experiencing evermore instances of pure understanding for no reason other
than you intended to." She grinned like a cherub, then holding up two
fingers said, "For a Stalker, there are two one-way bridges of knowledge."
She lowered her hand. "One of them is from Reason to the Place of No
Pity; the bridge deck is called pure understanding, which entertains no
behavioural influences. In other words, you do not bother believing or not
believing in the moment, but concerns can colour events after the fact,
because the awareness of self is present. This is not to be confused with
self- image, but as a boundary to what you consider possible. This is why
it‘s critical to stop talking to your suspicious ego." She drew a concluding
breath. "Also, don‘t be concerned about what you experience, or talk
about it while it‘s going on; just observe the landscape."
"Understood," I said, chuckling at her reasonable explanation of an
unreasonable phenomenon, and me understanding her without reservation.
Grinning in return, she said, "We have talked about stalking mostly in
terms of students‘ comprehension of the process, which is to reveal and
examine the core nature of one‘s own behaviour. The stealth aspects of it
lie in me knowing what will result in a given circumstance, and you being
unaware of what‘s coming, but being willing to face what happens. Do
you agree?"
"Sure… I mean yes."
"Now we‘re going to deal with it in a Stalker‘s terms: In an
overview," she immediately carried on, "stalking is about saving energy
by deliberately choosing to act impeccably. As you get better at making
these evaluations, a broader clarity connecting apparently divergent
circumstances will form the basis of a grand assumption that will placate
your ego‘s drive to interfere with your decision making."
"What do you mean by placate my ego? I thought I had to stop
talking to it?"
Her focus seemed to drift before she slowly said, "At one time, the
ego awareness was perfectly adapted to maintaining our health and safety.
Over time, our reason put more and more trust in the ego, and we allowed
our leaders to impinge on areas of life where it was not needed. This
created an illusion in man, which was useless in situations of survival—a
self- image. Reason next bestowed upon this illusion a secondary fiction—
that the ego had the ability to reason its own usefulness, which was to
interject self-interest into what was really happening."
At her normal pace, she said, "In our time, every member of their
culture is taught the illusion of their ego‘s independent power, through the
nature of the acts they experience and witness in others. But the reality
remains; the ego doesn‘t think. Instead of just keeping us safe, it responds
