spaces.
3) Visitors again had no place to inform themselves,
unless they entered the "Abraham" succah
and weighed down on the team.

In his "Lekh-Lekha", as Gadi, too, calls his parting from the Succah,

Gadi renounces any right to the Succah, except one:

if ever Avi would leave the Succah,
for reasons of health or any other reason,
Gadi, Efrat and Rachel would decide - together with Avi-
on the Succah's future.

And - of course - no one can inherit the Succah, should Avi die.

He added one of the best photos he ever made in the Succah:
It is full of future:
the pyramidal tent and the sun bursting through the clouds

"How great is your goodness
which you have concealed
for those who fear you
(=are communicating with you )
You hide them in the hiddenness of your face,
you conceal them in the succah"

There was nothing spectacular
in the closure
of our peace-process.

When I felt
that something was missing,
Efrat said:
"But for me it's alright not to talk or have a ceremony.
I just want to enjoy
the "nofesh la-nefesh"
in our succah."
They stayed in the Isaac succah.

"NOFESH LA-NEFESH"
- recreation for the soul -
was my slogan,
when I advertised the Succah.

"Do you remember this cat?"
asked Gadi, pointing to the piano.
"Ten years ago
you had two cats in the Succah, one you called Yang
and he is gone,
and one you called Yin."

"And you want to tell me,
that this is Yin?"

"Yes, this is YOUR YIN !"

p.100

moaned in the long wailing sobs she felt she wanted to at times or screamed in fits of rage or howled in terror as she felt something in her so wanting to do now. She hardly dared a low growl in her own room and was too terrified that disaproval might move to suppress her to allow herself any more.

She had been given too much imagery of how she thought she was supposed to behave there, and the imprinting that she must come up to My level of words played a major role in this. She was hating herself for failing to maintain self-control whenever she did break down into direct expression of emotion. She blamed a lot of her, so-called, "shortcomings" on her emotionality, and yet, at the same time she had feelings of wanting to allow emotional expression in the temple, because it felt cold to her without it when she was so full of it.

These feelings were coming from her own intuition about emotions, which I thought made her receptive to My new position on it,
too, but she feared it was a position of her own thoughts that was being intensified by being around the example of what it was like to be as emotionless as so many of the people in the temple presented themselves to be.

She feared it was only her own idea based on the way people were where she was raised and that she wanted to rationalize it that she was that way, too. [Sept. 18, 2012. I think of the Workshop of Re-evaluation Counseling in Newcastle, North England August 1978, Semiramis, the Iranian, - see us together - to me during group-work: "Rachel, you are rationalizing like hell." This was in contrast to what an American student said about me after my scholarship year in Jerusalem in 1961: "This woman will have a hard time in her life - she is thinking well, but she is much too emotional"] She often felt unable to hold herself back emotionally the way the other temple people seemed so easily able to do and felt fear and rage when they talked about how spiritually inferior the general populace was when they were so "emotionally attached" as themple people called them.

She feared that she was too emotional for the other people there and that they all really hated her, wished she would leave and let them have someone else as their head oracle. And there were people appearing now to want both of their positions, once it began to look like the temple was a growing influence, not only in Delphi and the rest of Greece, but the rest of the known world.

She felt very unpopular in the temple and often walked up on people in groups who had been buzzing with conversation but fell silent when she approached them and seemed to have nothing to say to her, or she to them, but she didn't notice that as much because there were so many of them, and she was the only one with no one to talk to, really. Her rage had a growing hatred for them for that and was not going to remain silent much longer. Heartbreak was the cause, but it was not realized in her there.

p.101

She did not realize how triggering it was for her to be around these people or that they had originally denied her and were doing it now. She could not get them to appreciate any other viewpoint until they moved that old charge.She did not see how much Luciferian light was influencing everything that was happening in the temple, including her own reaction to her own true self. she was still too frightened of her imprinted impressions that the others in the temple were more spiritual and that that was what a person had to be like to be spiritual.

She intuitively did not like this picture of spirituality and of what spiritual love was supposed to be like. A huge rage began to be fueled in her without her realizing how huge it was, because she was busy judging herself as unloving and intolerant for having any such feelings. But as time went on and her fear grew instead of lessening as daily she saw Roman troops drawing closer to Delphi, she became more and more agitated, even during the lessons she was supposed to be teaching in the temple.

She had feelings of a deep rage, too, which she could not understand, but it was surfacing feelings in her of not getting the help she needed and that it was not fair, but she had been so heavily trained in self-sacrifice as the loving and spiritual way that she could not really let it surface and express. She did not know that her rage really had anything valid to say. If it could have surfaced there, the first thing it would have had to say would have been "get yourself out of here! They're playing you for a fool!" which she did not like having to hear. When she did let herself notice it, even a little bit, it threw her into frozen terror that felt unable to move outward physically at all.

When she didn't listen to what her rage had to say there, her rage's next internal cry to her was, "You're stupid!" which she feared she was and did not want to hear, because it made her hate herself all the more. Next rage tried to say, "You're trying to please people who cannot be pleased and help people who cannot be helped!"

