TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 - The Story - page 21

Chapter 2 - To Earth - page 26

Chapter 3 - Thinking - page 36

Chapter 3 1/2- Sense Adventure - page 41

Chapter 4 - The Players - page 45

Chapter 5 - Senses - page 56

Chapter 6 - Seeing - page 65

Chapter 7 - Hearing - page 74

Chapter 7 1/2- Recitation - page 83

Chapter 8 - Feeling - page 86

Chapter 9 - Observation - page 96

Chapter 10 - Gift Giver Receiver - page 109

Chapter 11 - Rules - page 120

Chapter 12 - Calibration - page 134

Chapter 12 1/2- Good and Bad - page 146

Chapter 13 - Wake-Up - page 150

Chapter 14 - Time - page 164

Chapter 15 - The Beginning - page 176

Dedication:

This book is dedicated to my grandmother, Twinkle. While in her nineties, she was still looking on the bright side of life and lighting up the lives of the people around her.

This book is also dedicated to all of the people who have done and will do courses and seminars with Jerry Stocking. Thank you for your willingness to play and for the contributions you have made and will make to humanity.

Note from the Author:

Several years ago, I met a tough old coot named Dave Dobson. I attended a workshop of Dave's in Chicago. There were three other participants in this workshop. Apparently not many people wanted to hear what this man had to say. Watching Dave, I soon understood why there were so few of us there. Here was a man communicating on such subtle levels that few people could appreciate him. I had received extensive training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which allowed me to not only see same of what he was doing but to realize that I was missing much more than I was seeing.

On Saturday evening of the workshop, I sat in the hotel lounge with Dave. As he told me stories, I watched him simultaneously maintain rapport with seven different people. He conversed with the bartender by using his right little finger, which was obvious in that the bartender's hand was matching Dave's every move. Dave is a master of hypnotherapy and at seeing what other people do not see but what is certainly there.

Listening to Dave, I had to set aside all that I already knew for what I could learn. I had to abandon many of the NLP rules and to cease filtering what I was learning. In short, I had to roll over and present my soft underbelly to this gifted communicator. To do this, I had to trust, not trust Dave, but trust myself to later sort out what was useful from what was not in the process of living.

My father played the oboe in the Chicago Symphony for a number of years. To be so good at the oboe, he had to attend to details and subtleties that most people can't perceive. The difference between the ways one can address a note before a sound is even made makes all the difference. At a certain level of expertise, that which separated my father from the first chair oboe player, the differences are small but the effects on the final music large. As my father aged, his playing became technically worse, but his ability increased. His playing became less awe inspiring and more inspirational. Nuances which had escaped him arrived with ease and expressed themselves in every note.

Everything is composed of subtle building blocks. In this book you will discover many of these subtleties of thought. These are things that you should have been taught early on, some of which will be obvious as you learn them and some of which will elude you until you become grounded in subtlety. The best way to explore your own thought is by thinking clearly, thinking without adding any importance or meaning to your thought. Think for the sheer entertainment value of thinking. Think for fun, think for entertainment, think for flexibility and think for clarity. Thinking clearly is thinking fast. It is thinking without hiding anything; it is thinking with a mood of curiosity and discovery; it is thinking underneath and inside your normal patterned thinking. Thinking clearly is thinking so wide, tall and deep, without repitition, that your thinking becomes a continual revelation. This and more is available by practicing the basics: the modes and styles of thinking laid out in this book. Because you think your thinking is real, practice thinking; and if you are busy practicing, you may never again bare the tremendous burden of having to think for real.

Introduction:

There was once a little mouse who knew everything. She knew holes in the ground. She knew the smells of food and the tastes of all the plants that were good to eat. There was usually enough to eat, and little to remember. She lived in a forest glen seldom disturbed by creatures larger than herself. At the first sign of anything unusual, the mouse would scuttle down her hole to hide. She would wait in her tiny warm space, near her reserves of food, until she remembered there was a world to explore outside. What more was there, what more could there possibly be? She always knew what to do. There was no right or wrong. Just living.

One day, as she was sniffing out a succulent cluster of acorns, she had a feeling she was being watched. She started to shake and run. First toward her hole, then toward the acorns. Something was wrong. She didn't know what.

Above her, far above, loomed a creature giant by her standards. Regal white head and black wings floating on the wind currents, the eagle looked down. His world was huge. It includede tens of miles, every little beast within his view, the clouds, the hills, the rivers, and the treetops. Sometimes he would hunt, like now, but often he would just lock his wings in position and soar for soaring's sake, or sit at the top of the tallest tree in the forest. Whatever he could see was his, and right now he could see a mouse far below. Tucking his wings in, he dropped like a stone toward his lunch.

