Arcturus, My Home Star of Enlightenment

This blog is quite personal to me. It tells the story of my Arcturian awakening.

If you are reading it now, which, obviously, you are- then you are meant to be reading it. And I mean this personally, not just collectively.

YOU are reading it, because YOU are meant to be reading it.

Along the path of my own spiritual journey, I came across a few key writings with similar introductions, and always thought, as you are now thinking, "Oh, yeah, sure. I'm meant to be reading this. Me and every other person who reads it..."

And that's true.

You, and every other person who happens to read this, are meant to read it. No more, and no less.

I hope you enjoy!

***

My awakening came one Saturday morning in 2008 as I was getting ready for work. At the time, I was like any other lost 23 year old girl. I had moved to Vancouver to go to art school, but found myself disillusioned there. Instead of completing my bachelor of fine arts degree, I quit school in order to find my true calling. I dabbled in jewellery design, acting and writing, but nothing I tried gave me the sense of satisfaction we all look for in life. So, to make ends meet, I had taken a job in high-end fashion retail. My living was earned by jumping through the hoops of high pressure sales, slinging merchandise I hadn't an ounce of respect for, dodging cat fights with coworkers, and counting down the seconds until the end of the day, every day. Work was not a passion of mine, but a four letter word.

As I said, my awakening came one Saturday morning as I was getting ready for work.

I was putting on my make-up, when out of nowhere a voice said to me, "Sarah, you are an Arcturian." 

The voice was point blank, matter of fact. This was not the 'inner voice' that psychologists speak of, and it was not the 'booming celestial voice' so often described by mystics. It was just a voice, like any other. Neither high pitched nor low, without any perceivable accent. 

"What did you just call me?"

I figured my boyfriend, sleeping off a hangover from the night before, must have woken up and called me this strange name. Probably some kind of slang I hadn’t heard before, common at the dub step parties I had long since stopped attending.

When he didn't answer, I raised my voice and asked him again.

"Answer me, Star! What did you just call me?!" 

"Huh? Wha..." He grumbled, the way people do when you rudely interrupt their pleasantly undisturbed dreams. "I didn't call you anything, Sarah! Fuck... don't pick a fight so early in the morning..."

"You mean, you didn't just say, 'Sarah, you are an Arcturian'?"

"What? No! What's that?"

I was dumbfounded.

"I don't know..."

This was odd. For a moment, I considered that maybe I had overheard one of our neighbors. I dropped that explanation, though, when I remembered that the people occupying every other apartment on our floor were Chinese- the kind of Chinese who would say, "good day" to their neighbors in the elevator, but who never spoke English in the comfort of their own homes. I was quite sure none of them were called Sarah. 

When that dreaded time, I left for work. I was mildly curious about the voice, but given the nature of my dire occupational circumstances, I was more focused on getting through another day, than on finding out what Arcturian means.

That morning, work was more stressful than usual. The new store manager had given me a pseudo-promotion. She had invented for me a position called Floor Supervisor, which was really just a glorified name for "the one to bitch about each other to so that the real manager doesn't have to deal with your trivial bickering." There was no raise involved, just some added juice for my resume, and the questionable respect of my co-workers. As the youngest on a staff of mostly 40+ career saleswomen, you can imagine how much they appreciated having a 23 year old to answer to! 

"Just between us," said the manager, as she bestowed the new title upon me, "you're the most mature salesgirl we have here. I think if you give the others a few pep-talks, and set a good example with the chore list, you should be able to clean up the drama in no time!" 

"No, Liza, really-" I protested, "I'm flattered by the confidence you have in me, but I really don't think I have the experience necessary for this."

(What I wanted to say was this- "There's no way I can babysit these whiny women! They don't respect me. They think I'm a push-over… The only reason I don't get into fights like the rest of them, is that I've given up! When they steal my commissions and then deny it, I just let them because that's easier than fighting! Now, you want me to whip them into shape?" But, alas, I didn't want to speak up and risk losing the job, which was, though not my passion, a guaranteed paycheck.)

