The Valhalla Covenant

Reimas woke to the sound of birds and looked out the window to see a vivid autumn day, rich green grass and the colours of the exotic trees already turning on their display. He thought over yesterday’s many experiences in a flash, and was brought up short with the staggering memory of his first ever clear-cut astral transition. It was a shock to recollect how real it was.

For a moment as he got up out of bed, he wondered if he should try to repeat it straight away. No. The day beckoned him. All in good time.

The bathroom had two walls made almost entirely of glass, not to mention transparent glass shower screens that brought the landscape inside, but it was high up so did little to offend modesty. Its semi sunken bath had a great view but today he made do with a shower.

Several minutes later, as he gyrated under a cold blast finish, Sasha knocked on the half open door.

“Hi Blaze,” she said. “Do you have another bathroom?”

“There’s one downstairs, but don’t mind me. I’ll get a robe on and you can take over. How’d you sleep?”

“Like the dead. It’s so quiet here. I don’t know whether to like it or not. It seems strange that an absence of noise can be so confusing.”

Reimas got out, threw on a bathrobe and went to the door.

“You’re probably still worried about those thugs, but you shouldn’t be. I’m sure they weren’t killed, and what they got they deserved.”

“Maybe. I have been worried about it,” she admitted as she made her way to the basin to wash her face. “This place will make me forget it soon enough, though. I love it. The house is brilliant, and the garden — I can’t wait to have a look.”

“It needs more than a look, I suspect.”

She smiled, her eager face now fresh and glowing in the morning light.

“I’m all for gardening, but will we have the time?”

Reimas knew that Sasha’s input had been crucial in laying the psychological groundwork for last night’s breakthrough. If she had cause to know, and she did, then she should know. When she emerged some time later with towel in hand, he asked her to come and sit with him out on the balcony.

Seated on the opposite side of an outdoor table, he seemed almost to be grinning.

“You look like you have news,” she said.

He nodded.

“I’ve done it.”

“Done what?”

“I’ve transitioned into the astral. I flew, or at least floated for a while.”

“Flew? Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re not joking around or anything?”

“No. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I’m serious.”

She shook her head, slowly, as if shaking off the disbelief.

“That’s astonishing. Have you ever done it before?”

“Never. At least, not like that. It was as real as you or me or the roof beams that I passed straight through.”

“How did you go about it? I’ve heard people discussing it as a theoretical possibility but no one I know has ever actually done it.”

He told her, then, everything about the experience from start to finish.

At the end of his account, she seemed more amazed than she had at the beginning.

“The freezing would have been strange,” she said in a bit of a daze. “Was it scary?”

“It was, but at least now I know it’s only part of the lead in.”

“How do you suppose I’ll fit in, now that you’ve done what you set out to?”

“It doesn’t matter. Something crucial unlocked after we talked, and it’s no wonder. You really are full on. Anyway, there’s plenty to go on with. I brought some of the dream lab equipment with me and I’m hoping it’ll help me establish a rapid entry sequence.”

Sasha frowned.

“You’re not worried you might not be able to repeat it at all?”

“A little, maybe.”

“Well, in that case a lab sounds wrong to me. Surely it’d be better simply to have somewhere to hang out and relax, with the right equipment at hand if you need it.”

“There’s a good room for that downstairs.”

“As long as the colours are right — the lighting and ambience. Everywhere I’ve ever lived, it’s been the first thing I tried to achieve — to make the place look and feel like home, in my terms.”

Her assessment chimed with everything Reimas had been thinking lately. In the lifelong pursuit of his broad goals, he had never really taken time out to stop and fully cultivate a home comfort zone. Purchasing the idyllic Forest Lane Bower had been sheer luck — no more than a question of being in the right place at the right time. Until now, his appreciation of it had hardly been complete.

After dressing he took her down to see the room. It wasn’t huge but was comfortable and refined with timber floors and panelling, a beautiful Persian rug with a ‘portal to heaven’ motif, overflowing bookcases, burgundy velvet curtains and an open fire. Outside beyond timber bi-fold doors lay a sunny terrace.

“This is great,” Sasha said. “It’s only a question of moving the furniture a little, clearing away some clutter and lighting some candles.”

“Take a free hand.”

