10 things about your beliefs you won't believe
by Chris Johnson

• Our beliefs contribute to the overall frequency of our being.
A belief is a thought we think more than once. The more we think a thought, the more energy is being accumulated, which transforms the thought into a belief. And this energy is reinforced by the attraction of thoughts of a similar nature. The combined energy of our beliefs produces a unique electromagnetic frequency that is an integral part of our being.
• Beliefs become attitudes and truths by which we lead our lives.
Some of our beliefs accumulate so much energy that in time they become 'attitudes.' An attitude's energy will govern our thinking processes and behaviour – it will determine what is possible for us. Eventually, with a great deal of energy invested in a belief, the belief moves past being an attitude and becomes a ‘Truth’. Truths are beliefs that we do not question as to their validity. The more vehemently we express our opinion, the more we reveal the intensity of energy behind the belief.
• A belief is neither good nor bad ~ it is a neutral construct.
We can identify our beliefs as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, but only in the sense that a positive belief is one that allows for the expression of our Self; whereas a negative belief restricts our expression of Self. Negative beliefs tend to be associated with fear, whereas positive beliefs engender excitement and creativity.
• Core beliefs we hold can be invisible to us.
A core belief will have attained enough energy to become at least an attitude, if not a truth for us. It has enough strength to so focus our perception that we perceive from the physical world only those events that correlate with it. The belief can reach into the most intimate areas of our lives and no evidence will be forthcoming to disprove it because we will only be able to perceive that which confirms it. Thus, it becomes invisible to us.
• Our beliefs create the physical reality that we perceive.
Our beliefs can be regarded as the blueprint by which we create our reality. They are an integral element of the design of this physical dimension we operate within. Our beliefs continuously influence our perception of the world and our perception of the world is an action of interpretation of our reality.
• Changing our beliefs will change our reality.
The reality we experience is the product of our beliefs. It is a reflection of what we expect to perceive in accordance with our beliefs. There is no reality then, except what we define it to be through our beliefs. Thus, by changing our beliefs, we change our reality. By ‘changing’ we mean reassigning the energy behind the beliefs we are currently utilising.
• We incorporate ALL beliefs but utilise relatively few.
In changing our beliefs, we are actually reassigning energy from one belief to another. The beliefs themselves do not change. ALL beliefs are available to us, so we can choose, consciously, which beliefs we prefer to assign energy to. Beliefs are not our enemy – realise that from a broader perspective they are the way in which we express yourself and can be consciously chosen from moment to moment.
• Acceptance of beliefs nullifies their power.
Accept beliefs for what they are – a vast bank of concepts that we can move energy between as and when we choose. In order to accept beliefs, a suspension of judgement of them is required – remember that they are neither bad nor good, they are themselves neutral.
• We can learn to use our beliefs more efficiently.
Recognise that we always have the power to re-assign energy to our beliefs of preference. Preferences are merely preferred expressed beliefs. We can prefer one belief from another knowing that this is not an absolute judgement of the belief itself. Do not apportion blame to someone who gave you a 'problematic' belief – this act engenders a judgement of the belief as well as the person involved. We must suspend judgement in order to accept the offending belief, and thus nullify its power.
• We are what we believe ourselves to be.
Our perceptions follow that which we believe. Get in touch with your beliefs. When we begin to identify our beliefs, we begin to recognise what we are creating and how we are creating it. Every belief incorporates many influences – recognising how it is influencing us can bring about the choice of how we would prefer it to influence us - if at all. Addressing the beliefs that hold us, those 'negative' attitudes and core beliefs, leads to a freer expression of our Self. It is of supreme importance that we recognise the existence of joyful beliefs. Cultivate a positive, joyful and creative belief system that employs the emotion of excitement in its building of your reality.

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The Beauty of Mother
by Barabar Ziegler

One day I met an angel so unaware
Who changed my life beyond compare
Her beauty, love and light does shine
Like the magic of fairies and summertime.

To her I send my eternal gratitude and love
For without her presence so graced from up above
Life would not have captured her glowing sparkle and dance
Nor the essence of her being and light to enhance.

Truly no words do exist to convey the splendour of her light
Shining like a lighthouse beacon, on a very stormy night
Radiating beams of golden studded dreams now within my sight
Soaring off to realms of joy born from a place of a mystic height.

The desire to share my vision does silently surge
As precious revelations from her depths so emerge
Glimpsing her divine Presence, sparkling ever so bright
Cascading…and dancing…simply glowing with her light.

And so to you my angel and my dearest friend
My love and gratitude to you again I send
For enriching my existence as surely as the sun
Nurturing a tender flower that blossoms with such fun.

Yours whose soulful beauty unmasks your holy essence
Illuminating even the darkest of shadows…
so be it forever hence.

