He laughed. This odd conversation was different from any he'd had with himself, and it was fun. Oil pressure's good, oil temp's normal.
How do I un-mortalize without dying? What's your plan?
Pretend nothing that's happened on this flight has been coincidence. Pretend it was a lesson waiting for the right time in your life to come along and that time is now.
According to what you've heard in the last twenty-four hours, how did you become a mortal in the first place?
I was hypnotized, he thought, I accepted fifty billion trillion suggestions that I'm a mortal and not pure shining spirit.
How did Sam Black bring you back from knowing you were in prison?
He snapped his fingers.
And with that reminded you who you are, that you had bought your ticket to an entertainment, that you had volunteered for the stage.
So I de-hypnotize by reminding myself . . . ?
. . . of who you were before the show began. Affirmations. Counter-hypnosis. Constant, non-stop declarations. You de-hypnotize yourself by dropping negative suggestions and affirming positive counter-suggestions.
That I'm not a mortal?
Fact is, you're not. Want to know what that feels like? Deny suggestions you're less than spirit, affirm that spirit is who you are, always have been always will be, no matter you're spirit choosing games of mortalhood.
Every player has a life beyond the game. Even you.
Interesting. He drew a pencil from his sleeve pocket, wrote the idea on the map, not far from the town of Grove Hill, Louisiana: I'm spirit. Deny all else.
Such as?
I don't do such-as's.
Such as . . . “I am not a limited mind, trapped in a limited body subject to disease and accident.”
Nice denial. Now your affirmation, please.
He considered that. I am already spirit, here and now. Perfect. Undying.
Not bad. Shifting the definition of yourself from the trapped to the free. And you do it over and over and over, you never quit, you put down suggestions that you're mortal as fast as they come in. Every time you're aware of a hint that puts you down.
Why?
You want to know why, watch what happens when you do it.
How do I know it's true?
Hypnotized, you don't. You can't prove you're spirit. Not wanting to seem foolish, most folks accept the suggestion they're one more body killing time till time kills them.
But they're not.
There's no rush. You'll prove you're spirit when you die.
You want me to be foolish?
I don't believe in bodies, Jamie, but you do, so you'll have to tell me. How does it hurt, to identify with undestroyable spirit, instead of the vanishing beliefs of spacetime?
Wha
t a strange consciousness, he thought, this higher self. So if I'm not mortal, why did you say look out for the wires?