"At the third watch the sun's disk sends out blinding rays.
In the water blows the wind of the Gentle."
- Lines 3 & 4 of The Magic Spell of the Far Journey,
in Richard Wilhelm's translation of the Taoist text, The Secret of the Golden Flower

Aulden's notes on the book's explanation us of lines 3 & 4 of the spell:
"Lines 3 & 4 = 'The mutual interpenetration of sun and moon.'
How to: turn the Abysmal (Water) into the Clinging (Fire)
or turn the Creative (abysmal) into the Receptive (clinging)
or the Unconscious (creative) into the Conscious (receptive).
Sun's Disk = Polar line in the middle of the trigram for water
about to turn into the creative.
Wind of the Gentle = the eye
'in heaven' = 'the house of the creative'
Fire Trigram = 'the white snow that flies' = 'the true polar darkness'
(compare to the mist in Church at Center of Consciousness)
'Activity of the Pole of the Great Wain' = 'rise and fall of the whole release of polarity'

Aulden's paraphrase of lines 3 & 4:
The Center of the Unconscious is where
the unconscious turns into the creative."

Aulden answered my question, "Yes, I was worried at first that if people knew how powerful The Center of the Unconscious could be they'd use it for bad things, selfish things. But then I realized you could only use the spell if you had purposelessness. Besides, who would bother? The whole thing looks like nonsense to most people anyway."

"The Bus Driver took us there. He knows the way to everything," Aulden continued, "But first he took us to the Woolworth's where we had ice-cream. Being there brought back a flood of memories because my mother used to take me there when I was three or four years old. I think the bus driver knew I needed to take care of something there before I could go to The Center of the Unconscious."

At the Woolworth's, while they ate ice-cream, Aulden noticed a hideous creature sitting nearby, human in form but bulky and wrinkled, with pale-green skin. Its face was like a frog's, and its amphibious mouth hung open.

This was before Skandi had become the King. What was Skandi's function? Aulden thought that Skandi was a warrior figure, as Robert Bly described in Iron John, "Warriorship inside, then, amounts to a soul alertness that helps protect a human being from being turned into copper wire, and protects us from shamers, unconscious swordsmen, hostile people, and greedy interior beings."

I asked Aulden, "Do you think the book had a misprint and it should have said 'inferior beings'?" He answered, "Either way it makes sense."

Skandi carried a 9 mm handgun and, looking at the creature, he asked Aulden, "Should I shoot it?"

Aulden felt certain that this thing was a demon, but he answered, "I think we need to talk to it to see if it's a distraction and get a clue what it's distracting us from. Aulden yelled at it, "Hey you! What the hell are you doing here?" It belched.

Aulden asked, "Do you have something to tell us?" The creature didn't respond, so Aulden asked The Wind, "That guy over there is a demon, right?"

"Yes," The Wind replied.

Feeling uncertain, Aulden said to The Wind in a hushed voice, "What's right? Should I take action and kill the demon or is that wrong in a public place like the Woolworth's?" As he spoke he noticed that the demon was watching him, so Aulden smiled and waved, saying, "How is your morning this morning?" The Demon again burped.

The Wind answered, "Kill him." This was unusual for The Wind, who usually made Aulden choose what path to take.

Aulden asked, "In a public place?"

The Wind said, "This isn't a public place. This is your consciousness."

Aulden then asked, "What happens when you kill a demon?"

"You'll see," The Wind replied.

"Okay, be ready," Aulden answered, and then he said to Skandi, "Can you kill him? If so, go ahead."

Without hesitation, Skandi shot the demon three times in the face. The demon fell backward. Then Skandi stepped forward and placed his right foot on the demon's neck, and with his gun-hand behind his back, Skandi shot once more into the demon's chest.

What happens when an other-worldly creature is killed? This one - this demon - split open and a vine began to swiftly grow from its chest. Everyone appeared puzzled for a moment. Aulden, however, said, "I know what to do with weeds," and he pulled the vine out by the root. The vine shriveled and died.

Back on the bus, on the way to The Center of the Unconscious, Aulden wondered about this demon in Woolworth's. Everything else in the Woolworth's kindled memories for him: the plastic soldiers in the toy department, the wax pop bottles on the candy racks, the ice-cream at the soda fountain. But where did this demon come from? Did Aulden have a suppressed memory of a man he'd met there, or a suppressed memory of someone his mother met there many years ago? Was this killing of the inner-demon sufficient to heal a repressed psychological complex? Lastly, was this inner-demon a problem that needed to be resolved before he could find the Center of the Unconscious?

