I sent the introduction/prologue to nearly four dozen of my friends, and important acquaintances. I received three replies, and one had no clue what I was talking about. Well, I am not deterred.
I am guessing that this book will become a cult classic in about 50 years, but I won’t be around to see it.
This book will be published, and distributed for free, if necessary.
No More Turning Away;
How to Break the Conspiracy of Silence and Embrace Life
Prologue or Introduction to Introduction
If you want to become whole, let yourself be broken.
If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything, give everything up
Lao Tsu (from the Tao Te Ching)
Our minds are the most miraculous, wondrous creations and deserve our loving attention, and healing intention. The mind is both a goal setting and achieving mechanism, as well as an avenue of awareness for us. At some point in our lives, we realize that many of the goals that our family our society, or even our religion sets for us are not only incongruent with our good, but also not for the greater good of the world. At some point of our lives, we finally realize that we have access to higher powers than we ever realized, number one being the power to make meaningful changes in our own lives. And, at some point in our lives, if we have stumbled upon an eternal truth in our great journey of awakening, we realize that, in our own silence, a higher power, perhaps even a universal power, sees itself through our very own eyes. But first, we need to rise above our attachments to the past and our internal resistance to both healing and change that limits our awareness, thoughts, and actions in this world..
Trauma is a term that is being given maximum consideration by sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, ministers, and lay people these days. PTSD is a recently coined acronym that seems to capture the essence of a wounded person’s experience downstream from any traumatic engagement, and our mental health professionals, and spiritual advisors, are working in tandem to develop healing modalities that may bring harmony back into the awareness of the wounded person. Yet, just because we do not have such a label attached to our own personal experience does not mean that we have not been impacted by prolonged stress or trauma. I propose to you, the reader, that trauma, in its most general sense, is the summation of interpersonal actions and responses that close down a human being to the awareness of their capacity for spiritual empowerment and evolution. We all have the capacity to be a healing light to ourselves, and to others, and if we are not presently experiencing this grace, I propose that this is because of the effects of both individual and collective acts of trauma against us over the course of our lives.
We can bury our wounds, our griefs, our hurts, our traumas under massive amounts of the dirt of denial, but these buried issues, like planted seeds, will bind themselves to the soil through roots, while reaching for the light they so desperately need. This book is about the search for a light that we can heal and live by, where recovery from addiction, or healing from loneliness, depression, mental illness, and/or suicidal ideation becomes our evolutionary imperative. It is about seeing how our history, our race, our culture, our biology, and our conditioned consciousness attempts to keep all of us in a certain pattern or structure of understanding. I will indicate what we can do about it if we want to look at ourselves, and life, with a more holistic understanding and with more love and compassion, personal healing and empowerment, and enhanced resiliency.
In 1987, I had a series of remarkable transformative events in my life. I was near death, and insane, and if I could not find a REAL TRUTH that I could guide my life by, I was prepared to leave this earth life. I finally found that REAL TRUTH, and I had what the Christians might call a born-again experience, sans their prophet Jesus and all of the tradition and mythology surrounding that religion. I had a healing which gave me a blank slate to write my new identity upon, without being burdened by all of the wayward attitudes of the old me. But the spiritual experience revealed the presence in consciousness of two “tricksters” who I did not have the knowledge or capacity to deal with at that time, and that REAL TRUTH would not just magically dissolve without some sort of conscious participation on my part.
I was to find that many spiritual teachings, religions and prophets for those traditions bypassed or minimized the necessary engagement with these powerful cultural and personal forces, thus keeping them as unconscious advisors to all well meaning practitioners. Yet ancient shamans, the early Greek philosophers, and, more recently, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Gabor Mate, Dick Schwarz, and the modern day shaman Dr Alberto Villoldo have pointed to the way to engage, transform, and transcend these ever-present forces in consciousness that impede our spiritual evolution..
When it comes to being conscious as a human being, it is what it is, but it is not what it seems. I would like to encourage any hesitant reader to consider this challenging, yet, potentially, transformative work. I will not promise you eternal salvation, or a seat next to God in heaven. I will not promise you infinite financial prosperity, and all of the popularity that you need to fulfill your vision of who you think you are. But I promise you that I will present to you deep and potentially healing truths to contemplate, and, perhaps, to apply to your own life. I dug deep for this material, so deep, in fact, that I dug my own grave while still young and nearly buried myself in it.
