She stopped dancing, and her loose fitting light blue gown fell softly around her small feet. "Want to play?" she asked. "I have to work," I told her. "Even now I'm waiting for inspiration."

"I have a gift for you," she said with a smile that was both mischievous and angelic. I was wary. You see, Rashana claims to be my spirit of creativity, joy and Light. She keeps insisting that I've been spending too much of "what I have" writing sad books. She won't say "too much time" because on the upper levels of the Universal Mind, time is an illusion. And she won't talk in terms of illusion because she's also my spirit of truth.

She says the books about human suffering would be more healing if I could let her help me write happy and joyful books which celebrate the beauty of the human experience. "What kind of a gift?" I asked her then.

She raised her hand as though suggesting that I watch and began to blow bubbles through a gold ring on a wand which she held high in front of her. Beautiful rainbow colored bubbles filled the sky. She smiled at me, obviously pleased with herself. Then she reached for one of the larger bubbles and as she touched it, it seemed to turn into a smooth round rosy quartz crystal. She tossed it at me playfully. And I, thinking it would be hard, put my hand up to block it- which sent it spinning back to her. Like a beach ball she tossed it again. This time I threw it back.

"I have to work," I reminded her. "I have things to do."
"Come be with me," she said, as she ran toward the beautiful blue water that seemed to open like an ocean in front of her.
"I can't swim," I told her.
"I can," she said laughing.

By some magic of heart and mind, I was able to follow her as she swam underwater. I watched as she rolled herself into a ball and went spinning downward, I could see her as she wove the coral and shells through her hair. I was amazed to discover that the bubbles she blew while underwater looked more like the small fine bubbles of soda water than the bubbles I had blown in one of the few times I swam.

"Why are yours different?" I asked.
"Angel breath causes the silver shimmer on the waves," she explained as though I should have known. Then with her head thrown back and her arms raised in front of her she seemed to dive upward until she had gone past the surface of the water and was back in the sky. Once there she reached for some of the smaller bubbles she had blown and wove them into a rosy quartz necklace. When she came toward me again she was holding it forward and when she reached me she placed it around my neck.

"Thank you," I said.
"Would you like to come with me?" she asked.
"I really can't," I explained. "I really have to work."
"It won't take a lot of what you have," she said, and so I agreed. She took me by the hand, and suddenly I could feel my head spinning. "I'm dizzy," I told her. "Well, open your eyes," she said, "and look down."

Beneath me I could see my house with my car in the driveway. "I feel like I'm flying," I told Rashana as the world below me fuzzed.

"What do you see?" she asked.
"Small well kept houses, green grass and trees," I told her. And as we flew over town, I said, "I can see the lanterns that line the streets, the tall pine on the triangle and the new signs on all the storefronts."

"Quite beautiful, isn't it?" Rashana asked.
"It is," I agreed, and I tried to remember when I had ever seen it looking so green and lush. "Can we continue?" she asked, looking sideways at me and now we were flying side by side like Peter Pan and Wendy.

I looked down just as we passed over a very poor district in Mexico. Dark haired children with ragged clothing were sitting looking forlorn on fallen stoops outside ramshackle huts. We flew quickly, the scenes below almost a blur.

Next we flew over Armenia, the area of the devastating earthquake and I could hear the cries of the people reach high into the sky. I put my hands over my ears and then over my eyes. When I opened them again we were just going over India, Calcutta to be exact. And now Rashana pointed down at a group of children and old people in rags squatting on one of the sewage filled gutters. "Those people have come to learn suffering," she said, simply. "They have chosen very difficult incarnations so that they can learn as much as possible. Some of the poor areas in Mexico, some of the devastated areas of Armenia, some of the most restrictive areas in the Soviet Union provide the opportunities for excellent learning about suffering."

She said it with compassion but still I didn't know what she was getting at. Soon, we flew into New York and I recognized the area of Long Island around my house. Just before we landed back in my living room, Rashana asked, "Why is it you wish to do suffering?"

