The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision by James Redfield Read Free Book Online

watching an intense point of bright light
     moving toward us. It eventually swelled into a massive beam that covered everything. Unable to look directly at the light,
     I turned so I could just see the silhouette of the man, who was staring fully at the beam without apparent difficulty.
    Again I could pick up on his thoughts and emotions. The light was filling him with an unimaginable sense of love and calm
     perspective. As this sensation swept over him, his viewpoint andknowledge expanded until he could clearly see the life he had just lived from a broad and amazingly detailed perspective.
    Immediately he could see the circumstances of his birth and early family life. He was born John Donald Williams to a father
     who was slow intellectually and to a mother who was extremely detached and absent because of her involvement in various social
     events. He himself had grown up angry and defiant, an interrogator eager to prove to the world that he was a brilliant achiever
     who could master science and mathematics. He earned a doctorate in physics at MIT at age twenty-three and taught at four prestigious
     universities before moving on to the Defense Department and then later to a private energy corporation.
    Clearly he had thrown himself into this latter position with total abandon and disregard for his health. After years of fast
     food and no exercise he was diagnosed with a chronic heart condition. An exercise routine pursued too aggressively had proved
     fatal. He had died in his prime at age fifty-eight.
    At this point Williams’ awareness shifted and he began to have profound regrets and severe emotional pain concerning the way
     he had led his life. He realized that his childhood and early family had been set up perfectly to expose what was already
     his soul’s tendency to use defiance and elitism to feel more important. His main tool had been ridicule, putting down others
     by criticizing their abilities and work ethic and personality. Yet now he could see that all the teachers had been in place
     to help him overcome this insecurity. All of them had arrived at just the right time to show him another way, but he had ignored
     them completely.
    Instead he had just pursued his tunnel vision to the end. All the signs had been there to choose his work more carefully,
     to slow down. There were a multitude of implications and dangersinherent in his research of new technologies that he had failed to consider. He had allowed his employers to feed him new
     theories, and even unfamiliar physical principles, without even questioning their origin. These procedures worked, and that
     was all he cared about, because they led to success, gratitude, recognition. He had succumbed to his need for
recognition
… again. My God, he thought, I’ve failed just as I did before.
    His mind abruptly shifted to a new scene, an earlier existence. He was in the southern Appalachians, nineteenth century, a
     military outpost. In a large tent several men leaned over a map. Lanterns flickered their light against the walls. A consensus
     had been reached among all the field officers present: there was no hope for peace now. War was inevitable, and sound military
     principles dictated an attack, quickly.
    As one of the commanding general’s top two aides, Williams had been forced to concur with the others. No other choice existed,
     he had concluded; disagreement would have ended his career. Besides, he couldn’t have dissuaded the others even if he had
     wanted to. The offensive would have to be carried out, likely the last major battle in the eastern war against the Natives.
    A sentry interrupted with a communication for the general. A settler wanted to see the commander immediately. Looking through
     the open tent flap, Williams had seen the frail white woman, perhaps thirty, desperation in her eyes. He found out later that
     she was the daughter of a missionary, bringing word of a possible new Native American initiative for peace, an appeal