The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision Read Free

dressed in buckskins, sitting in front of a large fire. Streaks of war paint adorned his face. Around him
     was a circle of people, mostly Native Americans, but including two whites, a woman and a very large man. The discussion was
     heated. Some in the group wanted war; others desired reconciliation. He broke in, ridiculing the ones considering peace. How
     could they be so naive, he told them, after so much treachery?
    The white woman seemed to understand but pleaded with him to hear her out. War could be avoided, she maintained, and the valley
     protected fairly, if the spiritual medicine was great enough. He rebuked her argument totally, then, chiding the group, he
     mounted his horse and rode away. Most of the others followed.
    “Your instincts are good,” David said, snapping me from my vision. He was spreading a homespun blanket between us, offering
     me a seat. “I know of her.” He looked at me questioningly.
    “I’m concerned,” I said. “No one has heard from her and I just want to make sure she’s okay. And we need to talk.”
    “About the Tenth Insight?” he asked, smiling.
    “How did you know that?”
    “Just a guess. Many of the people coming to this valley aren’t just here because of the beauty of the National Forest. They’re
     here to talk about the Insights. They think the Tenth is somewhere out there. A few even claim to know what it says.”
    He turned away and put a tea ball filled with coffee into the steaming water. Something about his tone of voice made me think
     he was testing me, trying to check out whether I was who I claimed.
    “Where is Charlene?” I asked.
    He pointed a finger toward the east. “In the Forest. I’ve never met your friend, but I overheard her being introduced in the
     restaurant one night, and I’ve seen her a few times since. Several days ago I saw her again; she was hiking into the valley
     alone, and judging from the way she was packed, I’d say she’s probably still out there.”
    I looked in that direction. From this perspective, the valley looked enormous, stretching.forever into the distance.
    “Where do you think she was going?” I asked.
    He stared at me for a moment. “Probably toward the Sipsey Canyon. That’s where one of the
openings
is found.” He was studying my reaction.
    “The openings?”
    He smiled cryptically. “That’s right, the dimensional openings.”
    I leaned over toward him, remembering my experience at the Celestine Ruins. “Who knows about all this?”
    “Very few people. So far it’s all rumor, bits and pieces of information, intuition. Not a soul has seen a manuscript. Most
     of the people who come here looking for the Tenth feel they’re being synchronistically led, and they’re genuinely trying to
     live theNine Insights, even though they complain that the coincidences guide them along for a while and then just
stop.”
He chuckled lightly. “But that’s where we all are, right? The Tenth Insight is about understanding this whole awareness—the
     perception of mysterious coincidences, the growing spiritual consciousness on Earth, the Ninth Insight disappearances—all
     from the higher perspective of the other dimension, so that we can understand why this transformation is happening and participate
     more fully.”
    “How do you know that?” I asked.
    He looked at me with piercing eyes, suddenly angry. “I know!”
    For another moment his face remained serious, then his expression warmed again. He reached over and poured the coffee into
     two cups and handed one to me.
    “My ancestors have lived near this valley for thousands of years,” he continued. “They believed this forest was a sacred site
     midway between the upper world and the middle world here on Earth. My people would fast and enter the valley on their vision
     quests, looking for their specific gifts, their medicine, the path they should walk in this life.
    “My grandfather told me about a shaman who came from a faraway tribe and taught