Book #8: Chapters 1 and 2: Melinda Copp Ghostwriting Bruce Paullin

Chapter 1: Troubleshooting And Repairing A Broken System

Growing up, I was not provided with many clues for how to successfully manage the labyrinth of life and of my mind. The maps provided for me were incomplete and mostly inaccurate. My life had been characterized by early and intermittent, and mostly unintentional, wounding by my parents, especially by my father and older sister. But outside of my family, there was a culture that supported us.

My early exposure to Christian religion was also traumatizing. My young self could see through its parade of self-debasing interpretations of God and Jesus, and I was confused and often repulsed by many so-called Christian stories. Yet I was not to find other helpful guides, other than consistent loving support from my mother and my mother’s parents, who always wanted the best for me, and my father, though he sometimes appeared to me as a confusing trickster. There is one shining example of the poor guidance available for me in the story of Defender Dan.

In 1968 at the age of thirteen years, I was given a Defender Dan toy machine gun for a Christmas present. It was not a new toy, as it had minor internal damage that a father with mechanical skills might be able to troubleshoot and repair. My father had no interest in assisting me, so if I wanted a functional toy, it was up to me to do something about it. I was confused as to what was expected from me. Why was I given a gift that had known problems? Didn’t I deserve something that was new and perfect? I certainly did not have a fully developed skill package in troubleshooting and repairing this fairly complex mechanical system, but I liked a good challenge, and I thought that this endeavor might be worthwhile. Though I had no diagram defining the internal parts and their relationship to each other, I began dismantling it, trying to understand how the parts were related to each other and how it worked so that I could repair it. When Dad saw the gun parts spread out all over the floor, he accused me of destroying the gift, and then proceeded to remove his belt and whip the hell out of me. That beating hurt in a lot of different ways, for sure. The punchline, er, the belt line, is that, like my father, our life, and our world, will punish us if we cannot fix our lives, even though we may have  been provided with inaccurate repair diagrams and maps for living. This story captures the essence of our confusion as human beings seeking wholeness while receiving conflicted and inadequate support from others.

We live and operate in the background of our oft times toxic patriarchal 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.

A conspiracy of silence is 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. It also points to the promises that we keep even though we may have never have consciously made the promises, which become the strongest pillars supporting the platform of our culture. There are multitudes of societal requirements that are not written down, and we all unconsciously obey these edicts, edicts which we never would have obeyed, had we been given a conscious choice. They become either the shell that we must emerge from, or remain the ball and chain attached to our spiritual ankles.

We are all part of an economic, social, and religious system that not only cannot always and often won’t hear our cries for help, but also cause much of the suffering that inspires our agonized cries. Calls to 911 or to 988 may work for some, but for most others that need help will ignore or bypass those options. Our unwillingness to speak, or to reveal our deepest, truest self revolves around issues of compromised senses of safety and emotional security, which are exacerbated by trauma, shame, and denial, and by our often times oppressive, life devaluing surrounding culture.

I have personally experienced toxic masculinity, toxic religion, and toxic capitalism. These issues are challenging to recognize and successfully address, due to thousands of years of cultural normalization of unacceptable attitudes and behavior, and a conspiracy of silence maintained to preserve and protect the status quo. Personal family, and/or cultural toxicities tend to stay ignored, overlooked, or even denied by those with little time for insight, introspection, or interest in other people’s points of view on these troubling issues.

I have witnessed many failed, or failing systems, human and mechanical, for most of my life. In any system, we come to expect that certain inputs will deliver desired outputs, while maintaining some sort of balance within the whole process.  But we need good information, and a well ordered and maintained internal system, to get the desired results. If we can find the errors in reasoning and historical conditioning, which contributes mightily to each of our personal narratives, we can begin a search for the underlying truth behind all situations, while shedding the cloaks of illusion that continues to clothe so much of the human race.

Troubleshooting Broken Systems

Troubleshooting is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes on a machine, a system, or even a human life. It is a logical, systematic search for the source of a problem in order to solve it, and make the product, process, or person functional again.

It means gaining understanding and asking questions, like:

• What is the history and  intention behind the original system design?
• Has the system ever worked properly?
• Does the system presently work?
• What are the history of the problems?
• Are the problems a failure of the system and its original design, poor overall  maintenance, and/or ignorance or malfeasance by the human operator?
• Can this process be improved or stabilized without a total rebuild?
• What are the best options for repair?
• Who is going to help me?
• How much can I help myself?