Barbara Ziegler
January 19, 2006

A Dream, A Question, and A Promise: Chapter 2
by Pamela Gibson

Editor's note: A Dream, A Question, and A Promise is the true story of Pam's loss of her friend in a violent murder. To read the first Chapter, please visit the April 2008 Sethnet Journal.

“Pam?” Andy asked.

“Sorry.” My thoughts came back to the present where I faced two detectives in black overcoats perched on the edge on my couch. Jeff’s words, “Isn’t that long enough to be afraid? You can’t live like that” echoed in my mind. But I was living like that, and I trembled at the picture in my mind’s eye of Vic’s body pierced by gunshot wounds, lying bloody and dead in Jaaku’s garage. Even though I believed his spirit was alive and well. And even though I believed Seth when he said, “You’re as dead now as you’ll ever be.”

Jeff must have seen me shake and said, “Where do you think most accidents occur in the home, Pam?”

“I don’t know.” Nor did I know where this was leading.

“In the bathtub. People fall. Do you think people should stop taking showers because of that?”

I shook my head.

“Fear is just fear. You can’t let it run your life.”

I figured, being a cop, Jeff must know all about fear. But I wasn’t convinced that being afraid of falling in the bathroom was anything like feeling the aftershock of a murder. Still, I thought it was sweet of Jeff, trying to comfort me.

“Did you know Christian’s in custody?” Jeff asked.

Christian, Jaaku’s given name. At the station, we’d joked about his mom being overly optimistic, giving him a name like that.

“I wasn’t sure. Thanks.” I felt reassured. “We call him Jaaku.” The nickname he adopted after a Japanese fireman angrily pronounced him “jaaku no,” meaning “evil-minded one,” and he liked it.

Jeff grabbed a stool and sat down close to me. “Did Jaaku and Vic date the same woman?” he asked.

“I don’t know what they did when they weren’t at work. They said they hung out together but I can’t imagine any girl liking both of them, they were so different.”

“Did they have girlfriends?” Jeff asked. I shrugged. “Kind of unusual, isn’t it, two bachelors with no girlfriends?”

“Vic had girlfriends,” I said. “He didn’t mention anyone in the past six months but he had girlfriends before that. I know because he showed me their pictures. One was a hairdresser, a Norwegian girl named Molly; she lived with him for awhile. After they split up, he said he might call up an old girlfriend but I don’t know if he ever did. And he showed me pictures of some girls he met on the beach. As for Jaaku, he bragged about all these women he had but he was probably lying.”

“Vic was a loner then?” Andy asked. I agreed, yes, very independent.

“A pellet gun was found at the scene,” Jeff said. “Do you know if either of them owned a pellet gun?” His overcoat gaped open and I saw a gun in a holster strapped across his chest, and wondered if concealing the gun was the reason for the overcoat.

“Jaaku told me last December he might get a job as a security guard. It was right after he got passed up for a promotion. Maybe he got a pellet gun for that? He hasn’t been at work for the past six weeks, so maybe he was working somewhere else.”

I thought about that hot midnight shift in the alarm room. I normally kept the door locked but I’d propped it open because the central air conditioner was broken. Suddenly Jaaku, dripping sweat from his forehead and soiled white T-shirt, slipped like a bad dream into the alarm room. I watched his head turn rapidly from side to side and wondered if he was hyped up on speed. He peered into the corners of the darkened room (I kept the lights low so I could keep an eye on the station and no one could see in) making sure no one was lurking there.

“This fuckin’ place pisses me off,” he growled. “You heard the chief promote John?”

‘No.” I lied because I knew Jaaku didn’t like being the bearer of old news.

He looked down in the dumps so I tried to bolster him up. That was my role, one I’d learned years before. Never confront him. Always act like I was his friend so he wouldn’t think I was “crossing” him, so he wouldn’t stab me in the back. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

“The chief better wise up. Or else.” He struck what I thought of as his Mafia pose – legs spread wide, lower lip drooped at one corner, head cocked at an angle, hands on his hips. The red lights of the alarm panel reflected in his eyes and he looked demonic. “I’m gonna look for another job, maybe as a security guard. The chief just using me.” His red eyes gleamed. “Using you too, Pam.”

“Pam.” Jeff’s voice pulled me back into the present. “Do you have any idea what Jaaku’s been doing during these last six weeks?”

“No.” I wanted to help and added, “I wish I did.”

Jeff wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “It sure is hot in here.”

“I’m sorry.” I jumped up and cranked the jalousie windows open. Immediately the trade winds whipped through the room and my wind chimes tinkled and danced. “I was set to go to a friend’s house. I’ll just call her and tell her I’ll be late.” But Cindy’s phone was busy.

Suddenly, it was all too much. The detectives staring at me, Vic dead, Jaaku in custody for now but, for all I knew, out tomorrow. I started shaking and couldn’t stop.

“Oh, we caught you as you were leaving,” Andy said.

We all stood up and they squeezed past me to the front door. Andy thanked me for my help and Jeff handed me his card. “The number for homicide is on the back,” he said. “Call us if you think of anything else you want to tell us.”

