Preliminary Book #8 Start (big disorganized mess)

I believe everybody has the right to try something new without being ridiculed-—William Hung, of American Idol fame

When I first saw a rocket ship take off into the heavens, I became hooked on the possibility of becoming an astronaut as an adult.  My reading focus became both fictionalized historical narratives, and science fiction novels. I built several models of the various US spacecraft.  I also built flying models of several rockets, supplying Estes solid fuel engines to power these craft several thousand feet into the sky.  I spent countless evenings looking at the stars, and watching the craters of the moon, or the rings of Saturn with my powerful refracting telescope.  As I told my friends, I wanted to “get off of this fucking rock” and travel to far away worlds, where I might find happier versions of myself.

My childhood was a mixed bag, though predominantly a good experience for me, save early traumatic influences, my poor self-esteem, and social anxiety. When I was eight years old, my father drove us over to our new house being built in Milwaukie.  The house had not received sheet rock yet, because the electrician had not finished his duties.  I followed the electrician around for 15 minutes, and I was fascinated by him and his work.  I told my parents that if I did not make it into outer space as an astronaut that I wanted to be an electrician.

GAP GAP GAP

I have created a unique life experience, though it certainly was not newsworthy or extraordinary in any obvious ways. I believe that the best part of the story lies in lessons learned from life..  Much of my personal truth has been derived through my movement through both family and cultural forces….

There is a direct connection between what unfolded in my life while being a masculine energy dominated addict, alcoholic, and mentally ill human being, and the patriarchy that is unfolding in our world today. In some cases, I will allow the reader to draw their own conclusions about our culture’s dangerous trends, but in the following story it was unavoidable for me not to point out some of the more obvious threats to sanity and safety.

Life was never an easy journey for me, and had it not been for some deep need to understand my dysfunctional process, and try to find the underlying truth amid my personal chaos, I would have passed away long ago. Some wounds are so deep, and primal, that just pasting new names onto aspects of the disease are not enough.

But, the act of creating stories and context, and just being conversational about the details of life does not dislodge the detritus from our field of consciousness. The Devil is in the details, figuratively speaking, and if our need is for change, we need to find a way to see under the vast matrix of details that only float on the surface on the mind . We who still choose to name processes and create stories must also have personally explored and experienced the movements through consciousness, and found the way to the silence at the foundation of our being. Otherwise, the process of naming, and the resulting stories that arise from naming, are just more intellectual knowledge and entertainment for a superficial mind, and will not pry open the healing doors to insight and wisdom. The intellectual and the atheist, though possessing finely tuned minds, can never explore the mystery, and the depth, of the human soul, and comprehend that we all have a connection with Infinity. The willing explorer of the new paths of consciousness or the mystic both have access to the limitless territory of the Spirit, and will soar to new heights and see the sights rarely seen by the rest of mankind.

I did not develop verbal abilities until relatively late in my childhood My sister reports that she spoke for me until I developed the capacity, or inclination, to speak. Once I started talking (close to age 4) I proved that I had the capacity for speech, and A LOT OF IT. My father wondered, at times, if I would ever shut up. I proved to be quite precocious, once I engaged my verbal skills. I remember that I would start talking about things that were around me, giving new information that my parents had no knowledge about. My parents thought that there was no way for me to know anything about what I was spouting off about, so I was mostly ignored. But I can remember how good it felt to be talking, and sharing the excitement of the magic of words exploding in my mind!

I intuited quite early that built-in to the very fabric of words is an access to imagination and knowledge beyond the word, or sequence of words, spoken. Looking back now, I can see also the incredible capacity of the human mind to represent the real world with words and internal imagery, as well as to create false realities while remaining utterly convinced of their “truth”, even in the face of non-supporting facts. This book touches extensively upon the many false realities, that I, as an individual person, and as a collective, acculturated human being was subjected to and unconsciously adapted to throughout the course of my life.

From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic and drug addict, and mentally ill human being, I lost all freedom of choice. I belonged to the “death wish core group” of Americans, who lived lives of desperation, addiction, suicidal ideation, and mental illness. We all sought an early death, either by our own hands, through our addictions, or by the poor health and relationship decisions that we continued to make. And while we contemplated our own end, we witnessed a world in the midst of its own collective march towards suicide.

• Do you ever wonder why the world never changes?
• Do you ever wonder why the Christian world clings to worn out or misunderstood  myths and stories from over 2000 years ago?
• Do you ever wonder why certain family members never let go of a grievance?
• Do you ever wonder if mankind has any real potential for collective transformative change?
• Do you ever wonder why advertisers and book publishers keep channeling the same or similar information, consumer items, and/or dogma to you?
• Can you “teach an old dog new tricks”?

Automobiles as a metaphor for human consciousness.  Automobile headlights. . . How many cars over course of life?7

JFK’s speech? Dad’s intention to study at UP? Sheila Hamilton, and Marty Crouch (with, of course) Sharon white on that infamous March 2017 week?

Conspiracy of Silence

—-(definition from Wikipedia) An agreement, either formal or tacit, between two or more parties not to discuss some matter nor to reveal any information concerning it, especially in order to avoid blame, embarrassment, or other discomfort.

“If you really, really knew me, you wouldn’t love me”

—Often heard in many recovery meetings, and one of the foundational beliefs behind our collective conspiracy of silence

“Our lives begin to end, the moment that we become silent about things that matter”

—-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Don’t speak, unless you can improve upon the silence.

—-Quaker Proverb

Choose wisely, oh mankind, the secrets that we must keep

For by our choices, we may awaken, or just die alone, powerless, and asleep
—-Elisha Scott

Our world is populated and protected by superheroes, according to the mythology provided to us by Marvel Comics, or by our religions.. As I am a product of our civilization, and our shared humanity, I have also unknowingly become intoxicated by their narratives and underlying hubris.

I am also a broken container for our Spirit, like everybody else who is not in denial of their own human nature. The act of writing this book was a difficult proposition, as I had to overcome a lifetime of internalized oppression, poor self-esteem, and repression of aspects of my spirit. The messages that I received from my world or collective consciousness, as both a child, and as an adult are that I had nothing to say, or what I had to say had little or no value.

But, there has been other messages occasionally bubbling up within my consciousness that has indicated otherwise, and this work is the culmination of my attempt to honor all of those “whispers of the Spirit”, which have demanded that I deliver their words, regardless of what others might think, or how resistant I might be in sharing them. In the face of the evil and ignorance that predominates our world mind, those who have the sensitivity of the artist, musician, or even the voice of the prophet, must continue their best efforts to bring forth the Word, even while our civilization continues its seeming inexorable slide into chaos, hatred, and planetary destruction. This work is the culmination of my own efforts in that direction.

In your own experience, if you have never dealt directly with a mentally ill family member, drug addict or alcoholic, or had a desire to search for a new understanding and/or direction for your own life, this story may carry little meaning and have no value for you. When you watch the news, and witness all of the dysfunction of our world, if you are a disinterested, disconnected spectator, your emotions will not become engaged, nor will you be moved to action. The intention to heal can carry almost anyone to their own unique “promised land” of recovery, but without that intention, all hope for healing is lost. As I was finally to learn, intention is the very slingshot which launches our will into the human universe, and the universe ALWAYS returns back to us the energy that we have given, often times in the most unexpected of ways. Learning to fine tune those intentions for healthier outcomes is akin to the preparation for prayer, a process that is a rather mysterious, yet a completely natural form of energy exchange between all manifestations of life.

