The Twelfth Insight - James Redfield [24]
Suddenly, I heard someone walking up behind me and turned around to see an upbeat man of about thirty smiling and offering me his hand.
“I’m Jeff,” he said. “How’s it going?”
I shook hands with him and introduced myself. At first, I felt a slight downturn in my energy, but the more he talked enthusiastically about how beautiful everything was in the canyon, the more I began to think he was okay.
At one point, I even asked him if he knew anything about the Document, but he said he wasn’t aware of it. After we talked a bit more about Sedona, he said, “I see you have a knife. I wonder if I could borrow it for a few minutes.” He was pointing toward my belt at my prized eight-inch hunting knife that I always carried in the woods.
“We’re setting up camp over there,” he continued, “and I just need it for a few minutes to cut some rope.”
I looked through some mesquite and saw two men and a woman in that direction putting up a tent. Figuring he would be close where I could observe him, I took off the knife and gave it to him in the scabbard—then watched as he walked back and began working with the two people.
A fresh breeze was blowing up, and I took a breath. The morning rain had cleared and the sun was beaming down. Slowly, I felt myself recovering my lost energy and noticed how beautiful this particular area was. Small pine trees and junipers dotted the entire canyon floor.
Just then Wil came back and sat down beside me.
“No one seems to know what the chopper is doing,” he said. “I kept my distance from it, but I could see it was empty. And it’s definitely military.”
He was sitting on his pack. “Let’s just wait here for a while.”
I smiled. “You could tell me about the next spiritual law.”
As Wil formulated a sentence, I again looked over toward the campsite where the man had been working, only to find that he was nowhere to be seen. I jumped up and ran to the campsite and asked the couple where he was. They told me they didn’t know, that he wasn’t really part of their party.
“He just came up to talk,” the woman said. “He offered to go borrow a knife for us, to help us cut some rope. He seemed to be a little down on his luck.”
I was about to go look for him when Wil came up, and I quickly filled him in.
“He stole your knife?” Wil remarked, a look of wonder and amazement on his face, as if something important had happened. I brushed it off and proceeded to look all around the area. There was no sign of him anywhere. After about twenty minutes, I returned to where the packs were, finding Wil sitting patiently, waiting for me.
“I’ve had that knife a long time,” I said, sitting down next to him.
“Well,” Wil offered, trying not to grin, “you wanted to see how all this would play out.”
I was in no mood for analysis. I just wanted my knife back, but Wil was persistent. “Right before you saw the guy was gone, didn’t you ask me what the next law was?”
I remained silent, still sulking.
“Well,” he continued, “it’s the Law of Karma.”
It was past noon, and Wil had left again, telling me he was going to look for food. For a long time I just sat around, wondering what kind of purification was going on here in this canyon. Then, about the time I was ready to go look for him, I saw Wil coming back. He sat down and looked over at me.
“Find some food?” I asked.
“Yeah, a little bit. I had lunch with some people I met. I wanted to bring you some but there wasn’t enough.”
I just looked at him.
“Why shouldn’t I find food?” he responded. “I have good Karma!” He was using an overly dramatic tone to his voice, then burst into laughter, barely able to control himself.
As usual with Wil, his humor was so contagious I couldn’t help but laugh, too.
“Okay,” I said. “What did the Hopi tell you about Karma?”
Instantly, he was serious. “The Document says that it’s real, and in our time, it responds to our actions more quickly than