At that moment I couldn’t think of a single thing.

That night, I felt numb and wired and had a hard time sleeping. Memories of Vic tumbled through my mind; how he liked to tease me, and was delighted that I teased him back. He loved a good laugh and appreciated me for giving him several. I’d only worked at Hennessee for about three weeks when the red phone rang and the tower operator announced an in-flight emergency on a C-5 that “lost number two engine.” My voice shook as I dispatched the alarm and shuddered at the image of the plane flying lopsided, impossible to land with an engine missing.

Mad Max was the assistant chief that night. He radioed in, “Control, did the engine actually fall off?”

I stuttered, “They…they…didn’t say ‘engine shutdown.’ They said the...the engine was lost.”

A few minutes later, Max announced, “Emergency terminated, Control.” He paused before adding, with a chuckle, “By the way, the engine is still securely fastened to the plane.”

“Ten-four,” I whispered. My face and neck flushed hot as fire.

Vic’s was the first truck to screech back into the station. He sauntered into the alarm room, still wearing his bulky silver turnout gear, a puzzled expression on his face. “We looked,” he said, “All up and down the runway.” He shrugged. “No engine anywhere. Where do ya s’pose it went?”

“Into the ocean?” I wondered if I’d turned as red as his pickup truck.

He covered his mouth with one large hand, said, “tee, hee, hee” and chuckled, and then so did I, and soon we were laughing hard, and my sides ached. Some of the other firemen strode in, smirked, and razzed me for being a dumb blond until Vic growled, “So how’s she s’posed to know ‘lost number two engine’ is the same as ‘engine shutdown’? Ain’t you ever made a mistake, peanut head?”

The firemen held up their hands, said “Whoa!” and split. Vic’s face creased into a smile that lit up the room like sunshine before he “moseyed on out”, as he put it, with an exaggerated, cool dude saunter. That was the real start of our friendship.

I thought of Vic as some kind of natural born hero, fast as greased lightening, fearless and strong. As the solo driver of Ramp 7, a pickup with a large fire extinguisher mounted in the truck bed, Vic was in his element. It was awesome the way he jumped out of a dead sleep into his boots and turnout gear, screech-wheeled Ramp 7 out of the open bay garage right after the dispatch tones blared, arrived first on the scene, and first confronted the airfield emergency. The firemen told me story after story about him extinguishing engine fires during fighter plane engine startups, and squelching brake fires on the huge cargo planes that touched down with hot brakes. Often while the other trucks still barreled toward the scene.

Once, when he was on a hot brakes emergency, he spotted a C-5 cargo plane rolling backwards, one giant wheel heading for a fireman whose back was turned. The engine roar swallowed up Vic’s yell of warning. He sprinted fast as a cougar in his heavy turnout gear across the 30 yards between them and knocked the fireman out of the way as the huge wheel rolled across the taxiway where the fireman had crouched milliseconds before.

Time after time Vic extinguished engine fires while standing by during volatile engine starts on F-4 fighter planes. He squelched fires almost the instant they started, which earned him praise from the fighter pilots, awards and recognition from the bosses, and jealousy from Jaaku, who craved the limelight for himself whether he deserved it or not.

Sometimes, when he “talked story” with me at the fire station, he jokingly referred to himself as “a righteous dude.” I secretly agreed, and found his high energy, slow talk and playful nature enchanting. The nicknames he gave me—Snaky Lady, yogurt teacher—made me laugh.

Vic’s outlook on life was upbeat and positive. One afternoon when he was “hangin’ with me in the alarm room and we were talking about attitudes, he said, “The way I look at it, there’s at least two ways to look at everything.”

“How’s that?” I asked. “Pray explain!”

“The up way or the down way.” He contorted his face into an expression so ridiculously silly that I giggled. “Shame of it is, plenty of folks turn the up side down. I just think it’s more fun to look at things the up way.” He then performed his furry freak brother’s walk for me, said, “Look! I’m a stylin’ dude!” before he moseyed out of the alarm room and left me to reflect on my own thinking.

“Oh, Vic,” I thought. “Where are you now? I’ll bet you’re somewhere around here, wondering what the hell happened. Do you even know you’re dead yet?” I got up and heated some milk on the stove in hopes that it would help me sleep. I drank it down, rolled into bed again, and thought about the time I dropped by his studio apartment.

He’d proudly showed me a hanging aquarium he bought at Rare Discovery, a pricey art store in Honolulu. Molded from rough, unpainted ceramic, it was shaped like a porthole with thick pieces of round glass imbedded in two parallel facing sides. It struck me as a fitting symbol for Vic—one of a kind, of high quality, a piece of work, a heavy weight. One tug on the thick rope hanger told me I couldn’t budge it but he easily hoisted it back up to its storage place on the top shelf of his walk-in closet.

