The Gift

Two years ago, Ashe set an intention. Tomorrow, his intention would bear fruit. It was the Way of His People.

Others opposed Ashe.

The General, the Dragon, the Screamer, the Warden, the Punisher, the Witch, the Engineer, the Destroyers. And others, still, forming a network called the Axis. Like invisible latitudinal and longitudinal lines netting the globe, the Axis operated like so, dividing the world into spheres of influence.

The Axis oversaw the destruction of the planet they’d gone to war against.

For thousands of years during the Piscean Age, only the First Men and Women—trees with names and voices—knew this. Until they’d come to Ashe in his room and spoke, using his hand as a brush, his rug designs as their easel.

Their intention had been firm.

They told the story of their origin. Like mobile individuals on the planet, they explained they were a People too, and— because the Axis’s energy clouded everything from the sky to enlightenment—they stressed something was amiss, and knew of Ashe’s calling to do something about it.

The Axis were not people with Souls, but people who were demonic in nature. They were not human, originally, but afflictions on the human condition and on nature. They’d blended into families and societies, separated only by distance and the illusion of being alien to one another. They met in the dreams of the people whose bodies they inhabited, while the Souls explored landscapes the Axis sought to destroy, found within the human psyche. They were sentient, against God, life itself, the Way, and Unona, meaning One World, in the language of Ashe’s people from back home. It was a concept that all the Universe and everything and everyone in it—including connections across time and space—existed within a world not tied to any one celestial body, but from within the conscience—the Soul. And, like static, the Axis had interfered with this cosmic connection.

They’d colonized communities and raped civilizations of their greatness, replacing peace with war, abundance with depletion, balance with extremism, fair play with greed, health and wellness with injury and illness. They encouraged ‘system,’ rigging it only to a few people’s advantage and engendering inequality, instability, and insecurity through oversights normalized by political and media apparatuses that fed the public information, the truth or otherwise.

Everything humanity attributed wrong of itself and sought to correct was evidence of the war the Axis waged against—and from within—all civilizations and empires on Earth.

For the ordinary, the corrections were the worst.

At first seen by society as ways to confront aberrant behavior, for the Axis, it was a way of pushing bodies and suffocating the spirit. Incarceration, institutionalization, and security measures that cropped up all over the globe created surveillance and police states that encroached on people’s liberties and privacy, until they had none. Insurance companies played middle men, slapping yellow tape between people and their needs, culminating in death and rising debts. People flocked to worship houses for salvation, and, in turn, holy leaders relied on packed congregations and fat tithes to preach outdated scriptures on how to live in the modern era. Language and relationships grew increasingly more ambiguous, breaking down family units and complicating even the most intimate relationships. The competition in the open market and the monopolization of multinational corporations in the energy sectors increased deforestation and sped up the climate crisis, resulting in the endangerment and extinction of many species on the planet.

In every way, the Axis’s way of life dominated Earth.

Dystopia was no longer a hypothetical conversation or classroom discussion but a reality the world had glided into for centuries, with oblivion being the greatest “I Put A Spell On You” lullaby the Axis had ever cooed. With the Warden and the Punisher at the helm, they’d advanced to syphoning Souls from the brain and replacing them with their own demonic alternatives, precipitating the world’s descent into Hell on Earth, entirely.

Ashe had been twenty-nine when he’d experienced the Dragon look outside his eyes with loathing as he watched Hercules with a spirit of his wife from back home; when the General vowed to erase his ability to read and write as he had struggled—through the General’s tightening grip on his mental faculties—to read a page in Dan Brown’s novel Origin; when the Warden dared him to commit suicide; when the Screamer demonstrated she had more control over his body than he did; and when the Punisher pushed Ashe’s soul from his body while judging lies the Punisher had in fact manufactured himself.

They had identified Ashe, as they did others, as a Sun of God—an Enlightened mind—during a surprising Awakening that took place on a cool night in March, around his twenty-ninth and a half birthday. Mercury had been in retrograde, the Super Blue Moon in Libra.

In his bedroom in the middle of the night, he hadn’t been alone. Guided by an unseen presence, he had looked out at the backyard and night sky.

“Look to the horizon in the West, to the horizon in the East. Look all around, at the floor, the bed…” His Soul Ascendant paused. “There is a war going on that only Souls know about. One day, you’ll lead a Spiritual Revolution from within called the Conscious Collective, and guide it to Spiritual Enlightenment. You’ll free people from the Axis’s grip on humanity and the planet, and usher in the New Age. But, first…”

And then his Soul Ascendant explained:

In addition to the oppressive external systems, the Axis hurt revolutions by occupying and drawing energy from the minds of people whose Light and Love were necessary for the planet’s revival. Because the brain possessed all knowledge a person ever needed to live—from their Soul Ascendants, to God, to asė, a divine force and energy that flowed through all things—the Axis’s possession of the brain interfered with information people received from their Soul Ascendant—things about their Life Path, Soul Purpose, and Soulmate. This drawing energy away from pushed the person further from their Soul Ascendant’s original intent, and, in doing so, drew the world at large into the End of Days.

