DAKINI 5D: WISDOM FLAMES
PROLOGUE
“There are many who wish to gain enlightenment in a man’s form, and there are but few who wish to work for the welfare of sentient beings in a female form. Therefore may I, in a female body, work for the welfare of beings.” -Tara, Goddess of Compassion
“..those who cultivate the inner wisdom Dakini, the root Dakini, progress towards becoming the supreme Sky Dancer, incomprehensible feminine wisdom, the lover without motive.” -Trinley Norbu
“Who run this world?.. GIRLS!” -Beyonce
Chapter One: The End
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 11:10 pm, June 21st, 2018
This was the moment. It had all been leading to this.
Just hang on a little longer!
The howling wind stung her ears as Jolie craned her head to get a better view while struggling to keep a firm grip, hoping to see how much “a little longer” would be. Her eyes widened in disbelief despite the pain coursing through her, at the awesome sight of the auroral blanket of nearly blinding, phantasmic light infusing the night sky over Smithport Bay, casting a neon-bright glow over the entire seaside village. “Oh, God! Almost there, just hang on!” Jolie commanded herself, grunting from the strain and praying that she was right. She used every ounce of her strength to clutch onto the massive, vibrating crystal with her small, painfully fatigued, hands. The stormy waves crashed powerfully on the craggy rocks forming the natural seawall of the harbor more than seventy feet below her. Jolie’s arms were outstretched above her and filled to capacity with the sleek pulsating quartz. Her fingers screamed to let go but Jolie only squeezed harder. “Pain is only a feeling,” she repeated like a mantra, convincing herself, and slowing her breathing to intensify her will. Jolie’s recently trimmed-down physique dangled precariously from the huge stone, her battered body whipping forward and back in the ferocious cross winds caused by the solar storm. She felt her body dragging her down, like rope stretched taut by the weight of an anvil.
Jolie knew she was moments from her breaking point. Her dead mother’s face, with loving eyes and knowing smile, flashed briefly before her, encased within a tremendous flash of lightning. An ear-splitting crash of thunder immediately followed. She was a human lightning rod in the biggest storm of the century.
Focus, Jolie. Slow down. Be like a bat hanging from a limb too slight. She clamped her fingers to the crystal like vice grips. Strands of her auburn hair struck her eyes like darts made sharp by the salty sea wind. Half blinded, Jolie smiled. Employed humor. “Aaaaand cut! Stunt double, please!” Life-Strategy: keep them laughing. Even when “them” is just your waning self-will. Her short snort of laughter turned into an agonized grunt as streaks of white-hot pain shot up Jolie’s arms.
This was it. Splat. She wasn’t going to make it.
...
Minutes before, Jolie had thrown herself out of the circular cupola window atop the widow’s peak of Smith Mansion, the colossal 18th Century sea captain’s victorian that had kept watch over Smithport Bay for three centuries. Now, like a misfit masthead, she was hanging from the super-conducting crystal oscillator built by her best friend, Dr. Rima Asil Alfassi, a twenty-two year old female Tesla. A brilliant-mad scientist, Syrian national and recent MIT double doctorate recipient. She preferred to be called Minxx.
Minxx designed the crystal oscillator to utilize universal free energy, one aspect of which is called scalar waves, which continually course through the earth and its atmosphere and can then be amplified exponentially to be directed or applied in a multiplicity of uses. One application, Minxx’s passion behind her invention, was to create a free energy stream to power entire towns or cities. But tonight, the oscillator was programmed with one directive only: create an energetic frequency bridge to stabilize the inter-dimensional portal that would open at precisely 11:12 pm on June 21st, 2018, during the total lunar eclipse, during one of the greatest solar storms ever recorded in human history. At that moment, light-energy transmissions would cascade into the earth’s atmosphere, activating a complete dimensional planetary shift.
And it’s freaking 11:11!
Jolie began counting down aloud from sixty as if to force fate not to throw her to her death and thereby cock up the evolution of the entire planet. It hadn’t been in the plan that she use her own body as a projectile to alter the direction of the oscillator’s focussed beam. That nifty number had been Jolie’s on-the-fly, MacGyver-esque maneuver to shift the direction of the super-conductor after the solar storms knocked out the town’s electricity, rendering the positioning mechanism supporting the oscillator useless. Why would Minxx attach a free energy device onto on on old-people’s-type 110 volt scooter! She’d have been better off wheeling the thing around on her nephew’s rusty red-flyer wagon! Now, Jolie was stuck, as they say, like Chuck, with no idea what her next move would be.
