Yewell was silent for the entirety of the ride back to my house. I didn’t mind. There was a comfort in just having him by my side. Though I’d relished the time alone, being in his company made me feel as if I was closer to reaching my goal.
As he sat silently, I took the opportunity to scan the streets, soaking in all that Sarasota had to offer as well as noticing what it needed. Again I noticed how many shops and restaurants were closing down. I noticed how many homes were for sale. It seemed in many ways that the entire town was slowly being packed up and shipped somewhere else leaving only the shells of buildings behind as some sort of mausoleums to the vibrant life that once was.
Nevertheless, Sarasota wasn’t dead yet, and there were still plenty of establishments open for businesses, as well as plenty of homes that did not feature realty signs in the front lawns. As my attention drifted from the closures and the foreclosures to the open signs and the homesteads, I found a new vigor to my purpose and wanted more than anything to do what I could to keep my town alive and prosperous.
“What’s next?” I asked him when we arrived back at my place.
“You tell me,” he said. “You’re the one writing the book.”
“Yeah, but it’s about what you’re doing.”
“You’re the one doing it. We’re just here to inspire.”
“Well then inspire me.”
Yewell took a seat and looked at me with a cocked head. “Do you know how long it takes for Jupiter to make its orbit around the sun?”
“Excuse me?”
“Jupiter. It’s a big, old planet. The biggest one in your universe. It revolves around the sun, just like your planet.”
`’I know what it is. What does that have to do with anything?”
“How long does it take for it to move around the sun one time?” he asked again.
“I don’t know. A year?”
“Close,” he smiled. “Eleven point eight six years.”
“Wow,” I said in mock amazement. “So? What’s your point?”
“Guess how long, and I’m assuming at this point that it’s going to have to be a guess, guess how long it takes for Neptune to fulfill an orbit?”
“I don’t know. Twenty-two years?”
“One hundred sixty four point eight years.”
“Again I say, Wow. What’s your point?”
“The point, my impetuous friend, is that revolutions take time.”
“Is that what this is? A revolution?”
“Everything is a revolution, Steve. Remember, the wheels go round and round.
“So I’m just supposed to wait for things to happen.”
Yewell shook his head. “You’re never supposed to just do anything. At any given time you’re doing a number of things, many of them without you even realizing it. Your five senses alone assure that in each moment you’re seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling even though the levels may be so low that you may not even realize it. And then you’re also breathing, digesting, circulating, et cetera. There’s hardly an end to all of the things you can do in a given moment, so you can hardly say that you just do anything.”
“I’m a very complex organism. Got it. Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I sat down and faced him.
“So in addition to breathing, blinking, and letting my heart beat, shall I wait for the rest of the world to do its part?”
“Yes and no, but mostly yes.”
“I thought you were supposed to be helping me here?”
“And I thought you were going to be a little less helpless.”
“Sorry. I’m just a little anxious, I guess.”
“I gathered that.”
“It’s just that I’m jazzed about this now. You know? I mean, I want to do my part.”
“And sometimes your part is waiting.”
“So I should just be patient.”
“Not just.”
“Fine. I should be patient.”
“And…?”
“And?” I said. “And what?”
“Keep rolling along.”
“Huh?”
“We’re dealing with revolutions, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so picture a wheel,” he said. “How much of a wheel is active?”
“All of it.”
“How much of a wheel is reactive?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Follow the wheel. Where’s the reaction?”
I considered the moving wheel, the spokes that turned from the axle, expanding out to the circumference, the rim that propels it.
“The bottom,” I said. “Where the rubber meets the road.”
“And what is the rest of the wheel doing?”
I followed the wheel around in my head. “Actively waiting?”
“Exactly. Your reaction to the world is only a minor part of your actual revolution. The majority of your energy is actually focused on the revolution itself, not just the reaction to the external world.”
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“Are you familiar with Hinduism?” he asked.
“The people with the blue gods?” I said.
“The gods aren’t blue, only the depictions are.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference is enormous,” he explained. “Remember when I told you that humans only use ten percent of their brains? That ten percent is used to create the depictions of what you understand as God, be it one God or many. A rendering created by ten percent of a mind that has such a limited understanding of the depths and breadths of the universe as a whole can hardly be compared to the grandeur of what God really is.”
“So there really is a God?”
Yewell smiled. “What do you think?”
“I’d like to believe there’s a God.”
“Then believe that. May I continue?”
“Of course. You were saying something about the Hindus.”
“The Hindus,” Yewell went on “speak of three types of energies called Gunas. They are the Sattwa, the Tamas, and the Rajas. The Sattwa is what is to be realized, it is the purity we look for in each aspect of our lives, and it is the essence of our highest being. The Tamas is the obstacle that keeps us from reaching your objective. It is the crudeness of life that obscures your goal. The Rajas is the power by which you remove Tamas to reach Sattwa. It is your dynamism and passion, your ability to make your goals manifest. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” I said. “There’s our goal, our obstacle, and our passion, right?”
“Exactly. Now let me show you something.”
Yewell rose from his seat and approached my chair. He spun it ever so slightly, and it came to a stop when I felt his large hands as they grasped my shoulders. Though my chair stopped moving, I watched as my desk continued moving in front of me.
This is an excerpt from How to Survive an Estralarian Mind Meld. Come back weekly for the next part or order your copy in ebook or paperback today!