Crippled Inside, by John Lennon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otwuTetDSUs

A spiritual awakening process beginning in 1987 was the start of my own exit from the chaotic mindset that characterized my life up to that point. Since 1987, I have chosen to live life more fully, with good health, happiness and with almost continuous sobriety. My own living, dynamic story had to become forefront in my mind, and having examined my life to its deepest core, I could see what the source of my own spiritual disease and despair was. And, I finally found a way to describe the foundational dynamics of both personal and collective consciousness that contributed to my disease, and to all of our suffering.

The following book is a mantle woven together by the words and stories that I have chosen to represent my life experience. I wear this garment in honor of all those who have preceded me, and for those who still walk beside me in spirit, in love, and in healing. I honor my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and countless generations past. I honor those who have sacrificed their lives to their diseases of the body, and of the Spirit, be they the addict, alcoholic, mentally ill, victim of violence, or the so-called normal person who struggled with comprehending the insanity in their own life, and of their civilization, and died before finding healing. I honor those who are still alive, and suffering under the forces of oppression and repression that characterize much of life lived under our present economic, religious, and political systems. I honor those who will take the time to consider this work, and I also honor those who will never find the opportunity or the willingness to do so.

This is not solely a self-help or pop psychology/spirituality book. I will not be appealing to the ego, nor will I explicitly attempt to make anybody feel good about life, and their prospects for economic, social, or spiritual success. I am not seeking money, respect or adoration from the reader. I am not engaged in any people-pleasing need, or out of any passive-aggressive need to hurt the world, without letting the world know why I was angry or distressed with it in the first place. All that I ask for is the suspension of judgement for a few hours. and the treatment of this manuscript like it is a meditation on life. Tune into your heart, and attempt to listen to what has been written here, and see if compassion, insight, and wisdom can reveal itself, as I attempt to reveal my own life. I had to walk through many miles of underbrush, stickers, thorny bushes, weeds, stinging nettles, and mud to get to my mountain top, so be prepared for an uneven journey to the place in the book where the greatest, most far-reaching views are finally presented. Life is sometimes like the childhood game of Chutes and Ladders, so I will not be expounding solely from upon neither the spiritual mountaintops of peace and love for all beings, or from the darkened valleys of suffering and death.

In this book, I address our personal and collective consciousness, the potential for both dysfunction and recovery, as well as our attempts at connection with humanity’s highest potential. The subjects of toxic religion and toxic masculinity are addressed, which remain major forces for the propagation of ignorance and social disease, and the environmental destruction which we are now collectively witnessing and that we are being directly impacted by. Toxic masculinity leads directly to toxic religions, toxic society and toxic capitalism, factors which are soiling and eroding the very fabric of life woven through and upon our beautiful, sacred planet Earth. Our world remains both addicted to and intoxicated by its masculine hubris, greed, insensitivity, and the continuing domination and subjugation of all feminine energy. Callous, hate filled masculine energy runs rampant in our world, victimizing and destroying sacred life in all forms, while capitalists and other opportunists profit from our own destruction.

I am disturbed by what continues to unfold within our country, and what I have experienced in my own life, over the course of nearly sixty-three years. A recent book club meeting that was held at our house in November of 2016 exposed me to the author Sheila Hamilton, a local disc jockey for KINK.FM radio, and five time Emmy award-winning journalist. She visited our home, and shared with our book club insights into her life, and her marriage with David Krol, her deceased husband who had committed suicide. While reading Ms. Hamilton’s book “All the Things We Never Knew”, I was struck by how Sheila had to piece together what David’s inner experience must have been, as David did not communicate to others his inner turmoil and chaos effectively. I felt a need to give another voice for our shared disease, as I was a person who had walked through the gates of hell itself..

I will be recounting my own drama and internal struggles, with the hope that I bring to verbal light some of the inner workings of my own mind and life as it existed when I was mentally ill, as well as while I was upon the journey back to wholeness. I am a three-time diagnosed depressed individual, as well as a recovering addict/alcoholic. I have the label and experience of a dual-diagnosis human being. Dual diagnosis is the term used when a person has a mood disorder such as depression or bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression) and a problem with alcohol or drugs. We are one of the dark castes of our society, and, collectively, our spirits are stymied, and our voices have been quieted.

We live and operate in the background of our culture, and our message will not be spoken and cannot be acknowledged because of the Conspiracy of Silence predominating within our culture. Our culture is broken, which leads to broken people, and families. Yet, collectively, America has created a culture of denial, where we don’t look at our fundamental problems together, and confront them directly. To the extent that the broken individual might indicate a brokenness of our culture, is the extent that the broken individual is marginalized and minimized by the entrenched power brokers of our civilization and their sycophants. There are many economic, religious, and political leaders who have derived the greatest personal and economic benefits through the exploitation of the those who have no voice, and it is perceived as an existential threat for them to examine the damaged structure that gave rise to their own predominance.

John 1.1-From New Testament Of Christian Bible

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Yet, another layer of the Conspiracy of Silence exists around the Divine, Higher Power, God, or Truth. Organized religions, intellectual savants and those parading as atheists, and political powers all too often obfuscate the truth that underlies all of our existence. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus

“What is truth?”,

Jesus, as the story goes, could only be silent in the face of the greatest power of the day. The question “What is truth?” was intended as mockery, and that principle continues to this day. Speaking truth to power is not an easy or automatic proposition, no matter how “enlightened” one might appear to be. Truth is more like a continuous rainfall upon rocky mountains. It does not immediately displace all of the edges of eons of ignorance, but, over time, it finally erodes the roughest of terrains, and exposes the deeper layers of existence where a new level of experience is to be found. Those who are not patient will be mortally wounded by thrusting themselves too aggressively against the sharp edges jutting from our human monuments to stupidity and ignorance that often act as controlling powers within civilization.

Those who touch the Infinite relate back to the world the ineffability of the experience, though they have been deeply impacted by that contact. The universe of Spirit defies rationality, though it will eventually speak intelligently through the healed human mind. First, the mind has to be properly prepared, and then it must be willing to communicate, no matter how mighty the struggle may be to interpret or express its energy. But if the mind is overburdened by education, knowledge, religious and cultural inculcation, the Infinite will be speaking through distorted measures of reality, creating illusion, deception, and delusion. A look at Joseph Smith and his revelations, and the LDS movement that subsequently arose from this process, is a great example of the corrupted marriage of spirituality and truth with hallucination and delusion. This type of spiritual corruption only further confuses and alienates those seekers of a deeper truth that are still in possession of keen wits.

With ignorant Christian philosophers,scholars, and ministers continuing to interpret and promote the Word as having expression through only Jesus Christ, in their minds humanity remains relegated to outcasts from the “Garden Of Eden” and we will all remain on the outside of the universality of our divine heritage and potential for eternity, or until Jesus is accepted as a personal savior. There are many other errors in spiritual discernment to be wary of, especially all of the nonsense that is propagated around the concept of Armageddon. This is important, because these beliefs contribute mightily to the Common Knowledge Game of human perception, which is a socially and culturally inculcated system for assessing and judging against all others unlike the observers. Most of the world does not hold the belief in Jesus as the Savior, though many of us have been victimized by them! With our American judicial and political processes still impacted by, and in some cases dominated by, so-called “Christian ideals”, it is easy to see the potential for collective persecution of and discrimination against those not conforming to these ideals and dogmas..

