Chapter 14: KauaiI didn't begin my life believing in miracles. Although my mother was a twelfth degree Rosicrucian, it was my father's and my stepfather's more pragmatic beliefs that were the first to rub off on me. They believed that we made our own miracles through hard work, and that was the path that I followed until finally the rains came and took it all away from me. From that time on I was open to miracles of any kind. At first it was my increasing desperation over my seeming inability to change my world through any other means that drove me toward prayer. As years went by, and I finally found peace with what I had lost, I began to understand that miracles had always been part of my life, and then I began to see them everywhere. Miracles and wedding cakes both have to be made of something. A wedding cake might begin with a baker gazing at a sack of flour, and out of that subtle communication, like lovers whose glances cross for the first time, earth, water, air and fire would all be called forth to join together in the magic dance of creation. Before there were diamonds and pearls, there first had to be coal and sand, all the way back to the very first miracle, that was made up of nothing at all. I didn't have much more than coal and sand in 1989, when I found myself in Bellingham, Washington, standing with my hands in my pockets and staring up at the red brick facade of a restored nineteenth century building. I wasn't thinking much about miracles that day. If I allowed myself to dwell on anything, it was my troubles with my relationships and the endless machinations associated with my four bankruptcies. Still, I kept staring up at the third floor of the building, and at the sign that hung out front which read "The Black Cat." I was quite superstitious in those days, having begun my dealings with satanic cults and witchcraft, and so it was a little hard for me to walk up three flights of stairs to visit a cramped little antique store with a name like that. Finally the pull of whatever was in that store defeated my remnants of common sense and up I went. As I wandered about the store, the rough pine boards creaking under my feet, I found myself irresistibly drawn to an old oak curio cabinet, something like the one that I used to hide my chocolate bars in when I was five. I pressed my nose to the dusty glass. A large cherry amethyst crystal winked at me as my shadow crossed over it. I turned around to see the storekeeper watching me intently. "Go ahead," he said, encouragingly. "Take a look." I carefully opened the doors of the cabinet, lifted the crystal off its pewter stand and held it up against one of the store's windows. It trapped the sunlight like blood holds the essence of life. I could feel that it had a power, a power that had something to do with light. Then I gasped. There, carved on its face was a beautiful and intricate image of an elephant's head. I hadn't ever seen anything like it. "Nice, huh," said the storekeeper, interrupting my reverie. I nodded slowly, wistfully replacing the crystal in the cabinet. Unfortunately, I wasn't a millionaire any longer, and at $450 the crystal wasn't exactly priced to move. I thanked the store owner and left with the unpleasant impotent feeling born of having once had the experience of being able to buy almost anything that I wanted. Ten minutes before the store closed for the day, I was back. I was supposed to be in Bellingham on business but all that I had been able to think about for the rest of that day was the fiery cherry amethyst crystal. My higher self had been broadcasting the same message over and over. The message was, "buy the crystal." I tried to work some of the old Ken Page king of the salesmen magic by talking the storekeeper down, but he wouldn't budge. "We take credit cards," he said with finality. The bidding was closed. I took the crystal back with me to my hotel room at the Rodeway Inn. The next evening I carried it down to the hotel's hot tub with me, and held it to my forehead. I learned several things. The crystal belonged somewhere on the island of Kauai, I was to take it there, and taking it there would somehow alter the earth's grids. My trip to Kauai would cost me nothing, but there was no information as to when this trip would materialize. Then, as soon as I lowered the crystal from my forehead, I had an emotional breakdown. Much later I would realize that this, like my trip, was a gift that far outstripped the money that I had spent on the crystal. From that time on, I carried that crystal with me like a religious talisman, never knowing when I would be called upon to pick up and leave for the Hawaiian Islands. Nearly a year later, in March of 1990, the trip finally materialized. As the crystal had told me, the trip would cost me no money, although like all of my adventures it would require some commerce in emotions. The trip was the brainchild of a friend of mine named Rose who wanted to take me along on her vacation. She was going to Kauai to visit two of her friends, both of whom I knew as well. Knowing that there was a higher purpose involved, I had no trouble in accepting her offer. I'd first met Rose years before when she sponsored my work in Southern California. Her husband was a multi-millionaire, and they allowed me to see my clients in their house, giving me the use of a beautiful room with stained glass windows and an entire wall painted with angels. Rose's husband died about two years after I had met