Echo Crystal

“Your spirit guide will change your life!” I hear this from the attractive young woman on the stage. “Just tap into the wisdom of your spirit guide, and they can help you navigate the pitfalls of life and become a success.”

Being a young man deathly afraid of failing, I tend to try it all. In school, failure was nothing. In adult life, failure means poverty and perhaps homelessness. The whole pitch sounds quirky, but it may help me stay motivated to weather the challenges of young adulthood.

Around me sit about thirty people. Most are young; the older ones range up to fifty, perhaps. I’m here because a friend told me this group was beneficial to him in getting a good job.

“At one time I was homeless,” the woman continues. “I was walking and saw a flash of light. It felt profound!” She raises her arms above her head and shows a blissful smile on her face. “The thing I discovered reflecting the light was this.” She holds a crystal above her head. It looks like an ordinary quartz crystal, but someone must be shining a laser on it because it creates an explosion of colors across the stage.

“This living crystal is the home of my spirit guide.” Her smile widens. “Since I have communicated with my guide, my life has transformed from lack to abundance.”

Meditation practice often uses a crystal as a focal point for concentration. I think this is probably just going to be another ‘reprogram yourself’ game in the end. Perhaps they have some scripts or helpful chants to help me keep a positive attitude.

She focuses out to us. “The good news is my spirit guide told me where I could find others waiting for earthly beings to benefit!”

“Here comes the sales pitch!” I muse to myself. Patiently, I wait to find how much they are going to want for a mineral to focus on while I meditate and say motivating things.

“The good news is they are completely free! When it benefits you, send me a contribution from time to time. If not, just return the crystal. If you are interested, come to the front of the room and select the crystal with your spirit guide.”

I’m not sure what the game is, but it is hard to reject free. Like the others, I line up so I can pass by a table at the front of the room. Each of us selects a crystal. Of course, these are not as impressive as the one the presenter has. The large ones seem to be selected first, and I am toward the end of the line.

The crystal is small, much smaller than the one the presenter owns. I can probably carry it in my pocket comfortably. The smooth, glassy exterior feels comforting. It feels like something old, permanent. I hold it before my face and peer through the glassy surface. Buried in the crystal’s depth, I see a single flaw. Somehow, there is a black spot in the center. I think to go exchange it for a more perfect one, but the table holding the crystals is now empty.

The presenter retakes the stage. “Great! Let’s take a fifteen-minute break. Please be sure to take care of your personal needs because when we return, we will do a meditation to connect to the spirit guides in your crystals!”

The rest of the people are rising from their chairs. Some smile, some are doubtful, some are visibly bored, most don’t make any sort of eye contact. The crowd departs either to the vestibule or to the bathrooms.

Returning, we settle back into the chairs; we hear. “Now, quiet your minds and relax into your chairs.”

I slump into my chair; the room becomes quiet where I can hear my breathing. In and out, relaxing and letting my mind focus on my breath. Letting go.

The presenter is speaking more slowly now, weaving words into a systemic body relaxation. She continues, “Now as your body and mind relax, slowly bring your crystal close to your face and gaze at it. Locate the position of your spirit guide in the crystal…”

As I bring the crystal up level with my eyes, I slowly open them to reveal the crystal’s exterior sparkle. I search the crystal for my ‘spirit guide’ my gaze is immediately drawn to the dark spot in the crystal. The flaw.

“And as you locate your guide, let yourself communicate…”

Muscle tension almost gone, I relax my mind and allow the dark spot to draw my attention. It grows in my imagination until I notice only the darkness. As I do, I feel a tense energy entering my body; it comes on strong and sudden, I want to rise and go charging out of the room.

I do my best to relax and resist the urge to move. I search the blackness for some sort of ‘spirit guide’ but I see none. It’s just this sense of unease as I slip deeper and deeper into the darkness.

“As you say farewell to your guide, express your appreciation…”

“What?” quietly. I think, “What guide?”, something must have been wrong with either the way I did the exercise or my crystal. I never found the ‘spirit guide’ much less communicate with them.

“And as you open your eyes, know your spirit guide will stay with you …”

Eyes open, I peer at the surrounding faces. The blissful smiles on the participants make me feel like I want to hit someone.

I can swear I heard an echo of laughter in the back of my mind.

“To hell with this!” I place the crystal into my pocket and leave the seminar room.

As I exit onto the hotel parking lot, I find my car. My mood isn’t improving, and I feel my fists clench. The energy and tension in me feel like they want to burst forth. As I get in, I have this urge to slam my door into the car next to me.

“Deep breath, try to calm yourself!” Running a mental inventory back through the events I search. What made me so angry? The crystal feels warm in my pocket. I know I need to relax, or I may do something stupid on the way home.

I finally make it home to the apartment I share with my roommate. As I open the door, he has his feet up on the coffee table, drinking a beer, watching football. My agitation seems to follow me in the door like a cloud.

The sparse furnishings and plain apartment annoy me. “Do you realize we pay more than one dollar per square foot every month for this dump! No wonder I have no money!” My voice gets louder.

“You’re in a mood. Did something happen at that crystal-gazing thing? I didn’t think those were the types of people who would piss you off. Perhaps they may take your money, but this seems a little too out there.”

Opening the refrigerator, I grab a beer. Pulling the top off, I gulp half the bottle at once. The effects, calm me down some. Deep breath...I tell myself to relax.

“The crystal reading people weren’t exactly what I thought. They charged nothing. They also didn’t try to sell anything; they just asked for donations.” I pull the crystal out of my pocket. “They gave me this thing. It has a flaw in it, though. There’s a dark spot in the center.”

