The Game of Shepherd and Dawse Read online

  Every hour on the hour the dream catcher would hit a larger gong and everyone would awaken from their dream state and share what they had learnt and where they had travelled to. There would be three dream journeys throughout the day and the better you became at it the more amazing things you could do in your dreams. Everyone loved dream day so everyone had to wait until it was their day to take part. This worked well as nobody spent too much time in the dream world and kept a healthy balance with mother Earth and father sky.

  The education system was by free choice and there was no age limit as to whom could educate themselves. A typical class would range from roughly three years old to a couple of hundred years old, depending on who wanted to learn what and when. When people were not learning something specific, they were learning the fine art of teaching itself, by teaching others.

  There wasn’t any set structure to the education system either. When someone woke up one morning and had the urge to teach about a particular subject or topic, they would put the word out via means of telepathy and let everyone know what they were planning for the day. Those who wished to take part would then come along and join in. Everything was done truly from the heart, which meant everything was done to the best of each person's ability.

  It was art that flourished the most as recreation in Shepherd Wood. Art was a staple in the diet of all residents there and was not just a means of nourishing one's own soul, as it enabled others to be spiritually lifted by what was created around them. Being artistic also allowed people to be in touch with higher spirits and to channel what those spirits wanted them to share. In later centuries, art would become something discouraged and censored by those who had gained power. They knew only too well how this kind of activity made everyone so happy and how it exercised the mind to be greater - far greater than those who gained the power of control over the masses in the first place.

  Art would take many different forms and anything that pleased other people to watch look at or listen to was deemed as art. There were some truly amazing objects that were made and sculptured and people would take many years to make just one object, they could do this because there was no sense of urgency to get the piece finished, they didn’t have sell it to try and get by and they didn’t have any deadlines to meet, they also lived a lot longer than the peoples of today so there was never any rush which meant that everything was made with astounding precision and intricate detail.

  On the one side of the river were all of the houses with winding stone paths that had been laid down over many centuries. Each house was unique in design and reflected the character of its owner, as did the clothes each of them wore and the ways in which they styled their hair. The people of Shepherd Wood wore clothes that expressed themselves as a character which meant that everyone always looked and felt amazing. Their hair styles matched the same trend. Some people had very elaborate hair styles in which bee’s wax would be used to hold into place and some had very simple styles. Some people chose to have no style at all, which was a style in itself.

  There was no such thing as 'fashion' in Shepherd Wood. Fashion was a concept created centuries later by those deceptively wanting to have a steady and constant sale of their products - regardless if the clothing actually suited the person or not. If something was considered 'fashionable' then you were deemed to look 'good' and that’s how fashion worked in later years.

  The structure of society as a whole wasn’t that dissimilar to what we now know, except for all of the little differences. There was no legal system because no one had any desire to hurt another person. As a result, there was no penal system either. Everything ran smoothly and people treated each other with care and respect.

  There was a kind of farming that took place but not one we would recognise today. The forest and surrounding areas were plentiful in food, though most varieties they relied upon have now been long extinct due to over consumption in later years. Around Shepherd Wood, wherever a certain type of plant naturally grew, it would be encouraged to flourish there using techniques that didn’t alter its natural surroundings too greatly. If a key food type had been found, residents would carefully cut down just a few of the nearby trees, allowing the key food type the space it needed to flourish and spread. The trees they cut down would be used for fuel, building and making various other items, and new trees would be planted elsewhere to replace the ones that had been cut down.

  Farming this way ensured that nature grew at its very best because nature grew where nature wanted to grow, meaning yields were always more than enough to feed everyone. There were no ploughed fields full of crops nor huts cramped with animals in awful conditions, as the people never outgrew their environment and always remained in harmony with nature.

  Animals roamed freely in Shepherd Wood and every so often one would give itself up to the community, as that was what the animal had chosen as its purpose. It wouldn’t be uncommon for a hunter to have an animal in its sights and choose not to kill it. This would be because the animal had communicated to the hunter that it was not ready to go yet. Other times an animal would freely offer itself to the community, if it had gone lame for example. The residents had the most humane way possible of putting an animal in this condition to a peaceful rest. The animal would be given a heavy natural sedative, then quickly and painlessly be starved of oxygen so it would, in effect, die in its sleep.

  When these occasions happened there would be great celebration for that animal and nothing would ever be wasted, as that would have been disrespectful to the animal. There was much reverence for the animal kingdom in Shepherd Wood, as there was a lot of communication with the animal spirit world, as well as with the living animals. After all, the people who were alive there were animals themselves just as we are today – just a different type of animal, that’s all.

