The Twelfth Insight - James Redfield [68]
Uh-oh, I thought, and dashed outside where everyone was gathering around the vehicles, obviously checking in with each other to see who had the best intuition going forward.
What happened next was one of those fast-paced moments of Synchronicity and intuition where everyone spoke at exactly the right time and with perfect clarity about the hunches they were receiving. And it was virtually unanimous. Everyone saw that we were right to head to the Mount, but once there, we should be very careful.
Suddenly, Rachel walked to the center of the group, eager to say something more.
“We can’t let these threats,” she said forcefully, “interrupt our progress with the Integrations. If we stay in Agape, we’ll find a way to stop this danger. Remember where we are. The Ninth Integration says we have to use Agape to pull the Apocalyptics into a higher state and out of their ideology somehow.”
There was silence, then Tommy added, “We will discover how to do that at the Mountain. The next step is to tune in to sacred nature, open our perception, and get closer to the spirit world. This ability has long been the emphasis of Native peoples. If we pay close attention, the Mountain will show us the way.”
Most everyone agreed to go, despite the danger. But some didn’t, feeling their paths took them elsewhere. They would hold us in prayer, they said, leaving twelve of us to load into three vehicles: Joseph’s Toyota, Love of Mountain’s Subaru, and an old Volvo belonging to one of the others. Coleman, Rachel, and I rode with Joseph.
The plan was to separate and meet at a specific location that Tommy’s mother had suggested: the head of a little-known trail that led up the southeastern side of Mount Sinai. Love of Mountain had told us this route would still be guarded by Egyptian troops, but at least it would be less traveled. Because of the layout of the town, we would have to drive west and then south to hit the trail to Sinai.
The trip to the trailhead should have taken, at most, thirty minutes, but as we traveled, we ran into one traffic jam after another. Now we were waiting, again, in a long line of cars to make a turn.
“This little town has really filled up,” Coleman said. “I looked up St. Katherine on the Internet before we got here. They average plenty of visitors to Mount Sinai over the course of a year, but nothing like these numbers. There must be an extra thousand people here.”
I looked closely into the vehicles around us and at the pedestrians lining the streets. They all looked primarily Middle Eastern, but a good fourth of them were international, with lots of Europeans and North Americans among them.
“You think they’re here because of the Document?” Rachel asked.
We all looked at one another.
“Maybe we should stop and ask some of them,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Coleman retorted. “We should get into the mountains as soon as we can.”
All of us agreed, and we headed south, finally moving out of town and into a flat, rocky desert that was alive with small round plants and scrubby bushes that seemed to be glistening in the fading light.
Just like Sedona, I thought.
In twenty minutes, we were approaching the trailhead, and the reality of our situation was sinking in: we were about to scale a mountain in a foreign country without permission, facing a group of extremists who had already tried to kill us.
I shook my head, holding on to my energy level and reminding myself again that there was no choice. To have any chance of reaching the extremists, we had to get up this Mount and finish the Integrations.
“I have a brother who is a high-ranking officer in this region,” Joseph said abruptly. “I wanted all of you to know, because he could possibly help us. He has been very extreme at times, but I’ve been trying to convince him of the Document’s importance.