Besides the winning of an unwanted promotion, my day was a day like any other. Customers demanded attention, clothes required steaming, shelves needed dusting. My co-workers, in response to my new title, started to blatantly sugar-coat all of their interactions with me in a juvenile attempt at being thought of as 'the good one' the next time a fight broke out between them. (A classic case of sucking up, which children- even middle-aged children- do, when they know another child is preparing to tattle.)

By mid-afternoon, the toils of the day had all but erased my memory of the early-morning clairaudient episode. (As ‘clairvoyance’ means seeing beyond the physical, ‘clairaudient’ means hearing beyond the physical- think, Joan of Arc, or psychics who say, 'I'm hearing a message for you...') How quickly we forget about mystical things when we're caught up in the laborious process of mundane life. 

Anyhow, the mysterious voice of the morning suddenly came back to me as I was processing a sale. 

Something very strange happened: time stood still and everything around me froze. 

Yes, time stood still, and everything around me froze. 

The customer whose goods were being scanned stopped talking mid-word. The clock on the till stopped ticking. The cd skipped. (I wondered, before the magnitude of this odd situation sunk in, how, exactly, a cd could skip...) I looked around the store and the saw the bodies of my co-workers all awkwardly still; some mid-stride, some with their mouths open indicating that they were in the middle of saying something. They were awkward looking, like when you’re about to sneeze, and your face momentarily takes on a slack-jawed, unblinking gaze in anticipation of the explosive, ‘ahhh-choo!’ Only, none of them were about to sneeze.

It was as if, in the middle of the work day, a spontaneous playground game had erupted in the store, and the leader had just yelled, "Freeze!"

A buzzing sound filtered into my ears, but it wasn't coming from outside of me. It was like my ears were buzzing into themselves. Then, the ambiguous voice that had spoken to me in the morning, spoke to me again. This time, it spoke very clearly, emphasizing, with deliberately calm timbre, the importance of it's message. 

"Sarah, YOU are an ARC-TOO-REE-AN." 

(Although I understood that something very mystical was happening, I laughed at this annunciation; it's like the mystery voice had taken on the persona of a frustrated teacher speaking to a slow student in an English as a Second Language class, trying to make a break-through by saying, "You live in Ca-Na-Da. Can you say CA-NA-DA?") 

I replied aloud, "Thank you. I heard you," and quickly wrote the word Arcturian on a post-it note. 

Once I underlined the word three times, scribbled 'Google' next to it, and put the paper in my pocket, the world around me turned back ‘on’ again. The customer finished her sentence, the clock continued to tick, the bodies came back to life, and the cd resumed its smooth play.

"It's as if my work, the store, and everything else, is a mere television recording... and someone holding the remote just clicked 'pause' to tell me something important. Only after I confirmed that I understood this important message, the holder of the cosmic remote clicked 'play' to resume the show..." I thought. 

"Long day?" the customer asked, and broke my reverie. 

"Yes," I said, dazedly, "sorry, my mind must have drifted off..." 

***

The moment I got home, before even closing the door of the apartment, I ran to the computer to search the word Arcturian on Google. 

That night was a turning point in my life. That was the first time, in twenty three years of life on planet Earth, I had a clear understanding of reality. Everything I had ever suspected about the nature of existence, God,  humanity, and my own identity, was confirmed by information that came up in the search for that one glorious word- Arcturian. 

I haven't been able to look at my life the same way since. 

The web sites the search engine generated were all about extraterrestrial life, sacred geometry, galactic federations, a mission to enlighten humanity, and "starseeds." (Starseed is the name given to people who are incarnated on Earth, yet their souls originate in other star systems. Technically, we are all starseeds, and so, the word is primarily used to describe people who not only originate in another star system, but also, whose most recent previous incarnations took place in another star system.)