Being a broken human being rarely gets a lot of positive feedback, or life affirming attention from others.  It certainly is not a lifestyle choice for those who finally choose to awaken, which I finally did at the age thirty-one. How did I attempt to bring healing to my broken interior? I acknowledged that, of myself and my old ways, I was heading nowhere, and that I was doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. I did not have childhood training nor spontaneously developed capacities for insight, positive change, and growth until late in life. I 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 twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have come to believe that there is a power greater than my past understandings that lives within me, capable of restoring 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 who we are, and what God or Higher Power is, apart from religious dogma, ignorance, politics, and superstition. If we only continue to believe in things that we don’t understand, like our religions and their man-made, or God inspired, theories, it becomes nothing short of superstitious reasoning, if we are not also already inspired internally by this Truth. We must attempt to understand the mental ecology, and the history, of human beings, as we are the ones who creates and embraces ideas. This insight is essential if we want to cultivate any hope at all of troubleshooting and repairing any damaged human system.
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 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.

How to Describe Your Problem Completely

The first step in good problem analysis is to describe the problem completely. Without a problem description, we will not know where to start investigating the cause of the problem. Is it a systemic failure, is it limited to just one component or individual, is it transient or constant in nature. This step includes asking ourselves basic questions.

1. What Are The Symptoms? Who or what is reporting the problem? What are the symptoms and feedback messages? How do we fail? For example: loop or repetition of unnecessary or unwanted behavior, or quitting before a process is successfully completed. Is it intentional or unintentional  performance degradation? Is it an incorrect attitude and belief? What is the affect on all relationships?

2. Where Is The Problem Happening? Determining where the problem originates is not always easy, but it is one of the most important steps in resolving a problem. Is the problem isolated and specific, or common to multiple arenas within life? Is the current environment and understanding capable of being supported by a personal healing intention, or are broader, more socially encompassing changes necessary? Are there currently cultural power brokers attempting to dictate the way life’s route should be traveled? Is the source of the history of the problem purely an individual one, or universal in its expression?

3. When and Under Which Conditions Does the Problem Happen? Developing a detailed time line of events leading up to a failure is another necessary step in problem analysis, especially for those cases that are one-time occurrences. We can most easily do this by working backwards: start at the time an error was reported (as exact as possible, perhaps using the timeline approach), and work backwards through available memory and history. Usually we only have to look as far as the latest event that we have experienced conflict or despair, however, this is not always easy to do and will only come with practice. The intersection of society with the individual always creates multiple layers of interaction and mutual expectations, with the potential for far more failures than successes. Does the problem only happen at a certain period of one’s life? How often does it happen? What sequence of events leads up to the time the problem is reported? Does the problem happen after an environment change such as after creating new friendships, getting another job, or moving to a new neighborhood? Responding to questions like this will help us create a detailed time line of events, and will provide us with a frame of reference in which to investigate.

4. Under Which Conditions Does The Problem Happen? Knowing what else is happening at the time of a problem is important for any complete problem description. If a problem occurs in a certain environment or under certain conditions, that can be a key indicator of the problem cause. Does the problem always occur when performing the same task, or with the same people? Does a certain sequence of events need to occur for the problem to surface? Do other aspects of our lives fail at the same time? Remember that just because multiple problems might have occurred around the same time, it does not necessarily mean that they are always related.

5. Is there a fundamental flaw in the system and does it appear ubiquitously? Some designs just never quite reach their true potential for system’s operation and stability, and they require a total paradigm shift to see the process differently and bring repairs to it. If we have tested all available solutions, and nothing works, we have either approached the problem incorrectly, or we have exposed a flaw in the designer’s understanding and/or a failure in the implementation of the designer’s intention. We may have reached the most recalcitrant of problems, which are those that are expressions of a normalized unconscious dysfunction.

Asking these questions of ourselves and examining our lives is difficult work. The desire to fix a treasured object that has been damaged, bring a cure to a child’s disease, or to end one’s suffering is the manifestation of love. Love must be the guiding light while facilitating repairs and regeneration of any broken person, place, or thing. Bringing a hammer to a situation that requires a jeweler’s screw driver is a typical overreaction, is self defeating and reveals a life needing greater sensitivity and insight into itself. It is our desire to repair and improve, not damage further and destroy, so a conscious process must be undertaken to initiate repairs to any malfunctioning system, human or mechanical.

Finding the Problem, and Freeing Yourself

This is big picture troubleshooting, for sure. And change can be hard. In any electrical circuit, resistance to the flow of current is ubiquitous.  To reduce resistance, we can either tune the system by adding capacitors and inductors,  shortening conductor length or increasing its size, or increasing the applied voltage, all of which effectively reduces resistance.  There are also the second law of thermodynamics issues, which are entropy, heat related circuit degradation, and eventual chaos.  For humanity, the resistance to the flow of healing energy is also ubiquitous. Yet, we also have options for tuning our own spiritual system, by increasing our capacity to embrace, understand, carry, and transmit higher consciousness, which utilizes its own unique healing algorithm. Like in a high resistance electrical circuit, those who vehemently resist change and do not embrace their healing potential will eventually have their life system ruled by the spiritual equivalent of the second Law of Thermodynamics, where degradation and chaos reigns supreme.