her. Two months after his funeral, which I attended, and a few days into the first Christmas holiday that I had ever spent alone, I gave Rose a call. Her situation was the same. She invited me down to spend the next several days and New Year's eve in Palm Springs with her. She didn't have to ask me twice. Anything was better than spending another moment of the holidays alone in my motor home. On the third day of my visit, Rose came into my room and sat on my bed. She had something important to tell me. Her wealth had become a burden to her. She continued, "I want to give you all of my money," I blinked. "I don't want your money, sweetheart," I replied carefully. She told me that if I didn't take her money she would give it to a religious commune. I had visited the commune with her and seen enough to know that her money would not be spent wisely there. She even told me that one of the commune's "priestesses" had asked for her three caret diamond ring, claiming that it held Rose's vibration. I agreed to take her money, knowing that I would only be holding it for her until she was ready to take it herself. I was king for a day. Rose told me that I now had a monthly income of $17,000, her house, and my pick of a fleet of cars. All that she wanted was a single room. The gift was largely symbolic; we had signed no papers and I left the Rolls Royce behind in her garage when I flew back to Oakland. Her bequest was never mentioned again. Rose invited me to Kauai a few months later. It was on my way there, as the plane floated above a downy pillow of clouds, that I received another one of the messages that periodically turned my life upside down. "Your work on earth is done," a voice told me, "and, you can leave if you wish." I was offered a balance sheet and a one-way ticket to other realms. According to the balance sheet, I had so far helped to heal thousands of people, balanced negativity all over the planet, and helped millions of lost souls return to the light. If I stayed, I was told, I would assist millions more lost souls and help to change earth as I knew it. If I left, I would become a teacher of guides and angels on other levels. As I was already seeing the destruction of all of my businesses, my family and my relationships, the option of leaving sounded very attractive to me. I was even given a window of time in which to leave, the 17th, 18th, and 19th of March, 1991. I could feel the presence of the cherry amethyst crystal in my pocket. I had a mission to complete, and for the moment, Rose and I were in love. I decided to hold my focus, stick around and see what would happen next. The day after I got to Kauai, Rose and I had lunch with two friends of hers, one of whom was Lynn McFarlane, who was one of my very first students. We talked for a while after we ate, until I took advantage of a hiatus in the discussion to step outside onto the wooden deck that overlooked a backyard full of vibrant trees and flowers. It had rained while we were talking and the afternoon sun beamed down on all of the freshly washed foliage, highlighting every leaf and blade of grass as though it had just been painted. I soon found myself staring at an intricate spider's web. Backlit by the sun, and covered with tiny drops of water that shone like gemstones, it seemed to me at that moment to be one of the most overwhelmingly beautiful things that I had ever seen. Then, as my attention shifted to the architect of the web, the large dark spider in its center, something strange and miraculous happened. The spider began to talk to me. I heard the voice of the spider inside my head, the same way that a person might remember a conversation. The spider's voice was neither male nor female, at least not in the way that I would have expected, although it did have a feminine seductive quality to it. It lectured to me for nearly thirty minutes. First of all the spider told me all about spells and witchcraft, and gave me the precise information that I could use to break any spell. Then it lectured me about the human nervous system, how it is affected or changed by every single thing that has ever happened to us, and how I could help to heal it. The conversation ended as quickly as it had begun and then I was once again sitting on the deck, surrounded by flowers, staring up at the now silent and enigmatic spider with newfound respect and awe. By that time in my life, my reality had shifted so dramatically so many times that I didn't have any problems believing in talking spiders. I spent the rest of my free time exploring the island's canyons, mountains and beaches, carrying the crystal with me all the while, hoping that I would be shown where it needed to go. I had some interesting adventures along the way. One of these began with a road sign, a gust of wind and a sharp curve in the road. The sign was just as ordinary as the spider had been, the familiar standardized shape warning of a bend in the road ahead. One of the bolts that secured the sign to its post had come loose and a stiff breeze now animated the arrow, swinging it back and forth so that it pointed over and over, not at the curve but at something beyond the opposite shoulder. I slowed down to stare at it as I passed, and then a few hundred yards down the road I pulled over and stopped. I could see a small garden of pale white headstones over my left shoulder. I watched the sign swinging back and forth in my rear view mirror. It was pointing directly at the graveyard. The