…I was born in tengulih, a village that was part of the dhinseh community in the kaikune deserts. Tengulih was a village that thrived with the commerce of the jaunt fruits, the holy weeds of Guanjama. For countless generations our village had mastered the growth and production of this holy plant, and in this way we had bocame a rich and flourishing community. A village that prospered economically because of its fame as great manufacturers of hassiss, mix of holy plant pollen and oil which was made compact and traded with other villages and wandering groups.

Nitsabe and I lived our lives inseparable of each other. We would usually sit together and exchange our words and ideas for hours, even days on end. Nitsabe could really get my thoughts developing, he was so wise so young, and so full of vigorous life. Together we dreamt a lot of what was to come and what we had planned for it to be. In those days, in that culture of ours, time was used in a very relaxed fashion, we did much resting and mind wandering, spending much of our time in idle conversation and pondering. This was the way of the hassiss smokers of tengulih. Our customary attitude was a very passive one and observation was a skill much trained for it was the most desirable of attributes to us. We spared great deference and had much reverence for those that could see well into things.

There was a cave near the ocean which was a good walk from tengulih which nitsabe and I visited daily. Everyday we would sit there in this cave that faced the sea and smoke together, letting our minds wonder into the imaginary, both happy and thankful simply to be there sharing in each others company. We lived on opposite sides of our village, so daily one of us would, in his turn, pass by the market and pick up some herbs while the other would take the food and wait at the cave.

One fine morning, it was my turn, and as I walked the market to look for some hassiss to take to the cave that day, I spotted Feebii. Feebii was the most inspiring woman I had ever seen. I was immediately taken over by a feeling that I already knew her, but also with the certainty that I had never seen her before in this lifetime. She was selling herbs at a stand with her father. So I approached the stand. And as I came closer I noticed that she was staring at me. I could sense that she too shared the feeling that we knew each other from some other time, probably beyond this lifetime. I stopped at their stand and her father, suspicious that I had my eye on his daughter asked me what I wanted of their stand.

I asked for some of their best hassiss without unlocking my gaze from hers, and when her father had given it to me I paid him generously, still without unlocking my sight from that inspiring woman. As I finally turned around to go and meet mitzama I did so with the certainty that the episode between Feebii and myself had not yet ended. I was told by intuition that I had been presented a glimpse of the future and that I must prepare for this great love with enrichening experiences and lessons that were yet to come to me.  And slowly I walked to the cave immersed in her image.

Nitsabe and I spent that morning dazed, our minds wallowing up in smoke, both content with ourselves and each other in what seemed to us would be a great life-long companionship.

But it would prove to never be so.

That afternoon we ran out of hassis and nitsabe offered to go and get some more supplies because he wanted to take a glimpse of this angel I had told him about. He got up and said: ‘You stay, I go beisdes.’ It was a strange sounding thing to say to me for I believed that there was no need to say that, but I would soon learn that I was wrong. This was the last glimpse of eachother we would have in this lifetime.

Despite the faith and belief we sustained in our perpetual friendship, that day as nitsabe headed home from that cave to get some hassis, he was intercepted by the hashassassins who had come to the area to raid it of all its hassiss. The hashassassins had already set most of dhinseh on fire by then, robbing and pillaging, killing all in sight, and were headed to tengulih to finish off their work.

Nitsabe was slaughtered at encounter for the hashassassins were the brothers and sisters of death and would spare no one. They killed nitsabe and they then proceeded to head my way for in the distance they could see the smoke of our fire rise from the cave.

Yet something curious happened before they reached me.

Nitsabe returned to the cave before the hashassassins reached it. He seemed very much alive and in One peace when he arrived me, but before I could ask him why he was back so soon he spoke:

‘Beisdes, I have come to warn you, some hashassassins are coming your way and death is there with them. They intercepted me a while away from here and they have killed me. I am no longer alive my friend, I am here in spirit to warn you, for with death I came to an understanding of life as a whole that was inaccessible to me as a living, breathing being. I saw the general scheme and acknowledged that you are an important part of the possibilities of our kind. It is meant that I come to warn you. Be careful with them, their perspectives are dangerous and they can scar the soul with their overwhelming knowledge and experience of dark ways, yet with them is one that may help and lead you towards a path of extreme importance to us all.

