Today is the day to climb Squaw Peak, the mountain where Milton Erickson used to send patients who needed to find themselves. It’s early morning and I come to the foot of the silent mountain.

I begin following the path, it’s easy at the beginning and then more and more challenging: Dave was right, when you think you are almost at the top, you haven’t even started. Every step requires attention. The stratified rocks are sharp and they don’t offer flat surfaces. Your mind has to be in the here and now of this infinite moment.

The difficulty is not physical, it’s mental: keeping away every thought that could distract you from the path, in the one and only step you are taking.

Along the path there are places where you can stop to get your breath back and admire that stunning view which has been around for millions of years. At every station, a stone bench. Each is dedicated to one of the city’s famous personalities or indistinctly to someone unknown, to whom the family wanted to dedicate a remembrance. The very act of remembering becomes a moment of rest for the people passing by and a place of contemplation.

Erickson’s bench is the third you come upon as you climb up and it is protected by a thick thorny shrub. It is not the highest bench, just as the humbleness of Milton in his last years would have wanted, but it is the only one out of five stations to have another bench next to it, perpendicular, a little to the side: a kind of living room in the sky, where Milton would have surely loved to continue his hypnotic conversations.

I stop at the last open space, the fifth, where a bench looks down on Paradise Valley. I pick up some white quartz stones I want to give as gifts to people who, receiving them, may one day bring them back to this place, once they have understood and carried the message closed in them.

The benches are now finished, but not the climb.

The path becomes more and more challenging and each peak hides the next, the one that seems the highest, but never actually is.
While I am climbing I meet men and women who are coming down: some of them greet me with half a word, others are too wrapped up in their thoughts to notice me. Just one man addresses me with a whole sentence, as he overtakes me: ”sometimes it is better to follow than lead.” I smile at him and let him go his own way.

I reach the summit, the real one and look around me: an endless plain, interrupted only by a few desert mountains in the shape of some prehistoric animal. I look closer and I can perceive the circle drawn by the mountains on every side. I can see now that the earth is flat. Completely flat. It’s like a plate at the edge of which mountains have been placed so that people don’t fall off.

I turn to my left and I see an Indian man about forty yards away, or maybe it’s a woman. Dave was right: I’m not there yet. That is the summit of Squaw Peak. Climbing, I reach it, finding a small brass circle among the rocks that surround it.

It is the size of a hand and has the same circular shape of the earth around me. I have arrived, the time has come to descend.
Descending I try to keep concentrated on each step, not leaving my thoughts too much room. I stop only for a moment to let a lady who is climbing pass me by. I step back and something pricks the back of my neck.

It’s a kind of thorny shrub, the same that envelops Erickson’s bench. I look at it more carefully and I realize it’s the same plant that Kevin, our Sedona guide, showed me on yesterday’s trip, as we encountered Mystic, the most powerful energy vortex in the area. It’s exactly the same plant. The plant of the crucifixion, the same that was used for the crown of thorns that Christ wore during his ascent to the summit of Calvary. It’s a plant that grows in only two places in the world: the Holy Land and Arizona.

I go down further and I realize that these are the only other plants, together with the magic cacti, growing at the edge of this path.
At the foot of the mountain once again, I drink from a small fountain without looking back.

Let’s start from the end to understand where the hypnosis began. My right hand is under a ripe pomegranate, holding it, and someone is cutting the twig that holds it. The tree stands in Milton Erickson’s garden and the knife belongs to his son-in-law Dave.
It is a precious gift that comes as a magic day draws to an end, a day in which Milton has welcomed me, confused me and then guided me, showing me the places and the stories of his passing. He has done this through the people who knew him and have been touched by his light.

One step back and we find ourselves in the waiting room of doctor Erickson’s small office, sitting on that couch where hundreds of people waited for their appointment with destiny, their encounter with the master and true contact with themselves.
The clock stops and goes more than thirty years back: Dave, Cecile and Kathryne Rossi are talking as Fulvia and I listen in religious silence. The hypnosis flows through all of us and Milton shows himself in the words of everyone telling these stories that just emerge without belonging to anybody.

Everything being said right now concerns only me and the transformation which is occurring. The electric heater is sizzling loudly even though the plug isn’t connected and right now it is the most natural thing in the world.

Cecile, who took care of Elizabeth, Erickson’s wife, until her death, tells us about an Italian couple that came to visit. They had taken some pictures of the rooms and then, to Elizabeth’s great surprise, they asked her let them have a picture of the three of them taken, right on this couch where we are sitting. Elizabeth was so pleased about that.

Cecile is talking about them, and Milton is talking to us. He is asking me something. I let a few minutes go by so that the moment may manifest itself and I ask her to let us have a picture of the three of us taken, right on this couch. She is both surprised and pleased.

She didn’t think she was important enough to deserve a picture. I let my unconscious speak and I tell her something I have no right to say: she is the most fitting person to perform the task of taking care of this magical and silent place where presences must be protected. Embarrassed, she smiles and tells me that it was actually Elizabeth who took care of her, often telling her: “I can’t always be playing with you.”

One step further back and Dave and I are sitting in Erickson’s office, he in the patient’s chair and me in Milton’s. Dave imitates the tone of Erickson’s voice as he tells him to stare at the corner of his desk. He looks at me intensely and I allow my gaze to rest on that corner. I see the shape of the objects around me changing and I perceive Milton’s quietness flowing through me. I am wholly in a present which comprises all that is, all that was and all that will be. I keep on looking at Dave, who is so much like Milton, that I have to smile, amused, as if Milton had planned one of his jokes just to confuse my ordinary awareness.

One more step back, and we are at the foot of Squaw Peak, the small mountain to the top of which Erickson used to send some of his patients to distract them from their problem and bring them back to the present, in every action and movement necessary to reach the summit. Milton never climbed that mountain and has done so only after his death, when his ashes caressed the thousands of rocks, each different from the other, losing himself and finding himself once again in the wind. Dave shows us the mountain from one side and then from the other side. He gives us the task to climb to the top tomorrow morning, but he won’t come up. He wants me only to remember that on Squaw Peak, each time you think you have reached the summit, there is always further to go before you get to the peak, whatever the point you reach is.

One last step back and I find myself on the mountain beside Squaw Peak. I am alone, high up. I am looking for the blue marks that indicate the path which should circle back down bringing me to the base of the mountain. I stop, understanding that there is no reason to climb higher. I look down and enclosed between the desert mountains lies a beautiful valley of surreal green.

I start descending and with every step I take, I hear the noise of the rocks crumbling. There are only rocks and cacti. Going down I meet three lizards in succession, each ine walking in a different direction: the first one is small and climbs towards the peak, the second one is black and crosses the path from right to left and the third one is big, intense green and goes down towards the valley. I keep going down and find the path again. In that instant, my mind goes back to Erickson’s office and it is Cecile speaking. She tells me about the dozens of snails that come into the garden and about her senseless fear. And then suddenly Elizabeth’s words are in her head: always remember that God never created an evil creature.

Just yesterday, I was in San Francisco and the seminar on ABC counseling was a huge success: it is an honor to have had Suzi Smith and Judith De Lozier among the participants. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for all that life is offering me.

The time has come to use my hands to open the pomegranate and to share the infinite abundance of the wonderful red seeds of life.