On the edge of the woods, a young boy and a girl had interrupted their game of follow-the-leader to watch the eagle soar. They saw him begin the dive. They couldn't see the mouse yet, but they knew from experience that the eagle was on his way toward some small creature on the ground. Down went the bird, claws extended, braking at the last moment, then rising again. Taking the mouse for her last ride. The children watched with mixed emotions, not knowing whether to cheer for the eagle or mourn for the mouse, a dilemma neither the eagle nor the mouse could entertain.

Wiggling wildly, Mistress Mouse freed herself and fell unhurt, but badly shaken, to the ground. The eagle never looked back. The mouse ran for her hole as fast as she could. The children clapped, jumping up and down.

Racing hoe, they told their parents the story. First from their own perspective, their suspense as they watched the eagle dive, then from the precarious position of Mistress Mouse, and finally as the eagle with--and then suddenly without--lunch.

The stories were all different. To the mouse, it was a life-threatening attack, confusing and confounding. To the eagle, it was a lost snack, forgotten as he circled again and performed a successful dive. To the children, it was entertainment, excitement, and education.

This and many other stories made up their childhoods, influencing their lives as adults. Mice and eagles do what they do well, but they cannot tell stories. They cannot observe from beyond their own worlds and experiences, nor can they imagine or be entertained. People can adopt different perspectives, and by doing so live in a limitless world. They can concoct incredible stories to entertain, to expand their own lives and those of everyone they contact.

Living life with wonderful stories leads to a wonderful life. We are all story-tellers. What follows is a story I hope will entertain and enrich your life.

Chapter One

If something happens once it can be called an accident.  If it happens twice, it can be ignored as a philosophy.  If it happens often, it magically becomes a scientific fact and oppresses almost everybody.  The only time anything becomes persistent is when we continue to ignore it.  If we attend to apparent accidents the first time we can avoid philosophy and science and be amusingly entertained all the time.

When the strange woman, beaming with recognition, rushed through the departing plane passengers to give Paul an exuberant bear hug, he thought it was an accident.

"Benny!"  Her eyes gleamed.

He could only stare.  The air at 8,000 feet was thin, he was panting and lightheaded, and maybe the woman was a hallucination.  But she was certainly a realistic one.  Paul might have seen this woman before, he could not be sure.  Her abundant light gray hair contradicted her youthful features, confusing the whole issue of chronological age.  She was dressed in a nondescript black knit outfit and would have been entirely forgettable if it were not for a certain sparkle in her eye and her bizarre greeting.  She continued to hug him tightly.

"Benny," she repeated.  "Oh, Benny, I've missed you so much, where have you been?"  She stretched out the last word in a monotone whine, "beeeeeeeeeeen."

She wouldn't let go.  Paul had a weird, panicky feeling she never would.  He cleared his throat.  "I'm not Benny."
The woman pulled back, looked him in the face.  The eager light in her eyes faded.  "And so you aren't.  I just keep jumping my cues.  Perhaps it is a lifetime too early."  She turned and was gone.

Paul stood swaying and blinking dizzily.  Somehow yanked out of time and place, wondering if it had happened at all.  He looked around for a witness, but the other disembarking passengers had hurriedly left the chilly mountain airstrip for the shelter of the small terminal.

A physical shrug can dismiss most "accidents."  Not this one.  A chance meeting, a mis-identification?  Would they meet again?  If so, would he be ready for her?  He hadn't received that many hugs from women who weren't aunts or cousins....  Not knowing how to mentally shrug, he let it go.  The woman was gone, for now.  There was nothing to do but claim his luggage, find the university and his dorm room.

Years later, his odd welcome at the airport would appear one of the more ordinary events of his freshman year.  Now, shaking his head, he made his way to the shelves they called a baggage claim, half expecting to meet the hug-prone woman again.  No sign of her.

Paul was relieved to see his luggage, reassuringly familiar.  He'd packed light--hitchhiking across the country the summer before had taught him that.  The ratio of pencils and notebooks to camping equipment in his bags revealed his freshman focus.

Stepping out of the terminal into the crisp, thin morning air, he took a deep breath and gazed over the Gunnison Valley.  The mountains were much as he had pictured them, but bigger.

***

It was an inevitable chance meeting.  He was young, though his face was so weathered it was hard to see his youth.  As the Wright Brothers still worked on a new invention in Kitty Hawk, he arrived in Gunnison on foot to make his fortune.  He could have stayed back east, comfortable, earning his keep and a bit more.  That was not for him.  He wanted the gold, the quick rich waiting in these mountains.  Thus far he had done a lot of digging, and some panning, but had found no gold.  Hands callused, he continued to work, bound and determined to find the gold.

