you lost your sense of being no better or worse than everything else. A
short pause to congratulate yourself would have been enough."
"I didn‘t do that."
"Did you stop your evaluation of the circumstance at any point?"
"No I…hmm. I noticed the clarity and detail of my perceptions."
"As I said…" she pursed her lips. "You also abandoned your
heightened awareness to maintain the image you have of yourself as a
generous person. In essence, you gave yourself an example of what is
possible to perceive in a pure moment then you reverted to the cognition
of the average man to defend an illusion."
"You make it sound like it was the only time I will get the lesson."
"Two things," she said, holding up two fingers. "There are
magnificent perceptions that lie ahead of you, which your suspicion and
scepticism can manipulate into something sinister, because that‘s what
they do. There is also no force in the Universe that can guarantee you will
still be breathing an hour from now, so you have no time to waste on self-
indulgence, such as how smart you think you are or justifying your
personal views. This is not personal."
Before I could comment, she said, "I haven‘t mentioned all of the
practices that Stalkers use to overcome their flaws, but you‘re familiar
with the idea of using death as an advisor, from Castaneda‘s works?"
"Familiar, only."
"I mention this so what I just said doesn‘t scare you." Bonnie
officiously carried on with her original topic. "At times during your
dangerous assignments, the aspects of your personality that stood in the
way of perceiving knowledge directly were set aside to allow you to
experience the critical nature of the moment. In these times, when you
chose to not go down one road, or turn back, you entered into heightened
awareness. As we discussed in the last few weeks, you forgot about or
dismissed these occasions, because you couldn‘t explain them. In the case
of knowing things ahead of time, such as your father dying, some part of
your thinking was afraid that you somehow caused or contributed to
events. Now, that you‘re learning heightened awareness can happen
spontaneously, you will better allow for it, even summon it, and make it a
personal practice to not interfere with it."
"Now that I know what‘s happening."
"I‘m telling you this because it‘s not all that will happen, and I don‘t
want you to think you‘re losing your mind as we work with the positions
of the Assemblage Point." She chuckled. "Actually, you‘re going to do
that anyway. I‘m saying don‘t be concerned about the apparent
contradiction of intentionally undermining your reason. The payoff is
