The End of the World as We Know It - #29

One version of this story

The world was supposed to end multiple times in the six decades plus that I have been aware enough to comprehend the stories. And depending on who I talk to, the world may still be ending soon.

One of my first vivid childhood memories was of the Cuban missile crisis. The overheard idea of mutual assured destruction was terrifying. Humans were now capable of destroying all of us at one time! Sitting on the ground staring at distant tall mountains, my six-year-old brain reasoned it through. Since we knew we could, wasnʻt it a stalemate? It seemed logical that we should be able to just have peace now. Game over. Thatʻs what kids would do.

That Big Idea, maybe my first Big Idea, Universal Peace - that’s probably what drew me on this whole journey thirty years later.

When I was a teenager, my grandmother took up with the Jehovah Witnesses that came to the door of our family home during her lonely daytime hours. In her own Ukrainian Orthodox tradition, salvation was personal and available to all. Her new friends believed the end time is soon - soon as in during my lifetime soon - and only the chosen few will be saved. Grandma figured either way she would not be around long enough to know whether they were right about that.

My second ex-husband, the Swiss Guy, was convinced that the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 meant we needed to be prepared for catastrophic change. I got a nice buckskin horse out of that one.

And that brings us to the New Age version, the version most appealing to my six-year-old self. My initial exposure was probably a Sunday afternoon family dinner circa 1979 listening to the soundtrack of the musical Hair. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius! We were about to enter into a New Age of love and peace, where war and poverty and racism would be transcended.

Tied into this New Age notion of collective transformation is that of personal ascension. The idea of ascension being that through the process of spiritual growth, we raise our vibration to the point that we enter into different dimensions, higher dimensions than the three-dimensional world of our common physical experience. Negative emotions like hate and greed cannot exist at these higher frequencies. In some versions, once a sufficient number of people manage to reach this elevated vibration, that will kick us into the collective New Age.

The instant New Age of universal love version of the end of the world was more appealing to me than the reformed Christian version in which only the chosen would be saved. And definitely an easier path than the Buddhist version of slowly attaining enlightenment over multiple incarnations, at which point I would be expected to take boddhisatva vows and continuing returning to help until all sentient beings were safe (not saved).

When I introduced my Big Brother Best Man Carman Moore into this narrative, it began with Velvaleeʻs ascension event, which happened before I met either of them. From Carmanʻs perspective, the outcome of that gathering was exactly what was meant to happen: after years of touring with the Blessed Mother painting, it was time for Velvalee to embody its energy and continue her work as “just Velvalee.” Apparently many present for the event, perhaps Velvalee herself, were disappointed that they did not witness a literal ascent into the heavens or a dramatic transformation of her ample physical body into a body of light.

Velvaleeʻs ongoing work was to prepare “the souls of humanity,” as her painting was titled, for the coming New Age. The storyline I was hearing from Velvalee and Joié, corroborated through Joié’s channeling, was that Velvalee was somehow central to events that would lead to what I had hoped for as a first-grader: world peace and prosperity would arrive. Each of us in her inner circle had a pre-ordained role and mine, naturally, would have to do with the new world’s banking and economic systems.

This was the part where my skepticism remained firmly intact. Nevertheless, I was learning to hold a higher frequency without the techniques and props of formal meditation. I was refining my natural intuitive abilities. And honestly, most of the time being with Velvalee and Joié was both intellectually stimulating and just plain fun. A 100% buy-in to the bigger picture apparently was not a precondition for me to hang out with them. I never fully bought in to the meta-stories around corporate life during the time I participated in that domain either. I was used to keeping my own counsel.

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And so that brings us back to our “palm tree” hotel, where Velvalee insisted we spend two nights rather than just one, because there was a part of the story that needed to be straightened out during a non-driving day.

In their story of the coming new world, each of us would have a male partner, a particular man at our side to help us with our assigned role. At some point prior to our trip, they had decided that Isaac Tigrett, founder of the Hard Rock Cafe (motto: Love All, Serve All) and House of Blues, devoted follower of guru Sai Baba, was my predestined partner. Isaac was at that time a recent widower, his wife Maureen (ex-wife of Ringo Starr) having died in 1994. Carman and I were talking with him about potential sponsorship for Carman’s Mass for the 21st Century. There had been only a couple of brief business talks with no hint of a romantic component, yet this was their story line.

Only it turned out that Velvalee thought Joié had the story line wrong. Isaac Tigrett was Joié’s intended; I would get back together with Nelsinho, since it could not possibly be coincidence that she and he were birthday twins. He had to fit in there somewhere. Velvalee’s partner was to be a Greek man named Nicky. I no longer recall whether Nicky’s identity had some tie to physical reality or his prototype came from a novel. It was all that level of fiction to me.

Once we’d sorted out our fantasized romantic future, we were finally free to continue driving to my parent’s home in Colorado. After a night of introductions and settling in, the following afternoon Velvalee and Joié offered my parents a healing energy session, an offer they gladly accepted. When the session finished, my parents were both sound asleep in their recliners. I hugged Velvalee and Joié goodbye and left them to have dinner with my parents. I had an actual lover waiting for me in Boulder and I wanted to spend the night with him. Which apparently was ok with my traveling companions because Chico and I were not planning a long term future together. Plus, they pointed out, he was Brazilian, so I was keeping the energy signature intact.

At least I had a little downtime that weekend. I did not know it yet, but the following week would bring yet another life-changing encounter.