29, 28, 27, 26 “Next move: a really long fall,” Jolie thought, joking even now when her life was literally hanging in the balance. 19,18,17,16....
A forceful gale whipped up then and nearly tore Jolie down. She felt her fingers slip dangerously, only the very tips barely gripping above the sixty degree cut in the quartz that gave her just a modicum of purchase. 10,9,8,7...
Knowing her time was up, that this was it, a calm descended over Jolie. A strange peace. Acceptance. The proverbial end.
With renewed strength and a strange ease, Jolie twisted round to marvel at the majestic, cosmic glow bedazzling all of space as far as she could see, a glorious celestial symphony of psychedelic colors, growing in almost unbearable intensity, that made the Northern Lights pale in comparison.
The sky opened up. 5,4...
A vertical tunnel, like the inside of a blinding rainbow appeared. 3, 2…
Jolie surrendered completely, in that moment, to whatever would happen next.
CHAPTER TWO: The Mother
Central Tibet, Summer Solstice, 1054 AD
Bumcham awoke feeling a bliss she had never known before. Joy was bubbling inside her as she peered through her bedroom window at the permeating soft light of dawn. She caught a re- flection of herself in the glass where the sun’s rays refracted, and saw that she looked refreshingly youthful, as if many of her 48 years had dropped away overnight. Bumcham’s long hair, which used to be her one prideful weakness in feeling reverence for her looks, appeared renewed, the gray wiry strands that had sprouted up over the past few years were gone, and the silken texture and raven-blackness, so black it seemed to absorb all the light in a room and spin it into shining ebony, was restored. She started, shocked to see the unexplanable age-regression in her appearance.
Then she remembered the dream.
A myriad of Dakinis had visited Bumcham in the night. She had lain with her husband, the kind and strong Chokyi Dawa, the generous chief of their village, in the hours long after the stars had appeared in the mid-summer sky. It was the night of the fourth full lunar eclipse, the rarest Blood Moon, and their union had been blissful. Memories of their loving embraces lingered in her mind’s eye and then Bumcham’s inner eye alighted on a frightful figure, a powerful blue-black Dakini, towering over her, at the foot of her bed, with piercing black eyes locked onto her own. An electric shiver shot down her spine. Long-adored, revered and respectfully feared in her Buddhist religion, Dakinis were known as the sky-goers, magnificent female spirits responsible for shaping and revealing human destiny, appearing in often terrible forms to give messages and guidance to those who’ve taken the Bodhisattva Vow to commit themselves to human liberation, woven into the progressive spiritual path of the world.
Bumcham’s dream began unfolding before her, showing her once again the fate she had formed in her union with Chokyi the night before. First there were the four white Dakinis who bathed her from head to toe from the vases they carried containing the primordial elixir. The nectar smelled like the sweetest ambrosia and made Bumcham’s skin tingle warmly. Twenty-one Dakinis followed the four harbingers, seven each of red, green, and golden yellow hues. They brought Bumcham offerings of indescribable bouquets made of pure light and asked her to be their gateway into the world. With this Bumcham was sated beyond any desire she’d ever known.
And then She appeared.
The wrathful, black Dakini, emanating a deep blue aura the color of dusk on the night of the New Moon, appeared before Bumcham wielding a golden crook’t knife in her right hand wearing the bone ornaments of the demon realms, showing her to be devoid of ego or attachment. The wrathful one was accompanied by four attendant Dakinis, their bodies sapphire blue, carrying bowls fashioned from the skulls of ancient kings and queens. Each of these stood at the four points of Bumcham’s body, north, south, east and west. She was no longer in her bed but instead seemed to float in thin air, enveloped by a pleasant mist. The black Dakini rose above her then, spectral, omniscient, and reached her stainless fingers inside Bumcham’s chest, taking hold of her beating heart. The dark goddess sent thought forms to Bumcham, the Dakini’s voice reverberating through her mind. “Strong, committed, woman of faith, Bumcham Dawa, I am here to devour your ignorance and aversion and transform you into a perfected vessel for our beloved avatar.” The Dakini lifted Bumcham’s heart to her own chest and then pierced it with the crook’t knife, bleeding the organ’s crimson fluid into the four skull cups held by the attending Dakinis, anchoring the four directions of Bumcham’s levitating body. Each of them drank a ritual sip and then the dark Dakini raised a sacred conch shell to her mouth and blew a powerful trumpeting bellow, sounding like an elephant in battle, changing the future of planet Earth with her breath. The fierce spirit placed the sacred shell into Bumcham’s chest then, and said, “I give you the luminosity of the Pure Lands, a rainbow bridge to the Dakini realms.” A bright ray of ethereal light, all of the colors of the rainbow held within it, streamed forth from the Dakini’s heart then and illuminated Bumcham’s womb, moved up her spine, and shimmered in the space between her eyes, her third eye, the divine inner eye connecting Bumcham to the Infinite. Pure love coursed through Bumcham. The sapphire glow of the four attendants intensified and shown brilliantly into Bumcham’s body. Then, each Dakini dissolved, east, south, west, north, absorbed into the blue black goddess. With a piercing last glance into Bumcham’s wide eyes, the wrathful creatrix dissolved herself into light and was gone.
