The Arcane Teaching (III)

"-. 11 January, 1989 .-"

It turned out that for every DMT trip his mom or he himself had ever been on, the Ancient One had been there to smooth out and make it easy on them both. Or useful in his case.

That was not going to be the case this time.

"It is not enough to be told or agree with a teacher. You must experience the fact that you are an Ego-Centre in the Cosmic Life. You must realize that you are more than body and mind. That you are Spirit in SPIRIT. No mere intellectual acquiescence or understanding will supply the real experience of Egohood."

The words were ones he knew and the sentences made sense but he didn't understand the meaning beyond what he could imagine. Which was jack shit apparently.

"You must experience the realization that you are an Ego – a spiritual entity – before you attain Egohood. One cannot be dragged or pulled up into this stage, not even you. One must grow into it naturally, as a seedling grows into a tree that then blooms into leaf and flower. Unlike other plants, you have been grafted. Now we shall see if you can make that graft your own. Or perhaps you will shed it. Or both. Or none. We shall see."

Peter didn't have any contact with his mother or grandfather for five days after the argument. Not because he was forbidden to, but because his grandfather wouldn't leave his mama before they were through with things. And his mama didn't feel strongly enough about the reverse to flee her own rooms over it.

Or maybe they were making real progress. Either way, to Peter it felt rather like he was a bystander in the play being enacted of his life.

"Your personality is merely the part in life you are playing – 'the Peter Quill part of you.' And, consequently, the awareness of Personality is merely an awareness or consciousness of your own personal character, just as an actor is aware and conscious of the character of the play he is enacting."

When not being taught or put through various mental exercises by the Ancient One, Peter spent those days trying to imagine what it would be like if an actor forgot his real Self. If he became so earnest and wrapped in the play that he believed he really was Hamlet or Richard III or Faustus or Mephistopheles. He thought it gave him a pretty clear idea of the state of consciousness of the regular Joe. Peter wondered what it was supposed to be like, to shake off that illusion. Would he find out he was something more than the assumed character – would he awaken to find out that he was more than 'Peter Quill' – and feel like his personality is just an assumed character? Was he a mask used by an actor?

"The Consciousness of Individuality is an awareness by man that he is above the limits and character of Personality – that he is a Centre of Consciousness and Force in the One Cosmic Life. Once firmly fixed, the Ego-Consciousness never leaves one. Once found, it becomes a Tower of Strength in which one may ever take refuge from the trials of the personal life – and from which one may safely defy the things of personality."

The words were utterly loaded with meaning but he could barely grasp most of it. Even though nobody had the same problem. Not even his grandma. Which was an uncharitable thought, it's not like grandpa would ever fall for a simple woman. But it was a terrible thing to see himself lag so far behind in understanding just because he wasn't well-adjusted. It was so frustrating!

"Peter, you're eight. I know reincarnation is a big thing, but so is neuroplasticity." Grandma told him when serving him tea the third evening. "Also, all that stuff you're learning sounds like a formula to me."

Fasting meant he wouldn't be eating much. Or at all if it could be helped. That, at least, wasn't great hardship for him. He'd gone hungry a lot in his former life.

"The first step seems to be acquiring the realization that the Ego is not the physical organism, but is its master," Grandma further opined. Peter thought he had that already, but he was sure Yao would disagree. And probably use words like 'clear,' 'distinct,' 'positive' and 'absolute' while doing it. "From what I've asked and heard from Jason and our host, it sounds like every student of the mystic arts, even those who've achieved whatever mental consciousness state the menfolk are talking about, need some nice and proper drilling in order to escape the physical body entirely."

Why had grandma never gone on a DMT trip again? She sounded like she'd ace it. Not that it was a competition. "You'd think it would be easier at this point," Peter instead muttered. Sullenly. Trying to ignore his growling stomach with little success. "It's not like we don't all know this stuff. We've all seen this movie."

"Yes, where would we all be without the wisdom of people who become rich pretending to be something they're not while uttering words written for them by someone else?" Grandma said dryly. "Thank you Hollywood. You enrich us."

"Hey, Kung Fu was a great series!"

"No, the stunts of masculine dominance were distracting enough for the aphorisms cited out of context from the Tao Te Ching to seem 'great,'" Yao threw in from where he was sipping at his own tea. Peter could practically hear the quotation marks.

"Hold on, you watched Kung Fu?"

"In your dreams."

The world tilted sideways. What? This was not what the Sorcerer's sense of humour was like-oh! "Oh! You mean that literally!" Peter realized.

"Though the Ego is beyond such things as harm and hurt, certain things remain inescapable," the Ancient One said drolly. "Such as the witnessing of the less than relevant things of others while in search of their complete picture."

He could have just said 'dream walking' and left it at that. Jeez.

