Chapter 7

The hypnotising chicken

One day, Kevin was walking down a busy street in the city centre. "Young man!" A voice said to Kevin. Kevin looked up and saw a very smartly dressed man who had a funny grin and who's eyes were sparkly. The man said a few words to Kevin whilst waving his hand in front of Kevin's eyes. Then the man asked Kevin to think of a number, a colour, and a type of job. "4532, green, policeman" said Kevin. The man waved his hand around and then pulled out of his pocket a small envelope and asked a woman who was watching to open it and read it aloud. The woman opened the envelope and started reading. "4532, green! A policeman!! OMG!" she said excitedly. The audience clapped in amazement and Kevin couldn't believe it too. "That's AMAZING! What am I thinking now" said Kevin as he closed his eyes and thought really really hard, picturing a cabbage. The onlookers all started laughing. The man noticed this and had a thought of his own, maybe he could use Kevin in his act? "I can't say in public" the man said. The audience laughed. The man continued "Some sort of leafy vegetable" the man said. Kevin's eyes opened wider than they had ever been opened before, and he had seen some amazing things. "A cabbage!" the man exclaimed. The audience laughed. Kevin squawked. The man smiled. The audience clapped and put lots of money in the mans hat. Once the show was over, people started leaving, but Kevin was really interested in how the magician could do what he did. Kevin was just going to ask the man a question when the man said to Kevin "how would you like to be in a show I'm working on?" "WOOOWWEEE!" exclaimed Kevin. "Will you teach me how to do what you do?" said Kevin. "Of course I will" the man smilingly answered. Off Kevin and the man went to start training and rehearsing for the new show.

"The first thing to learn about the mind Kevin, is that whatever you focus on, you get" said the man. Kevin didn't really know what the man meant, and it must have shown because the man continued "Let me demonstrate". He started to make something, he got a pencil, tied some string around the end, then tied a coin to the other end of the string, making a pendulum. He gave the pencil end to Kevin, telling him to hold on to it for a moment. He then got a sheet of white paper,  a very thick marker pen, and he drew a large cross it and placed it in front of Kevin. "Kevin, hold the pencil at the end, and put the pendulum about an inch over the cross - make sure you don't rest your wings on the table." "OK" said Kevin. Kevin did, and the man asked Kevin to choose one of the lines on the cross, and to only think about that one. Kevin did, and a few moments later the pendulum started swinging back and forth over the line that Kevin was thinking about! "WOOWWEEE!" said Kevin. Now the man drew a big circle surrounding the cross. The man asked Kevin to concentrate on the circle. Again Kevin did so, and to his amazement the pendulum started swinging in a circle! Kevin was amazed. The man explained that people are really very powerful, and they create the things and the world around them. But, most of the time people have been convinced that they are weak, irresponsible, and that things around them just happen, and that is "just the way it is". When people believe that they are powerless, you can convince them of things which aren't really true. You can become an "authority" - like a government. Kevin got excited because he remembered the Fox, and that he did that type of thing to the little chickens. "So is what we are doing with our mind tricks bad then?" Kevin asked the man. "Well", said the man, "it depends on the intention. If you are knowingly trying to make someone believe something false, when you know it is true, or make them do bad things in the name of good, then that is bad. What we are doing is using it for entertainment. We can play around with it for fun, doing nobody any harm." "Good point" said Kevin. "So why aren't people getting what they want in life? If they really create the world around them? My parents were always saying they wanted more money but they never got it." "Well, they got exactly what they focused didn't they?" said the man. Kevin was confused again. The man was smiling. "You said they were always saying they wanted more money, correct?" Kevin nodded. "Well that is exactly what they got wasn't it? They were always making it so they wanted more money. They were always saying they wanted more money, so they created around them a scarcity of money. What they created was a state of wanting, and that money was hard to come by for them." Kevin still didn't quite get it. "OK, say you want an ice-cream" "ICE CREAM! I LOVE ICE CREAM" Kevin exclaimed. The man laughed and continued "if you say I really want an ice-cream, will you get one? Will it magically arrive?" "No" Kevin said. "OK, so how do you get an ice-cream?" the man said. "Well, I guess I say I will have an ice cream, that there is one in the shop that is mine, and that I need money to buy it." "Good!" the man exclaimed. "You see, you said you already have the ice-cream, it's yours already." Kevin sort of understood. "You mean I have to pretend?" said Kevin. "Yes" the man smilingly said. "Everything is pretend really. Things become serious if you pretend to get serious one minute, and then forgot that you actually pretended to be serious in the first place." Kevin's eyes went a bit funny, but Kevin understood. He was always playful and could imagine amazing things to happen in the future, and most of them did happen - apart from the magical unicorn running through a rainbow. But maybe that will happen, somewhere. So Kevin started to have lots of fun with this new idea. It opened a whole universe of potential. He learned not to imagine the world in the future somehow "becoming" nicer, but he decided that the world is a nice, peaceful, happy, loving and caring place now. It is already here.

Kevin learned lots from the man, and learned really fast too. They put together an amazing show where they did amazing things. At the start of the show Kevin would fly down on a magic carpet. Kevin also did a knife throwing act, whilst standing on a tightrope blindfolded (he had excellent balance as a chicken). They both did mind reading tricks with the audience, and the girls loved Kevin. As a finale, an explosion would happen and the man and Kevin would disappear. They started to become really popular.

One day the government secret agency found out what the man and Kevin had learned about the mind and people, and wanted to learn it too, so they could use it to "protect people", they said. Kevin and the man were taken in a car to visit the agency, and when they got there, they were told that they couldn't leave. Kevin and the man thought that the agency were going to do experiments on them and decided that they would use their magic powers to escape. It was easy to hypnotise the agents because they were not very clever. And after hypnotising lots of agents on their way out, they decided to split up for a while to let things cool down. Kevin and the man said goodbye for now, and they would meet up soon. Kevin took a look around, felt which way the wind was blowing, and flew away towards the sunset.