Hearing this inside of herself made her fear herself. She feared even more that she was intolerant, judgmental and unloving, self-righteous and superior-feeling toward others. she tried to redouble her efforts to be a good oracle and a good seer. She tried even more and much harder to please everyone and banish these thoughts, as well as any thoughts of her own personal plight, as unprofessional and un-called for.

p.102

When she failed , she hated and judged herself even more. When she could not stop the word "stupid" from reverberating over and over in her mind, especially when it seemed to apply to the situation she was seeing in front of her, she feared more and more that it was her talking to herself about how she feared she really felt about others. She coupled it in her mind with the place from which it arose, which was the feeling that she was not getting helped the way she wanted to be and that it was not fair. She feared more and more that this was her talking and that she really did see others as stupid. She judged herself more and more for this and feared that the increasing pressure from this voice was going to blurt something out to this effect, one day, that she was going to regret. And one day soon, it began to blurt out many things.

She increasingly began to feel that everyone around her was stupid for not seeing what was really happening around them and for not trying to fix it in the right way which in her mind was to not let Rome overrun them. She feared the increasing pressure from this voice, and tried not to feel it, because the more she let herself listen to it, the more she feared it was going to take over her and say all of the things she so feared to say.

One day, during the weeks this tension was building, she was teaching a temple class and feeling very frustrated that they never seemed to look round the world anymore as she had repeatedly been asking them to do. She was wishing she wasn't even there and was beginning to daydream that the head of the temple would come to her that evening in her room and approach her with a softness that would make her feel she could dare to talk to him, when she suddenly, caught up with herself in time to hear herself saying, "You're all stupid and nearsighted!"

What she blurted out was not in context, either, and the people who heard it were very much moved to surprise, which was not helped when she, terrified of what else she might have said that she did not catch quickly apologized and tried to go on as though she hadn't said it or didn't mean it.

Some time went by before her next outburst, so she wasn't expecting it then, either, when she suddenly heard herself cry out, "You're stupid! You're really stupid!"

She tried to stop these outbursts by trying to hold herself more present in the situation, but it kept happening. She kept lapsing, being startled to hear herself saying these things and then realizing that she had been engaged in inner turmoil around the men who had been asking her to see for them or trying to escape her inner

p.103

turmoil by fantasizing that she wasn't even where she was anymore or involved in what she was involved in there but was somewhere else peaceful and far away.

Rage was taking over her and not bothering to integrate with her personality, because it judged her to be a stupid fool, too, But there was something else going on there that she did not realize, and that was that she was being drugged, mind controlled and tortured during her "blank spots" to see if she could be made to tell anything that she was not already telling them; sexually used and abused, too, and then split off from that part of herself so she would not remember. She had an open door she did not know about to the rage that was building from these experiences because, when they enraged her, she often told them things she would not tell these men otherwise.

Without being able to control herself any more than she was controlled already or hold any more than she was holding already, it was bleeding through with a deep resentment toward her situation. Unfortunately, she did not know how to tell anyone, because she had been heavily programmed not to tell anyone anything unless she was told to and couldn't remember it anyway, but if she had only been able to feel that she could even start with it, it might have all come tumbling out once she started.

Those who were doing this to her had learned from their hatred of emotions that suppression of emotions could suppress the memories they did not want to have come back to them.This has played a big role in the gap in keeping unwanted memories from surfacing. This hatred for emotions coldly did not want to take emotinal needs into account; it wanted to use emotions it hated against the people feeling them as revenge for reasons the conscious mind could no longer remember and gave other reasons for instead, but which came originally from imprinting that interpreted emotions as theatrics being used to manipulate the other three parts and wanted to turn it back on the Will in very unloving ways designed to "teach' emotions how it felt to be manipulated and controlled.

Unfortunately for the understanding level at the time, most of what she was blurting out was what she wanted to say to those who were abusing her in these ways, but they would not receive anything from her there, and it was landing upon the ears of the ones who really were responsible for this being acted out on her through their denials, although they did not know it at the time

p.104

She said many things at different times over those last several weeks, such as:

"We are at a high place here in Greece and could go higher. If you don't let yourselves notice the things that are really important to notice and put your petty squabbles aside, we are going to go down, not up. There will be nothing left of us in terms of how we know ourselves now and where we could go."

'What is so hard about looking around at the world in front of you. If you don't rise above your own petty concerns, you will not save yourselves or anyone else!"

"I hate you all for your lack of concern about the world and its peoples! [sic]"

"I think you are all a bunch of cold-hearted, wicked people!"

"I hope you all go down instead of the rest of us!"

"The so-called spiritual seeking here is non-existent!"

Another time, She said, "If you even are scanning the world as I have asked, you are scanning too fast, like homework you can't finish fast enough so you can socialize! You couldn't really be looking into things, or you would come up with something for me here! You'd help me somehow!"

She startled people with a stridency in her voice that was becoming more and more driven with an urgency that was not pleasant to receive. She was too afraid to have rage fits and what she was holding was leaking out as rage comments in which she viewed everyone else as complacent because they weren't seeing what was really happening to them there. She felt grave concern and wasn't able to find any place of peace in herself anymore. As much as she tried to stifle her outbursts, she could not stop her mind and was losing track, more and more, of what she said to herself and what she said out loud.

Even in her own room in the temple, now, she could not move emotion without the python that guarded her hissing at her threateningly, as though he was going to bite her, and she hated his sounds. When he spoke to her, his hissing sounds sounded like Lucifer and chilled her to the bone marrow. How had this happened to her? How had her position of empowerment, in which she thought she could make a difference in the world, changed into such a position of unsupported abandonment, imprisonment and powerlessness?