And, much of our American religious landscape remains dominated by blind adherence to Patriarchy, which manifests through toxic masculinity and toxic religion, with their qualities of misogyny, white supremacy and its outright hatred or indifference to others unlike themselves, greed and rampant selfishness, and self-destructiveness, and all of the planetary destructive evil that emanates from it. When the writer quoted from in the Bible proclaimed that we “be fruitful and multiply”, that writer did not intend for our race to become a planet ravaging virus, through overpopulation, pollution, extinction of 1000’s of species, genocide, religious persecution, greed, and competition, yet our race has been fruitful, and multiplied our collective ignorance and evil exponentially.

It has been a great challenge and adventure living this life. It has also been a great fulfillment for me to have lived long enough and to have become articulate enough to be able to put into words my unique experience of life. It may be time to PUNCH A NAZI, in whatever form it takes, but it is best to first master the Nazi within our own minds. The fundamental oppressive force in the human universe is not our wayward religious, political, economic, or social agendas or systems, however, as the fundamental problem is within the human mind itself. Jesus Christ would be crucified again (and, in fact, the Truth continues to be sacrificed daily), and Muhammad and the Buddha, were they alive today, would be ignored or attacked, in today’s diseased, divisive, dark money controlled political, social, and religious climate.

Punch A Nazi Sign at June 2018 Portland, Oregon Rally for Immigrants and their families

There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness;….and, to know, rather consists in opening out a way where the imprisoned splendor may escape, then in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.”

—-Robert Browning

How did I attempt to bring healing to my broken interior? I first acknowledged that, of myself and my old ways, I was heading nowhere, and that I was doomed to repeat the same potentially fatal mistakes over and over again I did have any childhood training in, nor did I spontaneously develop capacities for insight, positive change and growth. I first needed to develop the emotional and spiritual fortitude to look at the entirety of my life, and then incorporate the experience for my greater good, which also impacts the whole of life in a more positive manner. By developing the power of insight, I brought a new level of healing and awareness into this new, present moment of experience. Some call this process “mindfulness:, though I just call it ‘taking personal inventory’, and improving my “conscious contact with my higher power” as I learned through practicing the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have come to believe that there is a “power greater than myself” that lives within my internal reach that restores me to sanity, no matter how often I might fall. Part of maintaining sanity is to allow for a continuous evolution of understanding and experience of what “God” or “Higher Power” is, apart from religious dogma, ignorance, politics, and superstition.

There was no minister, church, support group, therapist, Care Unit counselor, Indian guru, psychiatrist, mother, father, sister, wife, friend, daughter, son, pet dog, or Jesus Christ figure that could dig into my unique version of the human soul, and remove the thorns/swords that had been thrust into my side since my birth. My internal wounding and the resultant unsustainable suffering became the impetus to begin my inward journey, to face the absolute darkest areas of life itself, and then mine the treasure from my unique relationship with the dark force or shadow. To not face myself would mean to continue living the second-hand/passed down story of dysfunction that I inherited from our culture and from my ancestors, from which we cannot ever completely heal, without first becoming aware of our internalized, unconscious subservience to those controlling agendas.

This is my story about my exploration of some of the more fundamental aspects of my consciousness, and, thus, of all human consciousness. Virtually all of the interesting characters in history have struggled with, and have overcome, at least to some degree, a dark internal force, and it is their journey that becomes the stuff of great stories and legends. I will try to give a context to this distress that I share with the rest of humanity. For, the one is the many, and the many are the one. The author and scholar Joseph Campbell refers to the “Hero’s Journey” that we all must take to find our true self, and the story about to follow is representative of my own version of it.

It was revealed to me that there are two fundamental cores to my personal dysfunction. It is around these cores that the whole of my consciousness swirled around, as if drawn and disfigured by two distinct, though interconnected, black holes of negative influence. The length of the story reveals the level of my resistance to life, an extreme resistance that may have begun in my mothers’ womb, or, maybe, it extends all the way back to the beginning of human consciousness, but, the start date is unimportant. What is important is the intention to bring healing to a darkened situation. The story that follows is my testimony to the complexity and the rewards of this process.

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

—-Jiddu Krishnamurti

American society has created the perfect conditions for our population to practice insanity and addictive behaviors, but it remains up to us as individuals to create our own conditions for recovery. Self-awareness, personal inventory, making amends to all that we have harmed, working a strong spiritual program, mindfulness, meditation, eating healthier and exercising wisely, and hanging around like-minded people took me to the outskirts of my own “promised land”. Life isn’t always pretty, but I remain personally responsible for my attitudes and behaviors, and I retain freedom of choice in most of my affairs. But, many have lost all such freedom of choice. I have much compassion for those who still struggle with mental illness and alcoholism/drug addiction. It is no mystery to me as to why those who still suffer choose death through suicide or continued dysfunction over a healing path.

Collective consciousness is comprised of all of the answers that our culture, our families, and all of our individual selves have dreamed up to some of the great questions of life. The answers have become part of our philosophy, our history, our religion, the substance of our hopes and dreams, and the foundation for all of our nightmares. My journey towards healing is documented below. I will first briefly address the seed consciousness, where my own answers to the important questions of life gave rise to my interpretation of life, and of the universe. My incomplete and inaccurate answers became the unstable foundation for my journey through collective consciousness, spurring me onto new paths of consciousness, in the eternal search for meaning, truth, beauty, healing, and, ultimately, God. It is this very matrix of misunderstanding that we all must eventually embrace within ourselves, see it for what it really is, and isn’t, and then move through the illusions of self to the very foundation of our timeless soul, where peace and healing eternally resides.

Questions that I have pondered:

• Why does suffering exist, and why does it visit me so often?
• Who and what am I?
• Is happiness, joy, and freedom possible in my life?
• What am I really looking for, and will I ever find it?
• What really is prayer?
• Does religion have relevance anymore?
• Can there be any truth. love, or justice to be found in the 21st century version of American Christianity?
• What happened to the moral and ethical authority once touted as being endemic to Christianity?
• Does religion hinder or help a modern-day seeker of God?
• What is a “well lived life” and how do I achieve it?
• What is good mental health, or what does it mean to be normal?
• Who are my “people”, and where are they located?
• Why do people cling to certain groups of people, and reject all others, and why do I feel rejected so often?
• Why don’t people get along better with each other, and why have I become so isolated?
• Will I ever fit in? Will anyone ever notice me?
• Why don’t I feel peace of mind?
• What is death, and what does it mean to die to myself?
• Why does our society and much of the world’s population continue to not experience peace of mind, with beauty, wonder, and the innate internal integrity of our (potentially) divine nature, and what might I do to attain these qualities?
• Why is history defined predominantly by male energy, and why does my own life story spin so tightly around the male gender and its destructive byproducts?
• Why do some men become spiritually and emotionally disfigured by their desire for sex?
• Can men ever completely overcome objectifying women in their relationships with them?
• Why do some men exercise excessive emotional control over their partners?
• Why do I not feel satisfaction when I achieve the goals that I have set up for myself?
• Why do I not feel joy when others achieve greatness, or accomplish great things for themselves?
• Why do I sometimes feel threatened by others’ successes?
• Why do I internally try to hold others back from success and positive social acknowledgement?
• Why do I always seem to “self-destruct” right at the moment when I am about to achieve great success?
• Will I ever completely understand myself, and others?
• What is oppression, and what is my relationship to it?
• What is repression, and why do I participate in it?
• Why is expressing real human emotions such a double-edged sword, and why are my feelings so hard to identify sometimes?
• Why are some people always so angry, indifferent, detached, or depressed, and can these people ever see me for who I am?
• Why is anxiety the defining feeling of this age, and why is it so hard to heal from it?
• Where is the love that I feel is missing from my life?
• Why don’t I feel more love for myself or for others?
• Why do I continue to experience poor self-esteem?
• Why is our culture so focused on youth and physical appearance?
• Why am I so self-conscious, and will I ever be accepted for who I am?
• Why do I feel that I have to always be competitive, or “better than the others” just to fit in?
• Why is competition and greed, as presently coupled with Capitalism, the predominant economic system in our world?
• Why does shame and guilt control so much of my life’s experience?
• Is it possible to speak or live a lie long enough that we no longer can accept or believe the truth?
• Is a person’s silence because of an absence of opinion, or from a fear of speaking the truth?
• Why can’t some people be more emotionally and spiritually present for others?
• Why do people feel that they need to engage in mutual “control dramas”?
• Why do people endlessly pursue entertainment and/or use drugs and alcohol to excess, and ignore their own personal transformation and healing?
• Why is just more knowledge so much more important than intuition, wisdom and insight to most men and left brained dominated women?
• Why is collaboration such a dirty word for a national political process?
• Why do I have no desire to contribute to society in a more generous and meaningful way?
• Will America Ever Fully Awaken?