Stories where our unique personal value have been sacrificed to maintain some unloving sense of family and/or cultural order, or disorder, will be fertile grounds for exploration. Also, the over processed junk food narratives of the collective human experience can become coupled to our own unique and vulnerable sense of self, which fosters self-defeating patterns of thought and action. Regardless of the perfection, or the imperfection of our upbringing, problems inevitably arise throughout the entirety of life, within this world that we share. Yet,  if they can be seen within a more expansive context, where we can become more self-aware, consciously engage in troubleshooting and repairing our own issues, and become open to traveling new paths of consciousness, the negative effects can be minimized, and resilience and spiritual competency can be maximized. The intention is to help the broken or under performing person experience enhanced functionality and, thus, experience a greater good.

Healing is a powerful current that runs through us, whether we recognize its presence, or not. Those who recognize it have the potential for an amazing life. Finding the root causes for our individual and collective brokenness allows us to change our lives for the better. We can live a purpose filled life, inspired by the desire to be the best version of ourselves, while serving the highest interests of each other and the Earth with all of its life.

Chapter Two:  My Search For Truth and The Answer I Found

              In April of 1984, I checked myself into the Lovejoy Care Unit, a hospital converted to alcoholism care and recovery. I had been a drug addict and alcoholic, as well as a person consciously suffering from inner turmoil, since my sophomore year of high school in 1971. My most important initial consideration was keeping my job at the U.S. Postal Service, where I worked as a maintenance electrician and instrument technician in training, which I was about to lose if I did not stop substance abuse. I was to stay in the Unit for thirty days, while learning, at a puerile, kindergarten level, enough about my disease and myself that there might be hope for me.

After an interview with my parents, Claire, my counselor, informed me that one of the burdens that I was carrying was that my father was still trying to live his life through me. I wrote a lot of dark poetry during that time, which provided many clues for me in my desire to leave the knowns of my suffering and search for truth, peace, and a much more fulfilling life. And I succeeded in sobering up, but not for long.

In June of 1984, while still working at the US Postal Service, I was sent to  their national training center in Norman, Oklahoma, for a three-week class on repairing mail sorting equipment and a digital logic course, which was a prerequisite to advanced training. I needed to pass this test to have any hope for advanced placement, which would elevate me into a new, more challenging career as a computer technician, which was, potentially, far more interesting than my mundane, regular job as a maintenance electrician. There were two parts to the test, which I needed a 75 percent score to succeed. I aced the first part, scoring 70 out of 70 on the digital logic portion. The last 30 percent of the test was devoted to complex schematics of electronic control systems supporting optical character readers and other equipment. I had no prior experience with this equipment, and could not properly interpret the representative symbology. I failed, scoring zero out of that the last thirty, failing the test by a mere five points.

On the flight home, I relapsed back into drinking. I was so disappointed at this seemingly unfair turn of events, that I became re-dedicated to my own self-annihilation, even ignoring and hiding from the presence of my Care Unit counselor Claire, who serendipitously appeared on the same plane back to Portland. Thus, my sobriety lasted for less than three months, for I did not quite connect with the healing threads that I needed to escape my personal hell. Peace was not found until after I descended fully into a dark underworld, where I attempted suicide in January of 1986, and then began my search for truth.

Cast Out on My Search for Truth

              It remains no mystery to me as to why many people choose continued addiction, or suicide over recovery and healing. Invisible wounds are the hardest to heal and the easiest to stay in denial about their life-threatening potentials. I was starting to see the end of my own road, with my out-of-control car crashing through all of the safety guardrails and continuing the race towards the finish line of my dead-end life. I knew that my problems could not be solved, at least not on my level, and I knew of no other levels that were accessible, or available to me.

I moved back in with Randy, my lifelong friend, in December of 1985, after ending my latest relationship mistake, Alcindia in a rather dramatic fashion, On January 26th, 1986, after yet another night of fighting depression with the hops and yeast antidepressants, I woke up upon Randy’s living room couch at 8:45 a.m., with him emerging from his bedroom, screaming to my clouded mind: “Bruce, wake up and turn on the TV. The Challenger just exploded!”

After watching that horrific event over and over, I had the crushing realization that my life was also over. In part because of a childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, I saw mirrored in the Challenger disaster the total destruction of all of my hopes of realizing my life’s potential, and I made the decision right then and there to end it all, and fulfill a pledge that I had made to myself when I was just fifteen years old. I had known since then that I was a hopeless alcoholic and drug addict, and if I could not shake the disease by age thirty (and if the disease itself had not already killed me) I would take matters into my own hands. I never told another soul of my self-imposed fifteen year “pull date,” should I fail at sobering up. I just held on as best that I could for the intervening years, and I tried my best to adapt to my self-destructive life situation.

