After Phyler left Zelen, I was keenly interested in going to the meetings regarding her replacement. After all, the position of lead fairy and head of security for our planet was very important. I had assembled entire notebooks of material about the qualifications and experience that were necessary for Phyler’s replacement, plus added my own suggestions for the best age and personality type.

  I was on my way to the first meeting, dragging my overloaded bookbag that was too heavy to carry, when suddenly my Spirit Guide materialized in front of me. Spirit manifests in different forms depending on how much arguing it expects me to do. Today it was in the form of an extremely large, translucent male god, with all of the classic robes and Greek god appearance you could imagine. I knew I wouldn’t like what was coming.

  Gnomy, he said in a thundering voice. It’s time to reincarnate into a new form. Come with me.

  I was shocked. Spirit expects me to leave as we are choosing an important new security leader? I argued that they couldn’t possibly do it without my input.

  Spirit argued back that my age was getting up there close to the gnomish 1200-year maximum age. My body was getting weak, and it was time to go.

  He also said that lately I always thought I knew best and had become downright bossy. No one else could do anything right. I thought I had to direct everything. Hadn’t I noticed how other Zelen residents had started avoiding me?

  He added that I needed to learn to deal with uncertainty and unexpected events. He had picked out just the right lifetime to dislodge me from my succession of self-important, familiar gnome reincarnations.

  I asked where I was going but Spirit just smiled and said to relax and go with the flow. I won’t know in advance where my new life will be or what form I will take, or even how long I will be there. The surprise is part of the lesson.

  Reluctantly I stepped out of the particles that had made me a gnome and became just a glowing, radiant soul. Then suddenly everything changed. I forgot my gnome life and moved into something completely new.

  I had been incarnated into a dimension that had physical laws different from Zelen’s universe. What a strange experience it was.

  I emerged as a piece of a clear crystalline being that had broken off from a large crystal and had just come into its own consciousness. This new universe I had arrived in had an uncertain concept of space, not recognizable to someone used to three-dimensional space. In fact, it was not really describable at all. Time was distorted here, skipping around and not running in a straight path or even a discernable pattern.

  I felt like my crystalline form was in many places at once and in many times at once. My own structure was not stable in this new universe. I shifted from a short being to a long and thin being, became small and then huge again as I drifted.

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  Fortunately, I was not alone but had joined a group of similar life forms that had broken off from other large crystals. We linked together for a feeling of security.

  Our group crossed many dimensions and many universes simultaneously. We could see just the edges of other beings as we flowed through distorted time. Everything randomly changed around us. We all wanted to see more of the flashes of beings and scenes that appeared and disappeared, but there was no way to summon a specific image or to experience it in the sanity of normal three-dimensional space. It was all very confusing and frustrating.

  My fellow crystalline forms and I were conscious beings that were aware of each other, but had little understanding of ourselves or the bits of colorful scenes that drifted by us. We stopped trying to make sense of our environment and just experienced it.

  There was no way to control our floating movements, with one exception. We were able to separate ourselves from the group. However, if an entity got the idea to drift away from the group, it couldn’t choose where it was going and could never go back.

  Although I had very limited comprehension, I knew I had to break away from the group.

  I chose to leave the crystal beings as a particularly shimmery scene passed by. It reminded me of the bright stars of outer space. I attached myself to this passing scene and used it to travel away from the group.

  I ended up in a different universe. It was black but full of colorful stars that sang low tones to make an otherworldly choir. It was a marvelous experience.

  I floated completely alone for a very long time. I was simply existing and enjoying the soothing music of the cosmos.

  Eventually I floated away from the sweet and peaceful songs. My silvery crystalline edges developed a blue tinge. I started to pass translucent blue energy beings and suddenly realized that was my form now.

  My thoughts became more like those of a conscious being. I gained an awareness of myself floating amidst the stars and was able to fully experience the expansive and now stable universe around me. I didn’t know where I was headed but I didn’t care. This infinite universe was filled with boundless wonders. I felt profound gratitude at being a part of it.

  I felt gravity tug at me, and I suddenly dropped into the atmosphere of a blue world. To viewers on that world I must have appeared as a shooting star in the night. Before burning up completely, I splashed down into a large ocean on that world. My energy structure could not survive the unexpected and catastrophic physical changes, and that life ended.

  Feeling I had learned enough, Spirit allowed me to move into a new gnome life back on planet Zelen.

  Experiencing that transformative lifetime did help me appreciate uncertainty and embrace the constant changes in my current gnome life. I’ve relaxed and stopped trying to control everyone and everything. Now I simply enjoy the variety of life around me. I try to understand friends and family as they are, just enjoying their unique approaches to life. I often hum snatches of wistful, half-remembered space songs.

  Apparently, I have done well enough that my Spirit Guide has not returned to insist I live another incarnation learning to embrace randomness. It was an amazing experience but I would not willingly do it again. Any future lessons, therapies or life remediations will have to be done here in my beloved Round Woods on Zelen. Is that a controlling behavior? I don’t know. I think it just means I treasure my newly relaxed gnome life completely.