The chance meeting was an interruption in his digging.  This day had begun work in a small rock formation, alternately picking and shoveling.  He had worked for several hours when he sensed that he was not alone.  He had company, uninvited company, a threat to his would-be fortune, perhaps.  He turned slowly, tensed for a fight.  All thoughts of threat disappeared.  The visitor was an ancient Indian.  He sat still, so still it seemed he might not even be alive.  He looked to be as old as the rock he leaned against.
Ben approached his visitor cautiously.  He noticed a pale light, a glow in the Indian's eyes that betrayed his stillness.  Yes, he was alive, very much alive, though breathing very little.  Silently the Indian requested silence, and so effectively that the miner sat cross-legged about five feet from him.  An hour passed.  Two went by, time enough for even Ben to experience social discomfort, peacefulness, and finally physical discomfort.  Well over three hours went by.  Gracefully, the Indian rose, loped off with the ease of a coyote.  His movements were not of a man his age.

Ben rose with all the ease of a very old, stiff man.  He didn't know what to think--indeed it was several minutes before he could think at all.  Just being in the presence of this old sage had cleared his mind entirely, and he had to reassemble his old thoughts even to remember who he was.  The ancient Indian had taken him on a journey.  Where, he could not yet know, but he had conveyed a message to Ben.  This Ben realized three days later, in a moment of revelation.  He began digging where the Indian had been sitting, and within minutes hit one of the largest veins of gold ever found in the Rockies.

***

Paul had looked forward to Colorado for a long time.  He was young and eager, and not about to let the odd scene at the airport dampen his arrival.  He was going to college to get the kind of education that required a sleeping bag, lantern, camp stove, waterproof matches, and the great outdoors.

It was a short and pleasant walk to downtown Gunnison where it was still so early that all the stores remained closed.  This town was not a suburb to anywhere, it was a town in its own right.  From the old-time hardware store, one peek in the window revealing an endless and uninventoried array of paraphernalia, to the ornate bank building that reminded Paul of something from an old Western movie, this town was full of personality.  There was a cigar store Indian and a genuine barber pole along with wooden benches that Paul imagined might soon be filled with old-timers, the keepers of stories from Gunnison's earlier days.  Paul stepped back in history even setting foot in the town, and appreciated the irony of coming to such a place to educate himself for his future.

The university itself had very little personality--a collection of red brick buildings with white mortar.  The only sign of earlier times was one adobe, three-story dormitory.  A building that Paul would live in for the next eight months but never call home.

Dropping his luggage off at his assigned room, he found nothing to convince him to linger at the dorm.  He walked around the campus.  Behind the football stadium, the glass hills they called a stadium, a mountain rose.  It wasn't the biggest around, but he'd heard the football team ran up it for training.  This was the school for Paul.  Running up a mounatin at this altitude was something he wanted to imagine.  That first day, the three flights of stairs to his dorm room were taxing enough.  Later, climbing those stairs would be as easy as a stroll in the park.

Sports had not been important to him, although he had played tennis and wrestled in high school.  He considered himself to be in good shape from doing a lot of walking his senior year in high school.  As each school day ended, his day of walking the family dog and reading had begun.  Paul would read until sunset while walking with Hush, the 105-pound result of a moment of pleasure between a Golden Retriever and an Alaskan Malamute.  Existentialism was the subject of the first half of his senior year, and plays, primarily surrealistic, consumed the second half.  Hush didn't seem to mind his reading is long as they continued to walk.  Neither Sartre or Camus would have fit in well at his high school, and neither did Paul.

While his peers were busy with clubs, work, or intermurals after school, Paul and Hush were busy becoming a common sight in the suburbs.  Soon they were recognized by everyone in town as "that big dog and the guy reading."  His father used to tell him to make sure to be remembered for something.  It is doubtful we get to choose what we are remembered for.

Miles of walking had gotten Paul into what he thought was fair physical shape, though ambling along suburban sidewalks bears little resemblance to the hiking he would be doing in the mountains.  Reading for several hours a day had been preparing him mentally.  Ever the optimist, Paul was ready to explore the mountains.

He had four days before classes began.  He planned to go camping, but that was the only plan.  His goal was simply to walk any direction and find out where he ended up.  The mountains around Gunnison have no street signs--most don't even have names--so getting lost was the easiest part.

Leaving the university, Paul headed southeast.  This direction took him through town for supplies: a loaf of bread, some canned beans and two pounds of potatoes.  He left "civilization" behind to the northwest ignoring roads and hiking cross-country.  These were old mountains.  They were not the dramatic pointed variety found further north around Rocky Mountain National Park.  But their age made them a bit more inviting if weathered.  They demanded wandering and were impressive by their lack of distinction.  There were no landmarks here, just mountain after nondescript mountain, each weathered to the point of smoothness.