I'm afraid I was a little snappy. "I don't wish to do suffering, as you put it. I'm trying to show the difficulties that all human beings have in the crisis times of their lives," I said.

"The joyful areas of life that are not written enough about," she said. "Beauty is not as trivial as you think it to be."
"I don't think it's really trivial," I said, trying to make her feel better.

She sounded discouraged.
"If a soul constantly takes on too many heavy incarnations," she explained,
"it becomes stuck in suffering. And it batters the Spirit. To reach harmony and balance, it is necessary to do some serious joy."

"That's what you do?" I asked, thinking to myself she didn't have a clue about life on earth. I saw her frown and then she shuddered. "I will tell you it's not an easy thing to do "Joy" having you as a soul. You make everything harder than it has to be."

"Sure," I said, "It's easy for you to talk when you don't have anything to do but play. I have important work to do, things that will help evolution, things that will help raise consciousness, things that will help save the planet.."

She looked shocked. "That's what you think you're doing?" she said, and flopped down, sitting on my rug. "Well, it's clear I haven't done the job of teaching you humility," she said. "Talk about work..."

"No," I said. "Don't try to pacify me by changing my focus. What do you do all day...or time....or whatever...?"

She seemed to be studying me, trying to decide something, then in a very unangelike fashion, suddenly she lifted me up by the scruff of my neck and started flying with me again. "Where are we going?" I said, startled.

"To my place," she said. "So I can try to make things clearer..."

The wind blew in my face and in my hair, sometimes so hard it took my breath away, but still Rashana stopped at nothing.
"How much longer?" I managed to sputter out.
"Until we get there," she said in a firm voice.

Then suddenly it seemed as though she dropped me down on a cloud. All around there was just white moving energy, some a thicker white than the rest. "Stand up," she said, and grabbed me by the hand. I struggled to my feet and she began to float across the cloud floor. "Nice clouds," I said. "Thank you," she said, but there was a chill in her voice.

Up ahead I saw what looked like an igloo. "That's where you live?" I said. "I live everywhere," she said, "I'm sure I've told you that before. This is just where I formulate my plans...."

"It seems pretty stark to me," I said, as I bent low to get in through the doorway. Rashana seemed not to notice and just walked right through, as though nothing was in her way. Inside, in the center of the one large room, there stood a large shiny telescope. "What's that for?" I asked.
"Besides humility, it couldn't hurt if you learned some patience," she said. "I'm about to explain..."

"You sound angry," I said. "I thought spirits, high spirits anyway, didn't have emotions..." Rashana looked at me. "We don't, but we do have common senses." I nodded.

She walked over to the telescope and beckoned to me to come. Then she told me to put my eye against the scope. Wow! I thought, it was pretty amazing. Right in front of the lens, there was a woman from Siam, dressed in bright green and magenta flowing robes, dancing the most beautiful, graceful dance I had ever seen. When she stopped dancing, she seemed to walk toward me. I could see her bright black eyes and long dark lashes. She had smooth bronze skin, a fine nose and very well defined full lips painted with a bright crimson red. "She's pretty," I said. "Who is she?"

Rashana walked up alongside me and said, "Please turn the scope slightly to the left..." When I did, through the lens, I saw a tall good looking man dressed in what looked like a pirate's outfit, complete with the black patch over his right eye. He was fencing with someone I couldn't see. "Who's he?" I asked Rashana. But all she said was, "Turn the telescope a little more to the left...."

I saw a caveman dressed in animal skins waving around a club made of thick bumpy white wood. A really ugly creature, I had to admit. "I know," I said. "I know, just turn the scope...a little to the left."

Rashana giggled for the first time. This time there was an Indian, a tall dark, dancing Indian with feathered headdress and leather moccasins tied up along his calves. I could hear the cry, the call, of war.

Without asking, I looked now through that telescope, turning and turning it until I'd made almost a complete circle. And at every stop there was a different time, a different person, a different outfit, a different culture, a different face. Finally almost at the beginning again, I asked Rashana, "Who are all of those people? Why are they here and what do they have to do with us?"

She touched me then, tenderly on the cheek. "I want you to look one more time," she said. "And tell me what you see...."

