The following day we woke up to the children screams and the birds singing. All around, everybody was having a quick breakfast made of smashed insects and getting ready for the day to come. In the well organized chaos, created by people going and moving around, we were waiting and watching, to understand what to do or how to react to the situation.

"Good morning" said Mara smiling.

"Did you sleep well?" She was carrying some coconuts filled with some strange juice, only later  we understood was made of insects too.

"Here's your breakfast" she added. It was explained to us that they decided to take proteins in a different way ,more enviroment balancing. Insects grow their population very fast and they contain more protein rather than meat in the same quantity. They hoped that this change would have been a global decision once seen the violence and the harsh treatment on farm animals.

"Today you will be assigned to Uram, he's leading the kids near  the waterfalls, I hope you'll having fun" she disappeared in the flow of people, moving around as she finished speaking.

After meeting Uram again, we went one hour marching through the deep forest to reach the waterfalls.

We couldn't really understand why we went with the children or what we were going to do, but we followed silently the group of playful and cheerful boys and girls.

Once we got there, Uram stopped and then he said:

"The last one who gets in the water will carry me on his shoulders the way back!"

Everybody jumped laughing and pushing each other into the crystal surface. Then the man supposed to take care of us, turned.

"What are you waiting for? Go for it!"

"Should we go playing with the other children?" asked Ashley surprised.

"Of course my friends, don't you want to have some fun? Today is a wonderful day and the sun is hot! "

"I can't believe it! We should be looking for the thing we came here for and all we have is some playtime? Is this a joke?" said Luke furiously.

"You are fooling us, we got a brain you know?"

"Of course you have one" answered Uram politely.

"You see men are very intelligent and they spend their time worrying and trying to earn money and other useless things. Even dolphins are very clever and yet they spend their life playing and having fun. Besides..." he added "..children are full of answers for those who can listen to them and watch them carefully."

After saying that, he jumped with all the little boys and girls, screaming a cry of joy.

This answer let us impressed, so we were left with no other choices then following his example. We played like fools all the morning and then we did some activities well explained by Uram. One of them was crossing the river jumping from rock to rock .

"Impossible" said Ashley scared "There is a waterfall just ahead!"

"Only if you believe so"  our teacher replied gently.

"Who's first?"

Many boys and girls stepped forward and achieved the task easily. We were all amazed and drizzled. Soon was our turn. Luke refused to break his neck on the rocks, so I went. The rocks were wet so, after the third one, I felt in the river and before realizing it, I was falling from the edge of the waterfall.

The first thing that I heard was some kids laughing and saying "The stranger didn't make it! Have you seen how he felt?"

Luke , Ashley and Uram were on the shore next to me.

"What a nice fall!" said the teacher.

"Ready to give another try?"

I came out of the water and I said "The rocks are too slippery, I don't know how the kids made it but it's very hard"

"Look at your feet and hands then!" Uram replied smiling.

Curious I looked at it and I saw tiny ripples and lines on them.

"I don't understand" I said.

"Your body has already adapted to the environment, can't you see? Your skin is trying to get more surface to keep you balanced and create friction between you and the rocks. If your body is ready, what's holding you back? "

"Well I don't know" I replied.

"My mind I guess"

"Exactly!" he said "You need to believe to make it happen, if you don't, you'll never make it"

I never thought I could make it to the other side, so I changed my mind, I started all over and I got ready for the first jump.

"Remember" added the teacher.

"Don't think about what you're doing, follow your instinct, your body already knows what to do. Find the void in your head, silence your mind"

When I heard that some ideas were coming, my feet moved and jumped. I can't say what I was doing but I had no idea how I could jump, so easily and graciously.

 I reached the other side. Everybody clapped and I felt so free in that moment, I was the same but I had quieted the mind and reached an higher state of myself.

On the way back to the camp, Uram explained how easy was for the children to have the ability of not to think and at the same time, how hard it was for every grown up man or woman.

