The Arcane Teaching (II)

"I suppose that's one way to make sure all of us know why that alien menace fell for your mother."

Peter blinked dumbly at the old woman. Because none of that could possibly be why Ego fell for her and wait a minute, what?

"Actually, I think it is," Grandma didn't agree with what he'd apparently said out loud. What a shock. "Opposites attract but what happens afterwards is rarely useful or good for either side unless we're talking about magnets, and even then only if they're equally tough. Generally speaking, an evil man would only court a saintly woman intending to destroy her purity. But that's not what happened, is it? Now it's not impossible he was drawn in by her outgoing nature and admittedly charming ability to accept others. But a man only stays for those traits of a woman that he does like. Unless this was a case of Belle the Beauty taming the Beast, but what are the odds of that?"

Pretty good if you listened to Ego, but Peter was constantly finding reasons to disbelieve everything his enemies told him in the undone past. He tried to guess what traits his grandma was talking about instead. Or at least one of them. "Devotion?"

"To him, yes. She's clearly not short on it. Also, manipulativeness. Don't forget she also cares very little for most life forms other than the ones so pathetic that they can't go on without her direct nurture and protection."

"Well gee," Peter said flatly. "Thanks grandma."

"I wasn't talking about you, dear," the woman said with a raised eyebrow. "She's a wee bit too much of a self-righteous activist on behalf of causes she'd never have even considered worth her notice if she weren't as financially and socially privileged as we worked to make her." Wow, wasn't that a bit harsh? She's her daughter! "Sure, it's our fault for being too indulgent with her, but after what she just did I think it's past time we all faced reality, don't you?"

Peter stared at the woman.

"Your grandfather was incredibly restrained by the way," Grandma continued when she saw he was too lost for words, picking up her embroidery hoop. "The tally he doled out actually goes on to 167 items. He stopped very short of the full checklist."

Peter didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything.

Which was, apparently, the wrong thing to do. "Don't think I didn't notice you seeing her hit coming from a mile away and not doing anything. How many times did it happened in that past life of yours?"

At least once with every woman he was ever with. "Occasionally."

"Liar," because of course she could see through him as easily as Grandpa could. "And how many times did you avoid or dodge such blows in the early days, only for the floozy to become a relentless, spiteful bitch that would stop at nothing but the complete destruction of your life for the high insult of being man enough not to take such abuse?"

Peter Jason Quill blinked at the woman, a tad bit on the side of pole-axed from orbit. So much so that he didn't have it in him to give an answer. It was obvious anyway: the answer was all of them. It was just easier all around to take the hit and let them flounce off with their fake victory.

Meredith the Older shook her head as she teased at a stitch. She was sewing a model of an M-Ship, Peter noted distantly. "You have no respect or love for yourself worth mentioning, Peter." That… that wasn't true, was it? "I'm glad those pirates are dead if it means they won't get to break you like this again."

Peter suddenly had to swallow hard against his dry throat. "I… I think I'll go for a walk."

"Love you, Peter."

The casual, almost absent-minded words followed him out of room, hallway and building until he was on the top-most terrace of the Astral Overlook. The day was overcast and windy but at least that was okay. The cold never bothered him anyway.

It was there that the Ancient One joined him some time later, when he'd long since burned through all the energy he could allocate to pretend everything back inside hadn't happened. The Sorcerer sure knew his timing, Peter thought bitterly. "So," he said when the old man didn't seem like he would start the conversation. "Now that I failed as I'm sure everyone expected, what's next?" It was hard to withhold his resentment, even though he didn't know towards whom he was resentful at this point.

We can no longer make allowances for procrastination or cowardice.

Oh, that's right, with himself. How very-

"Indulge me in an exercise," the man said, completely derailing whatever Peter expected the discussion to be. "First, let's make this a quiet place, free from the disturbances and distracting influences of the outside world." The man performed a subtle hand gesture. The wind roar faded along with the snow glare and every other distracting draft, sight and sound. "Assume a position of rest, relaxing the tension from your muscles and nerves."

Peter blinked, taken aback, but after an inexorable gaze from the man, he sat down next to the railing. Then he laid on his back on the balcony floor when that was clearly not enough.

"Now fix your attention upon your physical body. First the body as a whole, and then beginning at the feet, move the attention upward until your whole body has been included in attention, step by step, until the brain is reached."

Peter wondered momentarily what kind of mystical exercise this was supposed to be, but he did as he was told.