I only needed to refill a prescription for some antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication that I already had secured from Dr. Dan Beavers, a psychiatrist that I had been seeing since 1985. I was going to take them all at once, and call it a life. I went to the pharmacist, with the intention of seeing the deed completed immediately.  While standing in line, I ran into Alcindia’s sister’s friend, Mike. We weren’t friends, but I knew him from around, and I started to share the smallest part of my story with him.  He immediately shut me down, stating that he had no time for other people’s problems, which reaffirmed my understanding of the other people’s tendencies towards indifference to each other. The pharmacist would not fill the prescriptions, however, even though I had one refill left on each one, and he told me that I needed to see the doctor again. I was not to be deterred.

I  scheduled an emergency visit to my psychiatrist for that afternoon. He perceived that I might be in a crisis and elicited a promise from me that I would not kill myself with the medication. Dr. Dan had just had another patient kill himself using the same medication, and Dan was still grieving mightily, and could not tolerate another such event from a patient of his. So, he got the empty promise from me that I would not commit suicide. Then I immediately placed those pills under the front seat of my car, for easy access and immediate use, should the conditions of my life prove that it needed immediate termination. I never intended to take those pills as prescribed, instead telling myself that unless I found a reason to live, that I was leaving this planet, without a rocket ship. Thus, began my official search for truth.

I called my old high school friend, Sean, who was stationed in Spain for the US Air Force. I told him that I had a fatal brain tumor and that I was going to die soon. He offered to let me stay with him in Madrid for a while. The thought of a geographic change brought a little hope to me, so I secured my passport, and applied for my pension from the U.S. Postal Service. I was going to use the money for airfare and to support myself Spain. I also filed for unemployment benefits, to help with my immediate income needs. Then I filed for bankruptcy, as I had no intention of meeting my financial obligations, which were immense. I had student loans, credit card debts, credit union loan debts, personal debts to my father, and other debts that totaled close to forty-thousand dollars. I wanted the slate to be clear by the time I was gone, and bankruptcy seemed like the right process to engage in. So I was putting my affairs in order.

In early February, I ran into DiDi, a woman I’d known for a few years and had a brief but intense relationship with in the past. We partied a few times and then decided to go to the beach. We traveled to Seaside together, and I did not really know what to expect, other than there would probably be some more partying, and maybe some connecting on a more personal level. We drank at several local Seaside bars until late in the evening when I no longer had any desire to drink anymore. I told her that I was going back to the hotel room. She stated that she wanted to keep the party going, and continued drinking and carrying on with some of the local folks.  She returned to the hotel room at two in the morning, all excited about some new friends that she had made, and the great cocaine that they had shared together.  She wanted to bring the two guys back into the hotel room to continue the party.

“No thanks, this is where I take my leave!” I told her angrily. I grabbed my overnight bag and headed towards home, even though I was drunk. Somewhere along Highway 26 I crashed my car into a guard rail, nearly going over a cliff in the process. I quickly got the car back onto the road and kept going. When I finally reached North Plains, I fell asleep at the wheel again, stepped on the accelerator, and rammed into the back of another car at freeway speeds. We both pulled over, and I was able to bribe the owner of the car not to call the police, since I was drunk, by writing him a check for $471, which was every last penny that I had in my checking account. My car was totaled, but somehow I was able to make it home, miraculously escaping death or a DUI citation. But I still didn’t stop.

I was to receive the retirement money by the end of March, and I owed my father nearly $3,000, so I no longer had enough money for a final trip to Spain. Stuck at home, I lived out of my 1977 Datsun 310 when I was not crashing in abandoned buildings with other homeless people,  while connecting with all manners and types of damaged and dangerous people.

It is a funny thing, I was nearly dead, or so I thought, so I had little fear as I met new people and befriended them. Most were people who I never would have associated with in my more ordered past, but in this phase of my life, I was curious to know those who I would have avoided if I weren’t looking for trouble. My only intention was to find the truth of living and of being, if there was such a thing, and I intuited that the truth might be hidden somewhere in this darkness and unknown.