Once reached our sleeping place, we went visiting Mike and John, still asleep and hurt by the fall. Mara appeared and told us to leave them alone. Healers were trying their best but they could only be saved if they wanted it. It was hard to understand this.

Tiferet was assisting them, she was preparing hot drinks and helping their sleep with some chants.

"They need some rest. That is fundamental for their possibility to heal by themselves from the inside" she said.

In the afternoon we had a meeting with Tov. He wanted to know how was our day and tell us the story of the place.

We got there where he lived and we saw him closing a book made by just blank pages and his exterior was red. Still wearing his mask, he started talking in a solemn way.

"I am not the kind of man you would call civilized. I said goodbye to the society, so I don't follow his rules and I want you to understand that here, the laws you used to know, are not applied.

Long ago I was not the type of man you'd have been glad to meet on the road. Things got harsh and time helped me to see things clearly. I spent many years in jail where hopefully I had time to study, reflect and read a lot. I understood that the society had failed many years ago and so I decided to act to change for a better way of living. I planned this place, I studied maps, ancient ways of living and local animals and plants. Mara and few people came with me. Together we started a new way, waiting and preparing for the era that is going to come, teaching universal values taken from the old societies that once ruled our world. These societies had strong beliefs and they were trying to bring heaven on earth. During my studies I learned their ways and I understood they referred everything to the sky. Their goal was to go there and in many ruins the symbol of a winged serpent was the way to make it.

Finally I got the profound message and I decided to recreate one of those lost sky society.

We started a revolution, that means turning back to the origins, to the relationship we had with everything surrounding us, and deeply, with ourselves. Here people are forged with noble principles and they submit not to me or to Mara...but to the ancient laws we forgot and replaced with man's laws..they submit to themselves. Once someone reaches the age of eighteen is ready to be tested. We send them in the world that you know with a job and a little amount of money. If they like it there, they could stay, but if they don't, they can come back. If their will is strong enough when they come to us again, they are ready to be an adult. Sometimes it happens that the moment of the return, they bring other people with them. We don't tell what to do, we just let them discover their true colors and their selves.

Our tribe is divided in for groups named by colors like yellow, red, blue and green. When you find your call, you are given a color.

Green stands for plant seekers, healers and explorers. We stopped harvesting the land because we understood that the ground give us everything needed without asking and that provides us with more than we could possibly imagine. To do so, we need to move around from time to time.

Once, in the middle of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, there were two types of populations: Leavers and Takers. The first ones were nomads, shepherds who followed the will of the sky. They lived easily and without a secure home. On the other hand, the second ones didn't accept a life guided by faith, so they built villages and they worked the soils.

This story is about the era of agriculture at his dawn.  Takers needed more and more lands because their population was growing in numbers, so they started to fight for new lands to harvest them. The rest of it was occupied by the nomads who had been killed or forced to move out. Right now, all the world has became like the Takers' model. They want to farm more land, not for the poor countries, but for the growing population that it's increasing in the rich ones. This leads to a mess in the ecological point of view. Each group of beings must follow wavy lines in the demographic population. It goes up and down, as the number of individuals. Right now, our population is just augmenting and never decreasing, so there will be severe consequences, like wars, new epidemic diseases and so on.

To contrast this mentality and lifestyle, we decided to respect this fragile balance between life and death. In this way, our tribe has a shape of a circle and not a triangle.

Red stands for hunters and fire making. Hot headed people need to learn that killing is a virtue, a necessity, if doing it in the right way. We don't trap animals in boxes or fences, respecting the balance of the system. We just take some, when needed, so we can survive.

In the so called civilization, there is no respect for the animals that feed us and give us the opportunity to live, so we recreated the special bond between the hunter and the hunted. We respect the creation and every living being from the smallest to the biggest knowing everyone of us, has a special and fundamental place in the ecosystem. The important choice we make about food is that, as you discovered already, we eat insects that became our basic diet. In many cultures this already happens, but, in the big societies, where money is everything, insects are not part of the diet even if the protein held in them are way much more than what they could find in the alimentary chain.