This is hard hitting material., and for most people, it will be difficult to read all the way through in one sitting. What I have already seen from friends and family is that they already have too much to consider, too much family troubles, too much distraction to even consider such an intensive and extensive work. Please remember, these words have a value many will not immediately recognize, and thus it can be easy to casually dismiss them and move onto “more important matters”. But these words have immense importance to me, and I would not be here had I not made a decision to keep living, and find an accurate description of the challenges that living in this diseased culture brings, and why so many like me felt the need to leave it prematurely, or engage in self and/or other destructive activities…
I wrote this as if my own, and many other, lives depended upon it, BECAUSE THEY DO. Note that, while you read, many parts of yourself will be motivated to just “turn away”, and put the book down, and move onto something much more pleasant. If you can be more conscious of that inclination, you need not judge or condemn it, just witness it, and not be carried by it back into perceptions of boredom, or even indifference to this subject matter.
Do you want to know why things never change? It is because we let our “not relevant to me” or “don’t care” indifference algorithms rule our minds. I urge you from the very beginning of this work to hang in there and wait for a new miracle of perception to appear in your awareness that meditating upon this work may eventually stimulate within you.
This work may have amazing potential, for those who are not trapped in culturally and religiously constrained patterns of unawareness, or, if they are trapped, are seeking release from these historical pillories. According to the latest neuroscientific studies, .led by Antonio Damasio, our identity as a human being is much more determined by the collaboration of all cells within our bodies, and our feeling nature than our left brain dominated rational processing centers.. Men have taken issue with that fact thousands of years before Descartes time (I think therefore I am), yet the fact remains—-we have to feel something DEEPLY, to truly find a new truth, and to feel and experience our real self.. I will be appealing to the very marrow of your bones, the cells within your body, the feeling nature of your heart and soul, while balancing the need to keep the intellect, and our rational processes, engaged. Please remember, we have to feel the truth deep within our very bones, before we will act upon it.
I did not write this book to entertain or amuse the reader. I wrote this book, not only to give voice to my process, but to give voice to those that never developed their own healing message, or who lost their voice due to early deaths, and/or historical cultural oppression. The words that you are about to read may be considered to have an almost miraculous quality to them, because they are written by a man who, by all rights, should be dead. I will not take it personally if you find that this work is irrelevant to you, yet if you want to enhance your sensitivity to our human condition, this book may be of help.
After nearly dying at 31 years of age, and embarking on a life changing search for truth, I was finally able to give voice to my past, and to my suffering, as well as to point in the direction of healing’s true origins. Dead men tell no tales, and, often, the world would not have wanted their message anyway, because the conditions that often lead to premature death and disease lie latent within all of us, and our denial of that fact is a powerful internal ruler. Yet, I live to tell my difficult tale, a tale that almost cost me my life, and a tale that is especially hard to listen to by those often in the greatest need..
I do not live much beyond 31 years of age, if I continued to turn away from my own traumatic wounding, and resultant suffering. This book does not get written if I turn away from the wounding and suffering of others. A powerful realization came to me that I could no longer just keep taking crap from past versions of myself, and a society that drains life force out of all its unconscious members. just so we could continue in our own unexamined, unconscious, unhealed existence, while parading around as if everything is still OK. Most of the scars on our hearts were not left by our enemies, they were left by the culture, the religion, and the people that claimed to love us the most.
I finally realized that I wanted and deserved love, while the world that we live in thinks that it deserves more comfort, entertainment, distraction, religious and political fantasy and delusion, and avoidance of difficult cultural truths, at the very expense of being more loving to itself, and to each other. I eventually found the love that I was looking for, but it did not come from this crazy world that we live in, it erupted within my own mind and heart. Yet, what about this world around me, where and when will it be captured by the infinite spirit of Truth and Love?
Sadly, the world must continue spinning in its wobbly orbit around its culturally institutionalized and normalized control dramas and insanity, where unhindered traumatic wounding of its citizens, spiritual decay, loneliness, anxiety, political divisiveness, religious fundamentalism, and mental illness, often posing as adherents of the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution, continues unabated. There is no such thing as the devil, or Satan. There is only the unconscious selfish beliefs of men and women who would rather watch the world burn than make necessary changes in the errant courses of their lives.
I have given a voice to my dark and light sides, and I now live in harmony within myself. Yet, the nightly news continues to give a sad summation daily of the ever-present shadows and darkness permeating the fabric of our civilization. We do not live in harmony, and the light and dark continue to seek their own tribes, rather than collaborate on a healing path.