I engaged will all types of individuals, and I had conversations with them about what life meant to them, and what they felt about God, good, evil, darkness, light, and human relationships. I carried my suicide drugs under my car seat, so that when the pain got too real again, I could make my departure from my world of little or no meaning, no peace of mind, and extreme personal suffering. During this time, I lived in an underworld community of drug manufacturing and distribution, homelessness, and crime. I witnessed crimes. I befriended homeless victims of sexual predators and child abuse, members of motorcycle gangs and their hit men, felons, murderers, and undercover federal agents, some of whom were still investigating the criminal tentacles remaining from the infamous, Stephen Kessler. I ran with my new friends, and my only intention was to be the best person that I could be, while living out the final moments, days, or weeks of my life. I wanted to live the twelve steps without actually recovering from drug addiction and alcoholism, which I had totally given up on.

Methedrine, crank, speed, go-juice, or one of any number of other street names of the same stimulant became my primary drug of choice, as it made me feel social, connected, and conversational with all others. I would not sleep for up to one week at a time, while running with my peer group. The Punjab tavern on Foster Road became my main hub or center for contact with many of the social branches of the tree of death that I was now climbing. Many a night was spent with a revolving group of my new friends there, with a main core group of people who had mutual interests. Each person I met during this time in my life both pulled me further in and helped me to find the path to recovery, and to finally embracing the path to truth and love within my own heart.

Ralph was from Scappoose, Oregon, or so he said. He was the center point for much underworld activity, and I quickly became his friend, and driver, through many underworld adventures. Through him I met drug chemists, motorcycle gang members, hit men, armed robbers, practicing felons in possession of firearms, prostitutes, homeless victims of child abuse, heroin addicts, and Steve (not his real name), who was an undercover federal agent, and who would figure strongly in my sober future. I learned to really love Ralph, who was an incredibly damaged soul, and his excessive drug use would sometimes cause concern for me. I noticed that paranoia was creeping into his mind, and we would joke about it, but he became my first living example of the damage that excess meth use causes.

I also befriended Ralph’s girlfriend, Sarah. One day, she decided that we needed to visit Jake, who was being held in Clackamas County Jail until his transfer was completed to a federal penitentiary. I knew Jake on the outside, and he was always so kind and friendly towards me. I wanted so much to express my sorrow at his long-term imprisonment. She told me on the way that our friend was a hit man for a regional motorcycle gang that distributed drugs, and he was in jail because one hit went horribly wrong for him. Sarah and I snorted some of the latest designer meth creations from our favorite local chemist just before arriving at the jail. Then when we met Jake at the reception area for the jail, all that would come out of my mouth were awkward grunts and squawks. The stress created by the meeting, coupled with the drugs, probably caused my loss of the ability to speak, thus contributing to the “conspiracy of silence” that my own drug use and addiction enabled.

On another frightening night, I was sitting at the bar yet again, conversing with the owner, Jack, when Robert slid in and sat right next to me. I didn’t know Robert well, but I’d seen him around, and I knew he was recently released from prison. He said, “I have been out of the neighborhood for a long time, and I am hoping to find some old friends.”

“Well, maybe a new friend might show up, say, right next to you this evening?!”

“That would sure be nice.”

Robert and I had an awkward exchange then in which I made a joke about him being a murderer and then learned he’d been in custody for killing a man during an armed robbery. I bought Robert a drink to overcome the awkwardness and talked to him until one of his old friends showed up. They went to the restroom to conduct whatever business they had. When Robert returned, he was slurring his words even harder than he’d been a few minutes before and his eyes had lost their luster. He closed his eyes and slumped down, face onto the bar. Then, he fell off of the chair onto the floor, where he was trying to right himself.

Thinking he was sick, I asked the bartender if he could call the ambulance. He shook his head and said, “Bruce, he is right where he wants to be. If you could, please help him over to a booth in the corner where he can try to get his shit back together.”

Still not sure what was happening, I asked the bartender if Robert had just done heroin and why he would do that.

Jack said, “Bruce, some people are just waiting for a better day. Today is not the better day for Robert, and it may never arrive for him.”

As I got Robert to a booth and out of view to keep us out of trouble, I didn’t truly understand what was happening. But I understand now that the Conspiracy Of Silence had claimed yet another human being. The heroin completely shut the bartender down to his humanity, and left me wondering what my own fate might be if I were to find myself in Robert’s situation.

One night I was hanging out with Dorothy, who was a young woman with two young children. She was a heroin user, dominated by the needs to use, and she was also shadowed by a former lover, Jakob, who was incarcerated in jail at the time of our connection. While I was at her place, I noted her scraping used spoons so that she could get together enough heroin residue to give her a fix. Her supply was out, and she was waiting for her next delivery, so she was tense and anxious. She believed that her criminal boyfriend, Jakob, had extraordinary powers and could astrally project himself out of prison at night. As long as she had company (friends or heroin), Jakob could not materialize into her home to threaten and dominate her, as he did when he was not imprisoned. Our conversation was intense too.