In having no one to talk to, she was trying to talk only to herself, which she was doing more and more now, hoping it would help her keep more silent in front of others, but things kept slipping

p.105

out, such as, "You think you should have the power position, but I am the only one who knows what is really going on here. None of you care enough to even look at it! Your small focus enrages me! It's trivia! Mere trivia! You're out there giving trivia to the people and leaving me with all of the risk and burden! Are you that incapable of looking at anything deeper than that!"

And another time, "I have asked you all repeatedly to scan the world in your third eye and tell me what you see, but do any of you ever give me anythng other than pretty, little pictures? No! Never! Well the world is not just pretty, little pictures, and you are all about to find out just how unpretty it can be! You don't know what you are doing by not giving me any of the help I'm needng from you here! You're all unconscious! You're all disconnected, as though you are not even real people! Life is not just triviality! It's not just social niceties! You have no feelings for others or even for yourselves here!! You are all disconnected from something you need here, or you would know what I am talking about; you'd be more conscious! It looks to me like you'e doing this on purpose! What you create in this disconnect is not pleasant, and you need to look at it! Widen your field of vision; you're not looking at what you need to look at!"

People in the temple who were hearing this did not know how to respond at first, but then a rage grew in them that wanted someone to say something back to her.

In another outburst, she said, "You're the ones in the temple! If you are suppposed to be the more conscious, spiritually-seeking people, may the gods help us! If you are going to join the temple, I want you to gain the depth that spirituality really needs here. You act like you do not even know what I am talking about when I don't like your visions and I tell you that to gain the true sight, you must look deeper into the sight. I would think by now you would get the point that there are deeper things to be seen and felt than how the pictures first present."

And later, but in the same class this time, "If your third eyes even are open, do you see anything but superficial little pleasantries there? Are you seeing any peril we might be in? Do you see any problems coming toward us? You try to pass your dreams off on me as though they are waking third eye visions, and I am not supposed to question you on what you say! You never question your dreams, either! Your mind can run any opinion you happen to have throguh your brain at night, and you will take it as true vision just because it came as a dream! You are all a bunch of phony spiritual

p.106

seekers who do not want to work. That's basically why you are here and not out in the world! You'd better pay attention to what I have to say here and get more serious about your studies, or we might not have temple funding much longer!"

"Oh?" one of her rage polarized students retorted, "I heard it was because of you, not us, that we might not have temple funding much longer!"

This startled the head oracle into falling silent in the sudden return of her fear. How could this student have known that? As far as she knew, not a word had been spoken about this except between her and the head of the temple when he had said "You better be careful what you are saying to these men. They don't like what you are telling them and have threatened to take away our funding if I don't get you under control!"

When the head of the temple came to her after this last of her many outbursts and said in a controlled rage, "Stop this! Are you crazy? You can't talk to your studens like that!" she felt even more frightened that she couldn't find acceptance from him if she talked to him. I addition to all of her other feelings, she had so much shame and embarrassment that she hoped could find some relief in acceptance from him, and it seemed to her that all he was seeing about her was that she was becoming an embarrassment to the temple.

Her heart ached for him to take a different approach toward her; one of compassion and understanding that might even take her into his arms. But no, she feared she would only cry until he grew tired of that and left her. She wanted to cry out to him, and without knowing she was going to say anything or what she was going to say, she did, and she was overheard.

"Im afraid Rome is going to invade Greece! You can't let Rome invade or take over! Don't any of you see what Rome is really about here? Rome is not about preserving anybody else's culture. Rome is about Rome! Rome is not going to encourage anything from the local people like we do. Rome is going to take and only take! Rome is horrible! I hate Rome and everybody who doesn't hate Rome!"

He turned back toward her then, afraid she had blurted this out in a too public part of the temple. He took a hold of her and made her go with him to her room. There, he took her in his arms. She was crying, but he did not comfort her. He was shaking her, demanding to know more and why she hadn't come to him with this before, but she would not tell him anything more, feeling that he, too, only wanted information while she was lost in her tears and

p.107

quaking in the terror that what she had said already had just cost her her life. He continued to angrily insist that she tell him more, and finally,she did tell him what she could. He walked away angry, as though he didn't even notice her feeling there as anything more than what she should be having for withholding this from him for so long.

[I'm constantly reminded of my three biblical prophets, especially Jeremia, who were treated just like the Oracle of Delphi]

Now among the many problems the temple was having, there were a number of students who did not like many of the progressive ideas in the temple or the approach to history being taken there. They liked the cleaned up versions, especially where mention of Greece was concerned, and they, in the name of preserving old Greek traditions, began to report these things to whoever they thought would listen and agree with them. There were those who would listen and say that they agreed with them, and they did not notice that it was not only for the reasons they were aware of, and these "students" became infiltrators in the temple school and in the classes the head oracle taught daily.

They were reporting everything they could report to gain power for their own positions there, as well as many things they did not know they were reporting because of the interpretations being made by those they were talking to. A number of these were rage polarized contenders for the positions there. They did not necessarily know what exactly they were really doing there, or who they were really reporting it to, because, of course, they never saw where it went after they spoke it to the one they reported to, but they were feeding the gap and often more consciously than they preferred to let themselves notice.

Sometimes, they did not grasp the subtlety of the situation in which they were being questioned, either. They had all been told that there was a growing intent to reform the temple. None of them had been told that there was no intent to let the temple go on having influence, power and, especially, wealth that the state wanted to have for itself. All had been led to believe what they wanted to believe, which was that they would be given the positions of power they all wanted to have instead of the ones who did have them there. The state postured agreement with them by saying they did not think that the things they were being told about were really legitimate, spiritual pursuits and encouraged these reports. They particularly targeted emotional movement as not the right approach for spiritual training and encouraged reports on anything like that.

