Page 7

21 This was dangerous and is not a Society ritual, recommendation, sacrament, initiation, or example to imitate.

22 I believed I was pursued.

23 No one was actually pursuing me as far as the evidence later showed.

24 Eventually Whitney helped me return home and consider that my perceptions might be ideations rather than an external pursuit.

25 Relief arrived.

26 Embarrassment arrived.

27 Tears arrived.

28 Then another question arrived:

29 What is so wrong about becoming a Snake Person?

30 Why had losing the word human felt like annihilation?

31 Why had I assumed Human was a prison from which there could be no voluntary exit?

32 In the days afterward, Nate and I compared memories.

33 Nate remembered telling me that he was not a snake.

34 I remembered hearing the opposite.

35 Thus the founding story containeth two incompatible memories.

36 We preserve this inconvenience.

37 Nate also used the phrase: Dream state.

38 Later I understood his teaching to mean that life can sometimes be experienced more freely when the mind loosens its demand to control the narrative while events are still unfolding.

39 Therefore Dream State became part of the Society.

40 Not as an instruction to ignore danger.

41 Not as an instruction to ignore evidence.

42 As permission to let the next moment arrive before forcing the final meaning.

43 I discovered the framework.

44 I also developed it afterward.

45 I do not claim that this history proves an ancient organization physically pursued me.

46 I do claim that the experience changed the questions I was willing to ask.