She did not believe in the power of God, having long eschewed any connection with such concepts. She lived for the moment, and knew all too well that shit happened regardless of how “good” or “bad” a person was. She told me about her darkness and belief that even good people will turn against others in a heartbeat, should the need arise.

“Good people do not really exist,” she said, “just fucked-up people who occasionally make helpful choices for themselves or, inadvertently, for others, usually while they are really just trying to selfishly take care of themselves.”

I argued that I believed we all have both energies, and it may only be that if we stumble upon the right understanding. We can act more from a not-so-dark, not-so-selfish position, and occasionally help ourselves and each other to have better lives. Then she called me out.

“Well, Bruce, how much time and energy do you put into having a better understanding of yourself, and being more helpful to others?”

The answer was none. But I wanted to actually try to look at the forces of darkness within myself, to see where I might also be negatively impacting myself and others through a lifetime of not fearlessly confronting those energies. I had no idea what would be revealed, if anything, if I ever successfully overcome my own darkness. Dorothy used heroin to cope with her darkness. But when she said her supplier was on the way and offered it to share it with me, I declined because I’d never done heroin or intravenous drugs before, and I knew I probably didn’t want to start.

But even though I had limits, I continued an incredible downward spiral into addiction, becoming so disfigured that my friends commented on my slight, unhealthy experience. I had lost seventy pounds. I had started hearing voices, and I had become paranoid, as well. And I worked hard not to show anyone that this was happening. But when I insisted that a major undercover operation was in the works, no one believed me. I imagined people telling me that my car was bugged and tore my car apart, searching for the transmitter or the recorder. I had two different people stop by, and try to interrupt me from the search, which only added to my own paranoia. I did not locate the transmitter, but I spoke to the empty car as if someone were listening. I wanted to trouble whoever was listening, renaming myself “the Wild Card” and saying aloud all my dark thoughts. I let my world know, in no uncertain terms, that I was no longer aligned with anyone, as I was on my way to my own death.

When Ralph relocated to protect himself and my social group subsequently collapsed, I met Doctor Dave. He was a short, friendly man, with a severely pockmarked face, and he was recently was released from jail. He introduced me to intravenous drug use, ever so carefully shooting me up with speed for my first time and most subsequent times, as well. I could not shoot up by myself, as I feared needles too much. But the incredible rush I received from intravenous drug use hooked me for the final two months of my drug abusing life. My mental health was irreparably damaged, and my “search for truth” had apparently only uncovered a hastened path to death for me. I was at a party when a friend, Frank, had just secured a fresh batch of speed mixed with heroin (which I had never used before), and he invited me to join him. Sure, why not? I had nothing to lose but a life that was already dead.

I started to accompany this friend to an upstairs room, when I spotted an old friend, Steve, talking with a healthy looking thirty-year-old woman, a person that I might have been attracted to had I been healthy. I met Steve at the same time that I met Ralph. Steve was a very intelligent, well-dressed man, about eight years older than me. Shortly after becoming a peripheral person in our rotating community of characters, I started suspecting him of being and undercover cop. Even so, I had always counted on him to give me good insight into others, though he held the truths about himself close to his chest. He became a big brother to me, at times, and would not spare me criticism, He initially could not understand why I thought it necessary to be where I was, either, though he was the only person that I ever told that I was on a search for truth. And I did not understand, at the time, how he could get by with so little use of drugs. Then I heard the girl at the party say his name, and it was not Steve, confirming my suspicions that he wasn’t who he said he was.

When he saw that I heard his real name, and he then knew that I knew, Steve took me aside, and tried to explain. I instead stopped him and told him that I had suspected him all along of being undercover. I also told him that his secret was safe with me. I told him my journey was about to end, that I was going upstairs with Frank, and if I survived that experience, I was going to return to my car, grab the pills under my front seat, and finish business, once and for all. Yes, I was finished.

Steve grabbed my arm, excused himself from his girlfriend, and took me outside to his car. He said, “Bruce, I can no longer keep you protected and safe. Your search for truth has to end within this dangerous world. Now your real search for truth must begin, starting with your relationship with your father. I never want to see you again, but believe me, I am going to try to help you, any way I can. You deserve so much better of a life than you have given to yourself.” And then he drove me home.

At my father’s house, Steve let me out. He and his partner drove my car to my dad’s house later that evening, and I never saw him again. The pills had disappeared from under the driver’s seat, as well. There was no way that I was going to go back to the doctor for another prescription. I was still a mess, strung out from months of drug abuse, alcoholism, gambling, and I only weighed a mere 135 pounds. My face was all broken out, I had the most horrific shakes, and I heard voices. I had experienced convulsions several times, and I wasn’t thinking very clearly.