I felt like a character in a science fiction story. Just the day before, if someone had asked me what an Arcturian was, I wouldn't have had the vaguest idea. My pursuits in life had been along the lines of art, fashion and music- not even close to new age spirituality. I had had no exposure at all to the idea of starseeds or galactic families of light. Yet suddenly, literally overnight, I knew from the core of my being that such things as starseeds and interstellar missions to awaken humanity are real, and beyond that, that I, myself, am a part of the mission.

***

There had been once- just once!- that this sort of a concept had been mentioned to me before. Of course, at that time, I thought it was a mere eccentric exaggeration on the part of the wise one who had mentioned it to me. It was my first week living in Vancouver, and a tarot card reader on Granville Island had just given me a very odd reading. Although I had moved to Vancouver to go to the Emily Carr Institute of Art, this reader told me that I had come to the city to discover my spiritual path. When I asked her to elaborate, her exact words were, "Five years from now, you will have found your calling, and you will be doing the same kind of work that I do." (But that's another story...)

At the end of the reading, she suggested that I go buy myself a stone from The Crystal Arc, as a talisman for my imminent awakening. I've always loved crystals- my mom can confirm that I spent many a happy summer day sitting in the back yard, looking for shiny stones. I had never before thought of them as tools for awakening, though. Oh, the lessons yet to be learned!

The girl working at the crystal store had an immediate reaction to me. She said that my aura was like nothing she had ever seen before. (She can see auras! I thought. Granville Island is such a magical place!) I asked her what it's like to see auras, and she told me to think back to being a little girl. As she said it, I was flooded with memories of mystical lights. From my earliest of days, through most of my childhood, I had seen multicoloured, self-effulgent, moving wisps of light occupying the space around me. (The closest physical approximation to these lights would be the aurora borealis, only I saw them all the time- in daylight and at night- wherever I went.) When I described these to the crystal girl, she said that auras are a lot like those colourful lights, only instead of floating around on their own, they surround people's bodies. 

"What you were seeing," she told me, in the nonchalant tone in which most of us discuss a newspaper or the auto-repair shop; that comfortable, breezy voice used for everyday topics of discussion, "were the light bodies of your angels, spirit guides, and interdimensional families. You knew that, right?"

I didn't.

"Wow- well, I'm honored to be the first one to tell you this: you're an intergalactic warrior princess, here to help enlighten the world!"

***

One website had a check-list of qualities that could be used to determine whether or not someone is an Arcturian starseed. I went through the entire check list, and every single item matched: 'A childhood ability to see light bodies', check. 'Early conversion to a vegetarian diet,' check. 'Vivid dreams of existing as a light form rather than a solid body,' check. 'Find comfort in solitude, often to the extent of being labeled a loner or social misfit,' check. 'Desire to break away from socially imposed belief systems, like religion and family politics,' check. 'Constant feeling that this world cannot possibly be all there is to reality, along with an indescribable goal to lead others to the higher possibilities,' check mate. 

As I completed the test, (which seemed to have been written in jest, and yet fit my most private beliefs to an eerie T) I was so grateful that I had never heard of any of this before that day. If I had somehow just stumbled upon the web site without first having heard the voice, I would surely have gone through the check-list and thought, wow, maybe I'm an Arcturian.  However, since first a mystical voice had called me an Arcturian, and then I found the uncanny list, I knew it was a complete confirmation of my truth. 