Blue stands for collecting water and fishing. It is fundamental because it teaches how to be patient and fish contains high nutritive proprieties for the brain such as phosphorous. The first people lived by the sea and, fish qualities, added to the discovery of the fire had been the key to our transformation to have a bigger brain. We want to restore that diet to achieve new ideas and an healthy life. Collecting water is very important because it reminds us where we come from and that we bring with us our past environment. We once lived in the sea and then we moved to the land but we choose the forest because it shelters us and nurtures us, like the water.

If you look closely it's easy to see the similarities between these two habitats.

Yellow is the most unpredictable color for those who don't belong to anything and they serve everyone in their particular way. Someone play music, someone move from team to team and even somebody unlocks new secrets from the forest or studies new way of getting our life better. This is the color of the sands that unlock the secrets of time and space. A grail of sand is useless but it was once on the mountain top or part of the most humble stone. Once it detaches from everything else, it can go anywhere, even flying and no matter where it lands, it fits perfectly. Many of these people are wonderful teachers like me and Mara"

After he said that he offered us some tea, made by leaves of the jungle

"Everyone is connected to everything else and respecting this everything is balanced" he continued.

"Here, argues are solved with games and activities in which people who are fighting are put in the same team, so they need to learn to cooperate. Sometimes they are pushed way beyond that in hard missions that test the union or the strength of the people fighting.

The only competition we practice is with yesterday ourselves, in order to become better and better and be elevated to an higher consciousness.

During the following days, you need to see it through by yourself and decide what color you want to wear"

All of this speech left us astonished and surprised. It seemed that the tribe worked very well and even without technologies or sophisticated tools they managed, not only to survive, but to thrive.

Many things happened later on. John and Mike woke up but they were too weak to stand, so they stayed in their tent. During their time there, they were taught how to lucid dream and some meditation practice. That was an ancient practice that focused of concentrating on the breathing . Lucid dreams was all about awareness and practice. It was the possibility to find knowledge within yourself being able to be fully conscious in a dream. This practice was just a part of the dream yoga, a  complex discipline passed on by monks.

Mara said that even if they couldn't move, they could learn much more that we could possibly do, if they managed to do it right.

We had time to get in the tribe routine and see what they could do. Ashley decided to go with water bearers and fishing people. I chose the green color, while Luke went with the hunters.

One week passed and we were very integrated with the other people, so we could follow them with their color activities.

Mara told us about the story of how they moved there and how they managed to survive in the forest. These forest people gave a particular value to stories because in everyone of them there was a little truth. They liked to invent new ones and even if they were not true, everyone was wrapped around it and magically brought in a some kind of trance where only those with good imagination could enter.

They liked to play too. Many funny games were proposed and I needed to learn their logic and skill. Especially, there was a gambling game made with a spinning top four sided. The bets were made by fruits. Depending on how the object fell, the winner could eat all or a part of them from the gambling spot. Loosing the bet, more fruits had to be added in the middle. Mara explained to us that this was a way to avoid fights and having fun without being addicted to gambling.

We found out that people there didn't talk very much but they preferred to sing and many times we heard men and women working and singing strange songs that didn't mean nothing. We discovered after that they were made to help them travelling but we couldn't understand where they needed to go.

Tov smiled when we asked what was the meaning of all of that.

"You will find out by yourself one day maybe" he replied calm like a tree.

One morning we woke up and saw that everyone was packing everything like they were getting ready to leave any moment. They had little satchels made of skin. Following their example we left behind everything except the essential and Luke and I helped carrying Mike and John. We felt very uncomfortable leaving that lovely place, but Tov explained later that it was necessary to move around to let the vegetation regrow  so the place could come back to his own original state: untouched by man. This was the way of living of the redskins.

Luke was the only one who opposed to this. He didn't want to move and he found ridiculous that everyone moved just for the sake of the environment. His way of behaving let me reflect about my house and all the facilities that allowed me to live over my possibilities.

Two by two they gathered in the middle of the village. Tov was holding Mara's arm and a stick that he used to count everyone that were slowly walking just before him to receive his directions.

