In fighting them, we just add struggle to our lessons list.
So for Spyder, there was no rush or pressure that was connected to his actions or inactions. And certainly not in the process of meditation, which is how Spyder frames hypnosis.
Spyder believes in non-effort. But for him, it is the non-effort of an elite athlete.
Studies have shown that when an athlete gets attached to an outcome, their performance declines.
Working with elite athletes both from the sports world and the special operators' world, the scientists have found that one must train to hit one’s peak, that’s body and mind. In mind training, visualization, meditation, or hypnosis, the goal is always to perform one’s best.
Striker, for example, was trained that after the team had planned an attack on the tabletop, they tried it out in the shooter house. They would practice and tweak, practice and tweak until their very cells remembered, without thought, the exact moves that they need to make.
The exact angle of the gun.
There was a truism in the SEAL world that no plan survives first contact.
But that doesn’t lessen the imperative of having a plan, practicing, coming up with contingency plans.
Once this was developed, the team would meditate on the action. They meticulously moved through each step in the exact way they wished it to be performed.
That was the action and performance, not outcome.
There was no, “and then I got the gold medal of freedom” at the end.
There was no, “and then I killed the bad guy, and the world became a place of peace.”
No.
If a shot was to be taken to down a bad guy, there was no “get.” There was no “win.” There was simply the physical action of positioning the gun, finding the mark, pulling the trigger, hitting the mark.
That was what hypnotism was supposed to be for me.
Information. Preparation. Separation from a need to have a certain outcome.
Of course, my desired outcome was to know why my parents were hanging over my shoulder (information), warning me (for my preparation). It was the separation that I found so hard.
It was a push me pull you.
Spyder wanted me to rid myself of the distractions. Yet, my psychic mentor, Meriam Laugherty, taught me how to allow those very experiences—again, for information and then remove the distraction.
That was often easier said than done.
Especially with the newest knowing, ““London Bridges falling down,’” setting off my alarm systems.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“My dear, I wish you to bring me your box with your mother’s journals.”
My mom’s journals, filled with sketches and doodles, miniature paintings and poetry, her thoughts. I couldn’t imagine what Spyder wanted with these.
Setting the box in front of him, Spyder reverently lifted one journal after another. Opening the front page, he glanced, then gently placed it on the floor.
Finally, he found what he was looking for and handed it to me.
“You will excuse me for a moment.” Spyder stood and walked through my dining room, my kitchen, and outdoors to the garden. I supposed this was all bringing up difficult emotions and memories for Spyder as well. My parents and Spyder loved each other with a deep kinship.
I looked down at the book in my hand.
It was a journal that I hadn’t seen before. I thought I’d read them all over and over throughout the last few years since mom had died.
I opened it, and a flurry of yellow papers fell out.
The first was an obituary. A young woman who looked a bit like me. She was killed in a car accident. She’d been seventeen when she died. “Molly Toone. Beloved daughter of Gloria and Vincent Toone. Mourned by her family, including her Uncle Seth Toone…”
The next article was about the police and ambulance being called to Molly Toone’s funeral. It said that the father, Vincent Toone, had severely beaten Douglas Rueben—Dad! My eye scanned the article.
It said that my mother was driving the car that killed Molly.
My nerves buzzed.
There was something there. Back, back, back in my memory. My dad had been covered in bruises, his arm in a sling…
There was a copy of my father’s obituary.
And now the last slip of paper. The one that felt like acid on my fingers. The one I didn’t want to read.
“I was aiming for your daughter. You should feel what I do.”
It’s funny how the brain stutters. How it creates magic tricks.
“The years of evil” was how I internally referred to the time between when I got my first stalker note from Travis Wilson up until the time when I found out my dead husband wasn’t really dead but had just chosen a life doing black ops for our government. And during those years, I had the support of friends and later Iniquus colleagues, and especially Striker and my team.
But the support and help I needed were from Spyder.
I had lamented the fact that he was off-grid, and I had no way to contact him, no way to send up a distress sign.
Or so I thought.
But he had given me a bat signal.
We had been at a Chinese restaurant where Spyder liked the idea of the fortune cookies. He used them as teaching tools.
I had a different mentor, Mrs. Drinkwater—terrible name. She was an English woman who actually drank tea—lots of it. And there was nothing she liked better than to have me round for high tea and chatter. A pagan, Mrs. Drinkwater, was trying to learn to read tea leaves. She was rarely accurate. She was better with tarot cards. But the thing that I liked best was her bag of tumbled semiprecious gemstones.
They were an act of trust.
After tea, she would