...
Realizing the auspiciousness of her dream, Bumcham moved to her dressing table and began brushing her newly luxuriant hair. Did this miracle truly happen? Did the benevolent Dakini rejuvenate her in body, fortify her spirit and select her to be the mother of an enlightened one? Her thoughts were aglow with wonder, her heart over-flowed with joy. Bumcham had increased her practices in the last months, offering her energy, time and love to the sacred rituals, and to furthering the health, happiness and prosperity of the villagers within her husband’s protected territory, giving her help unconditionally wherever she was needed. Bumcham prayed to remain humble for the sacred task entrusted to her: to birth a child chosen by the holy sky-goers, the Dakinis, to further the enlightenment and liberation of the human race.
Nine months later, during the third month of the sheep year, the day of the full moon, in the village of Tsomer, the Lower Tamshod in Ei Gangwa of Lapchi, Central Tibet, Machig Labdron, enlightened girl child, prophesied by the incarnated 2nd Buddha, Padmasambhava, was born.
CHAPTER THREE: The Adept
Central Tibet, Winter Solstice, 1070 AD
“The origin of all demons is in mind itself.” - Machig Labdron
“Confess your hidden faults.
Approach what you find repulsive….
Go to the places that scare you.” - Machig Labdrön
“Right leg extended, left bent, encompassed by joy, annihilating hosts of enemies.” - Tara Yulle Gyalma
The black starless sky was dense and dark, enveloping Machig with dreadful hissing whispers. Standing in the dancing posture, she poised herself in the eye of the mandala laid out on the barren circle of clay-packed earth, amongst loose shale and piles of human bones. The bones were picked clean by the vultures who fed on the corpses offered in the hallowed Tibetan sky burial tradition of her people.
The bowl of earth under her feet formed a snaking sinew that connected four sacred peaks rising from the lower summit of Copper Mountain and piercing the endless tapestry of space with their thick quartz veins. As Machig sunk deeper into a meditative state, a bright spark of hope illuminated her from within. “If I can sustain the dance, the radiance will fill me,” she affirmed, resolutely, having performed this ceremony thousands of times now, on black nights just like this one. Though she was still so young in years, Machig’s dedication and tenacity in her devotion to the practice of the demon-feeding ritual called Chod and the accompanying dance called Cham, had rewarded her with ancient, yet timeless, wisdom that even the spiritual leaders in the monastery where she lived did not possess. Surrounding her were the majestic spires of the towering peaks, jutting up like the iron ribs of an unconquerable beast, and she was in the copper belly, unarmed, and ready to offer herself as food to the ever-hungry demons of the night.
...
Machig stood poised at the ready, her ritual knife held high with her right hand, the razor-sharp blade intent to cut away all distractions. “Evil distracts,” Machig whispered, raising the knife into position above her head. She bent her right leg at the knee, keeping her left leg outstretched at the ready, demonstrating her balance and control. Fiercely, she focussed.
And then it happened.
Blazing flames erupted as if lit by pools of oil, dancing all around her. More intensely this time than ever before. There was power in this night. In this ceremony. In this initiation.
The flames spread rapidly, encircling the girl completely. With her left hand, Machig cradled a cup to her belly filled with a thick red liquid, and remembered her best friend, Chotso.
...
Chotso had died in child birth thirteen weeks prior, herself only a child of fifteen.