cemetery was completely deserted. I wandered it like the tourist that I was, studying the lacquered photographs that were permanently attached to the headstones, and reading the inscriptions beneath them. The markers offered no clues as to why I had been drawn to such a quiet and desolate place in the middle of a sunny afternoon. I listened carefully with my other senses as well, but all that I picked up was the vibration of a small child, who for some reason had been afraid to go into the light, and was waiting over the remains of her physical body for someone to show her the way home. At almost the same moment, I noticed for the first time the tall statue of Jesus that presided over a grassy and largely unused part of the cemetery. I walked toward it, but before I could get within twenty feet something started to happen. Something wonderful. The ground shook beneath my grass-stained sneakers like an earthquake. I could hear a roaring sound, like something between a jet engine and a hurricane, steadily increasing in volume. I stopped in my tracks, standing as still as though my feet had been nailed to the ground. Then the unseen energy that was building beneath me exploded, surging upward like an enormous volcanic eruption. I could sense the souls of the dead flying past me like bits of straw in a hurricane, flying straight upward, drawn by a force so immensely powerful that there was no gravity in the universe to rival it. I know now that force was love. I could only sense the souls racing by me for a tiny fraction of an instant, but in that moment I could briefly feel their essence. It was like listening to all of the long-distance phone calls in the world at once. I stood there in awe and confusion, holding my arms out from my sides, staring at the statue of Jesus, doing my best to be with whatever it was that was happening. It seemed to go on forever, for five, ten minutes or longer. When it finally stopped, my legs buckled and I sat down hard on the ground. Everything was completely still. The birds, the insects, even the wind were all at prayer together, as was I. It was the stillness borne of complete balance, a stillness that said God had just passed by. I had physically become the vibration of the gateway between worlds for the first time. As I had become that gateway, the souls then had to pass through my vibration to go home, so that the energy I felt was actually moving through me. This, I realized was the truth of what it meant to be a gatekeeper, to actually become the gate. Being a gatekeeper also had to do with the control of time, for the gate had to exist somehow outside of time, or at least outside of the linear tabulated time of the three dimensional world. Earlier that morning, March 19th, I had made the decision to stay on earth. I decided that I didn't understand relationships, and that I wanted to learn everything about them. Instantly, I heard a voice booming in my head like thunder. The voice said, "Congratulations, you've gotten it! By the way," it added, "you are now a Gatekeeper." My experience in the cemetery was designed to teach me exactly what that meant. Although thousands and thousands of trapped souls had just found their way home, I still had one homeless crystal to deal with. I'd carried that crystal thousands of miles, from Washington to California and across the Pacific to Hawaii, a journey that might have taken one of the ancients their entire life to accomplish, and I still had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. After I'd visited all of the special places that the tourist guides talked about and drawn a blank, I decided to call my friend Katrina Raphael, who was living on Kauai at the time and knew more about crystals than just about anybody. Katrina told me about the Crystal Lingam Iraivan Temple, located on the sacred Wailua River in Kapaa. When I learned that the world's largest natural quartz crystal was enshrined there, I knew I had to visit. The temple itself was a beautiful building, entirely constructed of stone, hand-carved in India and shipped by freighter to Kauai. It was surrounded on all sides by carefully tended pools and gardens. I didn't know it when I arrived, but the temple was only open to the public at specified times, and I hadn't arrived during one of them. Nevertheless, I stood peering hopefully through the doorway until finally one of the orange-robed priests saw me and invited me in. The temple's central altar was dominated by the massive, 700 pound earthkeeper crystal, flanked on either side by statues of Ganesha, the elephant god known as the remover of obstacles. The priest inclined his head, beckoning me to follow. The service was already under way in an adjoining room. I sat down on the right side with the men. Although the puja they were performing was entirely unfamiliar to me, I was able to follow along and I alternated between carefully watching my neighbors to see what I was to do next and staring at the massive six-sided crystal in the next room. I knew almost as soon as I saw the great earthkeeper crystal that the cherry amethyst that I had bought nearly a year ago in Bellingham, Washington belonged here in a Hindu temple on Kauai. After the service, I spoke to one of the priests and told him why I had come. I showed him the cherry amethyst, and explained that it belonged on the face of the earthkeeper crystal. It was the earthkeeper's eye. Opening my hand dramatically I said: "This is the most valuable