“Drop bombs on hospitals and schools, send troops into villages and homes, and lay with their wives… and there’ll be a fight, a rebellion,” Ashe heard the General say once. “But, possess the mind of a person—think, feel and believe for them, molding a completely different identity so far removed from God, and the world falls apart.

“Let the people live ordinary lives and work menial jobs, questioning the meaning of it all, while we grab what they never knew the Soul intended for them.”

But all Souls knew, Ashe’s Soul Ascendant told him. And they were waiting to rejoin their person, their physical body, at the right time. When Ashe would set—and execute on—an intention that would forever change the world.

The time for that drew nearer, but there were things to learn first.

In the weeks that followed, Ashe was visited by others.

After his first encounter with his Soul Ascendant, the First Men and Women spoke. Then, his Ancestors and the people who’d gone on before came—the spirits of Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Maya Angelou… the guardians, warriors, and freedom fighters.

“Become God faster,” they told Ashe one afternoon during a Rite of Passage. He’d already begun building and communicating with the Conscious Collective. “And lead all to freedom.”

And so day after day he did.

From meditation, dance, and music, to introducing people to their Akashic Records, to educating them on the existence of the Axis, to vanquishing ailments that had befallen the world and planet—Ashe became the leader of the hardest fight of his life. But who could’ve told him the most difficult years would be the most transcendental?

Ashe connected with his birth mother and three aunties, Black women on the Other Side who’d gone before him. Like a superhero, he worked in secret. A casual stranger one might’ve passed by on a street corner or seen throwing around a basketball on a town court, performing Acts of God, privately.

Not that all of it didn’t come without a personal price.

Several months after his Awakening, Ashe left the home he’d known for twenty years.

Moving from shelter to shelter and roaming the city, he listened to the Axis’s abusive commentary within his mind meant to break his spirit and will to live. He engaged where it made sense.

Passing by hotels with empty rooms on blocks where people slept on cardboard and markets filled with food ready for consumption while the hungry begged at intersections, he questioned the Axis responsible for this way of life as to why money stood in the way of anyone’s basic necessities. The buildings had already been built, he thought, shaking his head. The food was there for the taking.

But they were the leaders of this world that rewarded so few and broke so many. This was their Way—the Final Solution.

And so came the time—finally—for his.

… …. …

It was late when Ashe felt the onset of exhaustion pierce his concentration. He’d meditated in the woods of his old college campus for hours—for this was to be the greatest shift in the consciousness of the cosmos, and the last. His Soul Ascendant was his guide.

Sitting in front of the candle he’d lit, Ashe took several deep breaths, the piece of paper he’d written a single word in the palm of his hand. He felt the energy from his people, the Family he’d cultivated, within his Soul. The Conscious Collective—one with Unona—was present, their gratitude and exaltation for the connection they all shared filling his chest and diaphragm. Their spirits reached him, and in unison, responded through his body. Both arms shot up suddenly towards the Heavens, and the ease in which they did, let him know they were One.

Aware of the heart-shaped locket engraved with an infinity symbol cool against his chest—a reminder of both his wife and rightful place in the cosmos despite what wars he faced here on Earth—he clutched the paper he vowed would be the last, and thought, No more paper, no more pain, no more hunger, no more death.

A rustle in the leaves above his head and the sage voice of Gaia saying I accept raised his arms higher in salute. Tears sprung in his eyes at the reminder of their Oneness—their vision and purpose together. As was his nature, though, his mind and gut were resolute. His focus, unmatched. Although one day very soon he’d let his tears fall, he would not cry yet. In the face of his power, he was as balanced as when he’d started two summers ago. Instead, he said in an accented voice above a whisper, “Wantunu Ya.”

You are welcome.

His words signaled a shift, a nod and promise to return the world to the way it had been. Before intention had been only a wish. Before servitude and subordination had become the norm. Before thank you was more important to hear than you are welcome. Before the Piscean Age. Before the End of Days.

Yes, Ashe thought. This is good.

He felt the approval of the GentleMen and GentleWomen but did not move—not until he met the gaze of the one who’d precipitated his Awakening and Enlightenment—his Soul Ascendant. He looked serene, at peace, and it gave Ashe peace knowing he had that to look forward to. With his Soul Ascendant’s nod, and all that Ashe had lived through, and for, he felt the chapter coming to a close.

With visions of the word he’d written down flooding his Third Eye, ready to spring forth into reality, and the piece of paper he’d promised to be the last still resting in his palm, he leaned forward, inches above the flame, and whispered, “Paradise.”

With nothing left more to set in motion, Ashe blew out the candle.

And it was done.