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Several very young women there had all been promised the role of head oracle if they helped discredit the one they had. None knew about the promises to the others, of course, and thought they were the only one but they were all questioned in these kinds of ways, "If you were to be given the position, what would you do differently?" whereupon they told their "interviewer" many things he wanted to know about the head of the temple and the head oracle and their weak points, especially in the eyes of others.

One girl in particular thought she had the job cinched, because she thought she was the best seer, but what she did not see was that they did not intend to have an oracle after this who could really see. Although there were several, she, of course, was the one who was most involved with the head of the temple and was reporting on him, too, without wanting to see what she was really doing. The more she gave glowing [sic] reports on him, the more they did not like seeing his power grow there.

These people often gave word for word accounts of the head oracle's outbursts there when asked to be more specific about what it was they didn't like or think was right about the temple. When the young woman just mentioned came to them immediately to report the one about the Romans, they already knew they had to get the head oracle out of her position and kill her without delay, but they needed to discredit her further first. She was nothing to them now except a security risk, but one they wanted to play with for as long as they could on the way to her death.

[Sept. 18, 2012. I shudder when thinking of what Zwi Zohar- a contrabassist in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, but secretly working for the Israeli Mossad - once couldn't help telling me [perhaps in 1970], while we were strolling as guards through the village at night : "It's exciting to know that you can kill a person and nobody will ever find out who was the killer. But I also feel guilt"!"]

Her "inteviewer" did not respond as though what the girl was reporting meant anything in particular to him, though. He used a dismissing tone and said, "Rome is not going to invade Greece, only "annex" it, because that is what the heads of the city states want for their own defense. You will still have your city states."

Then he said, "You have told us that the head oracle has quite a following among the common people she has helped or healed there, but she cannot be allowed to damage the possibilties of a peaceful annexation with her own prejudice. I'm sure you can understand that, but she thinks she knows better than everybody else and will not listen. What we need is to be able to discredit her in front of the people, and I think sexually is the best way, so that the people will not see her as pure enough to be the head oracle anymore. Perhaps you know something that will help us here.

Of course, because of their many informers, they already knew that she did, but to the girl, it appeared to be almost magically psychic and as though the hand of fate wanted to drop the plum of

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head oracle in her lap. Her "Interviewer" hardly needed to instruct her, other than to suggest that she make sure there were others present, such as in one of her classes, so that there would be many witnesses who would carry the tale to the streets in the way it needed to be told there, and then, seeming to drop the plum ever so subtly and gracefully, implied that if she did that, the position of head oracle would most likely be hers.

Meanwhile, the head oracle was in anguish over having made any such statements and was torturing herself with judgments and self-hatred. She often found out from someone else what she had said, and it was usually not reported to her in a kindly way, either, but she could not move her feelings around this. Instead, she was utterly terrified that she had said anything at all and was utterly sure she was going to die for it, especially for this last comment.

She wanted to say that they were statements made while she was musing and looking around at the world and that they didn't mean anything about what was happening, only about what she saw might be forming there, but she knew that that was not really going to help. Having breached her secrecy vows without even knowing it at first, she waited in dread terror for the head of the city state to seek an audience with her as he usually did. She did not know what to tell him that he would hear when he came to see her, but he did not come

In her awareness , she did not know why this was happening the way it was. She felt so much fear about what she was saying and its consequences that she dared not say any more to explain herself there. She felt sure no one would really listen to her now anyway, because they were all already seeing her as losing her mind; she was sure of that. She was also afraid she was losing her mind and afraid of acting like she knew better than everyone else.

The more strident and overriding she became in her tone of voice, the more this rage was risking overriding her; almost as though she was becoming possessed. She was so ashamed of herself for that, she could not focus on anything there except the accusations she held against herself of self-righteousness, and that seemed to be all that was focused on there by the rest of the people, too.

Of course, it had been noised about the temple, by those who overheard, that the head oracle had made a prediction that Rome was going to invade Greece. The next day, before class, the girl told many people that the head oracle had made a wrong prediction again and that the Romans were not going to invade, only "annex"

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them to help them in their defense, She did not know why she had said this and feared immediately that she should not have, but it was because her rage wanted to best [sic] the head oracle. She presented this as a prediction of her own but did not have to struggle to try to see what was really going on; she had been told by her "interviewer," who was a Roman and the man the head oracle so feared there who was pretending to be Greek.

Talking to herself on the way to class the next day, the head oracle said to herself, "If you were more responsible , we could confer together, and the whole burden would not be on me! You are letting me down, as though you don't have to do anything because I am doing it all! I want you to learn to see! And what do you see? Nothing!"

As she neared the classroom, the buzz in the room had almost a roar to it, and she did not like it. It was all about her prediction of a Roman invasion and the girl's correction of it, but she was too frightened to want to address it. As soon as she felt all of this come into her, she felt great shame and embarrassment that she had made a wrong prediction and alarmed people for nothing. She did not want her prediction to be right, but she had pride there and felt she could not say anything to enlarge on the subject, and that even if she dared, it would not be received as anything other than trying to preserve her own position by making her own defense.

