Whitley has written about how he feels about his new novel
The
Grays. People Magazine calls it "a great read." It is based
not only on Whitley?s own experiences, but also on the
experiences of so many other witnesses whose
stories
we have heard over the years. But for me it's more than any
of those things: it's a love story.
It's the love
story of Whitley and me. We don't actually remember being
brought together as children by the visitors (whoever and
whatever they are) the way Dan and Katelyn are in the book,
but we've always felt that we were somehow destined to be
a couple. Whitley has vivid memories of meeting me when we
were children, and the meeting place he describes could well
have been my own backyard!
But he was never there, and I was never anywhere near
Texas, so there is no explanation. And yet, when we met, we
both had the same feeling of coming home at last, of finding
a dear, old friend again. And it has been like that ever since--
the first moment seems to be our permanent moment. After
38 years, our love affair is as vividly alive as it was the
moment we first laid eyes on each other.
And, speaking of eyes, when I read the story of Katelyn and
Dan's love in the Grays, mine became moist, because it was
so beautiful to see my husband's love of me reflected in his
story--and to see how deep his insight is into my love of him,
and the struggle I went through when he told me--of all
things--that he thought he might have been abducted by
aliens!
After that, I really could not imagine what was going on. But
his descriptions of what was happening to him were so vivid
that I believed that, certainly, it was something...
Then our next door neighbor came over and asked about the
light that was appearing above our house at night, and I will
never forget the shock that went through me at the moment
that I heard this polite, very rational man asking this
fantastic question.
But still, I had never heard or seen anything myself--until one
night, Whitley told me he had been begging the visitors to
show themselves to me. We were sitting in our hottub when
this strange noise started out over the woods--a sort of
rattling, humming sound. And here came a bunch of lights
over the house--not fifty feet above out heads.
Whitley yelled, "it's them," and sure enough, it was a UFO.
But what a WILD flying saucer! It looked like a big pile of
lumber decorated with Christmas lights. We stared at it in
open-mouthed astonishment as it went over the house, then
passed down a draw a short distance away, never going
higher than fifty feet or so.
We saw it clearly. No question. But then I had to say
it: "Whitley, that was a ridiculous UFO."
"What can I tell you--they have a sense of humor," he
replied. After that, I did not worry so much about his long,
secret forays into the woods at night. Surely somebody who
would do something like that wouldn't hurt my husband or
take him from me.
I saw nothing more until years later. By this time, he was
meditating every night in a room down the hall from our
bedroom, and the visitors were coming to meditate with him,
a whole bunch of them. I knew they were in my house, I
could hear them. And one night, I decided that I would join
one of these sessions.
I went down to the room and sat in a chair. Despite
everything, I still thought maybe this was something in that
very huge and complicated mind of his. Despite everything,
my own mind just wanted it to be something like this.
Then--thud! thud! thud! Something was landing on the roof
right over our heads. A moment later I sensed a presence in
the room. It was like people had entered who I could not
quite see in the dark. And I felt fear. I am not ashamed of it,
I felt intense fear. Who wouldn't, facing something this
strange? Except, of course, Whitley, who just sat there in
the lotus position looking as calm as some Buddha. I said, "I'm
not ready for this," and went back to bed.
Half an hour later, my husband came beside me, and held me,
and I felt that he had come from a far, far place back to his
home, that is me, and us.
My natural skepticism has always been a good foil for
Whitley's desire to find answers to the mystery
of the all this. It has been the foundation that kept bringing
him back to what is essential to his success both in his
relationship with the visitors and in his exploration of all the
unknown: the question. Keep the question
open, I tell him, and he always does.
One thing I've learned from my recent near-death experience
is that keeping the question open is the ONLY way to find
real wisdom. If you think you have all the answers, God or
the gods (or whoever they are) won't sprinkle down any more
knowledge and blow it your way. Why would they bother?
You wouldn't notice it or be ready to "catch" it when it came.
If we can't live in a state of indeterminacy, we won't be
ready to interpret the messages we receive in the light of
our own experiences and understanding?which is what
creates wisdom. we will either take them literally (in which
case, it's called information, not knowledge, and the gods
figure we can get plenty of information on our own), or we
will create all kinds of dogma around the whiff of knowledge
we've been given, then wind up attacking anyone who has
interpreted the same message even slightly differently.
Meanwhile, I'm living the love story of The Grays. It will be in
bookstores
very
soon, and Whitley will be on Coast to Coast AM
talking with George Noory about it on August 24th.
Related Entries:
31-Aug-2010: Cocooning
10-Aug-2010: A Trip to Crop Circle Country
27-Jul-2010: Marriage: Hot & Cold
06-Jul-2010: Marcelle
27-May-2010: A Trip to Esalen
11-May-2010: The Birds
13-Apr-2010: Staying Open
31-Mar-2010: I was an Angel for Easter
23-Mar-2010: Nuns I Have Known
16-Mar-2010: It Started With a Hummingbird