"Don't worry" said Uram.

"We always move around the mountain to get to a new place. In this way we take part in the great dance, the great circle and anyone has his place"

After walking three days, we found a new spot and there were already some tents built and a hut on a tree where Tov moved. We built up our tent collecting giant leaves and branches. In few hours we oriented in the new environment and we took back our activities. These day were extremely hard , but the joy of settling and  walking with the tribe made us bond even more and melt into awareness of the surrounding place and the people who became travel companions.

Tiferet was my guide during the first week and she mentored me well.

In the morning we started walking in the deep green. She was a very fine woman with grey hair but a light so bright in her eyes. She taught me patiently what to collect and how the job needed to be done. I learned very quickly and in no time I was as fast as the others.

During one morning march suddenly everyone stopped around a man on his knees, who was staring at a strange plant. He took a little bit and put it in his mouth, but after a moment he spitted it out.

"He's doing so to recognize if the plant is poisonous or not" said Tiferet kindly.

"Today we are looking for a special lethal plant that grows black fruits. We need to collect them because Tov needs them, but I don't know why"

She handed out a book's page that illustrated the plant. I nodded and went looking for it checking every detail written on the paper. Our research was successful and we found plenty of black berries.

After spending time learning about the plant and its proprieties, we made our way back to the camp. I met Luke and Ashley. He told me he learned how to make arrows and the base skills to hunt, but he found it boring, especially looking for insects under rocks and in hollow timbers.

"This will get you humble" he said in a ironic way "that's what they say about looking for tiny insects"

Ashley instead was thrilled, she learned to make nets and some skills about fishing.

"We should visit our friends" she said.

"Let's go and talk to Tov" I added.

"I want to try some other color. The green is interesting but not my kind of stuff"

Once we visited Mike and John, we went to the three where we would have found Tov.

Ashley was very worried because, even if she spent a wonderful day and she managed to talk to them, their conditions were getting worse and their life was at stake. Force of will was needed to survive their injuries. They were trying to heal themselves during sleep with the techniques that they were taught . There was no medicine for them, no cure, just themselves could be the cure .

The tree was huge as usual but seemed nobody was there. After calling for somebody, we climbed up to the little house between the leaves. We decided to wait there and while we waited, we looked around the place to pass the time. We found many shelves filled up of any type of book, from old ones to recent ones, written in any kind of language. On the shelves there were carved strange symbols that moved around with the books in a weird confused dance. All the place smelled like paper and wood. It looked like the inside of a boat except for the waves outside made of leaves. Everybody took a book and start reading randomly bits of them, until we heard Mara calling from outside, so we put everything back in the right place. While we were doing that, I noticed the mysterious book that Tov was reading. I tried to check it out but it was too late. Mara appeared with a smile followed by the feathered masked man.

"How was your day?" they asked nicely.

Tov seated comfortably on a huge chair at the level of the floor covered with pillows.

"We learned many things today" replied Ashley "but we just worry for our friends that still have not recovered"

"I know" said Mara.

"We are doing the best to make them survive, but they got very bad injuries and even with our ways of threatening it is hard"

"We are sure you are taking this seriously and we are very thankful for that" I replied.

"How long should we stay here?" asked Luke.

"You are free to go" said Tov "but it is not wise to cross rivers in this period because waters can grow and even animals like snakes and crocodiles use this season to move around. Anyway I think this would last few weeks still"

"Can I ask what are these books?" I said.

"This knowledge helped building this place up and give us past life experiences" answered Mara.

"We used it as support at the beginning, but now we give all these teaching orally, so we are not afraid to lose them"

"Everybody is an extension of this knowledge and helps adding new parts and make it better" added Tov.

"We don't care about celebrating the people who wrote this but keep his teachings and made them better and better"

"One last request" I said. "I find very interesting the teachings of the green ones but I would like to try something else, can I join Ashley and his group?"

"No problem at all" he said "I'll make sure Mara talks to Tiferet and Uram".