“Do you have music in here? Then there’s lighting, other than candles. We’ll have to see about that.”

Reimas went out to the shed then, to finally turn on the power.

Sasha could tell what was original to the spirit of the place and what he had done while he was here. Many of the changes she suggested were in a sense a reflection of the absence in him of certain attitudes and mental processes.

When he returned, she pointed out the need for a flowing transition between the room and the terrace outside.

“Sometimes you have to approach a problem from the side,” she said. “You attack it head on and you’re no better off than a fly buzzing at the window because it has no comprehension of glass.”

“If I was a fly I’d just buzz off now, wouldn’t I?” Reimas observed as he helped her drag the couch into a new position. Already he could already see how the new layout of the furniture would improve the room. She was the one for the job.

“You might think I’m being picky,” she said, “but art is life and you should know how worthwhile a little attention to detail can be.”

Since meeting Sasha, Reimas had been surprised by what he did not know and had not yet considered. So sure that he had been whole, tidy and efficient in his thinking, he had felt that he was ready for anything, even though Sasha’s observations had made him aware of some key deficiencies.

“Do you perceive me as being fragmented?” he asked.

“How could you not be?”

“My dream in the lab made me aware of the need to resolve dualities and somehow to build this deep sense of comfort — something I knew was missing in my life. I couldn’t do it then, but I shouldn’t be surprised now, considering you’re telling me I’m all broken up.”

“Only on account of your job you know, and not so as to be psychotic or anything.”

“Well, who’d have thought,” he laughed.

She smiled.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I was in a fine state too, when you first met me.”

“No self effacement, today. I know you can do the job and I don’t want any stone unturned.”

She returned his penetrating look steadily.

“Okay, we’ll plunge right in then and look at the fragmentation thing,” she suggested. “You have to understand that if you seek to divide the whole reality encompassing both pleasure and work, you’ll build barriers to understanding that can only inhibit your capacity for spiritual growth.”

“You mean, I take it, that by creating schisms in key life areas, you’ll be significantly less able to make good developmental choices.”

“Right. Especially when under pressure, which is when it counts,” she agreed. “Just for one thing, when you artificially separate work and pleasure, you create undercurrents of jealousy and desire. You might well avoid doing certain things that would be beneficial in some circumstances because you’re jealous about your time and energy, yet in your guise as a willing corporate pawn, you could do many things that serve no real purpose — things that you would never otherwise contemplate.

“Giving in to false desires like that is a time waster at best, but the thing is that many frivolous things run counter to the world’s interests and pursuing them can be dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Because they generally lead to compounding errors of behaviour.”

Reimas knew that she was right. A person in a highly regulated professional position might well covet things or experiences that a careful second thought would reveal as irrelevant. Jealousy of one’s own time and effort would lead to that because you’d always being looking for ways to get a bit of your own back. Then the acceptance of a wrong goal could easily pave the way for the acceptance of wrong means to get it.

“I can see how that might work,” he said, “but when I have to get a job done there’s usually a very specific time frame and a great deal of pressure. I’m not sure I could easily see the pleasure in it.”

“I was using the word ‘you’ in a general way. Even so, given that you may once have enjoyed what you did, looking back on it you’d probably agree that you were more likely to encounter problems when you resented the time you gave. From what you’ve told me, that resentment is actually growing.”

Reimas nodded.

“You’re being here at all is evidence of that.”

Sasha clearly wondered what he meant so he clarified the matter.

“If I hadn’t been so keen on some ‘me’ time,” he told her, “I wouldn’t have been on my way here, and might not have been able to offer you a place to stay.”

“Oh, I see — a little serendipity,” she said.

“Both for you and for me.”

“Yes, but it makes something else very clear to me. This is just the sort of way that last chances work. You can see the unmistakeable hand of fate in them. I know that I was given one, but you may well be in the same boat, now. If so, it’s vital that you continue the process of awakening. It’s happening for a reason and it’s up to you to make the most of it.”

“I hear you,” Reimas replied. “I can see that things really are changing and I believe that when I have some doubts I’ll only have to look at you to remind myself of my priorities.”

“That would make my job easy,” she laughed.

He stood up.

“You said you’d like to see the garden.”

“I did.”