I attempt to address some of these questions, and my answers may have a more universal application than to just my limited life experience. To answer all of these questions would require a series of trite responses, or a 5000 page book, as there are no easy answers. I will not make all-encompassing statements like “love heals all wounds”, or “love is the only power” as love is not what the vast majority of the human race believes it to be in the first place. Please forgive me in advance if my insights and realizations appear obvious and simple. This book is a presentation of my own unique perspective, and it will not conform to others’ expectations of what the “Truth” should look like.

My story will be told through more than one linear time line, with some overlap between the stories. There will be no lurid tales of debauchery (well, maybe a reference or two), nor did I ever engage in overt acts of aggression or crimes against my fellow-man, though I certainly carried the capacity for all manners of the evil inherent in the human mind. While a practicing addict/alcoholic, I was pulled over seven times for drunken or reckless driving, though I never got a DUI because of my capacity to appear sober, no matter how intoxicated that I was. I drove intoxicated over two thousand times, and though I never hurt or killed anyone, there were a few wrecks, and many near misses. In alcoholic blackouts, I participated in potentially murderous activity, and I also contemplated horrible behavior, but good fortune saved the day for me, and for the world.

In my journey through Portland’s underworld community, I associated with people who had acted on all manners of ignorance, evil, and darkness, and many lives had been destroyed or damaged as a result of their behaviors. No human being remains unaffected by our damaged common core of consciousness, whether we personally express it, are impacted directly by it from others, or only read about it in the newspapers or on Facebook. For the truth is, our core of collective consciousness gets transmitted from our minds to the rest of the universe, and we receive back from collective consciousness, as if it were an eternally uttered prayer shared by all of humanity.

One of my problems with religion in general, their prophets, messengers, and associated religious texts, is that they take a scatter-gun approach to delivering their message. Most of their “truths” are hard to digest, and they tend to speak AT the listener or student, rather than speaking TO the student or practitioner. There are those blessed few who are attuned to the inner value or meaning of the truth being delivered, and the message speaks TO the listener. It has been said that those are the ones who were either born with or somehow learned how to develop and practice spiritual discernment. In the hearing of Love, or Truth, hope for change is stimulated, and the internal motivation to make necessary changes in the course of one’s life begins.

There is one more step, however, with religious attainment, or attunement. Only a few in recorded history have developed the capacity to have their religion, their God, their Buddha Mind, their Christ Consciousness speak THROUGH them. In Christian mystical terms, this is the word made flesh, and dwelling among us. Ministers and politicians ever so rarely qualify for this exalted state, as experts and practitioners of the law have limited access to the spirit behind it. Watch out for television preachers and evangelicals, as they are ministers of propaganda, and are money accumulating propagators of illusion, delusion, deception, and fear, while preying on the ignorant, and the innocent.

If this book finds that its readers feel like this work only speaks AT them, then the work has little lasting value. If the reader feels that this work speaks TO them in some way, however, then a true connection has been made, and human energy has been exchanged, for the betterment of the reader and the writer. This is a fundamental form of energy exchange, or prayer. But if a reader somehow finds a truth within this work that resonates within their mind and heart, to the point of dislodging some repressed or oppressed divine energy, an enlightenment or liberation is attained that the whole human race has the potential to benefit from. If healing, wholeness, or divinity subsequently speaks THROUGH the reader, then this becomes a form of universal prayer that genuinely has the chance to help in the healing of the planet. To this point, nothing I have ever said or written has led anybody into the “promised land”, so I would be happy if this story somehow finds a way to speak TO a few readers. We can then share in a prayer with the potential to bring healing, wholeness, and divinity to us and the consciousness that we presently share. I will leave liberation and enlightenment to the spiritual savants, and to their students that insist on hanging onto their every word.

There is a unique path that each one of us must take, to find our greatest good. Those who continue to follow other people’s routes, at the exclusion of the route that their own internal GPS system is generating, risk losing all, including their freedom and their unique life expression. Trying to fit in with and adapt to insanity, and the continuing attempts to normalize it, is the foundation for mental illness, and for our present day corrupted economic, political, and religious systems. The following story indicates my path towards wholeness and spiritual integrity, while moving away from my own personal insanity and our culture’s schizophrenia.

I Looked For My Soul (by William Blake)

I looked for my soul,

But my soul I could not see.

I looked for my God,

But my God eluded me.

I looked for a friend,

And then I found all three.

May we all become friends of the Spirit.

U2–Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki5keBCz8DQ

Chapter Two–The Family

Bible verse about fathers sins arising from ancestors

I will start by writing about my father’s life. Beryl Donald Paullin. Beryl was a product of the Great Depression, having been born in 1927. His Father, also named Beryl, was a Fire Chief, respected within the community, and a horribly abusive alcoholic in his private life. I know little else about Grandpa Beryl (also known as Bruce), other he also served in the military, during World War 1, and is buried in Willamette National Cemetery, as is my father. My father kept my sister Pam and I away from grandpa Beryl until we were teenagers, that is how much my father wanted to protect us from the oppressive presence of his father. While in our early teenage years, Pam and I did visit with Grandpa Beryl at his La Center home twice, and I visited him in the VA hospital prior to his death. In his later years, he was sober, and seemed like a pleasant enough man.

Grandma Elsie, Grandpa Beryl, Susie Paullin circa 1948

Dad’s mother Elsie was the classic abused wife, suffering also through physical and emotional problems while married to “that Brute”, as my father referred to him. I also know little about her, either, other than she had kidney disease, and she died shortly after my birth. John Edward was dad’s older brother (Ed preceded him in death) and Ed was removed from his home and placed at their grandparents’ farm in Oregon City at 6 years of age, after nearly being beaten to death by their father. I later learned that Elsie secretly gave birth to a daughter at age 15, which she gave up for adoption. So my dad had an older sister that he never knew of, until very late in his life.