“Please, Machig, please, my friend!” Chotso had implored her in the delirium before her death, gripping Machig's hands with such strength, that she'd lost all feeling in her fingertips. As Chotso lay on grass mats soaked with her own feverish sweat, with blood and the fluids of her womb seeping out beneath her torso in ever-widening pools of red, she demanded, “Do not let my life be a waste! Or the life of the little one who’s killed me! I beg of you!" Tears streamed from Machig's eyes. Chotso could see the fear in them. "Machig, you must be brave! I give you permission, as your best friend on this earth. Use me! And then I will be with you, always, don't you see?" Chotso collapsed into unconsciousness then, and Machig moaned with grief, doubling over her friend's dying body. She could feel Chotso's essence leaving for the Bardo.
Chotso reeled then, groaning with supreme effort, and shook Machig one last time, grabbing her arms forcefully with the strength only a death-grip can employ, “Take my body, please, you are my best friend! It is all I have to offer you now. I know you understand. Please. Let me give you the only sacred thing I have left to give, for the benefit of all beings. And for you, dear friend, my truest heart. Let our deaths serve the highest purpose.”
Her voice gave in to a guttural rattle then and Machig broke down in sobs, burying her face in Chotso’s silken black hair, pleading for her to stay, to please not die! She needed her, more than anything else in this world! When she rose her head, Chotso was lifeless. Her eyes still open, but vacant now. A slight ephemeral smile fading from her paling lips. The sweat of fever disappeared within seconds. Chotso, the only friend Machig had ever truly trusted. Her sister, her confidante, was gone. One thing was certain, she would not let her friend’s dying wishes go unheeded.
...
The skull cup had been fashioned in perilous secret. Machig had remained at the charnel ground long after Chotso’s body had been unceremoniously dumped for the vultures, her pregnancy outside of wedlock deeming her friend unfit for a religious burial. Using her ritual knife, a traditional butcher’s trigug, Machig fulfilled her friend’s last wishes, taking her right femur to fashion into a kangling horn, the skin of her torso for the heads of her sacred drum, her finger bones for her ritual belt, and, most difficult, the crown of her skull for her ritual bowl. Then she enacted the last rites herself, honoring her friend’s life, sitting for many sleepless days to speak the sacred words of the Tibetan Phowa practice in order to propel Chotso through the Bardo, the tricky realm of the-in-between, and past the deceptive ring-pass-not of reincarnation, where the great serpent stretches long round and stands guard, biting its own tail. That snake did not confuse Chotso. Machig guided her through all deceptions and delivered her, expertly, to the realm of the Pure Lands.
The sacred liquid, extracted and then stored in a clay pot with several pieces of silver for preservation, was hidden in a hole dug underneath Machig’s threadbare meditation mats, the preservation of the holy fluid tended to daily, in her hut made of yak and reindeerhyde, bound to branches on frigid ground and camouflaged in the indigenous ways in a dense forest abutting the grounds of the monastery. These were the only traditions she could offer her friend. Chotso’s death propelled Machig in her practice and devotion. She would make the spiritual cull, rouse attention from the lazy Gods, awaken them from their bliss-simulation stupor. Machig's perfect intention, like the sacred mountain at who’s feet she dwelled, could not be moved.
...
The beguiling flames engulfed Machig, transforming the extreme bitter cold of the mountaintop, on the winter solstice, the eve of Losar, Tibetan New Year, into a merciful warmth. Phantasmic, the inter-dimensional flames infused the ritual bowl with an eerie glow, illuminating this in-between place of the Chod, the cutting of all attachments to this seemingly physical world called Samsara, where all beings were born into suffering.
Machig set down the skull cup and knife. She picked up her drum and ritual bell. She steadily began to execute the Chod ritual, her right hand rotating at the wrist to swivel the damaru, the Chod drum, her left hand methodically swinging the tibetan bell, the drilbu, forward and back, creating the forlorn melody that proclaims emptiness, summoning the hoards of terrifying demons that would soon swarm the adept, all alone in this frightful charnel ground.
Machig’s damaru had become her closest companion, holding the strength of her dharma, her commitment to the Path of Liberation. The striking of bone on drum skin proclaimed Machig’s fearlessness in her solitary practice and her fierce determination to single handedly liberate all beings from their captive state of servitude and fear, the prison called Samasara, the Gods for wardens, the Demons their watchful prison guards. These dual forces harnessed human suffering as yokes on teams of oxen and endlessly fueled their collective worlds of idleness, excess, and perversion with this stolen power, this inversion of human will infinitely imploding.