John couldn’t afford many luxuries on his fireman’s salary but the ones he bought—a three tiered, white shell chandelier; a plush, thick double futon bed; an extensive record and reel-to-reel tape collection—were exquisite and fine. He had great taste when it came to material things and music but seemed to be blind to the flaws of his best friend Jaaku.

My excuse for dropping by his “stylin’ pad” as he called it was to bring him the small potted plant with purple flowers I’d tried to give him the previous week. Red and Annie and I had visited him in his cold hospital room where he lay bruised and bandaged after nose surgery. The operation to repair his deviated septum had been successful, but the white bandages on his nose were surrounded by a mass of blue and purple bruises on cheekbones and eye sockets. As he sat up, bright red blood dripped from his nose. “This is not cool,” he said, and swiped at the blood with a napkin. I must have looked shocked because he added, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Red gave him a playboy magazine, a handshake, and wishes for a speedy recovery. Annie handed him a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. He smiled as I handed him the plastic pot. “A plant, huh?”

“I thought about cut flowers,” I said, “but they die so quickly, and this plant will grow.” I wished I’d brought him something more hip.

He said it was a cool plant but he rode his bike to the hospital, had no way to take the plant home, and would I drop it by his pad in a week or two? Of course I said yes.

“Here’s my phone number,” he said, and wrote it on a paper napkin.

“You have a phone?” I asked. He’d told the station he didn’t have one.

“Yeah, I only give it to my friends. I don’t want the chief bothering me with his…” he paused and made one of his funny faces, “petty bullshit.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” I now decided bringing him a plant had been a brilliant move. What a golden chance to hang out with him for awhile, away from the fire station and, better yet, away from Jaaku.

Red asked if Jaaku had stopped by. “Not yet,” Vic said, “But he said he would.” Red’s eyes caught mine; we both knew Jaaku wouldn’t show, that his circuits weren’t wired up to think about anyone’s needs but his own. I’d decided years before that straightforward Vic didn’t understand Jaaku’s backstabbing ways. It was like these two friends lived in separate universes, each thinking the other was like himself, both of them dead wrong.

When we stood up to leave, Annie kissed Vic’s cheek, Hawaiian style. She paved the way for me and I was happy to follow, to touch my lips to his hot cheek, something I wouldn’t have done if I’d been alone with him, pressed down as I was with the weight of the mountain-sized crush I had on him. It was the first time I kissed him. It was also the last.

The following week, I tried to phone Vic but his phone was busy for so long I got impatient, grabbed the plant, and “moseyed on over”, as he would have said, to his “stylin pad,” which was only a couple of blocks away from mine. He answered my knock with a telephone receiver pressed to his ear, motioned me inside, waved me over to his overstuffed brown plaid couch, and smiled at me as he talked to his ex (I hoped) girlfriend Molly. Some violent road warrior show played out on his small screen TV and I sat uncomfortably, wishing I could turn it off, feeling like a third wheel. “Well, got to go now, somebody came over,” he finally said, smiled at me, listened to her and added, “Yeah, me too.”

Words of love? I hoped not. He’d told me, one night in August of 1983 when we were “talking story” in the alarm room, that Molly had split to California in early Spring, soon after she’d rearranged his apartment without asking him and he’d ordered her to put his stuff back where it was before.

I’d also lost my significant other, a month before he lost his, when my boyfriend Abe moved to the Big Island to seek, he said, his Hawaiian roots. It had been a rocky eight years with Abe, an intelligent, warm hearted man who carried a big chip on his shoulder, and I was partly glad and partly sad to see him go. After transferring to Hennessee Fire Department in 1980, I often compared Abe’s morose outlook with Vic’s positive one and wished I weren’t enmeshed with someone so negative. But I had abandonment issues and was afraid of falling for a love ‘em and leave ‘em guy. At least Abe was there for me.

After Abe left, my friendship with Vic had metamorphosed into a mountain-sized crush but one, I imagined, that wasn’t reciprocated. Vic didn’t seem to know he was an Italian Adonis. His beautifully sculptured weightlifter’s body and his blue eyes nested in smile lines on his tan, Sam Elliot look-alike face left him with no dearth of female admirers. On a physical beauty scale of one to ten, he was a ten, so why, I asked myself, would be want to hook up with a seven or eight like me when there had to be other tens out there in hot pursuit?

Still, I fantasized. Vic was shy with women if he didn’t know them well and he hated being chased. And we were tight. He knew me and liked me from years of working together through heart-wrenching emergencies, sharing life stories, and enjoying each other’s slightly wacky sense of humor. I hoped that our history worked in my favor and I was careful not to put our friendship at risk by coming across like I was chasing him. Hence the protection of the potted plant which he, after all, had asked me to bring over.

