The skeptical child of scientists, Ellen decides early on there is no God. In her teens she has a vision of One Consciousness, and after thinking about it long and hard, concludes that she must be that One-and therefore to blame for all the suffering world. She tries to act normal as a wife and working mother, but leaps at the chance to study with tribal shamans in Nepal, learning their secrets and states of ecstacy-in vain. Only when she faces her own powerlessness does she finally discover the miraculous secret of reality.