His route took him, within a half mile, to the Gunnison River--a shallow, cold, fast-moving knife cutting easily through the old rock.  It looked small enough, but what it lacked in size it made up in ferocity and temperature.  He either had to wade across it or go upriver to search for an easy crossing.  Optimism chose the cold path.  He waded the freezing river with new boots strung over his shoulder.  Within moments his feet were numb.

There is something very real and intimate about crossing a wide, cold, fast-moving mountain stream in bare feet.  Paul remembered cowboy movies where the wagon trains and herds of cattle made their way across just such streams.  The movie seemed real until he set foot in this stream.  In the movie, the stream had looked cold; this water was cold.

Years later, he could still clearly recall the intensity of the cold water.  Growing up in the suburbs had been like living a theoretical life.  Paul know how clod streams were, but had not felt many.  He know what big mountains were, but had not climbed them.  He knew how romantic it would be to sleep out under the wide open skies with billions of stars to watch....He knew so much and had done so little.  The difference between knowing and doing was something he only knew about.

He had seen hundreds of people killed or maimed on television or in movies, but his life had never really been threatened.  He had never broken a bone and had only had stitches once, in his right index finger, courtesy of a mishap with an ax.  His idea of pain was the congestion accompanying a cold or the dull soreness the day after a hard run.

This water was cold and the hard, pointed rocks did not care about Paul's tender feet.  He slipped once, splashing his left side all the way up to the hip.  He managed crossing without further incident.  Proud of his success, he looked back to discover the bread had fallen from his pack and was floating away.  It would be beans and potatoes for the next four days.

It was only an accident, losing the bread.  From Paul's perspective the whole world was composed of accidents.  If his high school physics had been a bit more practical, he would have realized one of the primary rules of the universe:  there are no accidents.

The bread was packed in a particular way so that when Paul slipped, the jolt would be just enough to contribute the bread to the river.  In addition, this brand of bread was just the right weight and packaging for it to easily slide from his pack.  The company had designed just the right product for him to drop that day.  Years earlier, Paul would have laughed at attributing too much meaning to a silly coincidence.

In an effort to turn what could be an important moment into a light one, he waved to the bread and shouted, "Good-bye."  He pictured possible scenarios for the final resting place of the bread: in a bear's belly, at the edge of a dam, or wedged in an eddy near a large cliff always at the point of almost going over the falls only to circle again endlessly.  Perhaps someone would find the bread who needed it more than he did and be provided the nourishment to make it back to civilization.  Paul did not know what would happen to the bread, a fact that only encouraged entertaining speculation.

Paul worked his socks on over his damp feet and pulled on his boots.  Ahead of him was the foothill of a barren, rocky mountain.  Braced for his first climb, he began.

The rocks were well-weathered, dangerous in that some were secure while others would give way underfoot.  To an eagle, the climb would have looked silly.  Small rocks fell every which way behind him as he repeatedly lost and regained his balance.  No, this was not much like streets and sidewalks.  Occasionally, while walking in the suburbs, he'd played a game.  He would close his eyes and continue walking on blind trust.  Knowing when he was nearing a curb, hearing a car approaching, were easy.  Here in the mountains, closing his eyes while walking might mean his death.

It took an hour to climb the first hill, he estimated.  One rule he had was no timepieces on a campout.  His blue work shirt was soaked with sweat, and his feet had gone from freezing cold to warm.  From Paul's vantage point, he wasn't high enough to see the whole town, but the dormitory and other tall buildings rose beyond the foothills nestling Gunnison.  Paul had arrived in Gunnison just the day before and was already leaving it.

Pausing occasionally to rub the tiredness from his legs, Paul climbed all afternoon.  The land was barren.  Much of his energy was spent reassessing the kind of shape he was in and lamenting the loss of the bread.  The days are long in open spaces, and he climbed until the afternoon light dwindled into dusk.  Gunnison was no longer visible.  His canteen was running low and the river was the only water he had seen all day.  The land was dry, beaten, and weathered, three adjectives that seemed to apply even more to Paul.

Darkness set in long after tiredness.  There was no wood around and he had so little energy that a fire seemed unnecessary.  He ate a dinner of cold beans, and spread his foam mat and sleeping bag on a fairly smooth piece of ground.  It felt like Heaven just to lie down, stretch, close his eyes and relax.

Paul looked up.  There had never been this many stars before.  Silence reigned.
Just as he was dozing off to a well-earned sleep, reliving his first day's hike, an earsplitting "bang" shattered the calm.  Like thunder, but not at a distance.  Personal thunder.  He couldn't think.  Was the noise from within or outside of him?  Deafened, Paul cowered as rock chips and dust showered down upon him.

 

 

 

 

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