My parents were still snow birding in Arizona, so I called my old roommate Randy. He came over, and he, his girlfriend, and I proceeded to down an inordinate amount of my father’s booze and wine. My parents would not be home until the end of the month, so I was still able to keep my dysfunctional momentum going. After partying, Randy went home, and I was left alone with my horrible problems. That was when I blacked out.

I don’t remember picking up one of my father’s loaded guns or driving to another friend’s home in the Milwaukie area. This person was an associate of one of the drug chemists in the underworld culture that I had just emerged from. I have no idea why I went down there, but I awoke from my blackout when the gun discharged, shooting a hole in the front door of his apartment. He had two sleeping children in one room, and a sleeping wife in another room, and I was fortunate to have not brought harm to anyone. He then brought out a hypodermic needle out and injected me with speed (I still would not inject myself). I immediately snapped out of my drunkenness, and proceeded to talk with this guy for twenty-four hours. He gave me one more injection, and then clarity finally hit me.

Literally, a light went on in my mind, and I saw the utter insanity of the person I was with and the insanity of my life. I stood up, laughed at the guy, called him and myself nuts, and walked out of the front door, got into my car, and drove back to my parents’ home. I was changed, though at the time I didn’t know how much.

With five dollars left to my name, I needed to make a decision. Either I could buy more beer and cigarettes, or I could go visit my grandparents in north Portland. I kept the five dollars and drove to family. My grandparents were happy to see me, but were concerned for my appearance. I claimed to have the flu, and grandmother nursed me back to some semblance of health over the next five days, while I detoxified and had withdrawals from cessation of cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs all at the same time.

Return to Myself

I returned home to my parents’ home after a week at the grandparents’. It is another funny thing, two days later, out of the blue, Craig, a friend from childhood called me for the first time in three years. He was court ordered to attend AA meetings for a DUI, and he asked if I wanted to go with him. I figured since God was such a big part of AA, and since I was searching for truth, maybe it would be worth trying it. I proceeded to attend over 270 meetings in my first ninety days; I had nothing else to do, having lost my job, and, basically, my life, to my disease. Craig stopped going to meetings after his court ordered attendance ended. But I continued to attend them, feeling like I had finally found my spiritual home. I then literally spent thousands of hours over the next several years in AA meetings, communication, investigation, reading, writing, meditation, associating with all types and manners of people, and, eventually, healing my relationships.

I had to finally face troubling relationship issues with my father, my family, my society, and my unconscious.  Working the Twelve Steps of AA, initially in my recovery, and practicing meditation and mindfulness helped me to find the threads of meaning that would lead me out of my desire for self annihilation, while also finding a great measure of inner peace.

