How to Endure an Estralarian Mind Meld

Have you ever had déjà vu? You know, when you experience something and it feels like you’ve done it before? What do you call it when you remember an experience that you can’t remember actually experiencing?

There I was, reading about the second habit, trying to Begin with the End in Mind, when all of a sudden I remember learning about it through a conversation I had with two aliens that had once abducted me. Well, it wasn’t actually once. It was a few times. And they didn’t necessarily abduct me. They just…

“It’s an Estralarian mind meld,” Iman said. He was the taller of the two of them, but even though he loomed over me, he never appeared menacing. More like we were on the same level, which is probably why I never really felt “abducted.”

“What do you mean it’s an Estralarian mind meld?” I asked. “It doesn’t feel like an Estralarian mind meld.”

The last time I remember getting an Estralarian mind meld, I was in Five Point Park. Okay, it was the only time I remember getting one. It’s not one of those things that happen often and not something you’ll soon forget. Most of what I remember about it is searing pain and blacking out.

“That’s the one,” said Yewell, the shorter of the two.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s the one’?” I asked. “This is the mind meld I got in the park?”

“It only takes one,” he assured.

“But I don’t remember any of this. I remember pain, blinding pain.”

“You mean like that?” Iman pointed and we were suddenly at Five Points Park again. Across the grass, I saw myself sitting on a bench, the aliens on either side of me. As they placed their hands on my shoulders, I convulsed and dropped to the ground. They looked at one another and shrugged.

“Yeah! That’s it!” I said. As I said it and looked at the aliens beside me, the park vanished and we appeared to be in some sort of nebulous void again. I hadn’t even noticed it earlier. Funny how location just kind of slips your mind when you’re in a nebulous void. “Blacking out. That’s what I remember.”

“But think about all of the things that you don’t remember,” said Yewell.

“What I do remember is quite enough, thank you very much.”

“But what you have yet to remember is what is most important. That’s why you’re starting to remember it now,” Iman said.

“Starting to remember what now?” I asked.

“All of the things you’re supposed to write.”

“But I’ve already written that,” I argued. “Remember? The whole McAllister Code book you had me write with the marketing and the history of business and the thing with the hand.”

“You’ve only written one aspect of it,” Iman said.

“But it’s very good,” Yewell added.

“Just delightful, and very funny.”

“I didn’t realize we were so charming and witty.”

“Well,” I countered, “it’s not the bestseller you said it would be.”

“It is where we come from.”

“Oh yes, we all love it. As you know though, humans are a little slow getting around to things like progress and whatnot.”

“Yes, it seems like you’ve got to try every way under the sun that doesn’t work before you can try the one way that does.”

“Of course, that’s part of what makes you so endearing.”

“And entertaining.”

Have I mentioned that aliens can be almost impossible to deal with sometimes?

“Oh, come on. We’re not that bad,” Iman said.

“How are you doing that?” I asked… am asking… will ask?

“Doing what?”

“How are you responding to what I’m writing in the present during a conversation we were supposed to have had in the past?”

“Oh,” he said, “we didn’t realize there was a difference. Remember, time is a human constraint. None of the rest of us has much use for it.”

“You don’t see many elephants wearing wristwatches, do you?” added Yewell. “Or sea anemones with sun dials? For most of the cognizant universe, life just is. Breaking it up into distinct parts is strictly a human anomaly.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re saying that all of this – past, present, and, future – is all actually happening at the same time?”

Yewell sighed. “No, it happens at different times, but it all happens simultaneously.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“That’s the reason we gave you the mind meld. So that it would make sense.”

“Well, it’s not helping!” I argued.

“Of course it is,” Iman reassured. “That’s how you’ve gotten this far.”

“Huh?”

“Most of your paradigms,” Iman began to explain, “are communicated through a series of steps, a sequence of realizations that are revealed to people one at a time. However, they are all components of one truth. Take these 7 habits of highly effective people you’ve been writing about. You read about them one at a time, write about them one at a time, possibly even implement them one at a time, but they are all practiced simultaneously to achieve the state called effectiveness.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“Of course it does,” he added. “After all, you don’t develop a mind meld by being a ninny.”

See what I mean? Impossible.

“You want impossible?” Yewell said. “Try teaching the meaning of life to a human sometime.”

“So why am I experiencing a mind meld that happened in a different time?”

“Because now you’re ready,” Iman said.

“Ready for what?” I asked.

“To take the next step.”

“And that is?”

“Well, you’re being proactive, and you’ve begun with the end in mind… So what’s next?”

“Put first things first?” I offered.

“There might just be hope for your species after all.”