Excerpt from "Journey Through Fear"
by Antoinette Lee Howard
Huntsville, Arkansas: Ozark Mountain Publishing, 2009
(permission granted by publisher)
MERLIN, DEVIC GUARDIAN OF COMMUNICATION: LIVING YOUR TRUTH
(FROM CHAPTER 2)
I live in windswept caves on high hills, in mossy caves below the great ice fields, in river caves far beneath the breath of winter. I am Merlin.
The Merlin? The magician in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King?
Yes. Tell people that their magician is now minding their words. Call me the patron saint of words, opening you and others to your core knowledge, your truth. Be it fiction or nonfiction, truth is your goal.
If I were able to give you just one piece of advice, it would be to smile, because you find your truth in joy, not fear. Caves and crystals are my stock-in-trade, but I trust that I do not disappoint your sense of my exalted purpose when I tell you that sometimes I join the revelers at a back-slapping football game, viewed on a large screen in a smoke-filled bar.
Your laughter is contagious. If you smiled at all in your life, what a joyous, peaceful time all would have, as people and nations relaxed. It is so easy and so near. I want to shake your earnest shoulders and tell you to be happy every day.
It is not always easy to be happy. Countries are at war, and too often communities and families become emotional battlegrounds. Plus loved ones—and we—get sick and die.
Smile even when you are fearful or angry, sick or sad. The mind relies on the physical senses; the body, in effect, has wisdom that the mind taps. Your smile tells your mind that all is well in your immediate surroundings, that your senses detect no danger lurking inside or outside your body at this moment.
Most importantly, your smile reassures your mind that it is possible to live in peace. Even if you are in the midst of dealing with sickness or death, even if you are part of an emotional or physical combat zone, there is something small or large to smile about every day: a friend’s kindness, a bird outside your window, a dandelion with the audacity to grow in a bluegrass lawn, a poem, a delicious meal, your own courage in a situation that demands it, an audience with the Pope, a dollar to a beggar. It is easy to find happiness, if you but look for it.
In time, your mind will learn to read that signal, that smile, as an indicator that you can live in joy. I was a deva-in-waiting for several hundred Earth years. While I awaited my final acceptance into the devic realm, I held my dream of watching communication in mind and I smiled. I celebrated life.
Life is a paradox, is it not? Only when you give up wanting, when you rest in a state of doneness, do you achieve your goal. Your smile reflects the sense of peace that fills you when you believe that whatever you would have is yours. I waited with that level of serenity and faith. If the devic kingdom had not agreed with my assessment, I would have accepted the decision and looked for another way to help other life.
What did you do while you waited?
I traveled in space and time. I studied the pyramids. I walked in silence among mummies yet undiscovered, and lived their passionate dream of Ra. I delighted in the aborigines, and blessed their dreams in this era when standardization is king. I blessed the work of novelists, poets, nonfiction writers, and essayists, as well as playwrights, speakers, and speechwriters. I made my dream real.
Tell me about your dream.
My watch is communication, and primarily I deal with words that are spoken or written for formal settings, as opposed to casual comments that you exchange with friends, family, or associates. My watch is best exemplified by poetry, the true magic in words. The term poetry encompasses more than words that rhyme or have meter; poetry is truth. Shakespeare’s plays are poetry. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is poetry, as are Franklin Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats. Be it fiction or nonfiction, truth is your goal. I help you find your truth in the spoken or written word.
Do you stop at words? In all fields—religion, art, science, business, law, mathematics, physics, cinematography, and on and on—there are men and women who are not writing books or giving lectures, but who are searching for truth.
All they need to do is think deeply about a subject, and desire to speak their truth. Equations, paintings, photographs, and building designs are as potent as words. No earnest appeal or prayer goes unanswered in our realm. There are no barriers, no boasts of: I do this, and only this. My focus is communication, and I bless each earnest seeker of truth, in every field of endeavor.
The devic Guardian of Water Clarification says that words are not as accurate as shared vision, and that in time we will get rid of them.
Mine is a new post. I am convinced—and I have persuaded others—that words can heal as well as kill. They are that extreme in their power. Once you harness your communication, both spoken and written, you begin to control your thoughts and emotions.