Uncle Ed and Dad

Gloria (or Susie) as most people now know her, was his younger sister, and both Susie and my father suffered under horrible abusive conditions for most of their childhood. Both my father and my aunt displayed some symptoms of PTSD for most of their lives, as well as being products of the age of which they grew up. Over the years, Dad found a way to manage his life much more successfully than his sister Susie, for sure. My father really loved his older brother Ed, through all of the years of his life, though he loved to challenge Ed about the mess that was always present in the yard on Ed’s farm. Ed loved to collect old and junk cars, much to the chagrin of his neighbors, friends, some family members, and the local police department. Sharon and I started sharing in their love beginning in 1995, when we all started sharing breakfasts, and family gatherings together for the first time.

He started college at the University of Portland, studying Psychology, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and other courses, from 1947-1952. He really wanted to understand the human mind at the deepest level, and his curious mind about other issues only left him in recent years. But he had to delay his search for the truth about the broken human mind, as his now hyper-busy life got in the way of him finishing his studies of the human condition. Dad formed a great friendship and relationship with Father Delaney, who taught at the University of Portland, and in whose name the Delaney Institute was named. He struggled a bit with his school work, but he did stay at it over a course of five years, which did not result in a degree.

Note: I was to later pick up my father’s mantle, and I have made my own attempts to finish the job that he had started, which was understanding the human mind. And, like my father, I rebel against the spiritual and philosophical authorities of the day, sometimes sharing with the readers of my blog and Facebook readers my insights.

We will either heal together as a country, as a world, and as individuals, or we will all die alone
—–Bruce Paullin

THE PATH THROUGH COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

In this time when the anti-Christ seems to dominate the relationships between countries within our world, and when heartless terrorists, capitalists, and politicians victimize our most innocent of beings, be they human, animal, or the entire Earth itself, it can be difficult to feel the miracle of life that is constantly within us. Yet, to not have that experience, is to live a life devoid of much of the greater meaning available to us as human beings. And, the American male, who carries most of the self-destructive, earth destructive, socially destructive, and feminine destructive energy within humanity, is paying a huge spiritual price for our errors in the presentation of our lives to, and the experience of, this world. We, as a gender, continue to carry the historical debris from many generations of callous indifference to the needs of others, and to our spiritual needs for wholeness, love, healing, and compassion.

As I read, hear about, and personally witness the early death syndrome of the White American male, which may yet still capture me, I now know that our spiritual, medical, social, and economic systems are flirting with catastrophic collapse. The race is on between those who are spiritually supporting personal and collective Armageddon, and those who are promoting a holistic, healing approach to living together in lasting peace and health upon our sacred planet. Those who can become receptive to their own spiritual awakening will become part of a world-wide healing movement, through co-creating the roots of the new Tree of Life that supports a new world order of Love, Compassion, and the preservation of our home planet Earth and all of its sacred inhabitants. Those who choose to stay asleep will continue to contribute to suffering, and the destruction of life in all forms.

I offer my apologies in advance to any widow or family member who reads this story, and might be offended by what appears to be judgmental or incomplete representation of the facts. I will leave it to the real ‘experts’ within our culture to drill down to the “real facts”. What I have observed is quite subjective, and the population that I have witnessed is fairly small, compared to the whole of the population that has been impacted by our cultural disease. My only intention here is to provide a very incomplete voice, for those who can no longer speak up for the ills of the society that created the conditions for their own early demise, be it through heart attacks, brain cancer or cancer in general, alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, murder, or “accidents”.

I have watched an endless parade of friends, and acquaintances meeting an early death. Most of my grade school and high school friends have already suffered, and have either become disabled or had early deaths. Both of my best friends from earlier in my life died young from alcoholism and poor health choices My nephew has a bipolar condition along with alcoholism Having visited a cousin in February who was comatose and near death from the DT’s in the ICU, and buried another drug addicted cousin last August, and witnessed two close family members who are co-enabling alcoholics plying their self-destructive trade over the Christmas holiday in Arizona, not to mention our own grandson who has been addicted to pot and other substances since he was 11 years old, I can’t ignore this disease of the Spirit which has taken over our country.

Randy Olson (left-1955-2013) Dan Dietz (1955-1997)

In many cases, those early deaths or disabilities from mental illness and/or alcoholism were, literally, a divorce from their lives, as their lives were so unfulfilled and unhappy. In some of the cases that I am familiar with, the men were not happy at the end, and their death appeared to be a welcome release for them. Some had lost their careers, and could not recover from that. Some had no meaning in their lives, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to the idea that their only function was to provide for their wives or family, and, having achieved success or failure, they could not recover from that. Some were just waiting for a better day, and when it never appeared, they could not recover from that. Some were lonely and depressed, and they could not recover from that. Some had profound mental illness, and they could not recover from that.
What is the hidden story, the real back story to these men and their lives that may not have been told to their families, to their religions, to their culture, to their employer and co-workers, and to their Gods? Were any of our male victims of society able to listen to themselves, and identify their own unique pain and suffering, and bring it to the light of Love and Reason, to search for, and eventually find a newer path to healing and meaning? Or, did they blindly follow down the well-worn path of premature deterioration and death that unconscious humanity, through engaging in our collective common knowledge game, the road defined by “sin”, suffering, and dying, is doomed to trudge upon?

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There has been an epidemic of younger, white, middle class men who have been dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast, for the past 20+years. There is a dearth of information on this issue, though there are many references to the Opioid Epidemic, painkiller addiction, and the progression to heroin addiction by those participants. This is only a small part of the real story, and I am going to try, in my own incomplete way, to write about the disease of Spirit that has targeted American Masculinity for quite some time, and the people who I have known who have been struck down by it. I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my own being, that disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to disease within the body of mankind.

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Does anybody think that the suicide victim, lone wolf arsonist, abusive alcoholic, mentally ill man shot by a policeman, drug overdose victim, or mass murderer, is a unique being, with no relationship to the rest of the very humanity that spawned him? I have been asked why I often focus my attention on the damaged American Male Psyche, and why I don’t instead focus on more pleasant, loving thoughts and activities. The question itself reveals the flaws inherent in living an non-examined life, and the fragmentation already present in our collective understanding of how to bring healing to our self, and to our world. Just because we are not now consciously aware of, and viscerally experiencing the damaging effects of, the unhealed American Male Psyche, does not mean that we remain unaffected by its self-destructive, and other-destructive, energies. Ignorance never leads to bliss, but instead to more suffering by self and others. Before we can proceed into a new world order of better health, increased happiness, peace, and preservation of our sacred planet and our relationships with the totality of life upon it, we must first completely see where we came from, or our self-destructive history will repeat itself.

It is extremely difficult in finding a way to reach those who have unconditionally accepted a diseased culture and/or one’s own unique fragmented individual life, while they remain in rigorous denial of those facts. Those who have made a decision to slowly and painfully commit suicide, individually and collectively through their addictive and self-destructive cycles of behavior are becoming part of the new normal in American life. Each mentally ill human being, including all alcoholics and drug addicts must find their own unique “bottom”, where the pain of the disease causes a change, or turning point, in their lives. Insanity, poor physical health, loss of job, loss of family, jail, DUI, threat of death, or near death experiences, and deaths of close friends or family members also suffering from cultural disease and addiction have been known to bring the desire for healing. Personally, it took all the previously mentioned negative addictive cycle outcomes to convince me to change behavior.