When she entered the room, silence fell. Everyone quickly took their places, sitting in a circle, heir bobbing heads looking around the room, appearing to be only waiting for her as they always did at this hour. Pushing her terror and desire to defend herself to the side gave rage the space to speak in her again. "I'm going to give them another opportunity to show me if they can actually see anything of consequence," she said to herself.

She called the girl who she thought was her best student, one she thought actually could see, and who she actually had some hope for and, who, without her knowing it was the one reporting on her and who was most involved with the head of the temple. She asked her if she had seen anything of consequence that she would like to report to her there.

This student stood up and said, "How's this, if you think we only see trivia? I had a vision a few days ago that I was in a beautiful garden, and there was a man there who said there was a supreme God over and above all of the other gods that we or the Romans worship or fight about the power of, and that He was it and that He was talking to me now"

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She had already shared her own hearing of this with the girl, and the way she emphasized "me" caused rage to speak immediately in the head oracle. she said, "I feel betrayed by this."

She said this without knowing she was going to say it and for many reasons she did not explain there and could not explain there. Her feelings were swirling too much in her to know immediately how she wanted to handle the situation. She did not know how to say, "Oh, how interesting," and move on rather casually , because to her, it was not a casual thing.

Before she could say anything else there, this rage polarized daughter said the equivalent of this in Greek, "Oh yeah, well I'll show you betrayed! I see that you had sex with the head of the temple last night."

This stunned the head oracle into silence there. She felt that the girl did not see things in her third eye but must have followed them to her room. She then saw that the girl must have listened at the door, but why was she doing this to her when she had thought they had a friendly relationship? The head oracle was immediately flooded with fear about what else the girl might have heard and where else she might be carrying tales. Before she could think any further or know what to say, the girl said, "What's the hesitation? It's because I'm right, isn't it!"

The head oracle did not know what was happening to her and did not feel she could explore her feelings in that moment. She felt like a trapped animal. She felt people hanging there, in the few moments she took for herself in shock, studying her, waiting for an answer, and the longer she took, the more uncomfortable everything was feelng.

"You're lying," she said to the girl. "I did not have sex with the head of themple last night."

"Oh, yeah?" said the girl, "Then how come I heard you making sexual noises?"

"Those were not sexual noises," she responded quietly through the gritted teeth of held rage that was increasing quickly in her now as she felt the entire room hanging on her answers, as though there was nothing more important in this world than whether or not she had had sex with the head of the temple last night.

So many things were flashing through the head oracle now that she did not have time to move toward any of them or make sense of many of them; things like past scenes and feelings with the head of the temple and the pain there of him never having told her

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he loved her in the way she wanted him to, her decision to stay in the temple because he seemed so firm in his idea that he wanted that for a life instead of a relationship and a family with her, her feelings of overwhelming sexual desire for him at times, her hatred for the rules about sex in the temple, her feelings that to not have sex made her readings and her sight less pure because it was so imbalanced, made her feel so crabby and nervous, and just plain did not seem to be good for her body, the times her body's needs had gained enough strength with her to draw her to him no matter what the rules said, how he had convinced her it was alright, too, by saying, "You had sex before you were the head oracle, and yet, you are still pure enough to be made head oracle .Why then must you be made pure enough to be the head oracle by not having sex now?" how she had told herself at the time, "Everyone else has sex and pretends they don't," how she had gone to him more than he had come to her, and how, most painfully now, he had not come to her at all in that way lately, making her fear he did not love her, and so now, she was being exposed in this cruel way, and by a girl she thought wa her friend.

While all of this was rushing through her, she heard the girl say, "I saw you having sex."

"That is a blatant lie, young woman!" the head oracle said, and then in a flash remembered some positioning that could have been misinterpreted when the head of the temple had held her briefly in his arms while she was crying and monaing in anguish. A flush came to her face which she felt was immediately misinterpreted by the others in the room.

"Oh, yeah? Tell me you haven't had sex with the head of the temple!" the girl smacked out in a very confrontational, "I know what I'm talking about,"' tone.

To this, the head oracle could not answer a straight, "No," and again felt herself overwhelmed with everything that was going on around her, and now, she was also triggered into all of her issues about daughters without consciously realizing what that was. She realized only that she did not like something there. "I am not being helped there not by anyone," she said to herself.

"I did not have sex with the head of the temple last night. That's what we're addressing here, isn't it?"

This made everyone suspicious that they had had sex some other night, and the girl seemed to know that they had. Otherwise, why would she be so persistent instead of backing off?


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She gave a snort and then said, "You've had sex with him, I can see by the way you're answering there. What was it, some other night and so you think you can beg [sic] off on a technicality?"

The head oracle did not like the direction this was taking and did not know how to handle it without seeming to be sliding out on a technicality. She gave the girl a look that said this is not appropriate for class and made a gesture of wanting to move on now, but everyone in the room seemed unwilling to move on.

She gave her little speech that she had planned for that morning's class, and I thought she held the balance point quite well, because in her own true self, she did feel that rage's points were valid. She just did not like the emotional tone or choice of places and times this rage chose to deliver it. She said, "These kinds of personal visions are not what I am looking for here," meaning the feeling of beng personally attacked that she had just experienced from the girl. She went on to say, "I have been asking you to have a wider field of vision and to look into things more deeply to see if we can determine motives, causes or any other perhaps hidden factors that might help to explain why things appear as they do. In order to give real advice to people instead of just acting like fate is always sealed and there is nothing that can be done to produce a better outcome for anyone involved, it is necessary to feel more deeply into the situation also in order to determine that everything we see is not always just as it appears at first glance."