Words reflect emotion plus thought. Say them with love, and the harshest words are love; say them with fear, and they can strike terror into any heart. To take an extreme example, if a rapist were to say, “I love you,” you would find nothing but horror in those words; on the other hand, the same phrase spoken by a lover would ring with promise and joy. Similarly, the meaning behind the words, “We shall overcome,” is vastly different when you envision them shouted by Martin Luther King and Adolf Hitler.
Words are as capable of harm as actions, and you judge them in your after-death life review the same as you do actions.
Surely words are not as bad as actions. Out of sheer frustration, most people have said, “I could kill him,” at one time or another, with no intention of harming anyone.
As far as your system of laws is concerned, what you say is true. In terms of your life evaluation after death, it may or may not be so. Your intention is the determiner. Words said in anger, with no thought of follow-through, are just words. If you have committed the crime in your mind, however, you must readdress your life script to bring your mind to a point at which it would not consider such an act. You might decide on a life as a contemplative monk. You might even plan to spend a lifetime as a person who will be murdered.
I underscore what the Guardian of Water Clarification has told you: There is no Last Judgment by another. Saint Peter does not keep records, and neither does God; you keep them. Similarly, there is no heaven or hell, except as you create your own. Dante wrote lovely poetry, but the reality is that minds travel to the astral world after death, and all minds evaluate themselves there.
I speak now of humanity’s questions, since they are of principal concern to you and your readers.
The first question the mind asks is: How close did I come to realization, both in terms of living my life purpose—the life’s work most in keeping with my individual self-expression—and in terms of my awareness of God as the Creator and First Cause of my life, and all life? Religion does not matter, the groups that you joined are forgotten, your society’s laws are nonessential, and even what you did in life is unimportant, except in terms of the self- and God-realization of which I speak.
The mind’s second question is: How fully did I assist others, and other life? The word others includes your family and friends, as well as your enemies. Other life refers to everything you see and touch: animal, plant, and mineral. From the television in your home to the rocket booster, the humble crabgrass to the elegant orchid, the mosquito to the elephant, the evanescent puddle to the ocean, the smallest cloud to the Jet Stream, the pebble to the diamond, and the baby starving in Africa to the Vanderbilts and Rothschilds, all is of God, and, as such, all is precious.
Did you honor others, and other life, with blessings as well as with assistance? Understand that you are not obliged to save the world, but there are ways that you can reach out every day: by contributing time or money to a worthwhile cause, by calling a friend who is going through a hard time, by planting flowers or bushes that will attract and feed birds, by sending a blessing to an enemy. The options are endless.
Based on your evaluation of these essential life issues of self-, other-, and God-realization, you plan your next life. Be aware that neutralizing your judgments about others, and other life, is your first priority as you prepare this life plan. For example, if you deride the Afghans as infidels and savages, you will choose a life as an Afghan. If you, as a man, believe that women are inferior, you will choose to reincarnate as a woman.
There is no way around it: If you do not cleanse a judgment in this lifetime, you will reincarnate into the life that you focus on. Moreover, you are not limited to the human dimension. If you hate cats or evergreens, you will assign yourself lifetimes as these forms, to work out those strong negative emotions.
Ultimately, you are called to live like Jesus. Because he lived in love, not fear, he could say of those who killed him, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He accepted the appalling things that his persecutors did as being in the hands of the Creator, not him, a man among men. He did not burden himself with fear and judgment, even in the face of death. I know this is a big order, but this level of perfection is your ultimate goal.
ISBN-13: 978-1-886940-57-4 Paperback, $14.00 Available online from the publisher (www.ozarkmt.com); from booksellers such as Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com) and Borders (www.borders.com); and as a paperback or Kindle book from Amazon (www.amazon.com)
As a child, Antoinette Lee Howard dreamed of a life as a writer and artist, with Walden Pond her goal. She received her M.A. in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California, followed by four years of intensive study with abstract painter Aidron Duckworth, but chose a traditional career path as a technical writer and illustrator. It was not until she decided to shift her love for writing and art to the natural world—her version of that early dream—that she became aware of devic presences. Journey Through Fear is the result of six years of communications with these guardians. The theme that emerges from these messages is that we live in a field of unity, which includes everything we see, everything we touch, and ultimately everything we are. However, we block this truth with fear, which locks us into the belief that we are disconnected and alone. For most of us, fear thought-structures occupy seventy-five percent of our waking hours. Journey Through Fear offers a way to dismantle them, with peace individually, and ultimately worldwide, our priceless gift for doing so.
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