After digesting the fact that my soul's origin is a star called Arcturus, found in the Bootes constellation, I remembered something that I had written many, many years before, and ran to my stash of childhood diaries. I had kept a spiritual journal since the age of 12, when I had started to have mystical visions and lucid dreams. In one of my first entries, I had written: 

“Sometimes I dream that this world isn’t real. That I was sent down here.. as some kind of experiment, or as a cruel test. In the real world, all are poets, all are philosophers, all are artists. Everyone lives for their own inspiration, seeking higher awareness. Nobody is treated badly, animals are not slaughtered for food. Sometimes I dream that I came down into this world, this fake, terrible place, to see whether or not I’d be able to remember that my true home is a better place. In this fantasy, I will one day realize myself, and when I do, those who sent me here will come find me again, and see what I’ve done. They’ll ask themselves- did she fall into the illusion, or did she know all along? Did she take part, and add to the suffering of those on the planet around her, or did she work to liberate them from their suffering? Sometimes I dream that when they come back for me, they will find me surrounded by my paintings and drawings and liberated friends, and by then, I’ll be laughing, knowing their experiment was a success. But always, always I wake up from this dream. I go back to school, where we are forced to live for the curriculum in spite of our boredom. I see the blank unthinking faces of classmates who take the world as true only because they don't see an alternative. They shun me because I am not like them, and neither of us knows that really, truly, I am not in any way. Every day I face the harsh reality of this world, and curse myself for dreaming such a beautiful dream that doesn't come true.”

For at least a half hour, I sat on the floor with my old diary, 23, awed by my 13 year old clarity, still amazed and confused by my Arcturian awakening. I could vividly recall writing every word of those childhood prose, as I can still remember it now. At the time, I had used the word 'dream' out of necessity, simply because there is no word for, 'indescribable inner knowing without precedent or proof.' Actually, all my life I had known that there exists somewhere an idyllic, utopian civilization inhabited by beings of immense love and light- angelic entities unlike anything or anyone we encounter on Earth. Throughout my life, I have gone to that superb place in dreams, and have had moments of clear memory- flashes at odd times that would remind me of the illusory nature of a screaming teacher and rialed up students, the innate unreality of fear, and the transience of what we think of as our fixed identities- memories of beauty juxtaposed and contrasted against the dysfunction that passes for normalcy and on Earth.

When I finally went to bed that night, I was buzzing. I felt more alive than I had felt in years. I had sent emails to every web master of every web site I had visited. I had scrolled through pages of sacred geometry after doing an image search for crop circles, which many of the starseed websites said are manifested through Arcturian energy. I had always thought crop circles looked a lot like the recurring symbols in my abstract drawings, but somehow, until that night, I hadn't put much thought into the similarity. Yet now, the similarity was one more undeniable bit of evidence confirming my origin. I held my sketchbook against the computer screen, and excitedly found parallel after parallel between my drawings and crop circles- some, with matching dates. I read through all of my old note books, and stuck tape markers onto every page related to stars, higher dimensions, and enlightenment. Even at four in the morning, when I finally went to bed, (thankful, for the first time, that my boyfriend was out partying all night,) I still couldn't sleep. 

How could they just tell me I'm an Arcturian, and not tell me what to do with myself? I wondered. 

"Come on," I said aloud, willing the voice to come back, "tell me more! I believe you, I'm an Arcturian. But now what? Why am I here? Why did I come to this dump of a planet? Am I being punished? Am I being tested? I can't really be here to help enlighten the world while working at a clothing store, living with an abusive boyfriend, and stuck in student loan debt..." 

After pondering this for a while, I became anxious. The voice wasn't answering me.

"Oh my God- I really can't enlighten the world by doing what I've been doing! I'm a failure! I failed the test! I was sent into this world straight from the paradise of the crystalline blue Arcturus, and then I forgot myself! I'm just as lost, depressed, frustrated and bored as the rest of the population down here! And I'm expected to help?!" I was incredulous.

Still, there was no answer.

"Arcturian family, please," I begged, assuming that the voice that had spoken earlier was, of course, the voice of one or some other Arcturians, "forgive me for being such a total and complete failure in this life. Up till now, I've made mistake after mistake. But now, let me get enlightened, let me straighten out the mess I've made of my life, and then please, help me help others do the same."

For the rest of that night, I sat cross-legged with my hands in chin mudra, and tried, in vain, not to let any thoughts come up, lest they interfere with another Arcturian communication.