I saved the world, FROM MYSELF. Yet, the world is too unconscious to save other innocent people from its own wayward intentions, let alone the intentions of its misguided individual citizen. The powerful message here is that we each much work out our own salvation, and find our own unique healing, guiding light, for the ones being offered to us by our culture are suspect at best. We each must consciously look at life, discard the old, unnecessary parts that still try to rule us, and crown a new king, or queen, within our being who will rule with compassion, understanding, and healing intention over our thoughts and actions for the rest of our days.
It is tough to know in advance who to trust in these most challenging of times, as we attempt to move away from the old ways into a new understanding. Should we trust the authorities like we are programmed to do? Should we just automatically trust anyone with a PHD, a medical and/or therapeutic practice, a license to practice law, a degree from a Christian college, a former military commander, a reality tv star turned politician, the awakening Pope Francis from the long corrupted Catholic church, or US Supreme Court justices who takes advantage of our collective complacency and ignorance? Is that not tantamount to putting “new wine into old wineskins”?
Staying silent and remaining compliant within the face of our diseased culture is easy in the short term, but deadly to all in the long term. It is time to trust the courageous ones, the ones who attempt to speak the truth, and hold themselves, and each other, accountable to healing intentions. To speak the truth requires an integrity that seems to evaporating from the very landscape of our culture, as more power seeking people, cowards by their very nature, tell lies to get their way. Telling a lie is easy, especially when our culture has normalized so many of them. Standing up for what is right is hard work, and few seek employment in that field. Thinking for ourselves is hard, while also being compassionate, authentic, and empowered.
In times like these it takes all of the courage in the world to question the status quo, and to speak up, and to tell the Truth. Dead men tell no tales, but I am no longer under the spell of the conspiracy of silence, where lies and avoidance of discomfort are our paradigms, and rule our awareness. I have looked deeply at both the light, and the shadow of human existence. I have even stared into the face of Death.
I did not turn away from what I saw.
The following book is a report on what I have seen.
The power revealed within our self by clearly seeing the limitations of our collective, and individual, consciousness is everything.
Seeing through those illusions gives us the freedom to travel our own unique path of awakening and find our own promised land.
Get ready, I am about to “poke the bear”!
Introduction; Mythology, Religion, Liars, The Conspiracy Of Silence, The Cloak Of Invisibility, and No More Turning Away
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Joseph Goebbels
In the words of J. Krishnamurti, being well-adjusted to a sick society is no measure of good health. Much of our present world civilization has sickness built right into its very systems of economics, governance, and understanding of itself and the people in it. Progress and national expansion have been built upon the captured lands of native peoples, the monetization and overuse of Mother Earth’s resources, and the denial of full rights and dignity to the economically disadvantaged. Our world has been built upon the backs of a predominantly unconscious, overachieving, oppressed, and traumatized humanity. Do we remain in the conspiracy of silence and inaction around these global issues, or do we confront our complacency, our resistance to a changing truth, and thus become part of a globally collaborative healing adventure?
Are you tired of your suffering, or the needless suffering of others? Are you tired of being the silent stick figure in the dreams of others who would control and manipulate you? Are you tired of your past wounds controlling your perceptions and guiding you onto diseased and despairing paths of unconsciousness? If you have ever felt insignificant, unimportant, or worthless, then I want you to know that you can free yourself from those thoughts and feelings.
When we want to change our lives, we usually start with a motivating assumption, an assumption offered by others, yet probably also informed by our intuition and our long-lost innocence: Though we are not experiencing it now, there must be a better or even a perfect state of being available to us. There must be a cause or reason that we are not experiencing this blissful state. Is it because of an error in our thought, behavior, upbringing, acculturation, or even a fundamental flaw in our being? Or is it a result of trauma? The answer may surprise you.
The Conspiracy of Silence
Governments have similar characteristics to the individuals within the society that they represent. They are the collective energy of many individuals’ intentions.
Whether we’d like to admit it or not, governments, in general, are some of the shadiest organizations out there. The bigger and more powerful the country, the more likely it is to sit on a massive pile of shocking secrets and lies it has told its citizens. Such is the United States’ case, which perhaps has the most significant number of conspiracy theories drafted in its honor. The Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy’s assassination, the Iran Contra Affair, UFOs, and all of the other so-called conspiracy theories did not just grow out of nowhere. Due to the work of Congressional investigations and the Freedom of Information Act, our country has learned that many of our conspiracy theories do have a foundation in fact. Though most times, the facts are not as clear as we would like them to be, thus subject to interpretation and political leveraging.