As he did, though, he started to understand the point of it before he even finished the imagination. He became aware, by degrees, that he was a Something inside of the body. Even viewing and considering the body in all of its details, he suddenly didn't feel at all identical with it.

"By this point you will have found a dawning realization that the body is but the physical envelope or sheath in which the Ego dwells. Or a garment which the Ego has assumed for the conveniences of physical life."

He… he was right. The realization hadn't come all at once, but gradually dawned upon and in his consciousness.

Huh. Neat.

"Now concentrate your attention upon your feet, until you are able to regard them as but tools or instruments whereby the Ego may walk in physical form. Then, using your imagination, realize that even if your feet were not there, attached to the body, the Ego would still be fully existent and in being - that, although deprived of useful tools, the Ego would still be the Ego, unimpaired and undisturbed in its real being."

Yao talked him through the mental exercise, making him imagine himself without his legs, his arms, his pelvic organs, his chest organs and even the head. Peter didn't know how much time it took but he found it didn't matter. What mattered was… whoa…

"By now you will have realized that while the uses and purposes of these organs are important to physical life, the integrity and being of the Ego is in no way dependent upon them," Yao spoke confidently as if he could decide the reality of the words for himself. Peter… didn't have it in him to deny him. "Now, in imagination, separate yourself from all these limbs and organs in consciousness, and realize that even if that part of the body were removed, and missing, nevertheless the Ego would be fully existent in its entirety of being.

To his distant surprise, Peter didn't need to have it justified or explained to him. He just did as directed.

"Now throw your mind into and over the entire body and into and through all of its parts."

He could practically feel the process beginning to re-energize his physical body the moment he 'imagined' himself settling back throughout it. Had it become devitalised just through the analytical process? Peter didn't even have to imagine it re-charging with vitality and becoming stronger and more energetic than it was before the exercise. The moment he fully started to think of it as just an instrument, or machine, used by and directed by the Ego – that it was Mastered by the Ego – he felt like he suddenly was in possession of a new power. A power that was just one step removed from leaving the body entirely.

So in a moment of whimsy, Peter imagined himself doing just that.

And then it wasn't just imagination. He actually did leave his body on the ground and rose to gaze down upon it from above, as if he'd just emerged out of it through a circle of light that broke before him and shattered outwards until he was unbound.

Peter suddenly remembered the fullness of his flight through stars and time and became abruptly cognizant that the machinery of his physical body was just a created machine through which his Ego manifested. Was this why his father chose the name he did for himself? Peter could maybe begin to see it. If the Ego is above, independent of and apart from the physical body, then it may dwell apart from and out of the body. Or it may dwell in, of and through it and turn it into whatever he wanted it to be.

Peter was suddenly seized by the urge to imagine himself as occupying other and different bodies, one at a time, in different phases of life and condition, in different ages. Because his Ego was something so much bigger and higher and independent of this flimsy body of his that all he had to do was Will-

"Always you OVERSTEP!"

A crack in thought let forth the glimpse of a great, looming star field shaped like not-a-man and Peter Quill snapped awake on the ground, blind and graceless and gasping and heaving from a mighty fall and fright.

"Always you overstretch. Always you overestimate. Always you assume. Barely minutes under my instruction and you already seek to blow right past it. Hubris does not begin to describe it. Childish delusion of adequacy barely comes close. More fitting to call it self-indulgent stupidity."

"Excuse you!?" Peter gripped blindly around himself. His sight flickered from clear to nothing every other blink, like scratchy noise that broke out through scratched film. He felt for the railing, and when he found it he exploded upwards, jumping to his feet and ignoring how he swayed to point fingers in the direction of the voice. "Fuck you old man! You're the one who said we didn't have any more time for procrastination or cowardice. Those were your words, not mine!"

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. But Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. And for all that you indulged your grandfather in his earnest attempts to salvage the disaster of a manchild you've become, you never even considered what other claims and rights he might have had abstract yourself. Like you assumed it fell to the most inadequate and psychologically damaged boy within a hundred miles to confront a grown woman and mother about her deficiencies. Rather than the father on whose shoulders fell the responsibility to redress past mistakes in her upbringing. Never mind that the consequences of personal choices should be no one's responsibility but their own. You assumed it was your place to confront her false beliefs. You assumed it was your right to make that decision. You even had the gall to use it as a stepping stone in your quest to prove yourself worthy of some standard of bravery on which you consulted none of the other individuals involved that are wiser than yourself. Which is all of them!"