thing that I own. I have been instructed to give it to your head priest." The priest I was talking to frowned and shook his head doubtfully. He said that what I was asking would be most difficult. The head priest rarely came into the temple at all, and spoke to visitors even more rarely. "Nevertheless, I told him, "I will be back in two days, at eleven 'o clock, to present this crystal to your order and I would be honored if the head priest would be here to receive it." Two days later, I returned as promised to the Hindu temple and knelt down not far from the huge crystal. I noticed that in addition to the white-robed acolytes, there were more of the orange-robed priests than I had seen the first time that I was there. I craned my head and looked around. There were five of them, each standing at a different station in the temple. A moment later everyone in the temple was prostrating themselves, lying flat on their stomachs on the floor. The head priest had entered. He smiled at all of us as he walked lightly to the altar where the crystal presided. "Do you mind if I sit down for a moment?" he asked cheerfully. No one said anything. I could tell from looking at the white-robed devotees that several of them had never been this close to their spiritual leader before. He smiled at each of us as he sat down. Although he appeared to be in his fifties, his eyes sparkled like a child's. "Now then," he said, taking us all in. "Does anyone have anything to share?" My hand shot up. "I do," I said. He nodded, still smiling. "May I approach you?" "By all means," the priest replied, beckoning me to do so. I held out the crystal as I neared him. "This is the eye of the earthkeeper crystal," I explained carefully. "It is the most valuable thing that I own and I want to give it to you." He held the crystal up to the light like a jeweler, turning it slowly first one way and then another. Finally he nodded. "How did you come to be this way?" he asked. I thought carefully before I answered. "I have been looking inside myself for a long time," I replied honestly. The old yogi gestured toward all of his orange-robed priests, bidding them to pay attention. "This is what it looks like," he lectured them. "This is what it feels like. This is how you will recognize it, how it will appear to you." I stiffened as he said these things. Slowly, I realized from the way that the priests were studying me that I was what he was talking about. I felt very honored. "Well," the old man said pleasantly, "I must go to India
soon." He talked a little about India and his mission there. He was
going to supervise the stonecutters who were cutting stone to be shipped
back to Hawaii for their new temple. When he concluded his story, he looked
directly at me and said "Thank you." Then he left. I sighed. It felt like she was talking about some kind of relationship problem. I preferred not to mix my great spiritual experiences with my great unresolved issues, although I realized that the two were probably in some way inseparable. "And," Rose went on, "I've scheduled a massage for you tomorrow." Her words dripped with hidden import. She made it sound like scheduling a massage for me was the most profound experience of her life. I couldn't see the connection. I thanked her and told her that a massage sounded great. The next morning Rose dropped me off at a shack on the edge of a beautiful white beach. "Have a great massage," she said, her words still pregnant with hidden meaning. I watched her drive off, wondering if I would ever really understand her. I knocked at the door of the shack. The door swung open. I stood on the threshold, blinking in surprise. The masseuse looked enough like Rose to be her sister. The only real physical difference between them was that the massage therapist was ten years younger. I had learned in my work as a healer that coincidences like this were seldom completely innocent, but I didn't have a clue as to what this one meant. I was lying on my stomach staring out at the ocean through the shack's
open french doors and having a wonderful time, when the masseuse suddenly
lifted her hands from my back and said, "I can't work on you I propped myself up on one elbow to regard her. "What?" I asked. We were only forty five minutes into a two hour massage. "I can't work on you anymore. There's something evil in here, something terribly evil and it's scaring me." Evil, I thought to myself. I felt like Batman might have felt if his pager had gone off at Club Med. "Well," I sighed, "if you can peel me off of this table maybe I can help you. This is kind of what I do for a living." I sat up with the sheet wrapped around me and tried to make contact with whatever it was that had interrupted my massage. The masseuse was too frightened to let me work with her directly, and so I assumed the role of trance medium myself. I felt the familiar weight around my head that was the empathic signature of a powerful energy. When I asked it what it was doing around my masseuse, it told me that it wanted to kill her. "Kill her?" I said. Part of me wondered why it couldn't have waited until I had finished my massage to bring all of this up. "Why do you want to kill this woman?" "Because we hate her!" the energy roared. So much for introductions. The trouble apparently had started when the masseuse and a friend had dug some holes for fence posts on one side of the property. In the process they had accidentally unearthed the bleached bones of