Our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, according to President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. As goes our government, so goes our citizens, so goes our government, etc. Our governments have been designed to represent the interests of their citizens, and if the citizens are prone to keeping dangerous secrets, so are the governments. Historically, America has shown itself to be the People Of The Lie. The white race has shown that it has immense talent and expertise in leveraging a falsehood into a profitable enterprise for itself. For example, the European immigrants committed genocide, stole America from its native inhabitants, and kidnapped and enslaved men and women of African descent, and much of America still found a way to justify its own murderous excesses.
Much of the American Christian Church morphed into a political ally for our capitalist economic system and government, and they proliferate the lie that we have no value unless we adhere to their belief systems. And when it comes to our excesses and crimes against humanity, we have learned that if we change the subject fast enough, or spin the facts in deceptive ways, we can avoid being held accountable and responsible for our own errant attitudes and actions. We are a country that has learned to scapegoat the innocent and enrich and aggrandize the guilty among us.
Carl Sagan has stated in his work The Demon Haunted World, that “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once we give a charlatan power over us, we almost never get it back.” Yes, the power of the lie keeps the people of the lie as active community members within our cultural and familial conspiracy of silence.
- Where and when are we to find our freedom, while the church and the government are trying to control us?
- Where and when are we to find our freedom, while our conditioning and our traumas are still trying to tether us to an unhealthy past and control us in the present?
- Why would we ever consider granting each other release from the binding arguments of our lies and misunderstandings?
This book is a documentation of my understanding of the facts of our lives, clues about our shared human nature, and the discovery of our possibilities for transcending our human condition. Our sense of self or ego is as limited and mysterious to us in our unenlightened space as is our limited concept of God. The only “God” that most people ever become aware of are the lies and confusion spread by unevolved religions and their unaware adherents. We do not give real prayers, as we continue in earnest our culturally prescribed mutual control dramas.
In our native essence, we have a curious mind, a balanced masculine/feminine nature, and an amazing body as our vehicle for our consciousness. We naturally seek to understand ourselves and our relationship with the whole, yet we become self-conscious, judgmental, and/or uncomfortable with those assessments. The loss of our connection with nature and our imbalanced and inaccurate perceptions of self and each other contributes to our sense of isolation, loneliness, and vulnerability. If we do not make ourselves aware of the reasons behind the choices that we make in life, we remain unconscious human beings with little true freedom. The resulting perceptions spawned from our confusion are legion in number and resistant to change. It is no wonder why making a conscious choice is so difficult. One eventually has to ask: Why would I rather hold onto a fantasy than face myself?
Adam and Eve are often depicted naked in the Garden of Eden, made decent only by a well-placed fig leaf. The fig leaf represents
shame and
denial, or our need to hide from our inner creator and all of our creations. Thus, the ceding of personal responsibility is consummated through scapegoating or sacrificing others. Our
protective armor has evolved over hundreds of generations from a single fig leaf to become a Kevlar suit and military-style weapons for far too many human beings. As Goebbels suggests, the truth is the greatest enemy of our culturally institutionalized misunderstanding of Life, ourselves, and all of our relationships with all of mankind. This division between reality and fantasy draws its energy from the lies that we continue to tell ourselves and vigorously defend to each other. Our ignorance of higher possibilities began in the mythical Garden of Eden and is where, at least conceptually, the feeling of shame and the need to tell lies to cover up our sense of inadequacy becomes mankind’s first experience of dishonesty. And it continues unabated today.
When we don’t have the facts that we need, we sometimes trust the version of the facts offered to us by others, or even ourselves, even if their source is the cunning “snake in the grass.” The lies start small, as indicated by the fig leaf. But as our defense mechanisms grow in sophistication over time, eventually we clothe ourselves entirely with them. The flaming swords of the Cherubim guard the gates back into Eden, preventing us in our now “fallen” nature from ever reentering the Garden again. The reason is simple: We have abandoned our native intelligence, and now all that we see is a lie, projected out of ourselves. That lie will persist until we find a release from our temptations to believe solely in our self-defining and limiting judgments, grief, traumas, and wounds. As we return to our innocence, we lose our need to hide from ourselves and control others, we gain a enhanced perspective of the wholeness and unity of life , we lose many of our attachments to our old assessements of what was good and bad, and we no longer remain paralyzed by the fear of our own vulnerability and innate spiritual power.
