The vision in the cave

The cave was deeper than John had first supposed, and warmer. History had led him to a smooth-walled chamber where a small fire burned without smoke, casting dancing shadows on the stone.

‘Rest here,’ she said. ‘The road ahead is long, and there are things you must see—though perhaps not with waking eyes.’

John had not realized how weary he was until he lay down upon the soft moss that carpeted the cave floor. The fire’s warmth wrapped around him like a blanket, and soon he was falling, falling into the deepest sleep he had known since childhood.

And then he was walking—not in the cave, but in blazing sunlight through a city he had never seen yet somehow recognized. It lay due East of the road he had traveled, beyond even Eschropolis but this side of the great chasm. The streets gleamed like gold, yet the gold was hard and bright rather than warm. Every building rose in perfect geometry, and every citizen walked with the same confident stride.

Above the city gates was written: “ATTRACTIA—Where Desire Becomes Law.”

The marketplace hummed with activity, but it was activity of a peculiar sort. Instead of merchants crying their wares, there were teachers proclaiming formulas. Instead of goods being weighed and measured, thoughts were being counted and catalogued. Every voice rang with the same note of eager certainty.

At the city’s heart stood a great platform, and upon it sat a woman whose presence drew every eye. She was neither young nor old, but seemed to shift between ages as the light moved across her face. Her voice, when she spoke, had a quality that made John think of honey poured over silver bells.

‘You are gods walking as beggars!’ she proclaimed to the gathered crowd. ‘The Universe bends to your every wish—but only when you learn to wish correctly!’

John found himself pressed close among the listeners. Many held tablets where they wrote frantically as the woman spoke. Others clutched small mirrors, gazing into them with expressions of fierce concentration.

‘The Secret is simple,’ the woman continued, and John noticed her eyes never quite focused on any individual face, but seemed to look through and past everyone. ‘Like attracts like. What you think about, you bring about. What you feel, you make real. The Great Law of Correspondence ensures it!’

A merchant from the crowd—John could tell he was a merchant by his rich robes, though his face was anxious—called out: ‘But Teacher, I have visualized my warehouses full for seven months, yet they remain empty!’

The woman’s smile never wavered. ‘Then you have been visualizing from lack instead of abundance. You have been thinking “my warehouses are empty and I want them full” instead of “my warehouses ARE full.” The Universe cannot tell the difference between memory and imagination—it only responds to the vibration of your dominant thoughts!’

John saw several in the crowd nod wisely at this, but others looked confused. An old woman near him whispered to her companion: ‘If that’s true, then why do I dream of food and wake up hungry?’

But the woman on the platform had moved on. ‘Each of you is a perfect attractor! You draw to yourself people, circumstances, wealth, health—everything according to your vibrational frequency. Are you poor? You have attracted poverty. Are you sick? You have attracted disease. Are you lonely? You have attracted solitude.’

At this, a voice from the back of the crowd cried out in anguish: ‘Then I have attracted the death of my son? I have brought the plague upon my house with my thoughts?’

For just a moment, the woman’s perfect composure flickered. But then the smile returned, brighter than before. ‘Dear one, you must release resistance! What-is must be allowed, so that what-is-wanted may flow to you. Grief is resistance. Fear is resistance. Only joy and gratitude align you with your desires!’

John felt his stomach turn. Around him, he saw the faces of the crowd—some shining with apparent enlightenment, others twisted with guilt, still others blank with confusion. But at the edges of the gathering, he noticed something else: people quietly helping each other, sharing food, offering comfort. They listened to the teacher, but they seemed to hear something different from her words than what she was saying.

The woman raised her voice to its sweetest pitch: ‘Go now and practice the Sacred Techniques! Make your vision boards! Write your gratitude lists! Speak only words of abundance and watch abundance flow to you like rivers to the sea!’

As the crowd began to disperse, John found himself following a group of the more thoughtful listeners. They gathered in a small garden behind a modest house, and there an old man—who John somehow knew had once been a guide in Puritania—spoke quietly:

‘Friends, there is truth in what the Teacher says about our part in shaping what comes to us. But she speaks as if we were the only shapers. What of the Landlord’s will? What of the needs of others? What of the dance between what we choose and what chooses us?’

A young woman nodded. ‘I have found that when I stop trying to attract what I want and start trying to become who I ought to be, what I need does seem to come—but not always as I expected.’

‘Yes,’ said another. ‘The real secret is not learning to get what we want, but learning to want what we’re given—and to give what we’re called to give.’

John felt a warmth in his chest at these words, but even as he did, the scene began to shimmer and fade. The golden city dissolved like mist, and he was falling again, back into darkness, back into the cave…

He woke to find History sitting beside the fire, her ancient face gentle in the flickering light.

‘You have seen Attractia,’ she said before he could speak.

John sat up, his mind still full of golden streets and silver voices. ‘Is it real? I mean—will I find it if I travel East?’

‘As real as Eschropolis or Puritania. As real as any country of the mind made manifest in stone and law.’

‘But the woman—the Teacher—was she speaking truth or lies?’

History poked the fire, sending sparks dancing upward. ‘Both, as is often the case with half-awakened prophets. She has grasped something real about the conversation between consciousness and circumstance. The ancients knew it too—that mind and world shape each other endlessly. But she has made the mistake of turning mystery into method, relationship into technique.’

‘Those who helped the others—they seemed different.’

‘They had learned what the Teacher never quite grasped: that if we truly are co-creators of reality, then our first creation must be love. They discovered that the law of attraction is fulfilled not when we attract what we want to ourselves, but when we become attractive to what wants to love us—which is always more than we can hold alone.’

John thought of the grieving father in his vision. ‘And those who suffer—are they to blame for their suffering?’

‘That is the shadow of Attractia’s teaching. Its citizens often become hard in their hearts, believing that all misfortune is chosen, all pain is deserved. They forget that we live not in a world we made alone, but in a world we share with others who are also learning to create. Sometimes what looks like curse is actually gift, and what looks like failure is actually invitation.’

She looked at him with eyes that held deep kindness. ‘The fourth revelation teaches us we are partners in making our reality—but partners, not proprietors. The dance requires two dancers, John. The one who tries to lead every step spoils the music.’

John nodded slowly, understanding dawning. ‘So the real secret…’

‘Is learning to dance well with whatever Partner leads us. And that Partner, I have heard, knows steps we have never dreamed of—steps that lead not just to getting what we want, but to becoming who we are meant to be.’

The fire settled into glowing coals, and History’s voice grew soft. ‘Sleep now. Tomorrow we continue toward the country where the fourth revelation flowers into something the Teacher of Attractia never imagined—though she carries its seed unknowing in her heart.’