My roommate catches the crystal as I toss it to him.

Holding the crystal up to his face, “I don’t see any dark spot; it just looks like a small crystal to me.”

“It’s in the center!”

He turns the crystal around and keeps peering into the center. “Nope, nothing there.”

Holding my hand out, he passes the crystal back to me. Gazing at it, I can’t see the black spot either. Frustration begins to fill me. My first thought is to break the damn thing open and search for it. Even I can tell that was irrational. Chugging the rest of my beer helps calm me a little.

“I have to go out for a run; I’m too agitated to sit still right now.” My roommate looks at me with some concern, then shrugs. I head out the door.

As I jog through my neighborhood and relieve my excess energy and agitation, I focus on my mind. I can almost picture a black spot inside my forehead; it’s hungry. What it’s hungry for I don’t know. I pass into the more affluent neighborhood to our north.

The cars parked on the street are just too tempting. I have a sudden urge to tear the emblem off a Mercedes sitting near the curb. Kick. That felt good. The spot seems to grow a bit and send more anger my way. I rip a hubcap off the car and sling it into the street. It only pumps me up more. When I kick in the door, the alarm goes off, and I sprint away.

The black spot is feeding my anger, and my anger is feeding it. I am feeling the cycle. Stop!

Understanding creeps in. Whatever this is, it’s feeding my negative emotions. I try to relax and start walking back to my neighborhood.

By the time I get home, the lights are off in the living room, and I assume my roommate is already asleep. A shower and a warm bed seem my best option right now.

Sleep doesn’t come easily, but it comes eventually. I am a fitful sleeper normally; tonight it is worse. Waking up frequently is something I do during an awful night.

I jar awake; the strangest dream is fresh in my mind. I saw myself as a kind of biblical-era overseer. With a whip in my hand, I am forcing some of the most pathetic humans to work in the scorching sun. The cruelty radiates from me. Each time I strike one of these poor souls, I feel a little more solid.

As I gain more consciousness, the nasty face appears where the dark spot was. It appears as miserable as the poor souls he was striking.

Can I control this thing? It is my mind after all. Something has made an addition from the outside, but I am the one communicating with it. Hosting it.

Reclining on my bed and relaxing. The face comes back into my mind’s eye. Deep suntanned lines frame a scowling face. The malevolent expression seems set in stone. I feel myself tensing up, reflecting the anger. “Relax . . .” I peer down his body and see strength with the hardness that results from a brutal life. Experimenting, I imagine shining a light on him. It works. I change the background; that works as well. Changing his expression from malevolent to smiling doesn’t work.

Apparently, this persona or energy is in me now. Can I change it? Can I make it disappear? How much power do I have? How much power does it have?

Over the next few days, I experiment with what I am now referring to as my inhumane little man. He may look terrifying, but his chief characteristic is a total lack of empathy. Each time he shows up in a dream, his abuse of others is a matter of fact; it’s as if he is an empty shell.

The most important discovery I have made is that I can shrink him. Once the anger or the desire to abuse other people becomes too great, I visually shrink him down to almost nothing in my mind. This renders him powerless. That lasts as long as I pay attention; he can suddenly spring up on the shortest notice. So far, I have been able to keep it under control so it doesn’t affect my work.

Sitting back at my apartment, my roommate and I are watching television after a pasta dinner. The smell of tomato sauce permeates the house.

Someone begins knocking at the door. We look at each other with questioning looks.

When my roommate opens the door, I look through to see who was knocking. The young woman from the crystal gazing/spirit guide seminar is standing in my doorway! Two men dressed in expensive suits flank her.

The man on the right reaches into his wallet and extracts two one hundred-dollar bills. He hands them to my roommate. “I’ll give you this money if you will leave us to talk to your friend in private for fifteen minutes.”

When my roommate turns to me, I just shrug. He pockets the money and heads out the door.

The woman and the men step through the door. “I am glad to see you alive!” she says. “I saw you draw the black crystal; not everyone makes it. Some just go crazy, some hurt themselves, some …”

The inhumane little man in my mind flares up, and I tense up. I close my eyes for a moment and shrink his image back down. I keep enough emotion to be angry though. I look at my guests.

“You knew I might die if I took that crystal?”

She smiles. “Of course, we’re survivors ourselves. It is part of the process if you want to succeed our way. Notice we aren’t poor like you are. Sometimes it’s much easier to make money if you can be cruel. You didn’t even have to develop it, have a bad childhood, resent a lost love, blah blah blah, we gave it to you. All you had to do was survive long enough for it not to consume you.”

The wealthy-looking man on the left steps in. “We discovered a strange quarry in the Middle East. That quarry was our key. Something about that spot. The crystals would attract their essence when someone died. The workers’ deaths resulted in pure spirits and benefit other’s moods greatly.

The other man joins in. “Also, a smaller number of the overseers died there. The overseers were ruthless and made a black flaw in the crystal. Four friends came across the quarry many years ago. Our company president was the one who came into contact with the first black crystal.”

They all look at me, and the young woman speaks again. “Obviously, we all got a dark crystal and an entity like the one you have in your head. That’s irrelevant. The real question is whether you want to use what you gained to make money with our firm, or do you want to live like this?”

The entity makes itself present in my mind and seems almost neutral for once, expectant. The three people near my door look at me expectantly.

I look at all their faces and ask myself, “Would I rather struggle to become independent and keep my empathy toward people, or would I rather ruthlessly make money?”