Lies are the primary activity of the relatively unevolved mind, a mind intoxicated by subservience to its hubris, secondhand life experience, and twisted self-centered understanding of what is good and what is bad. Lies serve as a creative avenue for maintaining a safe distance from threatening truths that we are not yet prepared to confront. Nobody wants to grow up to be the best liar in the world (former President Trump might be the exception). Yet, by living a lie and telling lies, we can convince ourselves that we do not need to adapt, adjust, understand, accommodate, and/or heal.
Some who have been traumatized and victimized by the family, or by the community, may find little support in their search for justice and compassion. Thus they are compelled to remain silent about the abuse, fearing reprisal and spiritual assaults. This is a form of forced silence, and is the breading ground for the creation of lies. We are all the beloved of God, of this Universe, and our Mother Earth, and that is a poorly comprehended and applied fact within our collective consciousness. In truth, we should also be beloved by our fellow man, and we all have felt that lack of love. Unnecessary pain and suffering come from denying this truth, and it is the basis for many of the social ills within civilization.
The parable of The Emperor’s New Clothes represents in narrative form how we are susceptible to the lies of the mind being spun together with the invisible golden threads of self-deceit. Our deception, both to ourselves and to others, creates for us a self-perceived “cloak of invisibility.” The lies that we tell ourselves to cover our innocence and vulnerability feel like they are spun from gold, and, at least initially, we take pride in our new version of ourselves. Because of our social nature, we want to look good to others, thus the parading around of our latest “clothing.” But life will always present us with “an innocent young boy” who sees through the deception and proclaims our nakedness before our adoring crowds. Oh, how the masses love this eternal parade of fools, which, in our deceived state, we remain active participants.
The need to please others without first finding our real selves can lead to some incredibly challenging and embarrassing situations. It is enlightening to note how much of the ego’s energy is devoted to its own recognition when there was a shortage of loving attention very early in life. The ego, both individual and collective, is created from a desperate call for love from a world that has not yet learned how to listen to and love itself.
Through our unwillingness to embrace this world with love, with its ever-evolving truth, we tend to maintain a caricature of our real selves. And we build an almost impenetrable fortress around this misunderstanding (this idol, or self-creation, is called our “ego”), thus perpetuating a culturally conditioned war both against the present moment and all who appear unlike ourselves. Acts and attitudes of duplicity and folie a deux characterize much of the crazy-making attitudes and communication styles. The need to tell lies is a confirmation that we are practicing denial of our basic truth and are not yet courageous enough to face ourselves completely and honestly. When we don’t honor our truth, we share in our culture’s conspiracy of silence created to continue the perpetuation of those control dramas that prove we are anything but children of God.
The cultural conspiracy of silence is spawned through our culture’s accommodations to our lying nature and the need to hide from those lies. It manifests itself in two primary ways. First, the conspiracy embodies all of the shameful ideas that we have thought and acted upon, sometimes culminating in intentional harm to self and others. We keep our secrets close to our chest and fear our day of reckoning, when others may see through our surface stories to the hidden truth behind our senseless fear, heartless indifference, or hatred of ourselves and others. A compelling part of this conspiracy is that others also share in this activity of keeping dangerous secrets, secrets that are attacks against ourselves, the (potentially) innocent other, and the truth.
- How manyfamily lies exist just to keep a failing marriage together?
- How many liesexist just to protect the family from outside scrutiny because a member has a drinking or gambling problem?
- How many lies exist just to keepones tenuous hold on a job?
- How many lies existjust to cover up one’s own poor self-esteem?
- How many lies existjust to convince everyone else how well we are doing, even if we are in the greatest pain, or even dying inside?
This lying mutually imprisons all of us.
Second, the conspiracy indicates a hesitancy to talk with others about our spiritual potential and our innate ability to connect with and manifest a more aware, intelligent state of being. Those who are avid in their church attendance may believe that merely belonging to a particular tribe, be it Judaic Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, they are already granted their necessary grace, as if through a magical dispensation. These people feel threatened by suggestions that their way may not be in resonance with “God’s will,” and they shut down all points of view in disagreement with their own. Others feel resistance to any truth not already codified within their own tradition and dogma. Many just turn their heads, and their words, away from the resistant person, or even the community, knowing that their own new or elevated understanding or true spiritual discernment makes them invisible to those who refuse to look anew at life from a shared love or more collaborative perspective.