As the Chod intensified, the powerful vibrations of the bell and the drum sent waves of electricity coursing through young Machig, her body becoming one with sound, the realm of the shape-shifters. She spoke the sacred words then. As she chanted, a mist began to form. It was chilling and penetrating, punctuating the wisdom flames with its bitter vapor. This was the opposing force, the demon realm, responding to Machig’s powerful invocation. The drum beats accelerated, the hypnotic rhythm a persistent beckoning. The bell toned a tocsin, a warning signal, commanding the demons to arrive, to feast, to accept the offering of her body as food.
The cosmic bridge was forming. Machig’s strong legs, her calves as hard as the pounded earth beneath her feet, began to itch. The blood was throbbing in her veins. She remained steady and firm in the ritual posture. Her right leg was bent at the knee and held high, her left leg a firm, solid pillar, at the ready for the feasting dance. Forever ready. She would give them her best offering so far. She knew the words like she knew her breath, she felt the postures like her own skin, and she committed her indestructible spirit fully to this pivotal ritual, the long-awaited moment of self-sacrifice. Without self-importance, Machig knew her value to the ravenous demons. She had increased her worth with her incomparable, ceaseless dedication, unparalleled skill, and complete perfection of the sacred practice. Her commitment was total.
Kali Yuga, the name for the current aeon, or 26,000 year cycle of planet Earth, was nearing its end. If the demons and gods were placated, humanity would be enlightened, altogether, all beings fully liberated. Suffering, domination, poverty and pain would finally end, forever. With the aeon winding down to its end, it was critical that Machig do the work continuously, without pause, dedicating her whole life, and the next, and the next, in order to activate the Great Shift in vibration at the moment of The Liberation, fast-approaching, racing towards her, in only ten short centuries' time.
The fervor of the Chod increased as Machig left the earth plane and entered into the unseen realms. Surrounding her on all sides were grotesque monsters intent on devouring her very soul. She danced the Cham vigorously, the ritual steps blurring into hot rainbow flames, green, yellow, blue and red. As she twirled widdershins, Machig saw the eyes of those she had invited to the feast. Demons. Red, hideous, with faces so disturbing, it was nearly unbearable to behold them. They clawed at her form, exposing horror after horror in her mind’s eye. Machig did not even flinch. She had the unyielding courage of ten thousand warriors and the perfect composure of an empress.
The energy was exploding. The feeding bursting like the majestic fireworks on Losar, generating wisdom flames all the way up to the Pure Lands, the all powerful heavens themselves. The portal was opening. Soon Machig would be able to step through the gates of space and meet the Wisdom Dakinis to receive their instructions.
The demons became dull with satiation, eclipsed by the elixir of Machig’s self-sacrifice. A golden glow descended. Enveloping Machig and expanding outward, whipping around and then blazing upward again, like a shooting star in reverse. A blinding glare expanded across the heavens so bright, it was later said by the elders that it could be seen from every mountainside village in the province. Copper Mountain, with its rib like spires and craggy outcroppings, was the place between the worlds, the holy center for all the truth seekers of the Indus River Valley, high in the Himalayan Mountains.
As the golden, electric flames ascended into the vast night sky of space, a circular beam, fifty meters across, formed a tunnel of lightening and continued rising. Higher. Higher still. Machig stood at its center, no longer aware of the flames, completely absorbed in the task of supplication. The engorged demons, now blissfully sated, evaporated into emptiness and the brilliant, iridescent tunnel of light encircling the spinning girl was anchored.
With zero hesitation, Machig Labdron, most beloved servant of the Wisdom Dakinis, commanded into being two hundred years prior by the second incarnated Buddha, the masterful Padmasambhava, entered the sacred wormhole. In the next instant, all of Copper Mountain was wrapped in blackness.
