Ann: Hi Richard.
Richard Burton: Hi yourself. It has been some time since you just came by to chat, too busy being Mrs. Blogger.
Ann: Is that a problem?
RB: Not at all, I find it immensely entertaining and also educational as I try to fit my energy and experience into some kind of framework that can be useful to your readers.
Ann: I think you are doing splendidly. I think you have a following.
RB: Well, I always did….
Ann: And your ego was not far behind….
RB: Now, now, Madame….
Ann: Do you still have an ego?
RB: What do you think?
Ann: Well, the previous remark might so indicate to the average bear mind....
RB: Which, however much you may so advertise, is not the mind belonging to you….
Yes, I have an ego but not like the one that I lugged around in my previous time on the planet. This ego is the ego of wanting to be able to use what I know, what I have learned at some considerable cost in a way that allows me to create a safe space around those of you still laboring with that albatross.
I would say that, for purposes of these communications, I have not lost my individuality because it allows me to communicate and poke fun at myself, you and, the rest of us who have or are flailing around beneath the dark water of earth’s atmosphere. The point is, I remember what it is like. And I remember what I could not see then but which is visible now - though not on the radar of your average bear.
Ann: What do you see now?
RB: I see Madame trying to find her way in a new world that she is constitutionally inclined to distrust. Quite the little conundrum for you, is it not?
Ann: Yeah.
RB: But that is what makes you a trustworthy guide for those who come to you, who read your blog and who assume correctly that you stand behind the connections who speak through you even when you have had to abdicate that lawyer mind of yours to do so.
And that frees all of us up to offer an unedited version of our current insights and opinions with, in my case, the irreverence that allows your readers to take them or leave them as they deem best. There is no hierarchy among souls, as Fred Rogers would say. By the way, he wants to talk to you.
Ann: OK, OK, you and Anita*. Do all of you guys hook up over there? If so, you and John McCain must be raising holy hell if you are in similar form there as you were here.
RB: Best part about it. Wish I had known him in the flesh, so to speak, but we are making up a bit of time now.
I will leave you with this, Madame, since we started this little conversation with a discussion of egos. Yours and mine work to cancel each other's out, to entertain ourselves and others on the way to some half-assed version of enlightenment and I, for one could not ask for more delightful way to get there.
Ann: Amen.
February 26, 2020
*Anita Sacco. See "Recommended Channelers" under "Resources" tab.