The bus arrived at a barn, another place from Aulden's childhood. He'd often played in this barn with friends when they were very young. This barn was the image that Aulden's unconscious chose for the appearance of The Center.

Aulden and his companions entered the barn, into a lane of horse stalls. Light poured in from around the frame of the door on the opposite end of the lane. A woman, young with brunette hair, approached them.

Aulden felt startled by her appearance and asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I live here," she answered, "Along with my mother, my sisters, and my great aunt's sisters." Aulden would soon learn that this meant three grandmotherly types, one motherly type, and three young daughter types - seven female figures.

The group climbed a ladder into the hayloft, a large open space. Just as he remembered the barn he'd played in as a boy, this hayloft was empty and without hay - a large open area. Mist was rising from the floor in the center of the hayloft. Images were appearing in the mist and rising toward the ceiling before disappearing entirely: a shark, a man, a child moving toward a star, a woman pouring wine, a Christmas cactus.

At this point I interrupted Aulden, and said, "You're not telling me everything. You're leaving parts out of the story."

Aulden confessed to me, "Yeah, I'm leaving parts out: conversations mostly. And I'm not going to tell you what I asked for there."

"Why? What did you ask for?"

Aulden answered, "Something I wanted. Something that fits my soul, and it's none of your business."

Aulden and his traveling companions sat on the floor and watched as images formed in the mist. The seven women danced in the center of the loft, in the mist, spinning, whirling with their arms raised. One of the women approached Janice and placed a tiara on her head. Another woman approached Anxiety Joe and said, "There's a speck on your cap. Can I see it?" She reached to him and took a piece of lint from his cap, saying, "There it is. There's the moon right there." Aulden simply watched and speculated on meanings of the moon as the feminine, and the metaphor of it being on Anxiety Joe's cap.

They continued to watch as images formed in the mist and floated upward through the roof. A canoe appeared and Aulden, on an impulse, leaped to his feet and ran to it, climbing inside. The canoe ascended toward the ceiling and from Aulden's perspective it disappeared into darkness. Aulden felt himself, in the canoe, moving through a dark passageway. A glow of light returned and Aulden found that he, along with the canoe, had arrived above the platform in The Church at the Center of Consciousness. He climbed out and watched as the canoe continued to rise upward. From there, it was simple for Aulden to imagine himself back in The Barn at the Center of the Unconscious.

Aulden began to speculate that while The Church at the Center of Consciousness is where he could see images of the future, The Barn at the Center of the Unconscious is where his unconscious thoughts created images of the future. He asked himself, what holds more power, to see the future or to create the future? He sat, again, on the floor of the hay loft and reminded himself that the spell stipulated that to create reality here would require "action through non-action" and purposelessness.

Sitting, watching and speculating continued for several nights as Aulden meditated on this place. The seven feminine figures continued to dance in the mist, spinning circles with their arms raised. One night, on a whim, Aulden stood and reached out to Janice. She took his hand and stood, and the two of them joined the women and danced.

Poseidon, seeing this, leaped to his feet and joined them in dancing. He stepped up to the mother-figure, the central image among the seven feminine archetypes, and extended his hand to her. "Madame?" he said, and the two of them danced together in the mist. The two muses, Andrea and Carolette, who were along on this journey joined Aulden and Janice in the dance. After some hesitation, The Wind and Anxiety Joe joined the group and danced in the mist.

They danced for a long while until Aulden found an opportunity to talk with the mother-figure. He said to her, "Mother of these three sisters, tell us about this place."

She responded, "This place as you know, is the Center of all that you don't see, that you avoid, that is hidden, the Center of the Unknown to you. And yet, what you discover of it forms here."

Aulden worried that he wasn't hearing her correctly and that he was making the words up in his own mind. He said, "Am I putting my own thoughts into your voice? What is this place?"

The Mother smiled and replied, "It's a hayloft for a barn dance." Everyone continued dancing. An Irish fiddler and a Russian Cossack appeared in the mist. The entire group formed a circle and watched the mist. Papers flew into the mist as if in a whirlwind. They watched a coffee shop appear and then rise through the roof.

