Clearview: A Metaphysical Mystery

The twenty seven year old protagonist, Ellie Burke, has come to the remote mountain community of Clearview to untangle a series of plaguing, recurring dreams and to heal the first real heartache of her life. Clearview lies on the land of the ancient Kinekwa tribe which is steeped in both history and tragedy. The land is its own character and Mount Clearview, a once extinct volcano, is showing new signs of life.

On her arrival in town, she stops at the local bookstore and meets the owner, Colin Mc Bride. He is a fifty year old gay man who left the priesthood on a soul searching mission regarding questions of sexuality and spirituality. He tells her about a newly forming local interactive dream group led by the novel’s antagonist, psychologist, Lara Sequerios. She’s a friend of Colin’s and he puts in a word for Ellie and she’s accepted into the group.

The group has five members: the leaders are Lara and her ex-husband Michael Faralan, who is the owner of The Kinekwa Lodge where Ellie is staying. Along with Colin and Ellie, the final group member is Xav Fontaine who becomes Ellie’s primary love interest. Xav is a sculptor and naturalist who has joined the group to jumpstart his creative process. Tension builds between Ellie and Lara as the older woman is threatened by the protagonist’s youthful beauty and natural way in the world. Michael comes between the two women as well as Ellie and Xav’s relationship, seemingly for the pure fun of it.

Through Lara’s group hypnotic techniques, six major dreams in the same number of months are explored. These dreams now include themes of reincarnation which take the dreamers back to the world of the Mayas, the Epidauras dream temple in Greece, the American Transcendentalists, and the local Kinekwa Native American community in different historic time periods. During one meeting, group members drop mushrooms together which further opens up the dreamgates in interesting ways.

At first the dreams focus on primarily psychological themes for the dreamers with some psychic aspects. Then the dreams focus on higher dimensions of consciousness and assume primarily mystical and multi-dimensional aspects. Group members long for deeper spiritual connections with others and within themselves. The group supports each other’s non-ordinary experiences which can be described as unusual ways of knowing and perceiving the world.

Throughout their explorations, they discover varied roles that they played during these past lives which connect them to current conflicts and attractions which are ongoing. Through these experiences, it becomes clear that Lara’s real interest is intense psychic experience and in her thirst for knowledge, her ethics become distorted. Her psyche grows darker as she ignores the many signs that she is on the path to personal destruction.

The culmination of the clues and synchronicities from their dreams leads them on a dangerous search to find a hidden passageway under Mount Clearview. The group will continue on their quest to find an ancient Ascension Chamber which is the necessary gateway to surviving pending earth changes.