Awakening is an interactive process, encouraged and facilitated by the pain and suffering that we experience as human beings, while engaging with the “real world”. Unfortunately for all of us, too many Americans live in alternate universes, where we do not have to deal directly with our pain and suffering. Fantasy and denial of our personal and collective responsibility towards the ills of this world reigns supreme in major sections of our culture. This is fueled by addictions to media devices diversions of our life force into entertainment and worship of TV and movie personalities, alcohol, drug, and personal power abuses,, and all of the false teachers and leaders we have ignorantly chosen to follow, as did our parents, grandparents, and on and on until the beginnings of human consciousness. To facilitate healing, we must reject the false leaders, and we must become our own leaders, with awakened powers of understanding and compassion. All of the sleeping beauties, and the ugly ones with warts, will continue to sleep, until their nightmares become so frightening that they either have to wake up, or die.

One only needs to look around, and view the effects of Toxic Masculinity, and its ugly spawn, Toxic Religion, Toxic Politics, and Toxic Capitalism, to see that repression of the feminine, and the Divine, is built right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. Our POTU$ is the perfect representation for all of the ills of our culture, and to the extent that the men within our culture practice his unholy principles of engagement with the world, and its women, and men, within it, the men also share in his disease of mind, body, and spirit. What happens to a man defeated by the dark energy of unhealed masculinity? We don’t need to look too far to see the insanity around us, the mass murders, early deaths, suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, abuse of woman, and children, extinction of species, destruction of our ecology, and see the relationships that now continue to a very bleak future, unless the men in this world awaken, and rebel against the prevailing dark attitudes of our dying culture.

The following are formative energies that tend to shape and guide men in today’s America:

• Unconscious participation in the Common Knowledge Game of harsh and inaccurate self and other judgement, with resultant poor self-esteem inculcated into boys from birth by our wayward fathers, religions, and cultures,
• Remaining ignorant or fearful of our own feelings, including anger and grief, or expressing them unskillfully,
• Letting stress go on unabated in our lives, without challenging its points of origin
• Loss of emotional and physical safety in home, school or work environments
• not communicating honestly with others, and carrying the feeling of not being heard or appreciated,
• eschewing deep and meaningful relationships with others,
• excessive competitiveness with others while engaging with greed, trying to “keep up with the Jones’ “,
• proving self-worth in environments where self, and others’, worth is disrespected, thus trying to fit in where we really don’t belong,
• people pleasing, at the expense of our personal integrity
• not speaking up for ourselves or for others that are oppressed for fear of being marginalized,or further victimized
• over immersion in entertainment, excess reliance upon Snapchat, Facebook, or other social media platforms for social awareness
• excessive eating and/or eating excessive sugar or processed foods
• not exercising, not hiking in Nature and thus staying away from its healing balm
• excessive drinking of alcohol, use of recreational drugs to the point of habituation (including marijuana),
• smoking or chewing tobacco,
• using sex as a way to emotionally hide or escape, or to manipulate others,
• workaholic behavior, and forgetting how to laugh and play well with others

These and other phenomenon represent the factors that most men encounter or employ in our efforts to meet the needs for economic security, establish our place in society, relieve stress and keep ourselves at least marginally happy, and pursue family fulfillment, including ones sexual gratification. And, statements of personal well-being, such as those listed below, were anything but “facts of life” for most men.

• I am worthy,
• I am safe,
• I am whole,
• I am loving and lovable,
• I have something worthwhile to say

Dead men tell no tales, but the nearly dead MUST continue to tell their stories, with respect for themselves and others, until our civilization finally wakes up. To not express ourselves honestly and openly results in our own early demise, Spiritually as well as physically. My innate response would be to keep silent, as I have nothing of value to share with the world, and/or the world could give a shit about what I have to say anyway. Extrapolate that response to all of life, and we can perceive the isolating framework that imprisons much of the American male psyche.

THE FOOLS

You know who we are, there is no need for our names

We may be outwardly different, but inside we are the same

We vacation on ego trips, and with the world play strange mind games

While striving for material success, and its dubious fame

We remain graceless souls trying to blend into life’s masses

Some affirming our uniqueness, though we remain stuck in the same class

With our delusions of grandeur, while appearing just like an ass

And steering clear of self-awareness, Oh our transparency of glass!

At times spewing words of wisdom, but with only another dogs’ bark

Seeking to make a good life, but on life’s script still leaving just a dirty mark

Believing we may have seen light, but, if so, why is our life always so dark?

Needing more purifying inner flames, while snuffing every divine spark

Though we think that we have blossomed, we do not possess Love’s flower,

We hope for a life carried by the river of sweetness, while we still wade through the sour

Never realizing that, over life, we hold very little power

We can only avoid the reality of our lives, while living in our ivory tower

We tend to bring up life’s rear, though we think that we should be first

And from life we want all of the best, somebody else deserves the worst!

We think that our life should be more blessed, why on earth do we feel cursed?

Our lives just become overblown bubbles, just waiting to be burst!
Individuals who are addicts/alcoholics, and/or who are mentally ill, and the cultures that breed and support that behavior, and who are not yet ready to face their shame, guilt, fears, and insecurities consciously will not have an easy time of it in recovery and in the search for greater meaning in their lives. There are many religious paths to take, methodologies for achieving and maintaining sobriety, and therapeutic modalities and medications available for mental illness, and the technique chosen should be wisely considered based on personal needs and philosophies-or lack of them. For those who just want to treat the body, and not the mind or Spirit, there are injections available to reduce alcohol and/or drug cravings, and medications to temporarily treat the illnesses of the mind, which may be all that the sufferer needs for now, especially if they have little inclination towards personal awareness, insight, and spiritual evolution.

Each of my mentally ill or substance abusing family members knows of my own drug addicted and alcoholic background, and so far has had little use for my experience, strength, and hope in sobriety, showing that my “process for recovery” has debatable value for a diseased mind that has no desire to change. A common statement uttered by a practicing alcoholic/addict is “I don’t have a problem”, or, “he/she is the one with the problem, not me!” Denial of the facts of addiction and/or toxic attitudes, and justification for continuing unhealthy behaviors, results in the creation of the “fake news” that they don’t have a problem with drugs and alcohol and our underlying consciousness, and this sad fact remains a constant for most sufferers of addiction and Toxic Masculinity and Toxic Religion. Our culture is insane, and the insanity has crept into all of our families, and all of our individual lives, whether we want to face it, or not.

Brain Damage

(Written by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd)

The lunatic is on the grass.

The lunatic is on the grass.

Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs.
Got to keep the loonies on the path.

The lunatic is in the hall.

The lunatics are in my hall.

The paper holds their folded faces to the floor

And every day the paper boy brings more.
And if the dam breaks open many years too soon

And if there is no room upon the hill

And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too

I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.

The lunatic is in my head.

The lunatic is in my head

You raise the blade, you make the change

You re-arrange me ’til I’m sane.

You lock the door

And throw away the key

There’s someone in my head but it’s not me.

And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear

You shout and no one seems to hear.

And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes

I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.

“I can’t think of anything to say except…
I think it’s marvelous! HaHaHa!”

Of course I have much, much more to say about this song. There are many life stories built into this great song, including one of the original members of this band, Syd Barrett. The oppression of our mentally ill, and the repression of the basic human spirit by those practicing their professional witchcraft, continues to appall me.

My first wife, Donelle Mae Flick Paullin, suffered from what psychiatric professionals labeled as paranoid schizophrenia. I struggled mightily to help, and to understand her, over the many years that I stayed in touch with her. I gained insight not only into her “disease”, which also devolved into multiple personality disorder, but also into the very mind of mankind. Mankind suffers from aspects of this disease in a collective sense, and the oppressed and victimized, and most innocent and sensitive people in our society are most vulnerable to developing such mental illnesses.

