“Then the lamb ram sheep horns began to blow; The trumpets began to sound
Joshua commanded the children to shout and the walls came a-tumblin’ down!”
– From the song, Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho

As we rode on our tour bus through the streets, I was struck by how empty they were. In a city with over a million people, there were almost no cars and no one walking about. The city was pale, colorless, dead. We were in East Berlin and it was August 1988. We went to a museum, also sparsely attended, and then went to a “restaurant,” which only served our group and didn’t seem to be open to the public for business.

After the tour, we got on the bus and headed back to West Berlin. While waiting to go through the checkpoint near the Berlin Wall, I noticed that my spiritual teacher, John-Roger, or “J-R” as I call him, had his eyes closed and seemed to be asleep. As we crossed the border, back into the familiarity of western culture, it was like moving from an old black and white silent film into full stereo technicolor. The streets were bustling, the colors were bright, people were living their lives, and the creativity of West Berlin poured forth.

I took a breath, relaxing into the feeling of safety, relieved, and grateful to be back.

According to the Berlin Wall Foundation, the building of the Berlin Wall began in August 1961 by the German Democratic Republic. At 93 miles in length, it was the preeminent symbol of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War dividing Berlin into the Soviet controlled East and NATO supported West. During the time it was standing, over 140 people were killed attempting to climb over the wall.

After our group returned from East Berlin, we gathered and had a sharing session with my spiritual teacher J-R. It was there that J-R turned to John Morton, J-R’s right hand, and asked:

“What did I tell you about the wall while we were coming back?”

“You said you put a worm in there, in the wall,” John said.

“What kind of worm?”

“A Light worm.”

They went on to explain how this “worm” would feed off Light; so we were all to imagine our Light going into the wall and feeding the worm. As this happened, the wall would crumble and fall.

J-R said the wall would be down within two years.

A worm? A Light worm? A light worm that feeds on Light? A light worm that feeds on light that we would be sending to it? And besides that, the Berlin Wall would come down within two years?

This seemed ludicrous to me.

He went on to instruct that we were to visualize the wall down and people laughing and having fun where it once had been. To see children riding bikes and playing in parks where the wall used to be.

See it down and envision the positive images of people enjoying their lives where it once stood.

I thought this was nuts. I had seen many things that were amazing about J-R in my own personal experience, but this pushed the boundaries of what I was willing to be open to past an uncomfortable point.

Later when I was back in my room I wrote a letter to my cousin, Pryor, saying that J-R was either a crazy man or a prophet. What I had witnessed of the stark emptiness of East Berlin was something I couldn’t imagine shifting any time soon, and definitely not within two years.

Regardless of my doubt, I did go out to the wall and imagine Light going into it. I used my imagination and visualized the parks and children playing where the wall was.

We will see… I thought skeptically.

Fifteen months later, on November 9, 1989, I was driving to work in El Paso, Texas when I heard on the radio that people were at the Berlin Wall. Swarming over it. Using sledgehammers to tear it down. Later, I got to a television and saw the wall covered with people, many of them on top of it dancing and cheering. Where the wall had been pulled down, people were pouring into both sides of it.

Tears spilled down my face.

My God. He was right.

It had been 15 months since J-R told us about the worm and the wall. “Less than 2 years,” he had said.

“One of our intentions in Russia and Germany, East Germany, is to get them to take down the Berlin Wall. It may take a lot of concerted effort with a lot of people focusing on it coming down. To actually see it down. Most people see it up and complain. We have to see it down and praise,” J-R said, speaking before our trip in June 1988.

John-Roger in 1988 at Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known border crossing between East and West Berlin during the Cold War

One of the key pieces I took away from this mystifying experience was to continue to hold the positive vision. To see the wall down and the joy people were having, rather than holding the vibration of complaining and the vision of it being up.

Here’s an interesting addendum to this story. The week I was writing this chapter in June, 2020, a friend sent me information about something called “Solomon’s Shamir.”

“Think this might be what J-R used to bring down the Berlin Wall?” she wrote. It was followed by this article from Wikipedia:

SOLOMON’S SHAMIR –

“In the Gemara, the shamir (Hebrew: שׇׁמִיר; Arabic: حجر السامور‎ hajar as-samur) is a worm or a substance that had the power to cut through or disintegrate stone, iron and diamond. King Solomon is said to have used it in the building of the First Temple in Jerusalem in the place of cutting tools. For the building of the Temple, which promoted peace, it was inappropriate to use tools that could also cause war and bloodshed. Referenced throughout the Talmud and the Midrashim, the Shamir was reputed to have existed in the time of Moses, as one of the ten wonders created on the eve of the first Sabbath, just before YHWH finished creation.”

She didn’t know I was writing about my experience in Berlin with the Wall; this communication was completely unprompted, and information I had never heard of before. It was something that seemed to answer a question I had held inside myself about the mysterious ”worm,” as well as a response from my universe affirming the questions I had about including this story in the book.

Editor’s Note:  Richard Powell shares with us this article, excerpted from his book Essence Into Form – The Magic and Power of the Triangle of Manifestation.