Eventually, of course, my boyfriend came home. He had always been very strange about my meditating- every once in a while, the urge would hit, and I would stop whatever I was doing to sit, place my hands in chin mudra, control my breathing and watch my eyelids. Though he generally thought that everything I did was stupid, (and I know this because he told me so,) he had a great respect- reverence, even- for my meditations. ("Sarah," he had told me once, "any time you need to meditate, let me know. I'll turn off my music, stay out of your way, and keep my mind calm to help you connect.") Since he saw that I sat in meditation, he undressed and came to bed very quietly, without turning on any lights. When I heard he was asleep, I finally lay back, sighed, and allowed myself to slip into dream.

The next morning, the phone rang and woke me up with a start. It seemed I had only just fallen asleep... It was my day off, and I couldn't fathom who might call so early on a Sunday morning. Only because I thought it might be my mom, I answered it.

The caller turned out to be my boss, the manager of the store. Hearing her voice on the phone was terrible. I felt myself come down from the euphoric thrill of discovering that my origin is a harmonious civilization in orbit around a magnificent star, back down to the reality that regardless of the beauty of my origin, my present was that of an employee in a competitive, sales-goal driven clothing store. 

Have you ever had a dream that you're in a beautiful place, doing something you love to do? The kind of dream you regret waking up from, because it's just better than life? Hearing the voice of my boss was like a weird reversal of that; like I was brought back into the dream of 'real life' after being awakened to the 'reality' of life beyond Earth. 

Liza was calling to let me know that the next day- Monday, my other day off- there was to be a mandatory staff meeting. 

Since the phone got me out of bed, I decided to stay up- although it was early, and at that point in my life, I liked to sleep in as late as possible- so that I could get back into my research. I spent Sunday in much the same way I had spent Saturday night. Pouring through page after page of my old drawings and writings, looking for more "proof" of my Arcturian-ness. Also, I read blogs written by other starseeds. There was an immediate kinship, and although we hadn't met in physicality, I joined some chat groups and online communities, and fully relished the cyber company.

I marveled at the discovery that life really does have meaning and purpose- we are here to achieve the goal of spiritual self realization. We are here to come back to the understanding that We are All One. To reach the state of Enlightenment. To find bliss in spite of difficult circumstances, narrow-minded society, and personal spiritual amnesia.

I was beyond eager to embark on this exciting path of discovery. The textbook scientific explanation of life had always struck me as a harsh and barren view of reality. It's so finite and petty to think of ourselves as anomalies, born by chance of a one-in-a-trillion random chain of events that made living conditions a possibility. That narrow view was not enough for me. And yet, it had struck me as equally unpalatable to believe the laws of Catholicism with which I had been raised- the belief that we are all sinners because at the beginning of our ancestral line, our great-to-the-power-of-a-million grandmother had eaten an apple from a tree that God had told her not to touch.

Suddenly, there was a third option- we are neither random scientific co-incidence, nor doomed creations of an angry God who wants to punish us for the misbehavior of our ancestors- we, humans, are actually sparks of spiritual light who all, for our own individual reasons, chose, at some point in our cosmic journeys, to come into fleshly form on Earth in order to meet one another, quite literally, face to face.

The most beautiful thing I discovered through all of the various internet searches is that all of us, every single man, woman and child on the planet, are self-sovereign beings with other-worldly origins. Some of us are Sirian, some Andromedan, some Vegan (meaning, of course, 'from the star system Vega,' not 'strict vegetarian'- although, no doubt, some Vegans are also vegan; I myself am a vegan Arcturian...) some from Orion, some are Pleiadian, and some people are originally from stars so distant to our communal Earth that we can't possibly have names for them because even with super telescopes, they can't be seen in our night sky. All of these many, many stars host life, and of all the many, many stars that host life, some stars sent down seeds of life at the dawning of Earthly civilization, to participate in a mass experiment. To drastically over-simplify things, the brother-sisterhoods of various star systems wanted to see how members of a hybrid race would interact with one another, if that hybrid race contained incarnated souls from multitudinous other places. (My 13 year old dreams were true! It really was an experiment... I thought.)