Peter drew back at the second uncharacteristic display of emotion he'd seen that day, his sight settling enough into the real world again to see what he was dealing with. He tried to go back over all the words. Then he thought back further over weeks and months, trying to conjure up evidence and memory that could disprove them.

He couldn't.

Yao looked down upon him, gaze narrow and harsh. "The average person is surprised, incredulous and even indignant when I inform them that very few among sapient beings really have awareness or consciousness of the I AM within them. They take themselves for granted, and never turn the gaze inward. Self-consciousness, like personality – simple consciousness – has many degrees on its scale. One has but to study his fellow men in order to perceive these varying degrees. That is why most do not seek the Path, and most who do dare not step upon it. They believe themselves fully realised, when in fact they are not. They all insist that they are fully aware of the existence of the 'I,' and cannot imagine that anyone can have the audacity to dispute the proposition. Even though the Truth is painfully simple: there is no immortal soul inherent to any mortal kind!"

The words barrelled over him and through him and past him and almost didn't make any sense at all.

"This is not your issue. The issue for you is not failure to achieve, but overachievement. The Ego-Consciousness – the immortal spirit one can obtain only if they strive – should become the habitual and natural consciousness at all times and under all conditions. But this is an achievement and realisation that is sought and developed by degree. That is the opposite of your development. Almost all the times undone ended before your own life ended. But you did not develop Ego during any of them. The Ego – the immortal soul that religion has wrongly taught all mortals to take for granted – is something you only gained during your last life, the only life you now remember. This would be no issue on itself – indeed, it is the common state of things for many of the beings that lived when time was undone so many times previously. Normally this would also mean that you would never be more than an adjacent or incidental factor to any Event of Importance. If only due to the limited ability of personalities to conceive themselves in such a role, however petty and grand their imagination. And yet, somehow, you slew a Cosmic God. Which was years after you maneuvered yourself into the position of holding an embodied fragment of the Infinite All."

The words flowed from the man and beyond him and above him and still didn't make any sense at all. "What are you even trying to say, old man?"

"You were never seriously hurt even when shot point-blank. You were never more than equally matched in any physical or armed confrontation no matter who or what in the Universe you fought for more than five seconds. The Spider Totem – the one you briefly knew as Spider-Man – can sense danger from all sides, is fast enough to move between blinks of the eye, and is strong enough to upturn locomotives. And yet you, an ostensibly normal human with no enhancements to speak of, were somehow able to outmaneuver, overpower and hold him hostage within the space of seconds during your first meeting on an unknown craft." Yao loomed tall and foreboding over him. "Did you never wonder how you achieved any of that?"

Peter gaped and stared up at the man, staggered.

"There is nothing beyond your body and personality that has ever been more than unconscious, Peter Jason Quill. And yet you held the Stone of Power and later witnessed in full the Substance of All Things, if only for a moment in Eternity. Achieving Ego-Hood in such situation is the only alternative to nothingness. But there was never anything outside your body and personality that was ever more than unconscious. And so your Ego itself lingers and IS unconscious now."

Peter stared up at the man. That… he wanted to say that made no sense at all but the conviction died the moment he thought it. "What does any of this mean?" He asked, voice one level too high. He cleared his throat. "No offense but it feels like you're dumping me head-first into the advanced material."

"There is no palatable alternative. You roll and rumble and roil unconsciously without being aware of it even while everything else is. Or would be, if not for my concealment. But we are approaching the point where I will no longer be able to keep you hidden. You are a sleeping giant who thinks he is awake when in fact he is rolling over in dream and delusion. You are the blind leading the blind. The almighty idiot."

Peter leaned on the railing, feeling like he was actually bumbling vaguely downwards. He didn't say anything. Or think anything. He was lost for words.

"There is no more time to waste. There is no time to gradually awaken you to the Realization of Egohood. You already achieved Attainment without even discovering the Secret. The Key of Power. But you don't see it. And we have no time to wake you gently to what you already are. But the truth remains the same: you cannot exercise the Power of Spirit unless you realize that you are Spirit. Spirit is the Succor of the Cosmos. The Ego is a focal point or centre in that Essence. Come. We must prepare."

"What?" Peter asked, feeling slow and numb. But the Sorcerer was already walking away. Peter rushed after him. "Wait! Where are we going? What are you going to do?"

"We are going to start preparations to get you ready for the Hall of Attainment. And then I am going to keep watch to see if the Universe's track record remains untarnished relative to the rather more unpleasant alternative to the gradual awakening of awareness to Egohood."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You will go on a Soul Wine journey without my protection or guidance. And I will see if withholding that help will be enough to scare you awake."