It was on the fifth day that Peter finally got to see someone besides his grandma or Ancient One again. And it wasn't his grandfather, despite what he'd expected. It was his mother.

Meredith Quill sat down next to her son on the divan backing the north-side wall of their floor's communal living quarters and took his hand in one of hers. There was nobody else there. Yao was doing whatever he was doing wherever. Grandpa was wherever else. And Grandma had left to check on her man as she always did around noon and the evenings.

His mother looked… thoughtful. Melancholic. And settled in a way Peter hadn't seen her even at her best before the tumor. And he could remember that far. Easily. More and more easily with every new 'exercise' that the Ancient One made him try. And try and try and try whenever he had too much on his mind. Shame. Memories. Friends he no longer had. Hunger pangs.

"I was turning into a bad mother, wasn't I?"

There were several things that passed through Peter's mind. He said none of them.

"Peter?"

No way in hell. No way. No. I don't think so. "… I don't know mom," he finally admitted. "I don't… I just wouldn't know," he said miserably.

"I guess you wouldn't, given what I've been doing. Because how dare anyone suggest to me there might be some things in need of improving about myself? It's not like I've chugged up more DMT than both of you combined," she said with unprecedented self-deprecation. But she firmed against it as if she'd been prepared for the answer, even if it hurt her. "But I can damn well make sure you'll know what a good mother is like this time around."

Peter let his gaze drop from hers to the doily on the table, mind whirling with mixed feelings and questions. And one chief among them: What had his grandpa done? Because whatever it was, it must have been amazing.

"Your grandfather and I… we spoke." The undercurrent of 'understatement' had never been more blatant. "It wasn't easy to hear some of the things he told me. About you. About me. About parenthood." Se squeezed his hand faintly. "But I think I needed to hear it. Maybe a long time ago even. I suppose at first there was no precious child of mine at risk from my mounting mistakes. And later on… daddy just didn't have no heart to make me sad while I was dying. And how could he? I was his little girl." Meredith Quill looked wistful. "Maybe that's where it started going sideways. I never stopped being daddy's little girl. I never took on any of the do's and don'ts of womanhood. Never moved past the ambitions of my youth. Never flew the coop, as they say. Oh, to have lived without the safety net of my parent's house and bread. What harsh realities would have been thrown in my face? Guess we'll never know now."

Peter wished he knew what to say. It's not your fault was on the tip of his tongue, but that wasn't exactly true was it? If not hers, whose? Grandpa's? Grandma's? No one's? If there was a major thing that had been hammered into his thick head, it was that people bore full responsibility for the choices they made. Who was he to challenge his mother's position here? Her new-found feelings of responsibility?

And who was he to absolve her of them?

"Never offer absolution," Yao had told him. Long after Grandpa had told him the same. "There is none alive or dead that has the right to dispense such a thing upon another soul."

Peter had a feeling that fiery religious debates would be in his immediate future if he ever said that aloud in public. That or a stoning. Or both.

"I'm still not sure I can believe everything your grandpa told me about your daddy," his mama said, drawing him out of his mental tangent. "But I'm ready to find out for myself. Or at least become the sort of woman that can tell when the truth is or isn't right in front of her." She brought the back of Peter hand to her lips, then lowered it back on the divan. "So I spoke with the Wizard. I'll be going on the DMT trip with you." What? "No take-backs." What!? "No safeties. No help. Just me."

"WHAT!?" Peter jumped from his seat, which embarrassingly put him lower than he was previously. But he couldn't be arsed to care because what!?

The futile argument that ensued went precisely nowhere. Not even when Yao showed up later in the day with his latest cup of onion and banana juice. Ugh. He'd lost count how many of those he'd had. At least he wasn't puking his guts out because of them now.

"If it is any consolation," the Ancient One said in that kindly voice he always used when he wasn't tearing down your whole system of beliefs along with the rest of you. "There is no 'joining' someone on a Soul Wine trip. Not without one or more of those involved – or assisting – having sufficient prowess in mentalism. Which I will not be contributing."

Yao never told him what he should expect from the trip, and neither could anyone else. Or, as he'd come to correct himself on the evening of the sixth day, no one could hint at what he should expect except one.

He really should stop being surprised over it being his Grandpa. For a moment Peter expected to feel resentful of him. But instead he felt a flash of confusion on Grandpa's behalf for being the only one in his family who didn't get an easy pass when it came to DMT.

"Do you resent me?" Grandpa asked him wryly, after Peter tried to get over the absurd relief at finally seeing him again via the most awkward failure at starting a conversation. "That I didn't need the same crutch you all did?"

"It feels like I should," Peter said weakly, not shying away from being tucked into the man's side. "But I bet I'd just look stupid." Again. "Did it suck?"