The medium of this blog is truly not sufficient to describe just how I felt as I absorbed all of this; how much I felt like I was suddenly a character in a science fiction story come true- something crazy, written by L. Ron Hubbard, or directed by Steven Spielberg- and yet, I didn't just believe all that I read; I knew it to be true. It was undeniable for me. After all, time had literally stopped in the middle of the most cookie-cutter kind of clothing stores, as I was helping a customer. A disembodied voice had spoken to me, and told me that I was an Arcturian, and though I had never heard the term before, it turned out to explain why- like a child adopted at birth who could never put into words why she feels uneasy with her family- I was always 'different.' This business of multiple star systems coming together on Earth was a lot of information to take in at once, but I internalized all the new concepts quickly, inspected them from every possible inner angle, and came to the conclusion that they are not only true, but also, perfect explanations for the state of the world.

***  

Somehow, throughout the entire staff meeting the next day, I caught myself smiling. My mind kept drifting from the topics at hand to the awareness that I was not really salesgirl; I was actually on an intergalactic mission to awaken humanity, but that I had temporarily forgotten, and accidentally took on a sales position. I was not even a ‘girl,’ really, I was a light being temporarily wearing the body of a girl so that I could remember the truth, share it with other, then, once all awakened, we, the people on Earth, would all be able to ascend into higher states of consciousness. As Liza went on and on about sales, or the new trends, or competition, I would think to myself, over and over again, “Yes, Sarah, you really are an Arcturian.” 

On the bus on my way home, I sat gazing at my reflection in the window. I had been considered an ugly child, but by my late teens, something had happened to my face that people call 'growing into the looks.' My appearance had developed into a rather symmetrical one, with features that fit the social norm of appreciated femininity. I enjoyed having this face; I had fun with make-up, and hairstyling... I was very casually wondering about this- wondering whether or not my looks are in any way connected to my Arcturian origin, and also, wondering how it is that we feel so attached to our temporary earthly bodies, when something outside the window caught my eye: the name Sarah was printed on a lone bumper sticker on the car next to the bus, and it caught my eye literally. The reflection of my eyes was underlined by the bumper sticker. (Imagine this- you're looking at your reflection in a window, when suddenly, right behind your reflection, you see your name. It's like ‘you’ squared.) 

The traffic in the next lane moved ahead while the bus remained behind, and I watched, spellbound, as a van pulled up to occupy the spot the Sarah car had just been. It had an unusual license plate number. 

The plate read 'ETX 101.'

“ET 10… I need to take that! 1t would be a great college course for someone who just found out they’re a starseed!”

When I got home, I continued to peruse sites about starseeds and Arcturians. It's amazing just how much is written about something never reported on the evening news, or in magazines. One site that I kept referring back to was a blog written by a Pleiadian. He had some funny anecdotes about life in a big family, and how one person's awakening can inspire others around them to seek. As I went through his blog archives, looking for something I hadn't yet read, there was one title that hit me like my name between my eyes- 'ET 101.' The blog was a review of a book called, of course, ET 101, that he heralded a must-read; a quintessential primer course for recently awakened starseeds. I had to get that book! The last sentence of his blog left me disappointed, though. He wrote, like an after-thought, in small print: 

“Good luck finding a copy. ET 101 was never mass produced or sold in stores. It was released once in the 1990's, in a small batch, by university press. That makes it obscure and practically unattainable.”

I prayed- in a childish, begging sort of way- for the voice that had spoken to me two days earlier to speak again.

“Alright. You told me I’m an Arcturian. And now you're silent. Please, tell me more! Guide me! Tell me what I need to do! How can I get my life on track? Please- tell me everything!"

Silence.

"Fine. If you won't talk, then please, help me find a copy of that book!” 

