At first it's hard not to think the old way. Even once you learn to focus without anything there to hold your attention, you quickly find the next challenge is learning how to stop focusing without distraction. You don't become physically aroused or tired. There isn't a nose or eyelashes to confound you, no loud construction down the street. You must learn to enforce breaks in your thought, or else risk a china syndrome of the mind -- thoughts breeding thoughts breeding energy and heat. You need outside enlightenment to come and cool you off in that early stage. Luckily, there are plenty of people to help you out. Nobody wants to be around those mad effigies for too long.

The next step is to turn yourself outward. For some, it is a long-awaited release, and they turn out with such energy that they can't rein themselves back in. We tread through the remains of those bursts, scattered information and feelings that hold us in suspension. In a way, they are martyrs that nourish us, as we suspect that they lose consciousness -- all they have, really -- in the process. We can't say for sure because no one who has burst has ever become bounded again.

For most of us, though, turning out is a frightening experience. After the first push, it can take a long time to stretch your bounds far enough for a real interaction. But it's more comforting than you might think. There's less to defend yourself against than before. Some people still try to manipulate you, but there's really nothing to gain from it anymore. No physical benefits at least. The people who manipulate now do it from a malicious spirit. But once a malicious person tangles with one of the ancients, they usually don't risk interfering with anyone else. (The ancients are pre-Greek, and too far removed to communicate with. Even those who'd been barbarians of europe could be brought up to speed with the current thought, but the ancients think in such base confusions that one who intrudes with them usually turns back in for a while.) For those that persist as trouble, we have a roaming council of elders who are whole enough from experience here that they can risk a full intrusion and itemized removal of the malice. The process is never perfect, because the offending person is always the type to struggle, and more must be removed than planned. But this is how the atmosphere is made safe for shy and suspicious people to turn out.

There are also malicious people who never manipulate or intrude. They are the ones still fighting the wars of before, and they have little effect on the rest of us here. They comprise a sorrowful cadre who chooses to mourn rather than turn out, who still hold on to their previous feelings and stay close to their old stomping grounds and battlefields. The rest of us have little need to revisit or influence the things we have left behind. My parents are among those who are still nostalgic for hazy sight and the gritty sting of scraped elbows. They stay close to my children and rally them toward their old causes. In times of weakness, I go back to influence them, too, and temper what their grandparents say. But mostly I try to stay open. I think my children will forgive me my lack of involvement once they are here. We can't spend our time focused on the physical and closed to the others. Their time of darkness and confusion will earn their right to develop and learn later. And even my parents will turn out to everyone eventually, and then we'll all be together again and help the children when they come.

All newcomers, once they turn out, head straight for old lovers, family and friends, though meeting these people wholly and honestly is too disquieting at first. As these relatives, friends and lovers, it is our job to encourage newcomers to turn out farther and get them excited about the possibility of meeting anyone. At that point, most people immediately seek out Jesus, Siddhartha Gautama, Mohammad, or Confucius, Einstein, Virgil and the like. A common mistake -- though the prophets had special knowledge on earth, they know no more about this realm than anyone else now that we're all in it, and the world of the secular greats is now irrelevant. Worse, these great figures spend so much time around the newcomers that their own growth is stunted. Soon, the newcomers realize that they are as likely to find insight and joy from one who scraped barnacles and stevedored on the docks of 17th century Genoa, as a newborn from the steppes of Mongolia, alive and awake for a few minutes in the spring of 647 C.E., just long enough to see the chain lightning across the sky and feel a distinct lack of something we know as oxygen, as the most esteemed thinkers of world history. I usually consider a person's early stages over once they have felt the ecstatic, whirling taffy-pull of talking for the first time here with a retard.