I turned back and put my eye against the rubber circle and looked again through the lens of the long telescope. At first the girl looked far away. "I can't see her," I told Rashana. "I can't get a clear view, she's too far away."

Rashana walked up to the front of the telescope and put on the zoom lens. And I almost had a heart attack. But to be sure I said, "Bring her a little closer. Let me see her eyes...zoom her in a little more....ask her to turn toward me..."

When she did, I gasped. "Oh my God," I said, "It's me!"
Rashana smiled. "It is you..." she said.
"Well who were all those others?" I asked.
"My other souls from other lifetimes," she explained.
"Why are they here?" I asked.
Rashana looked at me, bright stars in her eyes.
"Do you really want to know?" she asked.
"I do," I said.
"Okay," she said. "Hang on." She lifted me again, only this time by the hand, and she flew until we were high above the igloo. "Look down," she said. "Look now." And as she said it, in a flash, all those people I had just seen were transformed into a perfect circle of graceful little rose quartz crystal statues. Except for one.

I pointed down to her. "That's me, right?" I said, both amazed and humbled.
"That's you," she said.
The circle of statues was too beautiful to imagine. It shined with a warm rose glow, each perfect little charm completely different from the rest and yet those very differences made it all the more intricate, all the more hypnotic.

"It's really beautiful," I said to her, softly. "But what will you do with it?"
Suddenly, we were on our way down again, down, down, down, and by the time we were ready to land, we were almost in my living room. "What is it?" I asked her again.

She stood in front of me, her head held high but her voice trembling with a mixture of excitement and reverence. "It's a gift I've made. It's a necklace for the Creator." She was quite breathless.

"Well, I think the Creator will be very pleased and touched by it," I said. "When will you offer it?"

Rashana put her head down and I could see a tiny bright jewel of a tear falling from her eye. "That's the problem," she said.
"What?" I asked. "What's the problem?"
She looked straight at me. "Can't you see?" she said. "It has no clasp."

I remembered back, the picture of the beautiful rosy quartz necklace now etched in my mind. "You're right," I said. "It has no clasp." Then I thought about it. "What do you need to make a clasp?" I asked her.

She was so intense, she was biting her bottom lip when she reached for my hand and said with her eyes closed as though wishing, "I need one soul, in one lifetime, to reach freedom. That's what I need."

Now I was frowning. "One soul in one lifetime to reach freedom?" I repeated.
Rashana looked at me, pleadingly. "Can you help me?"

"That's my part?" I asked, but I didn't really expect an answer. I looked at her, could see how much she wanted it. "Rashana," I said. "What were you thinking about? What kind of planning was that? You need a soul who reaches freedom and you send me down in the middle of an enmeshed Italian family?"

Rashana looked devastated. "I need a clasp for the necklace for the Lord," she repeated. "It's a gift I've been waiting for so long to give..."

I thought about it. "So that's my purpose in this life? To get free....?" I said trying to digest it.

"I need a clasp of golden love," she added softly.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"For a gift to be truly a gift, it must be freely given," she said. "And for a soul to be free, it must also be true....."

I shook my head and looked at her. The vision of the beautiful quartz necklace now danced before my eyes, the delicate little charms radiant in perfect form. I pictured it then....with a clasp of pure gold. It touched me, humbled me, and brought tears to my eyes.

"I'll try," I promised Rashana. "I'll really try..."
Rashana kissed me then, a soft gentle kiss, of gratitude. And she said, "You never asked when I started it."
"I can imagine," I said. "I saw all the lifetimes..."

Rashana smiled, her eyes twinkling. "That's not my only project you know. Spirits on the Creative Realm do more than one thing at a time." When she saw my expression, she quickly added, "But this is my favorite one, and the one hardest to accomplish."

"Okay," I said. "When did you begin it? Sometime before Christ right?" Rashana smiled, a sweet poignant smile. "I began that beautiful rose crystal necklace long before Christ and even longer before Time. I began that necklace on the day I began....and until this very moment I had no hope of ever finishing it."