Beisdes, I have sensed my part and importance in this life and it has been you to a great extent. I am content to have fulfilled what I set out with birth to do. What we have been through together holds great seeds of potential. Use them and become wise for it is your destiny to grow fast with spirit now.

When the hashassassins reach you, call after nae, for this is the name they call unto after they kill. Nae is the god of the hashassassins and it will be yours too for a time. It will help you if you are true to it. Call after nae and may they spare you.’

Nitsabe then disappeared into thin air and his words came to pass. I had no time even to consider what I had just been told, when the hashassassins arrived at the cave aiming to kill, waving their weapons around in the air and laughing like madmen. But as I called for nae they stopped in surprise, and gazed at me, incredulous. A few of them stepped off from their rides and asked me anxiously where from I knew of nae. They were the high priests of ghanjee.

‘Nae is the god I worship,’ I responded as if it were true to me, ‘Nae is the one and only god of hassiss, of high flight and high understanding. Under the protection of the nae spirit no real harm may come to me, only change in an unending life. If you are to do so, if you are to bring me change through death, you will only be doing it with nae’s consent for it is nae that in this world of hassiss exists as the overall spirit and spiritual. Nae is the point of view for people like myself.’

They nodded in agreement and looked around to each other for consent. To them these were words of truth and wisdom, and so they immediately made me one of theirs, and welcomed me in their midst. I jumped on the back of one of their horses and with them I rode and watched the hashassassins bring death to the village I was native of. With them I rode and watched the them bring death to villages I was not native of and with time I, as one of them brought death to any one who was unfortunate enough to cross our path. For some time I was trapped in their ways, as a confused slave of their perspective.

From the night of my first killing until the night I met Mitzama I was haunted by the screaming and agonizing voices of those I had murdered. I would often hear them shouting my name from the invisible in broad daylight, and at night I would fight for my life within continuous and consistent nightmares. I had become divided in two. I was a twin within. The darkness inside of me had grown to monstrous proportions overshadowing the light that lingered in my heart. I was always aware that the day of reckoning would come, because all that had happened to me would make no sense if I was to end up dead in battle or remain alive as a hashassassin. Nitzabe words and memory I had locked up so they would not be tarnished by my unconscious way of living, alongside Feebii's picture they were protected somewhere inside of me.

With time I became more aware that the cries that called my name came from within and not without. It was the real me that was calling my name in desperation. And this awakening certainty came to a culmination when I first saw Mitzama.

He was walking slowly around the campfire, muttering to himself. All the other hashassassins were ignoring his presence because they were all busy absorbed in their selves, but I was watching him with great interest for I had heard of him before. He was thought to be a great magician.

Mitzama walked slowly around and around the fire and I just kept watching him with each passing turn. But one turn, as he passed by me he stopped suddenly, and after a few moments frozen as if he were listening to an inner voice, he took a few steps back towards me. He bent down and looked me straight in the eyes, and then he spoke:

‘Up in smoke and headed to mars is the word metaphor we use to describe what we the hashassassins believe to be a person who has skipped dimensions.

Who believes in the blissful ignorance that he too is an accomplice to the overall harmony of things.

We say one is up in smoke and headed to mars when one knows so and the matter becomes obvious

One who’s thought behavior has been altered.

One is up in smoke when ones though no longer lingers in the common world, and is headed to mars to another plane of consciousness.’

Then he stood back up and left. He had voiced what I couldn’t phrase, what I wanted to hear with such a fervent yet silent desire.

That there was a way out, an escape from the madness I saw we all lived in.

They lived as a hidden community in the midst of the kaikune desert. They were a roaming community of men and women whom’s lives were based around the consumption of jaunt derivatives. With this as the foundation of their common experience there developed a common outlook between all of them. They believed in Nae, a god who taught them that life on earth was suffering and that there was no higher sense to be made of it. The only way to escape from this suffering was the intake of the jaunt power. It made their experience lighter and brought them closer to the higher place from which nae spoke down to them. It made life’s mishaps more tolerable and detached them from this confusing and inebriating reality. This was something the ghanjee high priests of the hashassasins taught them.

So generally they were all of a dark and reserved mood, experience being made a personal matter. Thus selfishness and aggression being strong components of their common behavioral makeup and tolerance a small one. Verbal communication was kept at a minimum, not much was said by anyone about anything really, they had little or no talk to share, nor were they even remotely interested in it. They simply did not allow others into themselves.