The 12 Steps of AA Revised To Reflect My Present Spiritual Understanding

1. Through our own extended suffering, we finally found the desire to want it to end. We admitted that when we become self-destructively habituated to any substance, situation, perception, or judgement and/or lack of forgiveness in our relationships with others, we lose our freedom of choice, bring unnecessary trauma into our lives, and into the lives of others, and, thus, fail to achieve any lasting sense of inner peace and joy. We finally realize that our lives have been lived unconsciously and have become unmanageable as a result of that neglect.
2. With our new found hope and openness for change came the desire to begin to awaken to higher possibilities for our lives. We realized that, in our essence, we have an interior, though neglected, power that will heal us and restore us to balance if we pursue it in earnest. We now realize that we have not been living up to our full potential as human beings.
3. We made a decision to turn our will, and our lives, over to the care of our higher interior power. We become open to the possibility of embracing a new Truth for our lives. We want to access the power to continuously evolve, and we want to cultivate our heart to be more loving to ourselves and others. We decide to let go of anything that impedes our progress towards happiness, healing, and wholeness. We realize that without the deepest of desires, and intentions, to change our behavior, we will not be transformed.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We have lived a life without a high sense of self-esteem, and we have made unfortunate choices because of the scarcity consciousness that has resulted from it. We realize that when we find the blocks to our evolution, and become willing to remove them, our new found insight will guide our paths with precision to the Truth of our existence. This is our entrance onto the path of mindfulness and higher consciousness.
5. We admit that we were not being truthful with ourselves and with others, and by talking with another who we may trust, yet not be beholden to, about our errors in judgement and in actions towards our self and others, we can better deal with the shame and self-judgement that so often arises from the deadly secrets that we once felt that we must keep. Just by honestly talking with someone else, our burdens can be lifted. Our secrets need no longer keep us imprisoned and mentally ill. When two or more people come together in the spirit of truth and honesty, mutual compassion and empathy also become part of the gathering.
6. We become entirely willing to let go of our attachments to unhealthy attitudes, behavior, and people. We wish to see clearly, without the limitations of our past, of our family history, and of our cultural conditioning, with all of their embedded trauma.
7. We open our hearts through humility and the willingness to change to embrace a new possibility for our life. Our new found sense of connection with our higher interior power inspires us to become more grateful for the gifts that we now have, and we are now spiritually preparing to finally give back to the world in a meaningful, positive way. We want to finally let go of all of the emotional charged memories which keep us trapped in a dead past. Rejoice, for the old demons are being transformed into the new angels!
8. While we were unconscious to our higher potential as human beings, we bring emotional, spiritual, and perhaps even physical harm to other innocent beings, and we want to try bring healing and peace to those who have suffered from the effects of our ignorance. We realize that through the mirror of all of our relationships, dysfunctional or otherwise, we are granted a view into how we truly see ourselves. We want to see through the eyes of Truth, and not through the pain and suffering that unfulfilled relationships may have brought to us.
9. We made direct amends wherever possible to all people we may have brought harm to, except when to do so would bring further injury to them or to others. Our guilt will not be assuaged at the expense of others. We make full application of our new found wisdom and our renewed desire to bring no harm to any sentient being. We want our world, and our own personal sense of self, to feel safe from further attacks from us, and our honest disclosure of our mistakes to those impacted by our errors in judgement will continue to support that intention.
10. We continued to take personal inventory, and, when wrong, promptly admit it. We have become honest with ourselves. We practice mindfulness and continue to develop our capacity for insight into ourselves. We now know ourselves, and we now know many of the potential impediments to experiencing and expressing the Truth of our being. We no longer solely abide in old modes of thought, and now we are more focused on the beauty of the present moment.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Truth of our being, praying only for knowledge of Truth, and the willingness to live within its infinite domain. We now understand that this whole process of recovery is a meditation on life, and that the evolving, healing life that we are now experiencing is our living prayer. Each time we drink from the deep interior waters revealed to us by meditation, more of our painful dreams are dissolved. We finally realize that the capacity to change, to evolve, to grow in our infinite spirit is the whole point of our human existence. We are now traveling upon new paths of consciousness.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we attempted to carry our message of recovery to our world, while continuing to practice these principles in all our affairs. We have finally become whole, and are now conscious, caring human beings. We have accepted full personal responsibility for our lives, including healing our past, and keeping our present balanced and harmonious, and we no longer blame others for who we are now. We are now experiencing prosperity on many levels, and have witnessed the healing of ourselves. We have saved the world—from ourselves. Our life is now our truest teacher. We realize that we have no power to bring salvation to others, yet, it is our responsibility to point to the way of healing for others who may still be suffering, and who may finally become interested in overcoming their own limitations.

Beyond the Twelve Steps

Outside of meetings, I was enlightened by a new teacher, a recovering alcoholic by the name of Jack Boland, who had released to the world many series of tapes on recovery and spirituality. On May 16, 1987, John Johnson, my coworker at the Fred Meyer warehouse, gave me on of his tapes on recovery, and for this I am eternally grateful. I listened to these tapes over and over, and something miraculous happened afterwards

My search for Truth, which had taken me through the darkest regions of hell, was about to give me wings, and enable me to fly to the sun and beyond.

Yet, the prison guard with one of the primary keys to release me from my own spiritual imprisonment was my own unhealed relationship with my father. Overcoming a lifetime of oppression and control by others is no easy task. It also must be done clean and sober, for the true depth and healing of the experience to permanently take hold. I began a new relationship with my father, starting with my new-found sobriety. After that era of my life, I certainly was ready to move away from ignorance, the effects of trauma, and suffering.

My arrows of perception became radically redirected inward in the spring and summer of 1987, after a series of three most profound spiritual experiences and my exuberant practicing of meditation, coupled with a newfound willingness to travel upon new paths of consciousness. I was given a vision to bring healing to myself, through allowing the Divine Feminine to love and nurture me unconditionally, while also learning how to pass that healing energy to others. I was shown how my perception can be transformed, so that I no longer just see myself, and the world, as two separate experiences or entities.

Bruce, This is a general note on this chapter, which I’m putting here because I want to revisit these sentences for a related reason. But overall, I am trying to organize this chapter around the idea of troubleshooting and repair and taking the first steps to doing so. I have moved out all the information about the water moment and the evolution of human language because it feels like that could almost stand on its own for a chapter. I could be wrong, though, and maybe that needs to be trimmed down and summarized in this chapter. In any case, I want to revisit this later after I get through more of the material.

Not sure if this will really be chapter two or not…

This implies a level of forethought that may need to be further described here. Or maybe it needs to be cut? Let’s talk about this and your motivation going into your search for truth.

I left this here because it is about what happened after you cleaned up. But this may belong in a different chapter, depending on whether you expand on these three spiritual realizations. If there’s not more material on this, then let’s talk more about it.