CHAPTER FOUR: The Archeologist
Western Himalayas, Tibet,
June 21, 2012 11:12 pm
Marlese attached her night vision binoculars to her head-gear mount and quickly pulled the fitted, day-glow orange hood of her Absolute Zero high altitude climbing suit back over her head. Auspiciously, the moon was full on the Summer Solstice, the longest night of the year, and her Luna Optics GEN-1 goggles fulfilled their promise of 450 meters viewing distance with 5X magnification. She grinned widely at the amazingly clear view of the pure white triangular pin- nacle in the distant valley below, its proportions perfectly geometrically precise. Her meager salary as Dr. Marlese McLeod, professor of Archeology in the School of Humanities at the University of Glasgow, didn’t allow for many luxuries in her field work, but the night-vision binocs were essential, so she’d picked them up on eBay, on the cheap. Even after countless successful, though controversial, digs, Marlese, a well-published, even notorious researcher in her field, was nearly blackballed by the ridiculously rigid, highly censored, traditional Archeologists and their propagandist, elite academic journals. The more controversial her discoveries became, casting doubt on the accepted historical timelines of ancient history, the harder it was to find funding for her increasingly expensive expeditions to some of the least accessible places on earth, like her current trek through the high Himalayas. So, with careful handling, Marlese hoped these binocs and her $1200 alpine climbing suit would last through the next decade of far flung adventures. Not knowing what they might find ahead, never having made it this close before, Marlese came prepared to go dark for this last leg of the journey. The rest of her party, all of them Tibetan nomads and sherpas, had no need for for such technology and, in fact, did not even use simple flashlights or headlamps, preferring the ambient night light, to which their native eyes naturally adjusted.
Glimmers of moonlight danced off the sleek mountainside and Marlese peered intently through the eerie green glare of her goggles. Beside her on the steep, icy slope, her small crew of sherpas and assistants moved deftly, and murmured among themselves in Tibetan, gesturing towards the formidable, smaller white peak pointing up from the valley towards which they were quickly descending. Full moon or no, it was unnatural for the reflective sheen to be so remarkably bright at this time of night.
Marlese found the glare to be too harsh with the night binocs and flipped them upward quickly, pushing her hood to the back of her head. The uncanny, reflective brightness could be the beacon signaling them toward their long sought-after treasure. A treasure entirely covered with camouflaging snow for fifty weeks of the year. If she’d calculated correctly, the moonlight wasn’t reflecting off of snow or ice. It was dancing on smooth stone. And not just stone but sheer crystal. White quartz crystal as described and foretold by the great White Lady herself, Yeshe Tsogyal, twin flame to the second incarnate Buddha, Padmasambhava, twelve hundred years ago. Tsogyal’s writings were the primary research material Marlese had scoured in order to locate the precise location she’d been hunting all these years.
For more than 1500 years, western explorers and merchants traveling along the ancient trading route, The Silk Road, as it passed through Eastern Tibet from China, had reported awesome accounts of a fabled white pyramid, its surface as smooth as the finest cut diamond, perfect in form, rising 1,000 meters from the floor of a mysterious, sequestered Himalayan valley, its rumored height making it the tallest pyramid on Earth. It’s capstone, made from smooth white quartz, was said to be expertly crafted from a single mammoth crystal removed from the bowels of the earth underneath a desert plain in a fabled foreign land on the other side of the world, the location of which was said to be deliberately cloaked by the Protectors themselves, the wrathful gods of terrifying appearance, who embody compassion and safeguard Buddhist knowledge and teachings. Furthermore, the stories of the pyramid were whispered only in secrecy, said to be forbidden knowledge, and tales of curses striking down those with loose lips or in whom too much curiosity abounded. Only in the last century had meticulous researchers, with access to 20th and now 21st century technology, been able to link the location with ancient Buddhist descriptions of the entrance to Shambhala, the hidden paradise accessible only to mystics and adepts. Sacred relics were said to have been placed in the pyramid by Yeshi Tsogyal, at the behest of her beloved Padmasambhava, who flew there upon her back, when she took form of Vyaghramukhi, the red-skinned, tiger headed Dakini. These relics, called termas, or mind treasures, were only to be discovered by pre-destined tertons, spiritual treasure-finders, at the dawn of a new Yuga, a future Golden Age. Marlese was utterly magnetized to the search, completely hooked, curses be damned. And now they might finally know if the relics, maybe even the paradisical world of Shambhala, whispered from teacher to adept in an unbroken chain throughout the centuries, truly existed.
After a dozen summer solstice expeditions across the span of nearly two decades and thou- sands of hours of tireless searching, could it be that she’d finally found it?! Marlese felt a chill thrill though her. If they found what they’d been searching for, the life-changing prophecies known by only a select few would be fulfilled in six months’ time, on December 21, 2012, the day of the great planetary Shift, as foretold by ancients on both sides of the world.
A single tear slipped down Marlese’s sub-zero, olive-hued cheek, her Mediterranean genes at odds with the bitter cold of the high altitudes, the droplet freezing mid-way to her prominent chin. She almost couldn’t believe it. But she couldn’t deny what she was seeing. She’d discovered the Great White Temple!