Thus the world of perspective was private, common interpretation being that the least others knew of you the more you would know of yourself, meaning the least others were able to influence you the more you would be you. The road is a personal one. If you did not give, they could not take. Let us not forget these were the greatest thieves and murderers of all times. They generally did not allow the frontiers of their private universe to be crossed and friends were none more than acquaintances. To explain ones own self to another self was seen as foolish for it was believed to lead to misinterpretation and trouble.

So communication was kept to the considered essential and as from the moment I was captured to the moment I arrived at the camp we lived in I was only ever approched by one individual with matters relating to the inner world. By Mitzama, the fool and the artist.

He was considered an eccentric fool, for his interaction with the holy weed brought a need for communication out in him, and he was considered an artist for his communication was an unique art of word weaving and poetry which he accompanied with incredibly descriptive movements of his body and a beautiful sincerity in his expression. He would stand and dance around the campfire singing and telling stories which explained his unique view of Nae and the world, and he was tolerated for it was known to even the most ignorant of us that he was a special one. Also, he was the oldest of all there, and everyone else believed that he was a powerful magician capable even of casting a spell on age and keeping it at bay. He was both respected and feared, although misunderstood and left to himself.

Mitzama the artist spoke to me as we first rode together, away from a village in flames. As I witnessed the pattern of life become death in nae’s arms, mitzama could see that I was distraught.

In a situation where all else pointed otherwise mitzama was the one hashassassin, the reaper of death that was to teach me of life and the immortality of things. He was to teach me of interpretation and meaning, of objective and of the power that nae shared with the ones that with it grew in evolution of spirit. He was the one that had reminded me of the blissful condition of child. As we rode away from a burning village one day mitzama spoke to me :

‘You know beisdes, as an early child one was a conscious accomplice of the world and all in it, and witness of the most important lesson it has to bring us, of spirit. We are unaware of it, but then we are listeners of nature, for everything that happens around us is not segmented into separate and individual manifestations of life, but limbs of the one and only moment, the present. The only moment that really exists to a cub is the now, and that is shaped to the focus in mind. If the cub is hungry or feels alone it cries because the world has become suffering and at that moment that is all that exists. But when it is happy it is purely happy, making of life pure bliss. I have understood this and with it grown beyond, for now I don’t feel suffering when I lack and happiness when I have.

These are double aspects, two sides of the very same center, where I stand. Thus I have seen a light that illuminates everything I see. With this in mind I ride with the hashassasins. I have mastered and focused that view, so when I am killing I am not affected by the pain or injustice I cause others for I am focused on something beyond. I am seeing the life that receives death and seeing the death that gives life simultaneously, without judgements or opinions on morality or sense. With the aid of nae I have come full circle to be as that child I was then, yet infinately more understanding. Let me tell you beisdes, to ride as a hashassassin is the lesson you need in this life.’

I became mitzama’s shadow, following him around everywhere, protected by his faith in that dark place we lived in. Listening to his every word with the intent of learning whatever meaning it embodied. I was probing him for the word that had made him so incredible, because I too wanted to see beyond the pain we caused and were a part of. I was already feeling an awakening within and was feeling many shallow and superficial aspects of my personality shedding and falling away. I was also finding a new love for life for I was coming to see the spirit in all of it. Something that didn’t die when we killed it.

Then one full moon night mitzama performed a rite of passage on me. He was initiating me into what he called the clan of the  light ones. When I asked about the others of the clan, and where they where, he pointed upwards to the clouds with the smile of one of who is a willing accomplice and told me:

‘They ride around up there. They are the ones that have transcended this stage. Those that have searched and found.’

Mitzama fed me a potion he had brewed. It was powerful and soon after I had drank some of it I fell to the ground oblivious to the world outside. I dove within.

I flew down a tunnel, rushing along inside of it for what seemed to be ages, until I saw a light that grew bigger and bigger up ahead.

I was suddenly outside again, standing on a field that extended as far as the eye could see. The sky was beautiful yet unreal. It seemed like it was sunrise, day, sunset and night at the same time. Light in places and dark in others, peppered in inspiring colors. To my far left, in the distance there was a mountain range that covered the whole of the horizon in sight. ‘I must be south of the kaikune,’ I thought to myself, ’for north there is only water and then the land of the white barbarians.’