The psychiatric profession would do itself wonders to finally gain the necessary insight to understand the underlying message here, for we are all about to be impacted by our cultural INSANITY, as far too many American citizens continue their own unconscious descent into their own darkness. They need better guidance, and our sick society needs better guidance, before it is too late for all of us.

Enlightenment does not come to the “fat and happy” people of our world. Enlightenment is NOT a gentle process, merely attained through reading books, practicing affirmations, talking with our friendly therapists, and attending a few workshops and conferences. To find true enlightenment, a path through personal, and collective, insanity is REQUIRED. Watch how the so-called ‘professionals’ of our culture continue to try to oppress this movement, and repress those impulses within themselves, and others under their ‘spell’ or control.

I can quote from the Bible, Koran, Talmud, Bhagavad Gita, or the sayings of the “enlightened masters” such as the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohamed, or more recently Krishnamurti, the Dalai Lama, OR ALL OTHERS, for the rest of eternity, but until I face myself directly and honestly, NO TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE WILL OCCUR. The same is true for our country, and for our world.

For those who understand, I will see you, and be with you for as long as necessary, on the

Dark Side Of The Moon

Now, let’s work on saving ourselves!

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

Socrates
“The unexamined life” refers to a life lived by rote under the rules of others without the subject ever examining whether or not he truly wants to live with those routines or rules. According to Socrates, this type of life was not worth living. Rather than living an unexamined life, Socrates chose death, and these words are attributed to the philosopher during one of his last speeches before his suicide.

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I started using marijuana my sophomore year of high school, and that use brought me into association with the Oak Grove group of students, who I had not met before, as I went to a different grade school (Concord) than they did. It was with a small subset of this group that I “learned how to drink alcohol”. Goose’s Garage in Oak Grove became my training center for social drinking, beer keggars , and out of control drunkenness, and I was a fast learner. After my first “drunk” I knew that I was an alcoholic, and that I would eventually die from it.
It was after my first “drunk” that I knew that I would be dead by age 30, at the very latest. I had resigned myself, at an early age, to the life of an alcoholic/addict, and i knew that I just had to “maintain control” as best i could, even though i no longer had control over my choices in life. Yes, my death wish was enshrined early, and worshiped daily.
In high school in my junior year, i was required to keep a daily journal for a writing class. The problem was that I had no “insight”, at least as far as being able to put into words what the interior nature of my mind and life looked like. I had to submit something, and in my desperation to get a decent grade i went to a bookstore, to find a book to help me to ‘look at myself’.

Hugh Prather had written a book called ‘Notes To Myself’, and I stumbled upon it, and bought it. I was so empty of complete statements about myself and my life that I copied statements from Hugh’s book, and tried to ‘personalize’ them so that it would not be obvious that I had copied his work.

I got my passing grade, felt very relieved, and continued on my awkward, highly dysfunctional path through high school. I was near the top of my class near graduation time, yet I was so out of touch with the majority of my classmates, as well as with myself, that to finally graduate seemed like it might change, if not end, much of my social anxiety and sense of disconnect. Of course this could not be further from the truth.

Looking back, this would have been great stuff to write about in high school, but i was living a lie, and the telling of the truth to others, let alone to myself, might force me into changes that I could not embrace or consider as possibilities. The absence of personal honesty and insight doomed me to a deteriorating life experience, and limited my choices so much that many days, and years, I felt trapped in a prison, with interior windows sometimes only opening to Hell.
I will bypass a few years, and revisit insight again. In April of 1984, I placed myself in the Care Unit of Lovejoy Hospital for a month, with the intentions of maintaining my job with the U.S. Postal Service, as well as, maybe, staying sober for a little while. I had a female Christian counselor named Claire, who was my guide while residing in this facility. A requirement was to keep a daily journal, and to document our “internal weather” while undergoing orientation back into a life of “sobriety”.

I remained quite uncomfortable recording my “interior universe”. Little had changed since high school with becoming “honest with my self”, and finding any hidden gems to discover, and write about. I found that i could write a lot, however, if what i wrote had the intention of “pleasing others” ,especially if they were female in orientation. Also if I could sometimes make somebody else a little “wrong” for what they were, or more regularly for me, accept FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MISTAKES OF OTHERS, I could find something to write about. Yet, something else was also brewing inside, to be revealed at a later time.

Every day my desire for PEACE was acknowledged, all the while attending the daily groups, and counselling sessions. I attempted to practice the 12 steps of AA, for alcoholic recovery, which demands insight, and rigorous honesty. My chances were still “less than average”, due to fundamental flaws in the basic makeup of my “personal consciousness, and awareness”. A lifetime of oppression, insanity, and repression of spirit, does not just magically disappear because others, or myself, think that it might be a good idea.

The final descent into darkness has been documented elsewhere, and I feel no need to rewrite my life story here. Suffice it to say, to follow new paths of consciousness means to “become aware” as a human being, and listen to my heart, and the heart of others, as we travel these uncertain paths of life that lay before us. And, I must continue to accept personal responsibility for all of my thoughts and actions, while supporting others to do the same. We must walk together, or die alone.

“The unexamined life will be painfully lived”

Jack Boland, several years before his death from cancer.

Insight and mindfulness, meditation, walking away from self-destructive dependencies, maintaining dialogue with others, speaking our truth, fighting against oppression of others, and repression within our own hearts and souls, following new paths of consciousness, working out our own salvation, while helping others on their own paths (only as requested) as well, are ways to develop collective awareness, and healing, and bringing peace of mind to our own interior universe. We cannot love others, or our own lives, completely, until we make peace within our own hearts and souls.

I am deeply disturbed by the present developments within our shared world, within my individual and our collective human consciousness, and the points of connection between the self and other, through language, religion, and philosophies that create oppression, repression, and personal and social disease.

Starting within myself, I have seen how a lifetime of oppression, and repression, had brought about a series of near fatal illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity, lived, moved, and had its being enshrined within my own heart and soul. I also saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions had failed to honor my most basic, innermost needs of being valued for my basic essence, and to have my voice listened to, understood, and accepted by those who have that capacity of the Heart.

January 11th of this year, I had my first ‘seizure’. I awoke at 2:45 in the morning, and went into my office and sat down. Suddenly, I lost all ability to move, and to even think, though I remained quite aware during this approximately one minute process. It was then that I became aware of a “black mass” in the brain area of my inner field of body awareness. I became quite concerned by this whole experience, though I kept it to myself initially. Every subsequent time I looked internally, I could still see the dark mass. The next month, I had yet another seizure, this time much milder, and in a public setting, while playing cards at a friend’s home.

I began to talk about it with my wife, and some friends, and it was theorized that it might be related to something spiritual or psychic in nature. But I came to know it as “death”, at least in a spiritual sense. I saw that there was no negotiating with it. Prayers, meditations, affirmations, reading, talking with others, nothing had any impact on the dark mass. I knew that some sort of spiritual death was coming my way, and I felt little need to discuss it with a doctor (though I did tell my family physician that I feared that I might have a “Debbie Reynolds-Carrie Fisher” event, when I took my ill father to see her about January 1st of this year).