I told him the TV show wasn’t my cup of tea, so he switched it off and asked if I’d like to hear some music instead. I nodded and he said, “Some Neil Diamond for you, I think,” and pulled an album from stacks of records stored in wooden crates beside his eight-track reel-to-reel recorder. He picked up the potted plant and said, “I think I’ve got a black thumb,” and I laughed and he told me that all of his prior plants had died but he’d try to remember to water this one. Then he placed the plant inside a round bronze pot with lion feet legs which now, twenty four years later, sits empty on my patio because I haven’t been able to find another plant like the one I gave him.

A couple of hours flew by as he “rustled me up” a meal made with hamburger helper and told me “eat, eat,” but wouldn’t eat anything himself. Then he spread out a checkerboard on his plush king-sized futon bed because there wasn’t enough room for it on his wooden spool table. We played three games; he won them all. Then we “moseyed on over” to the couch. He pulled out a shoe box full of medals he’d earned when he was a sergeant in Vietnam, and explained what each one stood for. We laughed and talked and he teased me and I teased him back and I drank him in like wine and didn’t ever want to be sober again. Nor, however, did I dare overstay my unannounced visit, so eventually I forced myself to say, “It’s been great fun, Vic. Wish I didn’t have to go.”

The day after the murder, I worked eight to four on B-shirt. After I typed up the morning paperwork, my mind turned round and round over itself in an endless loop-de-loop the way it does when I’m stressed out. Chin cradled in my hands, I rested my elbows on the long L-shaped console and wondered at not being able to feel anything except for anxiety at the thought, “What if Jaaku makes bail?”

My gaze wandered over the instrument panels full of radio channels, telephone buttons, and alarm receivers, out through the picture window and onto the enormous open bay garage facing the taxiway. The mud-splattered sight of Vic’s Ramp 7 pickup truck was an assault to my eyes, sandwiched as it was between the assistant chief’s polished pickup and one of the huge, shiny airfield trucks.

Ramp 7’s dirty condition was something Vic would never have allowed. He kept the truck shining like a waxed red apple, wiping it down every night and polishing it every morning after he gave me a break (there was no bathroom in the alarm room.) If the truck was less than spotless when Vic reported for duty, he politely but firmly told the B-shift driver to wipe down the truck before leaving work. The way I heard it, the driver invariably obeyed.

A summons from Assistant Chief Bob Henderson in the adjourning office pulled my mind back into the present. Jaaku’s nickname for Bob was “bolo head porky,” that’s bald and fat to you and me. He disliked Bob’s verbose ways and the fact that Bob had recommended someone else besides Jaaku for a previous promotion, which is why he’d cut Bob’s brake lines. On his part, Bob didn’t care for Jaaku but, like most of the firemen, thought he was just a bunch of hot air until he murdered Vic.

The local versus haole thing was alive and well in Hennessee Fire Department, I’m sorry to say, and I’d felt anti-haole sentiment directed against me more than once. That I had a local boyfriend for most of my stint at Hennessee increased my esteem in the eyes of some of the locals, and it may have prevented Jaaku from stabbing me in the back. He told me once, “Hey, Pam, you get one local boyfriend, yeah? You all right, pretty lady!”

Bob told me some detectives had called and said they’d come out if anybody would be willing to talk to them. Off the record, if they liked. That Bob had volunteered to talk to them didn’t surprise me. After all, Bob and Vic had been friends for years before Vic saved his life in 1981, pulling him from the torrid flames and heat of a back flash at the Iwelei fuel tank fire.

“I’ll talk to them,” I said, “as long as it’s off the record.”

Bob beamed, said he was proud of me for “coming forward,” and asked me to call everyone to the training room while he called the detectives back.

The firemen didn’t mind taking a break from the mops and sponges of station cleanup but, to a man, declined to talk, saying they didn’t work on A-shift with Vic and Jaaku, didn’t know them well, and therefore had nothing to say. This surprised me because some of them had worked for years on A-shift. I felt disappointed that Bob and I were the only volunteers.

“When I told the detectives who they’d be speaking to they said, ‘Oh, yes, we know Pam’,” Alan said. “They’ll come back tomorrow, too, when A-shift is on duty.”

Jeff and Andy used the chief’s office as their interview room and talked to Bob first. I was waiting outside when the door opened, and I heard Bob’s parting words, “The chief has a heart of gold. Jaaku slapping him was grounds for dismissal but the chief took it under consideration that Jaaku had a daughter to support and gave him another chance.”

Jaaku supporting a daughter? That was news to me. As I watched Bob disappear into the community room, I wondered if it was just another one of Jaaku’s lies.

“Hello again,” Jeff said. They ushered me into the chief’s office, motioned me to his executive chair, and faced me across the large oak desk. “The chief must be a good-hearted man, then,” Jeff remarked.

“That’s what Bob thinks,” I shrugged. “Most of us think the chief’s afraid of Jaaku.”

Andy raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

“Because Jaaku slapped the chief and got away with it. The Chief didn’t fire him.”