At this point Aulden spoke to the Mother-Figure and asked her if she could teach him how to create the reality that he'd been considering. (I - the writer of this story chronicling Aulden's experiences - still could not get Aulden to tell me what he specifically wanted to create.)

The Mother-Figure asked Aulden what he would like, and after he told her she took his hand and said, "Come into the mist." They danced together, a waltz, and she said, "Can you see it? This may take days."

Aulden explained to me that an image of the thing that he wanted to create was placed on a pole, and raised up, the way that Moses held up an image of a snake high on a staff. "Do you remember that one?" he asked me.

I did remember that particular Moses story, but I was bothered that Aulden wouldn't tell me what he held up on a pole. He explained that the image on the pole was held up in the mist and images of a multitude of hands appeared, reaching for whatever was on that pole.

Next in the barn Aulden then danced with Janice in the mist while holding this object - the image - on a pole. He said that the object was heavy and awkward to hold while dancing, but he felt that this was part of the process. The seven women danced. Poseidon, Skandi and The Wind… even Anxiety Joe - everyone was dancing, and then the object opened and inside was a bottle of medicine.

I interrupted again, asking, "Inside? So the object is something like a box or a chest?"

"I didn't say that," Aulden countered. "It could be something else that can be opened."

I tried to get a hint, and said, "I thought it might be some woman you were after."

He laughed and looked away, simply saying, "No, not a woman."

Aulden continued to explain: He watched as he and the others danced. The seven female figures placed the object on a platter which they placed on a pedestal. Electricity sparked from the object. Janice asked Aulden if he wanted her to make him able to hear the object. Intrigued with that idea, he nodded. A mouth formed on the object, and it said, "Love me like Detail told you to love a woman."

Detail was the Jamaican woman who gave Aulden some esoteric advice about how to give love, telling him, "See them like me: The light pouring out. The answers you seek. The questions you find. "

Aulden said to the object, "I'm sending you on a mission through the mist. Your job is to become known to people."

The object answered, "I don't know how to do that."

Aulden admitted, "I don't know either." Then he had a realization. "Listen to me: I'm wrong! Your job is to heal. That's why I found the medicine bottle inside you - a metaphorical medicine bottle."

I stopped Aulden and said, "The story would be easier to understand if you'd just tell me what the object was. What was the reality you were trying to create?" After I said that, Aulden just gazed at me for a moment and then continued telling me the story. He said, "After Janice made me able to hear the book, the seven women dressed everyone in white robes and wizard-style conical hats. They were really nice hats with fur lining."

Aulden was vague about what happened next. He explained that they called on someone to appear - a real, living person, and not an archetypal image. The person they called on came to them through the mist, as if in the process of a dream or by soul-travel, and she seemed annoyed as if they'd called her there against her will.

Aulden asked the woman to look at the object. She was resistant, and was talking to herself when she said, "They'll always be willing to pay the price to take the blessing."

Her words were alarming to Aulden, and he asked, "What price?"

She said to him, "Your commitment. If you do this you'll have to confess to something."

"That's the price?" Aulden agreed to this, and told her to take the object. She was reluctant, but Aulden wouldn't let her leave until she agreed to take it with her. She picked up the object and said, "Okay, I'll look at it," but she added sternly, "Read Faust!"

After the agreement was made, she rose up toward the ceiling and disappeared into the mist.

"And that's what happened when I visited The Barn at The Center of the Unconscious," Aulden said to me.

I asked him, "Who was the woman?"

He answered, "Someone I'll meet in the future."

"A love interest?" I asked him.

"No, nothing like that," he assured me.

I told him, "It would make a lot more sense if you told me what the object was."

He looked at the floor and said, "I'm not willing to talk about that."

I said, mostly to myself, "It's something that can be opened."

Before they left the barn, a discussion came up about these spirits Aulden had been visiting during his meditation work. With so many of them standing with him in the barn, he asked, "Who are you, really?"

The muse spirit Carolette answered, "We're nothing."

Aulden replied, "Patanjali called you disembodied gods - spirits of yoganas. I think that was cultural - correct in a way but cultural. I think Jung was right, that you're instincts and aspects of humanity. Correct me if I'm wrong."

She repeated, "We're nothing."

Aulden wanted her to elaborate, and said, "You're nothing until I see you through my imagination. But if I was never born you'd still exist in the spirit of humanity."

Carolette responded, "Sh!"

Poseidon then intervened, saying, "Best not to talk about that."