*** 

The next morning, I was once again caught between two worlds- the mystical world of Arcturian revelations, and the mundane world of third dimensional reality. I had overslept, after spending a fruitless night scouring eBay and the like for a copy of ET 101, and that oversleeping had made me late for work. I ran down the street from my apartment without breakfast, checking the clock one last time to see how late I was, and in fact, it was dire- I had to catch the next bus, or else I wouldn't have time to pick up coffee before my shift... As I approached my stop, the bus was just pulling away. I had missed it.

When the bus that I had finally caught was finally at my stop, the driver did something that made me want to scream. He over-shot his mark and pulled about half a block ahead- way past the intersection that I needed. Adding insult to injury, my feet froze after I disembarked. It felt like a scene in a bad dream: at a time when I really, truly had to run, I couldn't move my legs. In that murky slow-motion of my nightmarish state, I pulled out my cell phone to determine just how punishably late I was... but the glowing screen displayed a time let me awed and perplexed. I was early. Early! My shift was exactly half an hour away, and there I stood, but a two-minute walk from the store. For a moment, I doubted the accuracy of my cellular provider, and glanced up to see the clock on top of a nearby building. That clock confirmed what my phone had already shown me. I was most definitely a half an hour early.

I laughed, and turned in the direction of a bagel place to get some breakfast. That's when I noticed where I was standing. 

The bus had stopped, and I had disembarked, and my legs had become nightmarishly glued to the spot, right in front a spiritually themed second hand book store. Somehow, time had bent, and the bus had been placed exactly where I needed to be. So many Arcturian web sites had discussed the manipulation of the time-space fabric, but I had taken that to mean... well, I didn't know what I had taken it to mean. This was so literal. So practical. I was sent a half hour back and to a spot next to a place that I had to be... My mind couldn't fully grasp it, so I stopped looking for the right words to formulate a thought. I still can't quite describe how I had felt then. The laws of physics, as I had known them to exist, had been obviously flouted in front of me twice in under two weeks. I was neither underwhelmed nor overwhelmed. I guess, I was just whelmed, and also, speechless. I mean, when time stops, and voices come from nowhere to tell you amazing things, and cars line up with license plates displaying exactly what you need to see, and your legs physically freeze in exactly the right place at exactly the time when time is turned back... to say "wow!' would be just a bit cliché. 

Of course, I walked into the bookstore.

“Hi. I’m looking for a book called ET 101.”

The man behind the counter eyed me curiously, and asked, “Where did you hear about it?”

I told him, in a much less articulate way than I've written here, everything that had recently happened to me.

“A few days ago, a voice came out of nowhere and told me that I'm an Arcturian. Then, it came again and, like, time stopped at work. So I looked it up- Arcturian. Everything the web sites said fit with what I've always thought. It’s confusing, though, because none of the web sites give advice about what I need to do now! I was looking for an answer, when I saw a license plate with the digits ETX 101 yesterday... right away, I thought, 'wow- ET 101 would be a great primer class for starseeds' which, apparently, it is.”

I was rambling, and certainly, sounded like a certifiable nut case.

“I wouldn't even be here asking for this rare book, except that it seems fate has brought me here.”

When I finally gave him a chance, he said, “I have your book.”

I was both amazed, and not surprised at all, when he said this. He walked to the back of the shop, and returned with the prize.

Smiling warmly, he said, "Five dollars, please. Five even- there's no tax on used books."

I paid him, stepped outside with my package, and checked the clock again. It was exactly half an hour before the beginning of my shift. Still. Or, again. Half an hour even, as if time doesn't tax events that are meant to happen.

I leisurely enjoyed my vegan muffin and soy latte at the coffee shop, then walked calmly into work. 

Throughout my breakfast, I had stared at the unassuming spiral bound blue book called ET 101, waiting with anticipation. I was not going to open it until I got home that night. I wanted to read slowly, deliberately, the whole book in one go- without pause or stop.