She did not get any further than that when it began to feel to her that no one had heard a word of it, and even though she had intended to go on and say, "As in the case last night where it was emotional expression this girl overheard and not sounds of sexual activity,' the girl jumped up again and interrupted her by blurting out, in a very loud and overriding voice, "It's true that you've had sex with him, and I know, because he told me!"

Before she knew what happened to her there, the head oracle was triggered into something huge, and it was huge enough to make her gap. Without knowing how she had done it or how she had gotten there, she came back to herself to find she was shaking the girl by the neck, not hard physically, but in an emotional fury that was screaming the equivalent in Greek of, "You bitch! You hateful, little bitch!"

She was horrified to find herself doing this in the midst of temple people who were not going to understand such a thing. She sank to her knees in tears and in terror. She apologized to the girl and begged her forgiveness, but when the girl remained rigid and

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cold to her there, and even seemed to enjoy it that this had happened because now she was really validated, her self-hatred increased.

She saw the head of the temple then, standing at the back of the room as though he had just come in. She noticed immediately that he was standing with them, not coming to stand by her. This devastated her, but she hardly noticed it in the feeling that they were all right and she was wrong. She wished she was dead already. She saw the girl notice him, too, then.

"The head of the temple does not even support you anymore!" the girl cried out.

Everything was swirling inside her. She was so nauseated it felt like she might throw up everything she had been holding down for so long all over the room. She was being triggered into all of her original feelings of being rejected from the heavens and felt no more compassion or helpfulness toward her there than she had felt then.

She was crying already, and not liking to let it show, when rage, hating her all the while for her tears and her terror, gave her almost no time for any movement on that side of things before it stepped in, showed her these people through its eyes and screamed, "I hate you! You don't understand me, and you don't intend to! You have ruined me and not without design or purpose!" She said this first to the girl, but then to all of them she said, "I hate you all for this!" Crying she ran from the room and went to another part of the temple.

At that, the head of the temple left the room, deeply concerned and frightened about what she had done there to provoke such a confrontation. He could not let her outbursts of rage go on any more. He had let them go too far already. He hated it that she had endangered everyone this way. She had to be stopped, and now they were all going to have to go, without her if necessary.

When she went to another part of the temple, she had fear of facing any of the temple people again. From her point of view it did not matter what she said now, they weren't going to listen to her anymore. She felt fear for the head of the temple, too, because he had given her permission to try emotional movement, and now look what it had led to! He had been unsure. "Maybe he had reasons for that," she told herself now that rage had subsided enough that her terror returned.

She feared they were going to come to her as an angry and outraged mob saying she should not be the head oracle anymore, be-

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cause she was obviously losing her sanity. Her paranoia was running so wild in terror there that she had visions of them publicly discrediting her and throwing her to an angry mob from the steps of the temple and of an angry mob storming into the temple, grabbing her and torturing and killing her in the streets of Delphi as they drove her from street to street, ridiculing and sneering at her, throwing rocks and doing every other horrible thing to her she could imagine.

[Sept. 18, 2012: I depict the photo of the "Arian" woman, tied to a pole in the middle of town with a big poster on her chest: "Ich bin am Ort das groesste Schwein, ich lass mich nur mit Juden ein". "I'm the biggest pig around, I only deal with Jews". That was not in Delphi in the third-second century B.C., but in Nazi Germany around 1935...]

She could find no compassion for herself there, only an angry voice saying, "You're making yourself much too important again." When no one even came after her and she was left to sit all alone in that room, it seemed to her in those moments to be true. Yet, she could feel the buzz, even going public now, that the head oracle had gone insane, but no one said anything to her face, it was all said to others instead. She had discovered the gap in her own consciousness without the light of understanding to help her.

She sat in that room all the rest of that day and into the night, and it was there that her bitterness could see nothing else but to sacrifice herself again, because it felt to her like there was no other way out anyway. She had fallen too far into her original cause imprinting to know the way out anymore. She made a statement to herself then in her bitter rage, as she saw herself sitting there, the temple already abandoned by the people she had known there these many years, watching in her third eye until the small company of soldiers approached to take her aways. "They may take me in my body, but no matter what they do to it, I will never give in to them in my spirit! They will never make me see for them or tell them what they want to hear!" This is a judgment that needs release in many people as a Spirit-Body split that is not the right thing to do or say.

She felt hurt by the head of the temple most of all. It had now dawned on her that he was going to leave. She had not let herself notice the necessity of that before, but she could not move past her position there , either. She looked at him in her third eye, packing to go and felt she could not bear the pain of the situation anymore. It looked to her like he was planning his life without her now, and everytime she tried to get herself to move toward him, she was flooded with voices saying, "He doesn't want you anymore. He never wanted you the way you hoped he did. If you go to him, you are going to find another woman there. This is all your own doing and all your own fault. If you weren't the way you are with all of those feelings he doesn't like, you would be in her shoes now, go-

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ing with him instead of left here to go to your death alone and uncared about."

He showed her nothng outwardly that she was able to notice that told her he cared one zot whether or not she felt unable to go, and he did not see what she was feeling there, either. She could see that his heart was breaking, but she hated him so much for his lack of compassion toward her that she feared that it was now only ecause of the loss of his position and his life in the temple there. She thought he loved his music and his writings more than her, and she was not very far from wrong there.

