Dedication

Carla Lisbeth Rueckert and James Allen McCarty, to whom but you could I dedicate this book? Thank you for green-lighting and embracing this project. In a life where you’ve always stressed your secondary importance to the material itself I know that you were initially concerned that this interview would make you more important than the work. I hope that my care in writing the questions, making disclaimers, and keeping perspective has struck the right balance.

When I first crossed paths with you as a young person my mindset was one that lifted you to an elevated status. Through many years of knowing and working with you that veneer washed away revealing your full, ordinary, everyday humanhood: blind spots, shortcomings, weaknesses, warts and all.

But as the image I had constructed faded, and your actual and authentic natures became apparent, my crest was not fallen. On the contrary, my respect for you only increased as I witnessed ordinary humans with extraordinary strength of heart living a life of magic, beauty, seeking and service through the dirt and grime of the third-density experience.

One can view our collective human situation here on planet Earth as being somewhat lost in a thick jungle of our own confusions. In lieu of understanding who and what we really are, we cling to scientific, religious, or socio-cultural truths and myths in order to help us make sense of this mystery. All of these sources do—when viewed through the right lens—reveal some aspect of the truth (isn’t everything the Creator meeting the Creator?), especially the heart of religious teaching. Taken at face value, though, many of these threads of human thought obscure and distort the unified nature of reality.

Maps are needed. And while our human heritage preserves a handful of impeccable maps passed down to us by mystical sources who have experienced the truth of our situation, most maps are, by varying degrees, misguided and replete with misunderstanding. They do not empower the seeker with responsibility and authority for their own creation and evolution. They do not encourage the seeker to seek the truth for him or herself, to discover who he or she already really is. They do not establish a framework that reconciles the many to the One (insofar as words are able). And they generally do not present themselves as humble maps only, of aid strictly as a tool to the seeker who must him or herself walk the terrain. Though each of course must make that assessment for themselves—what is a faulty map for me may be perfect for another.

It is within this wilderness that you helped bring forth one of the most reliable, trustworthy, clear, beautiful and profound maps of which I’m aware. In conjunction with Don Elkins you made contact with those humble messengers who are in a position to lend some clarity to our conflicted human situation, thereby carving out a uniquely novel and direct path through the mazed terrain, one that hadn’t quite existed prior to your work. One that has every potential to endure as it concerns itself with timeless principles in the seeking of eternity and infinity.

The path is always within and awaiting the seeker’s efforts, of course—your work and its message can be no more than the signpost pointing to the ocean—but the philosophy you brought to this world is among the clearest signpost orienting the seeker to that inner work and to the infinite possibilities when the faculties of will and faith intersect in the seeking of the Creator. Of course you cannot take credit for all the content, but you can take credit for the fidelity with which you preserved and shared this information, and for being faithful instruments that have allowed the Creator to pluck harmony and song from your seven-stringed selves, with acceptable amounts of distortion.

To those for whom this material resonates your work has been a gift. Your life has been a gift. But whatever roles we may each seem to play upon the incarnational stage we are all only one thing: the Creator interacting with and knowing Itself. May we each reveal to each other who and what we really are, and go forth rejoicing in the One Infinite Creator.

And from the bottom of my heart may I thank you, Carla and Jim.

Those who know me may wonder at this image, but it is my favorite photo of myself. It was made when I was at Noyes Camp, a dancing camp in Connecticut, at a very early age, when my body had no limitations. No matter how limited I may become, this figure ex-presses my essence. Fly with me! – Carla L. Rueckert