Jaaku had acted out the episode for me in the alarm room. “The chief scold me for some damn thing, threatened for terminate me,” Jaaku said. “I told him, ‘Fool! You terminate me, I terminate you!’ Then I slap him three times across his Tweety Bird face, thwap, thwap, thwap!” Jaaku acted out forcefully slapping the chief. “Later on, John tell me the chief asked him, ‘Hey, John, Jaaku got guns, or what?’ John tell him, ‘Yeah, Jaaku bad. He got plenty guns.’ After that, the chief don’t bother me no more.”

Months later, I found out what really happened. The chief had pointed his finger at Jaaku and scolded him for some wrong doing. Jaaku pushed the chief’s finger down but then realized what he’d done. “I got a daughter I gotta support,” Jaaku pleaded. “I sorry eh?” The chief relented but warned him he’d be fired if it happened again.

“Why didn’t the chief fire him?” Jeff’s gray eyes bored into mine.

“Because Jaaku’s a…a…” I searched for the right word, “a criminal. He committed lots of crimes.”

“Like what?”

“Like setting his car on fire in the cane fields when he couldn’t make the payments, so he could collect from the insurance company. Like, with the help of what he said were his Mafia connections, ripping off the $2,000 station video center and selling them at the swap meet. Like ripping off the firemen’s wallets, cars, and lockers, until they got wise and locked everything up when Jaaku was working. Then there was an episode with Tom Jones, a fireman who used to work here…”

The Tom Jones story had scared me most of all. Tom disliked Jaaku but, like me, knew better than to confront him. Soon after Tom left Hennessee Fire Department and before transferring to a new job in the mainland, he turned Jaaku in to the Security Police for smoking pot in the bunkrooms. Luckily for Jaaku, a cop friend of his tipped him off and he managed to dump his stash before they came with the dogs to sniff the place out. A few weeks later, Jaaku sent some thugs over to Tom’s house. Tom wasn’t there but his mother and brother were. The thugs beat them up so badly that they ended up in the intensive care unit at the hospital.

I’d been a captive audience when Jaaku acted out that story for me. As usual, he waited until I was alone in the alarm room.

“Hey, the bugger never shoulda fucked with me, no joke.” Jaaku threw his hands up in the air and paced the floor. “Us guys used to drink plenty beers in the bunkrooms, Tom too, so how come he never told his asshole fuckin’ cop buddies about that, about him being one bunkroom boozer? He never like point the finger at hisself, is why, fucking hypocrite.” Jaaku curled his hand into a pretend gun and acted like he was shooting it at an imaginary Tom. “No way that asshole gonna get away with turning my ass in without him getting his ass kicked. No way. Hey, Pam, I bad, or what?”

I said something inane like, “You sure are” and thought, “What about Tom’s poor innocent mom and brother?” The familiar taste of fear coated my tongue and I wished I dared tell Jaaku to get the hell out. But no, I had to stick to the formula I’d figured out for how to handle Jaaku: always watch my back, give him the attention he seemed to crave, and act impressed. Pretend to believe his wild tales. Don’t say I know he’s lying or at least exaggerating, and never confront him.

I told Jeff and Andy the story.

“These things really happened?” Jeff asked.

“Yes.”

“Did Jaaku tell you about all of these things?”

“Only some of them. The firemen told me the rest.”

“Why do you think Jaaku told you some of these things?”

“Because he knew I’d listen. He didn’t know I was afraid not to. But Jaaku liked to brag to almost everybody, not just me. I think most of the guys knew better than to ignore him or make him mad because he would have slashed their tires or worse.”

In an incredulous tone of voice, Jeff asked, “Why didn’t you tell the chief about these things?” Then he answered his own question. “You were scared, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I figured the chief was scared, too, because he let Jaaku get away with slapping him. Because Jaaku gets even with people who confront him in any way. Like he did with Tom Jones.”

Andy asked, “Did Jaaku ever say anything to you against any particular race?

“He talked about Japanese…” I paused but Jeff nodded so I went on, “He said the slant eyes all stick together. He called Japanese people ‘Buddha heads’.”

“Did he ever say anything against haoles?”

I nodded. “I overheard him talk about the ‘fucking haoles’ when he ‘talked story’ with the local guys at dinner. But nothing directly to me, of course, since I’m haole.”

Jeff must have sized me up as a good witness because he pulled out a tape recorder and said, “We’d like you to make a statement.”

“You said we could talk to you off the record.” I protested.

“That won’t help us with the judge, Pam,” Jeff said. “If we tell him what you said he’ll ask, ‘Where’s her statement?’”

Fear made my voice loud. “Can you guarantee me protection 24 hours a day?”

“No,” Jeff said softly.

“Jaaku will send his thugs after me if I testify against him in court!”

“Jeff, she lives alone,” Andy said.

“So what?” Jeff captured me in the steady gaze of his executioner eyes. “What if you had a family? Would you tell the truth then? You said Vic was your friend. What if he was your brother? Would you tell the truth about Jaaku then?”