He appeared in her third eye again. This time she saw him with the girl again and was suddenly flooded with recall of moments in which she had not really let herself know how she felt when she saw him with other young girls in the temple, displaying a softness towards them she wished he had shown toward her. [Sept.18, 2012- I remember this wish when I saw my mother - and later my sister - "displaying a softness" towards others , which I wished they would show toward me..].' She felt there was nothing more important to her in her life than him and she had never even been able to say this to him. Now it seemed he did not care about her anymore if indeed, he ever really had. She felt so abandoned and hopeless there that she did not see any point in going to him one last time; she wasn't going to get that kind of a commitment, that must have been a dream of hers that he loved her in that way. She could not move from her position either physically or emotionally as she sat focused inwardly there, watching in her third eye as the people in the temple were preparing to go without looking like it outwardly. She didn't see how the hollow form of "temple as usual" was fooling anyone who came there that day, but apparently it was.

The oracle was again seeing herself give up to the small party of soldiers who came to take her away without even a sound of protest because it seemed inevitable to her at the time. No one challenged them as to their authority to do this. No one protected her or came to her defense. No protest issued forth from the head of the city state. Her exile was complete, and what lay beyond that was so horrible she could not bring herself to look past the moment of her capture which was playing over and over in her head.

Just at that moment, the girl walked past her with another student from the temple and said. "He just said it was called the Isle."

"Where is it?" the other one said.

Before the girl answered, she turned and feigned surprise to see the head oracle sitting nearby. The head oracle knew the girl had seen her. The moment she entered the room, she had felt it.

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The girl and the other student walked on by, but the girl turned and looked back as she was sitting there feeling so heartbroken, forlorn, abandoned and without hope. She did not move toward her at all; she only gave her the famous purple daughter look of, "I'm in the superior position, and you are not even in the picture anymore. I've got your man and I've got your position, now, too, because I'm so much better at it and so much more loving, attractive, spiritual, emotionally composed, alluring and sexual than you are. He wants me so much more than he ever wanted you that there is nothing you can do about it, and besides,I can give him the sex he really wants because I know what it is," that really carries even so much more than that in a single glance; that is why I call it the famous purple look. This hurt so much she nearly attacked the girl again. She made a growling sound.

"Your prediction about the Romans invading is not coming true," the girl said over her shoulder as if it was an off-handed remark as she was leaving. "I wonder what else you have said that is not accurate, either."

This pushed her back into her fears about herself again. She could not give any response. She could only sit there in abject bitterness, despair and hopelessness But the girl did not go. She let the other one she was walking with go on ahead, as though she was hanging back to make one last comment, then she said hatefully, yet provocatively, yet sweetly, "If you so much as lay a hand on me, I will go straight to him," meaning the head of the temple. "He told me I am under his protecton now, and if you even try to do anything more to me, I am to come straight to him and he will deal with you."

She left the room then in a very slow, provocative walk that seemed to be inviting the oracle to jump her from behind so that the girl could turn on her with her own rage.

The oracle gritted her teeth even more and forced herself to look away. Even biting her lip, she could not hold back the stinging tears. Her teeth hurt already, and so did her whole head, but she knew it was nothing compared to how much she was going to hurt as soon as they left. In what seemed like an eternity of invasion into the little space she had left there, the girl moved slowly across the room and finally left it.

No one else came, and in the gathering gloom of evening falling, the room felt ominously huge and vacant, still and dark. All around her, there was a growing chill of gathering darkness that made her shiver as if there was a storm rolling in from the sea. She

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felt fear for them and actually hoped they would be all right it they were going by boat, because she kept having drowning terrors and didn't know why.

She had feelings of darkness gathering within her, too. The gloom around her seemed to lose her small form within it. She had the feeling of growing dark and small that in many ways was not an illusion. As much essence as possibly could was leaving her there to go with the head of the temple. The rage around her was planning to leave her, too, but it had one last move in mind for her first.

Feeling almost like a small, frightened helpless child again with no place to go in the world, she thought of her mother. Oh, why hadn't she just stayed home the way her mother had told her to do instead of going into the temple at all! She could see and hear, smell and feel her little village by the sea as strongly as if she were really there, and did not even know it was the very one from which they were planning to leave by boat. She had a feeling of longing to be there again, as in her youth, that was so intense the pain was excruciating, but she felt sure she could not go back as she was now. She was not a child anymore, and it was not the same, either . People she had loved had died, and what if she could go back, even really go back in time? What if she still came forward the same way, came to the temple again and got herself into a mess again? She wasn't sure, in that moment, if given a second chance, she could do any better. She felt hopeless about herself.

"Why do you have to be so headstrong?" as her mother had put it, as she had walked out the door, angry at her for trying to hold her back. "You don't know what you are getting yourself into," were her mother's last words to her. Now she wished she had listened and never left home, but then, everything she had ever heard or seen from the temple had had an allure for her that she could not resist. It had seemed exciting to her compared to the prospects of life in her village when she had not seen a man she loved there.

"I'm sorry," she told the image she saw of her mother there, old and lonely for her presence. "I'm so sorry," but she felt it was too late, she would never see her mother again.

Oh, how she wished now that she had listened, but her mother did not tell her what she would be getting herself into. She hadn't known, and she hadn't asked for fear her mother would lecture her without giving her any specifics, and she wouldn't have wanted to believe a word she said. Her whole being had felt full of spiritual

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quest, and the rest had come so gradually into her life that she hadn't noticed how horrible it was until it seemed to be too late.