the ancient Kahunas who had died in the very spot. The energy that I was talking to was what had killed them. Unearthing the bones had somehow drawn it back to the property, the site of one of its great battles. When the energy had finished its tale, I shifted it and sent it home. I used something I called the double pyramid release to draw all of the related energy from anywhere else on the planet that it was affecting. By the time all of that was completed, my appointment was over and Rose was pulling up outside. The masseuse thanked me profusely, and begged me to come back the next day to finish my appointment. I readily agreed and on that note we parted. The next morning when Rose asked me what I was planning to do with my day, I reminded her of my return engagement with the massage therapist. She had a lot of questions for me about it, questions that didn't make a whole lot of sense in light of the fact that she had made the appointment for me in the first place. "You're acting jealous," I told her flatly. Her eyes welled up with tears. "Don't go," she implored. "If you go I'll lose you." "Rose, what's going on here?" I demanded. "Well," she sighed. "I suppose I had better tell you. I had a vision." I put down my coffee cup and listened. Her vision had come during her massage with the same masseuse. This was the most profound experience of her life, the one that for some reason she couldn't tell me about earlier. In her vision she saw Jesus standing before her, arrayed in brilliantly glowing robes. Jesus had spoken to her. He told Rose that I belonged in a relationship with the masseuse, not with her, and it was her duty to bring the two of us together. This was why Rose had made an appointment for me, to fulfill her "vision." I told Rose that I needed some time alone and went out to sit on the balcony. I stared out at the peaceful blue Pacific, but I did not feel peaceful. I was seething. After a while Rose slipped through the sliding doors to ask me if I was all right. I told her I wasn't. I wasn't all right because she had sent me into a situation where I could have been killed. She hadn't seen Jesus, she had seen the energy that had killed the Kahunas. It looked like Jesus to her because she wanted it to, but it was a set-up. The energy's immediate purpose would have been to take me out. If she had shared with me, instead of believing that she knew enough to act in my greater good, I might not have walked blindly into such a potentially dangerous situation. I knew that our relationship was essentially over. Rose was comfortable with her money again, and confident enough about herself that she was becoming increasingly critical of me. My mission on Kauai was nearly over as well and when it ended, I would sever all of my ties to Rose. Her money had never been mine to begin with, and now her life was her own as well. The following day, which was Sunday, services at the temple were open to the public, and I went there with my friend Katrina Raphael. This time the temple filled near to capacity with forty or fifty people. My heart leaped when I looked over to the shrine where the giant earthkeeper crystal was. A thin gold wire ran around it, securing the cherry amethyst crystal to its face. I felt a small flush of pride. The cherry amethyst was in exactly the right place. Halfway through the service, I heard a voice inside my head saying, "We need you to let go of your nervous system." My immediate response was far from positive. I had been asked to do so much already; this was too much. I had people all around me. What would happen if I let go of my nervous system? I knew what happened when people let go when they died. They made a big mess, that's what happened. After a short while I calmed down, realizing that I probably wouldn't be asked to lose control of myself in such a way in a sacred temple. I centered myself, and made the decision to do as the voice asked. I looked over to the crystal. Instantly I felt myself being bombarded with a wave of energy. The waves kept coming faster and faster, just like they had at Blue Lake, only at a much greater frequency. I started to shake uncontrollably, like one of those wooden puppets that puppeteers bounce on their knees. Great, I thought to myself. I'm going to have some kind of seizure in a temple during Sunday services. How embarrassing. Then it hit me. The shaking and the acceleration of the waves of energy were happening because I was hanging onto my nervous system. I needed to let it go completely. As soon as I let go completely I felt the cherry amethyst crystal on the face of the earth-keeper connect directly with my third eye. It was like I had picked up a fallen high tension wire and held it to my forehead. I felt a physical jolt and then I felt information pouring into me. The information was all about the nervous system, how to heal, how the body's energetic templates worked on other dimensional levels. The images flooded into my consciousness more quickly than I could ever hope to catalogue them. It was like a car mechanic being given all of the electrical information about every car in the world all at the same time, only I was learning how to heal the human nervous system. Just as suddenly as it started, the flood of energy stopped, leaving me with a sensation of being filled with a quiet, gentle power. I stared at the two crystals I had brought together. They had been forever changed by their association and so had I. I felt like I