  Nothing went to waste from the animals in Shepherd Wood and nothing else went to waste either. There was no such thing as rubbish as there was a use for everything. As people here only possessed exactly what they needed and nothing more, no one ever had the need to throw anything out. What would be the point? If something broke - which was rare, as everything was made to last then - it would be carefully repaired in a way which just gave it more character.

  The society of Shepherd Wood didn’t need control structures and never had any person who wielded more control than another. The community did however have the Wise Council. These were members of the community who were at least 100 years old – considered young for the Council, as people in this era could and did live to ages of up to 300 years. The reasons why people lived so long were a combination of things: pure food, a lack pollutants in the air, water and soil and especially the intrinsic ability to self-heal. If a person was guided to move on to the next plane of existence, they would allow their bodies to degenerate and then they would pass over.

  The members of the Wise Council lived for as long as they could because that was their purpose – to stay around and help as many people as they could. The Wise Council didn’t deal with the kind of counselling we think of today. The sorts of issues they counselled on were things like giving advice to someone who had tried to master something but who wasn’t having great success or sharing stories and tales from the past that had been passed down by other Council members throughout the ages.

  No one ever put themselves forward to be on the Wise Council as that would have been disrespectful. Instead, other people would nominate you. The nomination process would happen over many years, if one of yours friends gave you some very good wisdom on a certain matter you would repay that person by finding the most attractive stone you could find and then place it outside their house as a way of saying thank you. It would also serve as a memory marker so that whenever either party looked at that stone it would remind them of that wisdom that had been given and accepted. Over time the amount of stones would increase outside a person’s house. The more stones you had the more people would come to you for guidance and the more guidance you gave the more stones
you would have.

  When a house had a complete stone circle around it (which would take many years) the person would then automatically become part of the Wise Council. It was a great way of having those who were naturally wise to be in the best position for the benefit of the whole community.

  There was one topic, though, that would be a regular theme and that was the topic of love. But even in Shepherd Wood, love didn’t happen in the same way it happens today. In today's society, people work hard to convince themselves they've found true love, whereas most of the time it is nothing more than two people who get on rather well, minus the odd argument here or there. In the days of Shepherd Wood, a union was made only when two people had found their exact other half of themselves. When they found this person, it was a celebrated occasion. They would live in perfect harmony with each other for the rest of their lives and would never do anything hurtful to one another, as that would be like hurting themselves, which is something that no one ever did. The phenomenon of self-harming came into existence at a much later time, after the interbreeding of the two different tribes took place.

  Finding this perfect love was never a given nor guaranteed, even in this idyllic, beautiful place and way of life. Those who did find true love were very well respected and much celebrated. There was no jealousy from the other people who wished to find love, as the people who had found love themselves would show the others how to bring that union closer to them. All on the Wise Council had at some point found their true love. Sometimes they would stay together until they both decided to pass over and sometimes one would decide to pass over early. This would be a decision fully supported by both wise partners. There would be no mourning, as again this was something introduced to mankind later on as another means of diminishing personal energy, making people feel miserable and therefore easier to control. The passing over of a person was a great event and their life would be celebrated in the full glory in which it had been lived. It was one of the most joyous occasions to occur in all of Shepherd Wood.

  For those who didn’t find their true love, they could find love of a different kind. Love and affection was always something in great abundance in Shepherd Wood. You could share an intimate embrace or passionate kiss with another person and that was perfectly ok, as it was simply seen as an exchange of energy. No one got jealous and no one misinterpreted another’s actions. It was a nice way of saying to someone, “I very much like your soul and I’m glad that you’re here at this given time”.

  The one piece of knowledge instilled in every child of Shepherd Wood, without fail, was that to find true love you had to become the best person you could possibly be and utilise all of your talents and gifts. Some people did this very quickly and some people took much longer, depending on how important true love was to them. And because this was how residents found true love, it proved an amazing motivator for people to always strive to be better than what they were. This meant there were people who could do the most amazing things, not just with their hands and bodies but with their minds and voices as well.

  Evening entertainment could spring up on any given night, as there was no such thing as structured days to the week. There didn’t need to be. People always worked as hard as they could and if they needed rest, they would take it. If for some reason lots of people had learned their skills and wanted to perform, there would be performances every evening until each of them had showed off their new talents. Having a two-week long party was not uncommon. Though after a two-week long party, people would be a bit more worn out than usual and things around Shepherd Wood would move at a slower pace for a while. Performances would be curtailed, which gave everyone enough time to recover and not become victims of overindulgence.