Something in my expression must have betrayed the unusual circumstances of my morning, though, because the first thing one of my co-workers said as I punched in for the day was, "Sarah! What happened to you?"

"What?" I asked, "Did I only put liner on one eye or something?" I couldn't imagine what she was seeing.

"No, nothing like that..." she said, "it's just... you're glowing or something. Shining..."

"Radiating!" Our other co-worker said.

I knew I had a secretive, knowing smile because of my morning's unusual events. Also, I knew it was unfair to keep such a strange series of happenings secret- after all, my tale might be a refreshing one for them to hear after many mornings of stubborn silence, complaints about traffic congestion, minimum wage, sales goals and the chore list. Besides, what would it matter if they thought I was crazy? Nothing was real, after all. 

"Nothing is real." I said, like any other character in any other story who has just had an epiphany. Only, of course, this story really happened. "Work, fashion, sales competitions... illusory, fake, pointless. All the things we feel duty-bound and obligated to in life are but scripted scenes for our enactment. We only feel stress, anger, jealousy and boredom because we believe the game is real. We can have fun, though, if we choose to. The game can be fun if we remember, through every act and scene, that it's just a game. An actor playing the part of a shopgirl can enjoy it, because she knows the camera is going to stop, and she will be herself once again. An actress. We can do the same thing." I looked at them all, one by one. "None of us are what we appear to be. I see all of you. You're playing here, pretending to be mad at each other, pretending to compete, but really, it's only because you've forgotten this is all a play! I guess the reason I look like I'm radiating, is that I've been going through a bit of an awakening. A few days ago, as I was getting ready for work, a voice said to me, 'Sarah, you are an Arcturian.' That's Arc-too-ree-an."

It would have been easier to describe all of this if I had known Sanskrit at that time. Basically, I had told my coworkers that this world- it's pressures, struggles, and rivalries- are only maya; that it will seem like a drag until we wake up, and understand that it’s all just a leela. I discovered the leela when my jeeva experienced a satori, and heard that its ishwara is from a star called Swathi. 

I told them everything, and they surprised me- which was quite a thing for them to do- surprise me, I mean- considering the windfall of miracles that had just happened. Instead of reacting with jaded, cynical or skeptical reproach, they listened to my story happily. They were all amazed, awe-struck and excited to hear about the strange course of events. 

"So- it was just this morning that your bus stopped in front of that book store and you were half an hour early?" One finally asked, after a moment of silence in which they digested the strange tale.

"Yes," I answered.

"So- can we see the book? ET 101?" Another broke in.

When I pulled the thin volume from my bag, I could tell that in that moment, my story had became real for them; substantiated. They each held the book so reverently. These people, whom a week earlier I would have judgementally thought held nothing as sacred, gingerly turned the pages, laughed at the jokes, and respectfully took turns. We spent the rest of the day reading passages aloud, and from then on, it wasn't a dysfunctional staff any more. We were enthusiastic, considerate; we shared the chores and took turns with the customers. 

All the web sites declared that when one person experiences a spiritual awakening, the entire collective of people close to the awakened one experience similar elevations in consciousness. The elevated mood of the staff of that high-end fashion retail store was just the first of many, many, many examples of this; examples that have come up in my life, and in the lives of of my clients, friends, associates, and more. An awakening is not just a personal realization, it's the spark that can ignite a fireworks display! When you awaken to a higher reality, you elevate your friends, family, and even stubborn coworkers, to that higher reality with you. When you seek enlightemnent, even just your own enlightenment, you set out on a mission of global enlightemnent.

Now, wake up! Find out where you come from! Seek the truth of your being! Life gets really interesting when you know that you're not really a human, you just play one in earthly life.

***

ET 101 is still one of the best books on the market about the starseed phenomenon. Luckily, it's been taken out of obscurity, and the original author has put it into reprint. She has a website where it can be purchased either as mail-order, or as an e-book. Needless to say, I highly recommend it.

www.et101.net