At that moment I saw some dark outlines approaching from afar. As they drew closer I noticed that I could not tell their features or what they were wearing because they were dark. At first I thought it was the stretch between them and I that didn’t allow me to distinguish but pretty soon they were close and around me and I saw that they were made of black and had no features to tell. I grew scared. ‘These are your demons,’ I heard a voice speak in my head. ‘They have come for you. You are here to face them. Fight them beisdes, I will be here with you.’

Mitzama was the voice. With him present I felt invincible, although the current predicament was surreal and I had no clue on how to take on these figures, but I felt courageous and was well aware that this was a chance that the others at the camp had never seen, to defeat that which imprisons them as hashassasins. Hovering above the amorphous demons that surrounded me floated a prismatic body, quite opposite to the others. It shone and was dazzling to look at. All of a sudden I knew that that was nae, I was sure of it, and I realized that this whole situation, this battlefield and this fight, had been composed by nae. This was the test that would determine if nae would become my ally or the devil's weed.

I was inside myself, ready to fight for my being. And If I would lose I would want to die for I could no longer live if I was to be a slave to the same devil the others at the camp were, the self-serving ego.

At that moment I received a flash in my minds eye. It was the resurgence of a consciousness I had been part of eons before. I was suddenly aware of a pre-embryonic stage before even my very first of incarnations in this planet. I sensed the primordial oneness within, from the time before I knew this dual existence, when I was an awareness of the vastness of space.

This gave me strength for now I knew that it was where I came from and where I would go, and that to do so I had to cross all the trials and tribulations of this dimension which I had chosen to experience. So I turned around in a circle, looking at each of the demons in turn, inciting them to come for me.

One by one they came and one by one they perished. For from the moment when the first one leaped on to my face I instinctively sensed that they were essentially hollow beings. And so I knew that they were in origin an illusion. I had created them, myself. So I simply willed their defeat. On the one hand were the fading doubts and fears that I could not gain and maintain control over the creative potential inherent in me, which could turn into my destruction, and on the other was the certainty that I already had done so on a higher level, and that even this battle had been willed by me.

I realized that I had spoken my life into existence by molding and defining it out of the possibilities that lay before me. I had been making statues from clay, statues I had projected myself into and embodied in order to experience. And this reborn awareness was the lesson I had chosen to learn because I knew that it was best for me at this time. I was rhyming my destiny to the beat, the rhythm of the universe, in this here planet, at this here time...

I woke up on the sand. The birth of a new day had colored the sky with the beauty of new life. I could hear the hiss of a dying campfire and the were no voices floating in the air. The camp was out cold. All the hashassasins were asleep. All but one.

Mitzama.

He stood there on a dune, looking at the rise of the sun. As I watched him I remembered how old he must be for he stood with a firmness that was stronger than age. I think he kept himself young by letting go. He never spoke as if it were written in stone, always letting the words float up and dissipate like smoke.

Once I had asked him if he had any philosophy or opinion about the condition of mankind, and he simply told me that man and history was like dust blowing in the wind. That what I should do, instead of trying to interpret man and assess his situation, was simply to remember that we were born naked. The rest, the understanding would then come naturally.

He added that from the center all things come and become, and when they come undone they will return to the one, recur to the sum from which none will be shun.  ‘Deposit your faith on that and you will neither despair nor feel alone, for you are not alone but part of everything.’

Mitzama came down from the dune. He walked towards me and as he came near he grabbed me by the arm and picked me up. He spoke into my ear: ‘You will escape now. You know this is not your home nor will it ever be. I have prepared a ride for you with the necessary things for you to exit the desert successfully. There is a bag hanging from the horses neck. In it I have placed a container with a drink you shall consume when you reach the plains of the south lands. It will make you forget your past. It is necessary for the future. You are going to be a great person by the name of Manuatlz. I saw this in the fire when you were travelling within. The fire has told me everything, it has told me what to do.

You came to learn so you can teach and you have shown both the endurance and devotion it takes. You have come to pass the word of the One. Do it well.’

I thanked him for everything he had done, he was my teacher, a father who had led me towards a good life. And to this he responded, ‘I have only pointed the way. You have done all the walking.’

With this Mitzama rushed me to the horse, lest the others awake and prevent me from going. This was the last time I saw him as Mitzama, but I was sure I would see him again under new clothes. I did as he told me, I forgot what I had been through, and my life again changed…