  There was no such thing as addictions in Shepherd Wood, even though there were many mind-altering substances available to take. No one was addicted to anything because no one was trying to escape from anything. Everyone was completely content. Any mind-altering substance would be taken for a specific reason and that reason was to enhance an experience or expand their minds in ways one cannot do without such substances. During these encounters, a person would be guided by their chosen member of the Wise Council, who would shepherd them through their experience.

  It would be easy to think that in a society like this that no one ever got upset, but on occasion people would get upset, as it was a natural process of dealing with life’s frustrations.

  Like everything else in Shepherd Wood, people’s frustrations were also quite different from what we think frustrates us today. Some people would get frustrated because they hadn’t managed to master a new skill as quickly as they desired, which meant true love had to wait a bit longer. The most common cause of frustration was when they had been working too hard and not retaining a good balance within their wellbeing, which would then slow down their learning process.

  The elders could always spot when this was happening and when someone was doing this to themselves, but they would never alert the person, as this was something each had to master and stumble across for themselves. When the person did eventually realise what they had been doing, the inevitable crying phase would kick in and all their frustration would be released. This was such a natural way of living that no one batted an eye when a person was practicing a release exercise. Quite often you would see someone standing on the spot with tears running down their face for a short while and then go about their daily business as though nothing had ever happened. No one would think twice about what was happening just in the same way today we don’t think twice when we see someone going for a walk. To have a cry was considered to be like giving the soul an oil change it was just something that occasionally had to be done.

  Even though the people of Shepherd Wood were much more advanced than we are today, no computers existed such as we know them. Instead, they had super human computers. These were people who had dedicated vast amounts of time to training their brain to work at lightning speeds and the calculations they could do were phenomenal. Every so often a distant relative of these people surfaces in our current society. We call them autistic savants. Sadly for these gifted people, their memories are so very good and they remember this forgotten time of bliss so very well that the modern world they were born into greatly disturbs them. Although they reside here in body, parts of their mind remain detached from our modern world which is uncomfortably hectic, loud and harsh for them mentality. This behaviour can make many savants appear a little peculiar, though in fact these few special beings we have on this planet, maintain a direct link to our forgotten times.

  Unlike many modern conveniences we rely on today, metal was not something widely used in the time of Shepherd Wood. People instinctively knew mining was very damaging to mother Earth. Imagine for a moment, if someone were to drill a tiny hole in your body and slowly suck out all of your veins, just as large corporations do today with veins of metal in our Earth. Eventually you would die. Thus, the people of these times made much of what they needed from stone and rock, as this is something nature makes naturally and replenishes.

  The only metal used was metal found lying in rocks on the surface of the planet. These small amounts of metal were used for several purposes and that was for hand tools, eating utensils and also used to make concave shiny disks. These disks could reflect the sun and magnify it onto another shiny disk, which would be repeated many times until the sunlight became so concentrated it could quite easily cut large pieces of rock with pinpoint precision. In certain parts of the world, they used this technology to build huge structures out of stone, structures we still marvel at all these years later.

  The elders of Shepherd Wood were very spiritual people whose practices had been passed down throughout the ages. Perhaps due to this, the spiritual elders had sensed a foreboding for some time, though none could quite put a finger on what was bothering them. All they could be sure of was that there were going to be some very trying times ahead.

  The inhabitants of Shepherd Road were n
ot as content as those who lived in Shepherd Wood. It was modern times and the society was structured very differently. It was a society based on taking and rarely giving. The main motivation for these modern day people was money and it was money that consumed people the most.

  It was money that gave some more than others and it was money that made some people go without. It was money that motivated wars and it was money that was used to enslave people, yet it was money that most people valued the most. The very few people who controlled money made sure that money controlled everything.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MR SADSOUL

  “Smile at the world and the world will smile back”. ~ Joe Sadsoul

  Shepherd Road was very typical of a southern seaside town. It was very clean and tidy and all of the houses had their own character which was a representation of the people who lived in them. Some houses still had the brick showing and some houses had been rendered. Some houses had pebble dash and one house even had stone cladding. Every house had a small front garden and everyone’s garden walls were slightly different. When the houses were originally built, they all had ornate railings. But these had been taken by the government during the Second World War due to a shortage of steel for the war effort. They promised, of course, that the railings would all be replaced after the war ended but like so many government promises, it hadn’t been fulfilled.