And then it happened.
Tremendous rumbling shook the frozen ground underneath beneath her. Hundreds of feet above her, the colossal mountain roared in protest. Below the thundering din, a deep rever- berating chime pierced the explorers ears, rippling through them in growing waves of intensity. From within the White Pyramid, a tocsin, ascending in pitch, saturated the entire party in al- chemical sound, immobilizing them within the gong’s highly charged electromagnetic field.
No one could move an inch. But the avalanche was fast approaching.
Marlene stood mesmerized, transfixed. She knew that in a few short moments she and her entire crew would be crushed under a million tons of snow and ice that was barreling towards them at two hundred miles an hour, gaining speed, mass, and momentum as the gong’s frequency grew higher, causing a vibrational force of resonance that was splitting off the weaker layers of submerged snow pack from the mountainside and dragging all the top layers with it in an unstoppable white river of destruction. Marlese willed herself to move, to run, to scream, to grab her emergency gear, but the plasma force-field paralyzed her, rearranged her, hijacked her like some unholy, euphonious body snatcher. Then she heard Gyamuk, her lead guide’s voice, rising impossibly above the pandemonium, commanding the unseen elements with Tibetan mantra, in syllables foreign to Marlese. He was somehow standing beside her then- how was he able to move?- and his arms were extended, his long thin index fingers exposed to the frigid cold and pointing straight towards the glowing pyramid, the rest of his fingers curled back to clutch his thumbs.
Gyamuk bellowed the protective syllables and executed the Vajra Thunderbolt Mudra with perfect precision. The wrathful Protector deities of the White Pyramid obeyed his masterful command and released him from the gong’s vibrational hold. He whirled around to face Marlese, who stared past him in terror, as the hurricane force winds of the avalanche splintered a copse of Himalayan firs only thirty yards above them. With a spin of his hands and another set of secret words, Gyamuk cast Marlese up into the air, hurtling her above the roaring wind, and instructing her, from inside her mind, to prepare for impact.
“You know what you must do, fellow Initiate. Do not fail our beloved Lama. Complete the mission at all costs.”
Looking like an extreme-sports still-frame, suspended above the rushing torrent of snow and ice, Marlese came to and reached back for her survival skis, yanking them off the sides of her Float 30 Backcountry Access pack, which was designed with a rip-cord triggered avalanche airbag. Any second now she was going to need it.
But not yet. The timing had to be perfect.
And then the icey tidal wave swallowed her dear friend Gyamuk and their entire expedition team in a blinding white torrent.
Marlese free-fell into the raging river of snow, the faster moving ice spinning her into a downhill position, her poles striking at the rushing mass to keep her from going under. For the moment she was on the top layer and she fought her way into a 45 degree ski angle, the best position for gaining speed sideways, in hopes that she might escape the avalanche’s reach. Her lungs were collapsing from the stress of the effort at such a high altitude. Her strength was failing fast. In seconds, she, too, would go under.
“Pull the cord!” Gyamuk commanded Marlese inside her mind. “Now!”
She did it. The air bag released.
The day-glo orange balloon enveloped her head and buoyed her atop the slide, but the layers of snowpack kept coming so fast that even the state-of-the-art M.A.S.S. unit could not keep Marlese above the torrent. She braced for submersion, her whole body pummeled by the cataclysm, and fought to protect her face with her bent arms to create a meager air pocket.
Blackness. The roar of the tumult fading. Burial.
Then silence, save for the pulsing tone of her smart-beacon, like the steady beep of an EKG monitor.
Marlese wished she were lying prone, oxygen mask in place, electrodes attached to her safe, alive body, in the ICU of any hospital, anywhere. But there would be no rescue team equipped with avalanche transceiver locators to receive her signal and carbon probes to pinpoint her suffocating body. There was no one. She had watched them all die.
Marlese thought of Gyamuk, her dear friend, guide and teacher who had made the supreme sacrifice so that she might succeed. She had failed him and the mission entrusted to them by Lama Tsogyal. Now, the sacred relics would not be found in time.
But even worse, the thing that broke her slowing, smothered heart in two...
“Jolie,” she whispered, the stale air recycling into her desperate lungs, "I'm sorry."
As Marlese drifted into unconsciousness, the last words she uttered were barely audible between agonized gasps: "my beautiful girl...forgive me."
END PROLOGUE