"The first trip or three were a dreadful experience," Grandpa admitted grimly. "Like falling into a dark and terrible place where I was tortured for an eternity every instant. At first I didn't even have any self-awareness. Even though I was some manner of aware for all of it. And then, when I finally began to remember myself and what it was to have free will… it didn't make any difference. When I remembered what it was like to be anything, I didn't seem to have any ability to do anything. The suffering just… went on and on and on. It was torment the likes of which I can barely describe. A strange, soul-deep agony. And everywhere a heavy, all-pervading derision that seemed to eat at whatever I was, like acid. It felt like being eaten alive."

Well… shit.

"The mocking laughter on and off might have been a torture-induced hallucination, or it might not have been. The only useful thing I got out of the whole thing was a whisper right at the end. 'Meredith.' My daughter that is. Like whatever-it-had-been was mocking me for my greatest failure. And looking forward to my return when it could devour me all over again."

That… that…

Peter was fucked, that's what he was. What could he say?

"It was actually kind of freeing," Jason Quill said, a strange peace upon him. Peter gaped and stared at his bizarre conclusion, spellbound. "All that torture. That disdain. The sheer Derision. And it wasn't for anything I couldn't change. Not even for anything I could have changed that was bigger than me and my life on this here planet. My greatest failure, and it wasn't my people. My world. My father. My empire. Whatever destiny I thought I had. No. Somehow, my greatest failure was one of two good things I got out of the worst turn in my life. Things I could actually do something about." Grandpa smiled slightly down at him. "Seeing as the worst your mama did was take a few extra years to get over her childish fantasies, I'd say my greatest failure wasn't that bad a failure at all, don't you think?"

Peter stared at the man, awestruck. What kind of person did you have to be, to be able to pull that sort of realisation from such an ordeal? If Peter had to achieve anything even remotely like it, he might as well call it quits right there. He was nowhere near that… whatever it was. He was…

"… I don't know what'll happen," Peter said dully.

"Neither do I," Jason Quill shrugged. "I doubt the Sorcerer entirely knows either."

"So what then?" Peter scoffed. "Have faith?"

"Faith? Who the hell told you to rely on something as flimsy as that?"

Er… Yondu? Kinda? "… You're not checking any of the pep-talk boxes, you do realise that right?"

"'Do as I say not as I do' is not something I ascribe to, son."

"I'm feeling distinctly not encouraged," Peter said flatly, trying to disguise the dread he felt mounting the longer this conversation continued. "Isn't this the part where you go all 'I believe in you' to get my spirits up?"

"I don't believe in anything."

Even sitting down, that reply staggered Peter. He'd have expected literally everything else. Anything else. Even if it was just a platitude, he could have handled it. 'I believe in you.' 'You should believe in yourself.' 'Believe in me who believes in you.' 'Even if you don't believe in yourself or whatever.' He'd even have lived with 'why should I believe in you when you don't believe in yourself?' Instead, he'd gotten… he'd…

He…

Jason Quill laughed and pulled him into his lap, turning him around to look him in the eye. His hands were firm and warm on his shoulder and his face. "Always you assume there is nothing outside your imagination that could be appropriate to your situation, son. Always you assume. Always you overstep." Hearing those words from a different mouth unbalanced Peter even harder. "Does it not occur to you that perhaps there are things beyond your imagination that aren't beyond mine? You think I haven't already imagined and prepared for whatever could pass as your failure? You think I haven't done the same for your success? You think I need something as flimsy as blind faith to expect you to be victorious?"

Peter felt… he didn't even know at this point.

Jason Quill chuckled again and took him by the crook of his neck, so that he couldn't look away. "Peter. Repeat after me. I AM."

The boy blinked, but okay. "I am…" He was what?

"No. I AM."

"I am…?" He was what?

Jason Quill shook his head. "Wrong."

"Gee, Grandpa, thanks, that explains everything!"

"I know." The man put him down on the floor and rose to stretch.

"Oh, come on! At least tell me what I did wrong!"

"Intonation."

"What?

"You asked what you did wrong. The answer is intonation."

"What intonation?"

"All of it."

"Argh!" Peter stomped his foot in a fit of childish pique. Then he flushed in embarrassment at doing so. "God, I hate you sometimes, you know that?"

"I do," Jason Quill said with a rueful sort of solemnity. "And so does your mama on and off, even when she doesn't admit it. Such is my burden and I bear it gladly."

Peter practically fled from that conversation, even if he tried not to make it too obvious that's what he was doing. It was already bad enough that his mother and grandmother had been there for all of it and hadn't said anything. Not even his mother. Something… something seemed to have passed and concluded between them.

Peter only later realised he had forgotten to ask his Grandpa how he'd overcome whatever it was that made DMT trips such hell for him in the beginning.