His words stabbed me and I cringed.

“So,” Jeff said, “you have a conscience.”

“I felt like…in many ways…he was my brother,” I whispered.

“Won’t you tell the truth for your brother?”

I felt squeezed between fear of Jaaku and love for Vic and I couldn’t think clearly in the face of all the possibilities that raced through my mind of the ways Jaaku would get even with me if I testified against him. The only way my frantic mind could think of to push back and give myself some space was to say, “I only worked with them eight hours a day, every other day. Why don’t you question the guys who worked with them 24 hours a day, three shifts a week? Jaaku told them a lot more than he told me.”

“We intend to. But what about you? Are you going to make a statement?”

I looked into Jeff’s hard, gray-eyed stare and thought, “he just doesn’t understand that Jaaku’s buddies would kill me if I testified against him.” Stalling for time, I said, “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay, you think about it.” Jeff looked disappointed as he put his tape recorder away.

I walked them to the front door and then, wanting to give them something that would help, blurted out, “Jaaku had a murder fantasy. He was always saying he was going to blow somebody away. He was like an explosion about to happen.”

Jeff and Andy exchanged glances. “We know,” Andy said quietly.

Pam recently finished an article on school gardens and is hard at work on one about bullies in Hawaii’s public schools. She welcomes your feedback and asks that you send it to her at lyricpam1@yahoo.com.

She thanks SethNet Journal reader Mike Nelson Pedde of Canada, who wrote: “I just wanted to take a second to say thanks for sharing your story.  It's beautifully written, and would have been especially hard to write, being a true story.  From a Sethian perspective, though, it's sometimes hard for people to accept the whole 'you make your own reality' concept when something like this happens in our lives.  We find ourselves at a crossroads, either wanting to assign 'blame' somewhere, figuring Seth is wrong, or wondering what belief or system of beliefs could create such a reality in our lives.  Eventually, if we're lucky, we find a way to make peace with ourselves.  On a larger level of existence, everything is cooperation.  In 'The "Unknown" Reality, Vol. 2' Seth talked about this reality as being a 'training ground' of sorts.  Even when we kill, we kill nothing, and even if we destroy the world, we can only destroy it as we know it to be.  We destroy nothing, for we can't annihilate consciousness.”

“I agree with you and Seth, Mike,” Pam says. “I made peace with my part in this long ago, believing as I do that my role was and is to be the fair witness. To tell the truth about what really happened because I promised Vic’s spirit that I would. I also hope to continue to grow as an artist as I write this, the story that’s closest to my heart”

“I think there are few real heroes, and Vic was one, and he deserves to be honored. I know Vic’s as alive now as he ever was, that he’s aware that I’m telling his story, and that it pleases him. “Great heart” is what I called him in one of the songs I wrote about him (titled “Resurrection”, you can listen to several versions of it on my website at http://www.SongU.com/members/pgibson). For doesn’t the Bible say no man has greater love than he who lays down his life for his friend?”

For Chapter 1 of A Dream, A Question, and a Promise, and Pam’s bio, please see Sethnet Journal #42.

My Will To Be
by Hal Manogue

Bubbling With Consciousness
Water Fills Itself With Love
Raging Rapids Spin In Cycles
Giant Falls Splash Into A Pool
Of Endless Affection
Floating In The River Of Joy
A Branch Reaches Its Destination
And Returns To Meet Itself
In Awareness

Following The Sea Of Dreams
I Cascade Through A Mist
Of Molecules
Never Catching A Breathe
Or A Drop Of Doubt
I Free Fall Into Existence
With Water’s Love
And A Gift Of Choice
That’s
My Will To Be

Howard (Hal) Thomas Manogue, was born in Philadelphia, and is a forerunner to the Indigo children, a now age term for misfit with an intuitive nature, a desire to know his truth with a gift of giving and sharing. Hal retired from the shoe industry after 35 years of sole searching, and discovered his real soul. He enjoys art, music, philosophy, psychology, nature and people.

His poems have been published by: Mystic Pop Magazine, Children Of The New Earth Magazine, New Age Tribune, Seasons Of The Soul Newsletters, Lightship News and Writers In The Sky Newsletters. His essays can be found on www.ezinearticles.com and www.selfgrowth.com .
Hal’s Blog and Website: http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"> http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/ and www.shortsleeves.net He lives in Franklin Tennessee.

Hal’s new book Short Sleeves Insights: Live A Ordinary Life In An Non-Ordinary Way will be in print in April. Visit any book store or Hal’s website to get a copy. Hal’s third Collection Of poetry: Short Sleeves A Book For Friends will also be in print in April.

Announcements, Links and Shopping

Online Energy Games

Join Dale Evans each Tuesday 4-5 p.m. (Eastern) on Yahoo Instant Messenger for Group Energy Games. Connect with IntuitiveFacilitator on Yahoo IM for an hour of energy fun and games.
Free and open to the public.