She longed to go home to her mother now and cried as though she were in her arms, but these feelings were brief before she heard a voice telling her she was just feeling sorry for herself and to pull herself together. She felt her mother grow cold to her there also with the same walls that had made them unable to really get along with each other when she was a small, crying child. It felt the same to her, as though she had to shut down her emotions to get along with her mother, do exactly as her mother said, and not ask questions or look too deeply into anything.

Maybe that would have been better, but she had never been able to do it, and she didn't think she could do it. Besides, everyone in her village knew she had gone to the temple and become the head oracle. The Romans would soon find her there, and she might even get her mother into trouble; maybe even her whole family.

She didn't realize that what she saw as her mother was part of herself that split in the Will and backed away from the light, imprinted that it would be better to not seek any more consciousness than she already had, to let go of the vision and the dream that she had as nothing more than fantasies, to accept reality as it was, to make the best of things as they were and to stop tormenting herself by thinking she had to actually live her dreams to be happy and   f u l f i l l e d . When was she going to learn that lesson and grow up?

She gave herself no space to run. As she sat there in the gathering gloom, everything around her looked dull, not vibrant anymore the way it did when she felt good. She feared that her emotions were not right to have the way she had them and that there was something really wrong with her for having them the way she did.

To change her outlook there, someone would have had to reach for her and really mean it, and no one did. They were only able to reflect all of their own original cause to her there. No one was able to reach past this in themselves or see it for what it really was there. It was going to have to be my light to reach her there, and as desperately as I was trying, I could not reach her yet and would not be able to for a long time.

Later that night, still sitting there, waiting for her fate to be sealed by the temple's departure, she heard hard footsteps approaching her. The first thought that leaped to her mind on a jolt of fear was that it was the men to arrest her already, but it was the head of the temple. When she realized it, her heart leaped with re-

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lief and the hope that he might be going to take her with him after all by making her feel welcome and that he would take the risk.

Instead, when she looked up at him, she had never seen him so formidable looking. He simply said, in what felt like a very cold and controlled manner, "Do not be so foolish as to sit here all night; go to your room." Then, he rather roughly set an oil lamp down next to her and said, "Here, you might need this to find your way." He had planned to come to her room at departure time and forcibly take her with them, but she did not know it, and he did not let her know, figuring she would only object and delay his preparations with more emotional outburst.

She did not take it that way. She feared his controlled rage and felt only that in him there. She did not know what a struggle he was having with his own emotional splits that were being highly triggered there and felt this only as another of his harsh orders toward her with which she was so familiar when he was enraged at her. Sitting as it was, so heavily on top of her great shame, guilt, self-hatred and fear that she deserved punishment, she was unable to move past her pride to comply there. She did not answer. Instead she said, "Did you have sex with her?"

He gave her another stern command to go to her room, to which she bitterly replied, "I need to know. Dd you have sex with her?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The girl!" she said.

"Tell me what girl you are talking about," he insisted, acting impatient with her as though he wished he were gone already.

"The girl," and this was very hard for her to say, " I was shaking this morning."

"You were doing more than shaking her," he said without showing that he felt any of the pain in the breaking of her voice.

"Did you have sex with her?" she asked again, feeling nearly destroyed by him.

"I love her more than you, because she is satisfied with me the way I am," he responded in a controlled and cold manner."a

Crushed, she cried out to him, "You have to help me here!"

"I do not have to help you. You have not helped me at all here," he responded, still cold and controlled. "I have tried to be supportive of you in this , and now look where it has gotten us. You have endangered everyone here."

He gave her yet another stern command to go to her room. She knew the import of denying him three times; she even wanted to go

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to her room, but she could not make herself move to do it because of the tone he was taking with her. Her heart was breaking, but she was converting it to rage without even realizing how she sounded to him there. She said, "How can you do this?" meaning how can you be so cold to me and all that I am feeling here.

"With all of the temple's treasury," he replied, as if she was asking him how he was going finance [sic] taking so many people on such a long journey as it was going to have to be to get sufficiently away. "And that includes your belt. I want you to give me your belt."

She looked down at her gold python belt, feeling devastated at what her life had come to. She had no love for the snake, itself, but his flared head had made her lower chakras feel protected there. In noticing her reaction, the head of the temple looked at her for a moment as though he were going to soften, but she was looking at her belt and didn't see it. Without changing much in his tone of voice, he said, "You are trying to hold onto your position here,no matter what, arent' you?"

It seemed to her that was all he could see about the situation. "That's not what I want to hear from you!" she blurted out, meaning, "Tell me what I want to hear, and I'll do anything you say,' but she said, "How can you do this on top of everything else?"

"You're the everything else," he replied, "I'm just taking the temple's treasury and leaving."

"You can't do this! It's not right!" she cried, noticing how unprotected she felt at even the idea of having to take her belt off.

"If you are really so concerned with the right thing to do, you should have thought of that earlier," he replied. "Now, because of you, I have to make the people's life and safety my most important concern."

"That's not true! You don't know what you're talking about!" she cried out in anguish at his refusal to give her any validation there.

"I don't want to go through this with you anymore. Give me the belt and go to your room! Now!"

"You cannot command me. I am not the head oracle anymore. I am no one. I do not even have a room to go to anymore, I'm not going to any room that used to be mine."

"Have it your own way" he said, "as you always have!"

"I have not! You've always had it your way! You're only concernied with your own plight here!" she said.

"You need to be concerned about your own plight," he said to her.