Last Thursday, I had begun my daily Zen sit around 6:15AM. As I always do, I started the water boiling for my cup of coffee, so I wouldn’t have to wait very long after my sit. I settled on my cushion, activated the 25 minute timer and then unfocused my eyes, with a lazy stare at my altar. I gently rested my tongue on the roof of my mouth and then slowly and methodically, began the inhalation and exhalation of my breath, the wordless lyrics of the sitting song.

All of us have thoughts that travel through our minds most all the time and they have no discernible voice, just the muted monologue of ideas and feelings, navigating through our consciousness and then gone.

Something very unusual happened to me on that morning. Initially, I thought this was going to be a fake story, me making up something that never happened. Then, I realized I was completely out of my league and my imagination might not be a fabricated story to entertain the handful of readers, who are kind of enough to follow me.

So, I am sitting on my cushion, wondering what I’ll write next. I am never worried, because somehow something pops up and anchors my tendency to float in the sea of ideas. Whenever I get anxious, I remember that I have been concocting stories out of the ether for nearly six years and then I settle back into the groove of now and relax.

I wondered what would happen if I was contacted by the Intergalactic Council. I imagined these were beings, who have been keeping an eye on me since birth. I couldn’t ask any questions and had to simply listen to what they wanted to share, impossible for me to tell whether it was actually happening or simply the imagination of a mind bored with the moment.

During the sit, which was the same 25 minutes it has always been, I spent what felt like hours and hours with these beings, quietly listening to what they wanted to share with me. I really didn’t have to ask questions anyway, because before I could even finish with something piquing my curiosity, the blanks were seamlessly filled in. I know there was more than one, even though they spoke in a single, soundless voice.

Their explanation for contacting me was so perfect, I was speechless, in complete acquiescence with their message. They have known me since I was born and have recently taken particular interest in my writing. They didn’t think I was very good, but they could feel my sincerity, struggling to the fore, regardless of subject. They also liked that I wasn’t very popular, so whatever I shared, would quietly slip into the consciousness of the world around me, without any fuss.

Back in February of this year, I wrote a story about an imaginary visit by Major Tom, David Bowie’s space traveling alter ego and the members of the Council enjoyed it. The idea that I played with it actually happening is what they found particularly interesting.

For millions and millions of years, earth has been like this spherical drive-in movie for members of the Intergalactic Council. They have been hovering, mostly out of sight all these years, watching the Earth Show. We have a very limited vocabulary, imagining all life outside our world adhering to certain scientific parameters, which is both egotistical and stupid. We look for signs of water on planets, because it means life is possible. How can you look at infinite space and not also allow for infinite dimensions, far more intricate than our own? This muted voice in my mind told me they have been watching this planet forever.

They told me there was this wonderful progression of life that began around 900 million years ago here. It was easy to see how one miraculous life form lead to the next. There were natural set backs, like Ice Ages and catastrophic meteor impacts, but life seemed to always adapt and move forward. They were stratospheric students of our evolution. The Intergalactic Council was very excited to see man evolve, millions of years after the first, accidental cellular entities birthed in the primordial oceans. There was genuine excitement that after all these years of distant observation, they might finally be able to make their presence known.

Time is of no consequence to these beings from the land of forever, so they watched and waited. Amidst early signs of potential receptivity, humans continued to mistreat each other, their appetite for dominance seemingly insatiable. They understood we were early in our evolution and the potential for transcendence was still there. When they witnessed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its unfathomable destruction, they thought finally we would begin to understand the power we had and move off the time trodden path of dominance and blind greed.

Frankly, between you and I, I have no idea what I am supposed to do with this communication.

They were not at all surprised about Covid 19 and they knew it was inevitable, as if we have been begging for it to happen to us for centuries and centuries. The climate crisis had to happen, because we have forever treated nature as our servant. Our complete disregard for all living beings, viewing them as here to satisfy our whims, has decimated the delicate balance of all life on earth. We have punished our own, because of skin color, economics, religion or geography.

They told me they think Covid 19 might finally bring us to our knees. America has fallen, just like the empires that have preceded it, each one filled with an inflated sense of self-importance and omnipotence. It will probably be around 2,100 AD, when humans will have one final chance to realize the promise the Intergalactic Council has been waiting for all these millions of years.

I believe them.