Dale Evans is an Intuitive & Psychic Coach and Energy Worker who has been studying, teaching, and exploring metaphysical phenomena for over 40 years. Her teachings incorporate direct personal experience in order to foster and nurture self-acceptance and trust in one's natural abilities. Dale is also a published poet, newspaper reporter, and freelance journalist whose work is seen in print and on various websites, e-zines and online journals. Visit her website at www.ItAllBeginsNow.com.

Explore the works of Visionary Artist Shirley Hadley!

The photographs you see below were created by Shirley in her studio, and not through electronic manipulation. Each photo is available in 5x7 or 8x10 and includes a poem that goes with the photo.

Entrance to Awareness
The journey of the self is
to see without using your eyes
to hear but not with your ears.
Listen to your inner voice, it will lead you
to an awareness of new ways to view your
selves and the world you live in.

New from Sharon Hackleman, author of Marion the Magnet



MIND TIME CARDS

"Mind Time Cards are a deck of 31 inspiring positive daily affirmations created by Sharon Hackleman and illustrated by Jessica Glickman. The SOUL purpose of creating the Mind Time Cards is to teach teens about the magical powers of positive thought and the importance of feeling good about themselves-
Spirit, Mind, and Body!

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"We are all connected...intertwined...by a universal energy so divine." - Sharon Hackleman

Sethworld - A board game based on the Seth Material

Explore your beliefs! Stretch your imagination! Delve into your dreams! Challenge your creativity!

Seven years in the making, I am so pleased to be able to offer you SethWorld - The Game of All That Is! SethWorld is a totally unique game, the first metaphysical board game based on the Seth material - maybe the first metaphysical board game, ever! It is designed to explore and uncover beliefs while having fun. There are no winners, no losers, and NO RULES! A 24-page pamphlet included with the game gives a probable framework for play, 6 sample "moves," and a glossary of 61 concepts.

SethWorld -- You've never played anything like it!

WHAT A COINCIDENCE Understanding Synchronicity In Everyday Life
by Susan M Watkins

Overview:

What if all those seemingly insignificant little What a coincidence! moments you've experienced were actually connected, were part of a larger, more complex coincidence story?

What if they were hinting at something very personal and important about yourself—and about the workings of human consciousness?

Would you listen?

Susan Watkins does. For more than 35 years she's been documenting and studying the coincidences that have happened in her life. What she's discovered is that seemingly simple coincidences—thinking of an old friend and their calling seconds later, for example—are often pieces of larger, more complex and meaningful "coincidence clusters."

A former newspaper reporter and the author of five books, Watkins has always been intrigued by coincidences—what they mean in our everyday lives, and in the grander scheme of things. What, she asks, do these coincidence clusters say about human consciousness and human connection? In What a Coincidence! she presents coincidence clusters that are utterly astounding. What they reveal is life- altering.

What a Coincidence! is an exciting, groundbreaking journey. Along the way Watkins offers profound insights as well as practical pointers on how to become aware of the coincidence clusters in our own lives. She also shows us how to document coincidences so that we, too, can reap their valuable rewards. We'll never brush off those What a Coincidence! moments again.

Conscious Creation Links – Conscious Creation Publishers, Book Stores, Websites, Journals, Newsletters, Mailing Lists, Message Boards, and more.

The Elias forum - website by Paul & Joanne Helfrich contains an expansion of many of the conscious creation concepts introduced by Seth/Jane Roberts, channeled by Mary Ennis.

What if the Seth material was a foundation to be expanded later by other channeled sources? Can any perennial source ever be considered complete AND infallible?

Seth readers will want to check out:
Introduction & Overview
A Seth, Elias Comparative Overview (Updated!)
Digest: Seth, Jane Roberts

In The Rose Garden - a blog by Joanne Helfrich who channels the essence of Rose as mentioned in the Elias forum.

The Kris Chronicles - an expansion of many of the conscious creation concepts introduced by Seth/Jane Roberts, channeled by Serge Grandbois.

A Kris, Seth, Elias Comparative Overview (Updated!) - a preliminary comparison of core concepts in the Seth material, information offered by Elias, and Kris Chronicles

Otherfocus.com the personal website of Donald R. Johnson

Explore the creative worlds of John McNally and Kristen Fox Cofounders of the Conscious Creation Website and Email group John and Kristen share interests in writing, art, photography and cooking which they explore on a variety of websites:

John and Kristen's new Green blog: It Should Be Easy Being Green
Intuitive Astrology site: Psychic Weather
Writing: Mind Altering Fiction
Photography: Telepathicfrog
Cooking: Food Follies
Shop: Telepathic Frog Designs
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Kristen's weblog: FoxVox
Art & Photo Gallery: Art of FoxVox
Art & Photo Prints: Deviant Art
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