Ego's Puzzle by Daniel Cook and Cassondra Beers

Once upon a time, once and for all, and before time itself was The Great Puzzle Maker, His fame renowned throughout the worlds by His ability to create puzzling mysteries able to hide the greatest treasures ever known in plain sight. The mystique of His trade buried deep in the complexities of design yet beautifully simple in execution and form hidden from all except those with the singularity of eyes. It was the Great Puzzle Maker’s greatest desire to build the most intricate of all puzzles, one that would defy all explanation--a puzzle that was deeply intricate, uniquely inseparable, and inescapably dependent upon not only the fullness of the design, but also each individual piece. Ego, the Great Puzzle Maker, wished that each piece have a choice. In doing so, He could create the opportunity for each piece to share the treasure inside and discover the boundless treasures of the other pieces and of the puzzle and also use the treasure for themselves. Ego’s intention was for each piece to use this treasure and the mysteries hidden inside. The complexity of this puzzle was infinitely multiplied by the layers where each piece could stand alone as great, but then being connected in all layers of the puzzle, become something far beyond anything they could ever imagine--the greatest treasure of all.

A. Piece, one of the more than 8 billion pieces of the grand puzzle began to contemplate exactly how he fit. He always liked to look around and see how the other pieces that were around him were fitting in. He noticed some of the pieces seemed to be structured beautifully, their outward form both pleasant and conventional. Some seemed rather flat sided and appeared to have a lot of difficulty fitting in. One thing he had noticed was that each piece was similar but also very unique in form.  A. Piece was rather unique. One side of his piece seemed to look like many of the puzzle pieces he knew with knobs to interconnect, but A. had another side that was rather flat and seemed to have difficulty connecting with other pieces. He had come alongside many other pieces, and believed he had found a fit, but the pieces didn’t match up quite right. The images that were made when he tried to connect in these ways were ugly or vague as the faces of the pieces came together in partiality.

A. began to look deeper into himself and the questions exploded like a supernova. “What part do I play in this puzzle? Where do I really fit in? Are we all connected? If we are, how?” The deeper he looked, the darker things became.

“I must be on the right path” A. said. “There must be something hidden underneath all of this darkness.”

Directly ahead, A. noticed a tapestry of threads and was intrigued by a single filament. There seemed to be a slight glow around it as if energy and light was running through it. Drawing nearer he began to see this light energy as individual dots running back and forth between what appeared to be the ends of the filament at the borders of both his flat and knobby sides. A. immediately knew that this light energy had to be given to him by The Great Puzzle Maker and pondered how this energy could become brighter. Drawing closer still, he began to see even deeper into the filament. At the core of the light energy there was a brightness beyond compare. The brilliance seemed to take the light and both reflect and refract the true nature of the light emitting from the core of the dot. A. reached out and found the he could reach inside this filament. Suddenly he found himself standing on the inner edge of the filament and could see the beauty of the filament itself. From this perspective the dots he had seen from the darkness began to take form. Reaching out to touch one, he could now see that they were multifaceted diamonds beautifully chiseled in such a way as to be part of a whole new puzzle: a mystery hidden deep inside a mystery. He thought of his own shape and how difficult it seemed for him to be able to find a place to fit. Yet looking deeper into the diamonds he sensed that this was not the case. These diamonds were calling out for connection. He could tell that once they were connected they would, as it were, snap into the place and begin to form something far greater than A. could even imagine.

Looking deeper into the stone, he saw three letters written in Hebrew:

ח׳ה

Suddenly A. heard a voice. “You have found the Chayah.” The voice sounded like thunder, yet was as clear as a whisper. As the sound of the voice began to resonate inside of A., he could hear an even clearer voice saying, “You have found The Life of I Am.”

A flood of revelation overcame A. Piece. He saw that this mystery of mysteries was the grand design of The Great Puzzle Maker. How his part in the grand design was both integral and necessary. His responsibility of knowing who he was both from his own perspective and from the perspective of The Great Puzzle Maker allowed him to see that his words, his thoughts, and his actions helped to form the very core of the very unique perspective that he had with The Grand Puzzle. He was necessary, but so were the others. The filaments were full of treasure and this treasure was there for him to use but it also needed to be connected to the others. A. knew that somehow the treasure hidden within himself could join with the others and create a treasure beyond compare.

Finally, A. understood why he was shaped the way he was. On one side, his knobs were perfect for interconnecting with the pieces that he saw all around him. It was a place of give and take, of extending and reaching out and receding and allowing others to expand. This side of interconnectedness was one he recognized in the pieces around him and had known was valuable all along, yet now he valued it even more, for he saw it in context with his other side.

This side of him, the flat side, had always troubled him. He could never find a way to connect to the other pieces. It made him feel strange, different, awkward. There had been times he had wished it away, and yet now he finally understood its purpose. It was this side that connected him to the threads, the filament, and the mind of the Great Puzzle Maker Himself. This side allowed him to see and participate in the Life of I Am.

Taken together, the sides of A. Piece could round out his part in the mystery of the Puzzle. He could see the Puzzle Maker clearly from his flat side, his own unique treasure and perspective of the Puzzle Maker’s mind flowing through him on that electrified current that was made of dancing diamonds. And on his knobby side, he could share that vision with others, and in turn receive their own unique visions and perspectives.  He just needed to find them and awaken their own multifaceted perspective of this Great Puzzle.