A clear rectangular beam merging two close-by mountains in a bubble of glass contains my new home. But this glass is Aerogel, a see-through clear-steel the manufacture of which is perfected in space. Aerogel has enabled this home to come into being. I can turn the outer walls off and on as I please so that my pleasure is maximized.
I live suspended a hundred feet above a beautiful coastal forest the beauty of which Maui comes close to, in a house with invisible walls. Talk about walking on air. It can be quite erie when you look down at your feet and see nothing holding you up. The illusion of flying is not difficult to preceive when levitation appears mundane. It's also wonderful to wake up and look straight up at the sky, and not have a wall limit your view past a side-window. There is enough beauty on my island that I don't think I'll ever get satiated with taking in these vistas.

I have always loved the sea, I am now a water slide away from the best snorkeling available to anyone, anywhere. If you haven't experienced "forced-immersion" yet, there is nothing I can say that can prepare you for the beauty that is to be yours when you do experience this equivalent of a skydive into the sea. All I do is decide I want to take a bath and get cleaned up. Of course, time is no issue, so I enclose myself in my TUB and activate the "thriB" ride. The tub becomes a cylinder and fills up to about 1/3rd with a bio-degradable soap and water mixture. All you need is snorkle gear, if that, and you are ready. Suddenly the only solid wall on this translucent cage disappears into a watery swell. It has begun!
A blast of pressurized cold air propells me at an incredibly fast yet extremely comfortable speed down a tube with dimmer and dimmer lights, so that my eyes may get accustomed to the diminished lighting conditions down where I'm going. As I sink further and further down this almost womb-like entrapment, the pressure increases so slowly you don't even know what's happening. Your internal body pressure is being equalized with the outside pressure so that when you are "released" or "thribbed" you don't implode with the 4 Atmospheres+ pressure you find yourself in.
This slide-coaster is most amazing. (Yes: slide-coaster _is_ a take from rollercoaster.) My seat is a comfortable, albeit slightly cool gulp of soapy water which has acompanied me from my tub and is gently cleaning me all over. The twists and turns in here are most amazing, and will not be done justice to if I try to limit them to words. You have to experience this for yourself to know what I'm talking about. This would have to be the ultimate refinement of the roller-coaster idea. And quite a refinement it is. The first time you experience this, you are so busy having a wonderful time that you don't even notice your surroundings morphing from one state to another until you come upon a contradiction before your very eyes. The calmness with which you see it approaching and the resulting panic that ensues had to have been the work of either a crazy genius or a great artist. Or maybe this experience has been designed by a skydiver who's also in love with water and wants to get his "rush" in more diverse and possibly safer surroundings.
Naah, safety can't be a concern here. This is all beauty and experience. But before you know that, you have to face your natural instinct of panicing when you see the foamy white swell approaching. It looks ghastly. It look horrendous. If you've ever seen a dam spweing out rivers from openings the size of cars, and the water screaming forth into a white wall where the difference between stream and steam is untellable, you can start to have an idea of what I'm talking about. But now take a leap of creative visualization and imagine yourself INSIDE the body of water as it's being sucked into that thin opening. Panic, right? *smile*
It's an invisible wall disappearing right before your eyes. But this one is unlike any wall you've ever seen, and it's right in your path and there is no power short of a Divine Act which can keep you from being devoured. You can see this wall is alive and as you start to resign yourself to your inevitable fate, you start to wonder if it wouldn't be so bad being devoured by this approaching oddity - sort of like thinking about entering a wormhole the result of which could be death or deliverance. The first thing it reminded me of was an image of a birth canal I had seen on a "Mothers Day" program as seen through the still unformed eyes of a baby in the process of Birth. This gaping hole into nothingness is bound to be some sort of a reverse of that process - among all the other things it may be.
And all this while you have been having so much fun enjoying yourself, you haven't even noticed that you're inside an invisible tube of water surrounded by - invisible hardness. It's an exclusion of the ocean. You've made a fun ride of water and air _inside_ the belly of the ocean. This is so beautiful! I am sliding past immortal reefs at depths not yet ravaged by man - already well past the swell of shore waves most every novice misses in their first transition from dimly lit tube into bluely lit ocean.
I am in a land of beauty. I don't care to know that there is pressururised air flowing also in another tube, right outside mine. Oxymoron indeed. I am in a tuve of 1/3rd water inside another tube of pressurized air, inside the ocean! It is this outer tube of air that's being forced out in converging jets below where my tube meets the ocean. The high pressure air in the outside tube, when injected as a converging cone at the mouth of my well-pressurized dive-shaft/tube/whatever you call it, serves the purpose of providing a clean break between my environment and the reality of the ocean that's approaching rapidly. It may be simple to describe, but harder to understand and scarier still to view - even for experienced thribbers. All this opening is doing, in reality, is giving a clean break to this huge (albeit pressurised) mixture of 1/3rd water/air to mingle with the ocean which it is about to enter. This process is most amazing to view. When you think about the fact that the air will not compress too much more because it's already pressurized to equal the outside water pressure, you'll realize that the rider is in for the unique experience of a transition from a (slightly soapy) water/air mixture into ocean water, the likes of which humanity had not known until this invention.
I am being flung into a slowly carressing wave WELL below the surface of this heavenly sea. And all this time I am coming closer to my thriB. The air pressure inside this tube has so slowly equalled that on the outside that it hasn't even been noticed by my body as it's luxuriated in it's bath. I am about to be cleansed of all this soap surrounding me. Pleasure of pleasures indeed is the knowledge that this soap will be completely disintegrated within one day out in the natural environment. And all this soap, after having cleansed me thoroughly, now gushes me into a foamy wave well past a hundred feet below the ocean surface.
My body is holding just as much air as it can. In the parlance of cars, I have been filled up. Yet more pleasure it is to realize that this fill-up is exactly equal to the pressure of the water around me. This is so much fun it's gotta be a sin! As if I hadn't already enjoyed myself enough, I now have a natural supply of air inside me which will enable me to stay submerged for minutes as I keep exhaling slowly and let my body's own bouyancy carry me to the surface. I get to enjoy the best skin dive in the world, without any gear, and for the maximum humanly possible time allowable. Oh it's so beautiful to travail these coral neighbourhoods, loitering as if I am an inhabitant. The fishes certainly think I'm one of them. As I ascend the continental shelf, the appropriate amount of air automatically leaves my lungs in the manner of an experienced diver - which honestly I am not. I am just....
*sigh* Oh, this is too beautiful. I am just a soujurner on this land who's travelling a path quite different from his surroundings. They serve only to accentuate the experience of the journey - and what I get out of it. This underwater ride, this forced-imersion, this thriB, this whatever you call it - ! It's too beautiful to take in, even for someone who's done it countless times before. Oh God, I sing your praise. This is overwhelming. This is.. *wow* I have tears forming in my eyes and I see my goggles in my hands! The seawater isn't stinging my eyes! Oh this is too beautiful to take in. My tears are mingling away in the sea water and hence they to not feel like tears. It feels like I am giving a gift to the beauty that this world is. It has just occoured to me that we expel our living cells from within us when we cry, and these cells take the hurt inside us with them - that's why one feels so lighthearted after one has had one of those good rare sessions. I knew tears make you feel good, I just didn't know why - until now.
People who are experiencing this beauty with me know what I am talking about.
Looks like today's was a valuable journey indeed, as the lessons are still coming. I am realizing that this ocean - this vast container of life - is the only place with the compassion to absorb my tears without letting me break down. I am hovering at a place of extacy, of beauty - just like freefall in a good skydive. I am feeling great and I am feeling beautiful, while my tears are adding to this great couldron of life and energy that is our caretaker in so many more ways than one...
I have heard it said that realization is powerful. Well this this bit of power just mixed with my mind. Crying, in truth, overwhelms us because of the intensity of emotion which it tries to express. That is why we break down and "can't control ourselves." I don't think you and I were meant to be able to control an outburst of emotion of such intensity. The levels at which control is manifest are far below. Why do you feel good after having cried? It's because your person releases all those pent up emotions it holds inside all the time. Everyone should be fortunate enough to be able to cry once in a while. (And it doesn't have to be for hurt either, you can cry because of being overwhelmed by beauty as well...) Which brings us back to our original line of thought. There is something about the ocean that is otherworldly. There is a particular beauty and a certain awe that it puts awakening souls into, an awe that most will never even experience because they are not open to receiving the gifts that an emotionally intense moment of realization can give them. Is that because it's so alive? Maybe. Well, does the life of the ocean all around you equate to an able comparison? I think so. The ocean can absorb your hurt so completely, you don't even realize you're crying. Why is that? Can we question this fact? Can we try to get to the root of this mystery? I believe I have an answer, and you will have to guide me on this one. I believe that the ocean is alive. I believe, for numerous reasons, that the single body of water on this planet that regulates it's temperatures and pressures and gravity with currents and fronts and tides and so much more, I believe that this body is the brain of this planet. The reasons for this factual statement are deep and many, and I do not yet know how 'sane' my audience is at the present time. So I'll refrain from going too far into this topic. But as in much of the rest of this book, I'm sure the idea will manifest itself in some argument or the other that I will make furthur or prior to here. Whether you receive it or not is not my problem. This teacher is interested only in those fellow sojourners who have the capacity to accompany him.