From the porch, the garden looked lush and almost luminescent in the gentle autumn sunshine. It was an old place with landscaped grounds and beautiful big trees. Amongst bold outcrops of rock were large patches of pretty alpine natives and a pristine stream.

These were the perfect surroundings for a good conversation — especially a philosophical one — and they could at least breathe properly, surrounded by thick relatively healthy forest. Strolling towards the nearby hill through the rose garden, they were soon deeply absorbed again in discussion.

Sasha’s philosophy was essentially existential, and existentialism required the sort of ease of adjustment to circumstance that implied a little laziness, but she mitigated that by advocating ‘effort blended seamlessly with indulgence and passion’.

“Effort’s fine, in itself,” she said, in response to a comment that implied she might be too easy going for today’s circumstances, “but too great an obsession with getting immediate results leaves us short of time and promotes shallow interactions between people. Then error’s not just on the cards; it’s inevitable.”

“I expect you’re right,” Reimas replied, “but these things would only be relevant in a world not so far gone as ours. I suspect that no amount of fine tuning now will change the sorts of harsh realities we have to deal with pragmatically every day.”

Sasha shook her head.

“That’s where you’re wrong. Allow yourself the luxury of a moment to explore or to talk to someone about something apparently irrelevant and you might be surprised at how much more effectively you resolve the key dualities and deal with the practical problems.”

“But, in my case, I do solve the practical problems automatically. I have to.”

“You know it’s not automatic. What we’re talking about is consciousness isn’t it, and as you’ve said yourself, you can’t do that automatically. Besides, in solving those practical problems, you still haven’t gone that one step further to resolve the most significant dualities, have you?”

Reimas looked rueful.

“You’re talking about the spiritual and the material and how they work together? Touché, no, I haven’t.”

“Don’t look so down. Would you have my help or not?”

“I would.”

She stopped and turned to face him directly.

“One day you’ll lead, if you don’t already,” she said firmly. “I’d like to believe that you’ll do a great job, but I only pray that you’ll understand how risky that is.”

“It can’t be much more risky than what I do now.”

“That’s not what I meant. We’re here to learn how to exist in a state of grace — how to become immortal, perhaps — but all too often we get sidetracked by chasing after things of little worth, instead.”

He looked off into the distance and said, quietly:

“A failure to resolve the dualities we’ve been talking about — the spiritual and the material. So you mean I’d risk losing sight of that as a leader?”

She reached out and gently touched his shoulder, sensing an imminent breakthrough.

“I think you already know that’s not quite the answer,” she said, “but it isn’t only the spiritual at stake. Every aspect of life depends so much on the attitudes your spiritual makeup engenders — but most of all its overall character.”

“You mean whether we live our lives in fear or in favour?”

“Essentially, yes. You know those things that you shy from mentally — you wish there was some easier way to deal with them or to avoid them altogether. Well, when you learn to blend effort seamlessly with passion you’ll forego the anxiety and simply see these things as passing activities along the road of life.”

“I know what you mean, but the thing is, with me it’s not about how to live life with courage. I can do that already, or I couldn’t do what I do.”

Sasha flicked back her long brunette locks.

“Of course you can, but haven’t we been talking about fine tuning all along?”

“Sure.”

“Well, you may never be truly, heart-stoppingly afraid because of your confidence, your tactics and your experience, but how do you know how the processing of fear in your brain manifests? Could it render it into boredom, or cynicism or simply a latent charge that never lets you truly relax?”

“Maybe. I suppose …”

“So, it isn’t just doing away with obvious fear. It’s more a question of not losing the opportunity to live in a supreme state of grace. And being there could allow you to treat every prosaic task like a simple pleasure — hitting a tennis ball, riding a wave, moving a chess piece or kissing your lover, even if the task is as superficially unpleasant as digging a ditch or making a speech.

“That, I think, is the profound inner comfort you’ve been looking for — the spiritual key that comes in large part from a positive relationship with desire.

“Yet now you face a profound and difficult paradox. You need to solve the problem to achieve a truly worthy goal, but the goal represents the greatest distraction of all to your solving the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s that thing about the mechanism of desire gone wrong. You’re hung up on the achievement of this goal, and if you don’t turn that around, you’ll probably never reach the astral again.”