had died and been reborn, and I knew that I no longer needed to physically die. I felt like the shape of my head had changed, like the back of my skull extended outwards, like the ancient Egyptians, or the being that I had once recognized as another aspect of myself on a mortally wounded starship. Immediately after the service, as I stood blinking and swaying in the bright sunlight outside the temple, wondering what on earth I was being prepared to do next, I heard a voice beside me. "Ken?" it said. I looked down to see my old friend Katrina Raphael. "I know that you're on vacation and everything, but I was wondering if you might do some work with me before you left. I've been feeling under the weather." She had been one of my first teachers about crystals and we had worked together several times before. I readily agreed. We met at her house and as we sat together in her unfurnished living room she said, "God, I wish you could do something about my nervous system. I feel like it's totally fried." A light went on in my head. "Well," I replied laconically, trying not to sound overly eager, "I've just been told how to work with the human nervous system. If you don't mind being the first-" "I'm always the first!" she interrupted. "I'm always the one that gets sacrificed." She wasn't being facetious. I'd heard her relate the stories of some of her past lives. She had been sacrificed, many times. Most people I've met like Katrina, who have volunteered to come here as lightworkers, have had some very unfortunate experiences in their past lives as a result of their spiritual vocation. "Not this time," I said smiling. Once we began the session together, it quickly became clear that her nervous system was in a very fragile state. She had channeled the bulk of the information in the three books that she had written and the energies that she had allowed to flow through her had damaged her nervous system. I had been instructed in exactly what to do by the spider. I silently uttered a brief prayer and bent down to touch my forehead to hers, allowing her to feel my female template so that she could rebuild her own. The operation was a success. I rejoiced in the knowledge that I now had a whole new set of techniques to work with, and thought excitedly about all of the new clients and information my newfound knowledge would bring to me. My optimism was not in sync however with divine timing, and I went home to California to see my flow of clients slow to a trickle and then dry up entirely. The truth was that in 1990, I was still so deeply enmeshed in the world of polarities that my knowledge of the nervous system and energetic templates made me as dangerous as a ten year old at the rudder of an oil tanker. My knowing about templates gave me the power to change things, based on my beliefs, and the state of evolution of my beliefs suggested that the changes I might make could hurt people. Two months after I left Kauai I was living at my aunt's stables in my motorhome and feeling more sorry for myself than I ever have before or since. I would have no practice to speak of for more than a year, until I had learned enough to be safe again. Within months of finally learning my lessons about polarity consciousness, I would meet my wife Mary, and I would know then that the angels were still with me. I met Mary when I offered to scan her horse for her. I knew that the two of them had gone over an embankment, and that both of them had been injured. She looked at me as though I were crazy, but she told me to go ahead. I stood beside the horse and ran my hands over it. I told her the history of its injuries. Then I moved my hands to the horse's head and told Mary about the thought form that I found there. The horse was afraid that it would be injured again and this fear was making the horse difficult to ride. I looked over to Mary. Her look had changed from skepticism to astonishment and awe. I told her that I could do a past-life regression with her and her horse so that she could discover the truth of their lives together. When she told me that she also had migraine headaches, I bet her $20 that I could completely cure them during the same session. Three days later, Mary, her horse, my cousin Cathy, and I, all stood in the horse's stall together. Cathy held the horse's reins. Mary stood with one hand on her horse and I stood beside her. Within moments, she was experiencing a past life where she and her horse both fell, and Mary's neck was broken. This was the pattern that they were giving energy to in their present life. Looking at her accident and understanding it fully for the first time, freed her from the need to subconsciously recreate the pain associated with the original injury. Mary's migraines disappeared, never to recur. I still have her $20. Not long afterwards, we fell in love. When I left California, she came with me and together we set sail in my motorhome to co-create a new life together. Our physical journey ended in Texas where our spiritual journey has only just begun. Soon after I met Mary, I met my partner Shirley Holly, and soon after
that we were offered our own healing center in Houston. Within a year
I would be giving workshops around the country. My mission to teach would
eventually bring me to Montauk, Long Island, where I would use the knowledge
that been given to me on Kauai for the best purpose that I could possibly
imagine, to bring a template back to earth that had been missing for 2,000
years. |