This was absolutely a most moving experience, one that I wouldn't at all mind trying again sometime... (As often, I'm talking about more than one things, can you tell?) In this case the tears were tears of joy, but the beautiful balance that resulted within me would have to be even more helpful if these tears were tears of hurt. I'll have to try this cradle the next time I'm moved to that extent - and I'll report my findings to you then.

This has to be one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever.... No, this IS the most beautiful ... No. EVERYTHING HERE IS BEAUTIFUL. Everything is beautiful, here or not. God, you have made a beautiful Earth. You have made a perfect world for us to live in. If we can just take care of it, it's ours to make our own heaven out of. I truly am in heaven.
And do you know the most important message I have learned from this experience?
Far more than the realizations and the threads thence traversed. The lesson is that water is the key. WATER made this beauty possible. I need to explore what else water can do for me - for US.
That is the next chapter.

===================================================== (Copyright buzzaz, 98-99, all rights reserved) UN Global Copyright - RESERVED. Distribution permitted only in completely intact form. Contact: ludi@i.am Latest Version available at: http://www.atlasfc.com/az Chapters currently written: 04 A Self Contained Vacation 05 Water is the Key 06 Electro Magnetic Space Elevator 08 A Finite Fractal 10 Building the Perfect Machine 12 Greatness Sought is Greatness Gained 17 Have you seen The Matrix? 18 Dancing in the Soul 29 Kill Devil Hill * 99 The Final Chapter [Link made unavailable, for now.] ===================================================== An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men. ~ Thomas Fuller ~ (1608-1661, British Clergyman, Author) =====================================================