In early March, a friend was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and Sharon and I visited him two days prior to its surgical removal. Mr M and I talked about our seizures, and I was struck by the similarity of his description of his event with my own. I told Mr M that my perception was that Death was making itself known to me, through the dark mass that I could “see” in my own energy field. I hoped that Mr M’s mass did not indicate a death for him.

That next day, Wednesday, at noon, I had another episode of such intensity, and duration, that I dared not even attempt to get up from the couch. I had previously arose from the couch, and briefly lost consciousness, so I was “all shook up”, yet I still had no desire to get a doctor involved. Sharon came home later that afternoon from her creative writing class, and found me quite compromised. She listened to my story, and accepted my decision not to seek further medical attention, since this was perceived as a spiritual crisis, while she offered her own love and care. She monitored my blood pressure, and when she noted when my breathing became shallow, to offer me a paper bag to breathe into, lest I sink into a “panic attack”.

Each time I tried to get off the couch, I became quite dizzy. I continued feeling quite physically subdued, and some sort of anxiety reaction was also happening with my body/mind. I was also losing my ability to talk. It took all of the power that I could muster to force words out. It was reminiscent of a time 31 years before, when I wandered through Portland’s dark underworld community. I had an event that prevented me from speaking, which was probably amphetamine use related. A prominent memory is when I visited a motorcycle gang hit man who i had befriended, who was incarcerated in Clackamas County jail, and I was incapable of speaking with him. My words were frozen in my mind and throat, and I could not talk for two days.

The present time, I actually felt like my consciousness was trying to escape, and it took all of my resources just to hold it together. I characterized this present event to Sharon White as “losing my mind”, while having an almost Neuro-toxic component to it. I did not want anything to do with a neurological exam, having been through that horror several years before. I tried to go about my “normal” activities, while being grateful that I did not have to provide care for my disabled father, whose care that week was taken over by others.

Thursday came, and I had not improved much. It also was the day that Mr. M’s tumor was being removed. I had dual concerns, for Mr M, and for myself. I went about my limited daily activities as best I could, but I became quite conscious of my own fear and anxiety around Death, both of self, and of other. I continued to listen to the occasional taped “spiritual wisdom” tapes of some of my past teachers, hoping to hear something that might bring me comfort. I listened to a tape made in 1991 by Jack Boland, a nationally renowned speaker and master of the recovery process. I owned a tape where he referred to me personally, on which said he knew me, probably better than I knew myself. He wished pain, not peace of mind, to me, and to all who had not yet fulfilled their interior spiritual obligation to cleanse their hearts, as this is the great precursor to spiritual progress. Those who understand this statement UNDERSTAND.

After yet another nearly sleepless night, I got up and sat in the family room, and awaited Sharon to join me. My life’s message was now bubbling up within me, and I felt a compulsion to share it with my world. Yet I also knew that there were few, if any, people presently in my life who had the time, or even the interest, in listening to what Spirit was trying to “pour through me”. As I lay out on the couch, feeling my own emotional/spiritual death about to overtake me, I cried out in despair to Sharon, to please share my message, since I didn’t have the capacity to deliver it in a way that others could hear, or understand.

After a lifetime of experiencing people experiencing me as less of a human being than I am, starting with my own diseased father, followed by a steady progression of angry, sometimes hateful, judgmental male and female power figures (with a few notable exceptions), how could I feel differently? My voice had been silenced, even in settings where spiritually aware, conscious people gathered to celebrate ‘connection’.

Sharon looked at me with acceptance, love, and compassion. She then stated unequivocally that my message was my own, and must be spoken through me, or not at all. Even my tears, and begging, would not change her mind. I was in such pain and agony, that I knew that I could not go on. But I could not let myself die again emotionally and spiritually, so I asked my Spirit how to best deliver “my message”.

A prayer formed in my mind “Grandfather, Great Spirit, Thank You”. All of a sudden I was COMPELLED to write, and I did not stop the process until fifteen pages of a story poured through me. My Spirit chose the format of a parable, knowing that it would be discarded, without reading, by those who already believed that they knew me. But the curious ones, the ones who’s inner Spirit had not been yet stymied, would read, and appreciate, this aspect of the message that I felt Compelled to give to my world.

It took less than two days to write, and it was the first story I have ever written. And, the dark mass in my body of energy disappeared. I remain healed of that darkness, though I am forced out of bed frequently now, to contemplate, to explore, to discover, to write, and to share with, the One who listens. Sometimes, I only sleep 3 or 4 hours, and I write until Sharon usually wake at 5 am. I note now that I have “access” to nearly infinite reserves of human energy and my heart has opened up in new creative, POWERFUL ways, allowing access to heretofore unexplored areas of human/Cosmic understanding.

A New Story Needs To Be Told

The fatal flaw with all philosophies touting the coming of a new age of peace and enlightenment is that they fail to embrace a fundamental flaw in human character and reasoning (the flaw which is typically male in nature, with a few exceptions). All “teachers” who promote the “light”, without first addressing the required walk through the personal and collective “darkness”, are offering up shallow containers for those who need to drink deeply from the waters of the Spirit. We are left thirsty, and confused, as to why we do not reach the “promised land” as offered by others who are supposedly “in the know”.

When Jesus of Nazareth stated that “the poor will always be amongst us”, he was talking about those who were poor economically, emotionally, and spiritually. He knew that men repressed their feeling nature, and tried to oppress others who attempted to express it, as well. He was referring to a basic defect in character, or nature, which permeates the intellect of men, and the way men communicate within themselves, and with their external worlds. Men use their philosophies to justify greed and selfishness, and to give themselves permission not to feel for others less fortunate than themselves. He knew that male energy, and all patriarchal cultures, in general, are out of balance, having repressed so much of our basic, human (feminine) nature that we can no longer access our innermost divine/human nature, where all love and healing bubbles up from.

Built right into the very fabric of life, is death itself. Our own cells within our bodies are constantly dying off, and being replaced by others so that we can continue to live, and even evolve (or regress as the situation may dictate). So also should not all of our old thoughts die off, to be replaced by newer, more vibrant creations, if we are to continue to live, and grow, and even evolve?

Women, especially those who have carried the life of “another” in their wombs, know at their deepest level the experience of physical creation, the bringing forth real life into our shared world. It is not just the fertilization of the egg that brings life; it is also the carrying and internal nurturing of the developing fetus for almost nine months, then delivering the viable, complete life form to the world. Women know, at the deepest level, that their babies have ultimate value, regardless of what the “egg fertilizer” might say or do to try to imply otherwise.

It is then that the parents begin to practice whatever are the socially or culturally acceptable norms for raising the child, coupled with their own ‘insight’, from the baby’s birth through its young adulthood. The spiritually unaware male figure, try as he might, never quite catches the “spirit of the creation”, and begins the process of impressing his own disfigured consciousness upon the unsuspecting developing human being. Yes, the “sins of the father” meaning, the errors in spiritual understanding of the entire culture, and the individual father, are inculcated into the baby.

I have had a very painful “rebirth”. Yet, this birth is what I have been looking for my entire life (and, perhaps, many lives, if reincarnation is true-who knows for sure?) I refuse to raise my “New Born Child” according to the established norms of our diseased times. I will use all of my human resources to communicate, as best I can, the unfolding new reality bubbling up within my heart and soul. I will not oppress, or repress, the ever unfolding new reality, of the self that I am, and that I am to become. Toxic Masculinity, Toxic Capitalism, and Toxic Religion are not welcome guests in our home, though they continue to “stand at the door and knock” at the interior doors for all of mankind.