Who wants to spend their lives continuously confronting the unevolved? Thus, those not trained or equipped to qualify for the debate team just smile and walk away, keeping their words to themselves. We may remain silent because of our own perceived inadequacy in presenting a supporting and compelling argument for our point of view, fearing indifference and rejection from others. Those with personalized versions of our culture’s institutionalized hatred or judgments, such as white supremacists, misanthropic gun owners, and/or religious and political fundamentalists are especially resistant to open communication. Such people may even feel that their freedom and way of life are threatened.
Spiritual freedom has never been about guns, money, or religion. Good luck communicating and collaborating successfully with someone stuck in their own tribal and personal self-righteousness, while stockpiling weapons of philosophical, religious, and/or mechanical natures.
This is a critical part of the conspiracy of silence. We become invisible to each other, less curious about others while becoming unwilling to communicate with each other, and therefore we remain less curious about ourselves. We become invisible to ourselves when we sit on our voices and fail to listen to our essence as our inner voice cries out for justice, peace, healing, and change.
There is a cultural conspiracy of silence, and that fact remains beyond question. Those who have been traumatized by their own or their family member’s mental illness often do not communicate their distress and thus suffer in silence. Many secrets are kept, that are held close to the heart, because the victimized, the broken, and the ill do not have the language nor the receptive audience to share their trauma and pain with. Some traumas are so painful and distressing that the victim is fearful that the revelation of their disease will bring harm to others or further harm to themselves. And major sectors our culture remains judgmental, uncaring, and indifferent to the plight of the suffering, closing their minds, hearts, and ears to those in need, so that they can continue relatively unbothered in their own selfish, self-serving worlds.
I have been personally impacted at the deepest, most profound levels, and my own social anxiety, mental illness and addictions as a teenager and young adult were a cause of greatest concern for myself, my family, and my community. I have been victimized by mental illness, addiction, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and my path through life has made me a reluctant expert in these matters. Not only is remaining unconscious and victimized not a helpful option now, but it is also inappropriate and unhealthy for me to keep silent around these issues, as I tend to be as sick as my secrets. In my unhealthy past, my conditioned response would be to keep silent, as I had nothing of value to share with the world, and/or the world could give a shit about what I had to say anyway. Extrapolate that response to all of life, and we can perceive the isolating framework that imprisons much of the American psyche.
One of the more powerful stories about my early life has to do with the unconscious parental care that I received as a baby. My parents wrapped me in a blanket and put me in the car in the garage at night so they could get some sleep. My father was chasing the American Dream and worked two jobs. And I was just another “damned crying baby.” This experience, although I didn’t know it at the time, left me feeling abandoned and lonely from the beginning. I always felt like I was competing for love. I never felt like I had anything to contribute. Toxicity pervaded my childhood home, the way it pervaded the culture at the time, and continues to do so. My father overreacted to any situation that brought a sense of fear or threat into the home environment. I felt an unconscious need to find safety within myself while balancing whatever energy was being over-expressed at any particular moment, which certainly added to my passive-aggressive component of self-expression. Though I loved my parents, I certainly did not want to grow up to be like them. And for most of my life, I couldn’t get over my upbringing.
Much of my early life was clouded by the traumatic influences that I experienced. I can never forget the dark feelings of abandonment as a four-year-old when I woke up from a nightmare and found no parents in our home, with the garage empty. I could not forget the pain of a belt whipping from my father from the ages of four through thirteen years of age.
I could not forget the feelings of terror and confusion at being told that I was damned to an eternity in hell as a six and seven year old for not acting and speaking in a religiously acceptable manner.
How can I forget the victimized, helpless feeling of being abused by school bullies, or my father publicly humiliating me at a baseball game when my errant pitches missed the mark? I can never forget the horror, as an eight-year-old boy, of watching my first dog get run over by a car. How about the confusion and distress I suffered as a seven-year-old when viewing my grandfather’s lifeless body? I remember the many years of tortured sleep and bed-wetting caused by nightmares. Perhaps the greatest trauma I experienced was the one I don’t remember when my parents placed the incessantly crying baby version of me into a car in our garage at night so that my work-a-holic father could get five hours of sleep. I do not wonder why I came to believe that my cries were not important, both as a child, then as an adult.
Trauma is an umbrella term, and it covers an almost limitless variety of damaging responses within the mind and body of its victims to stressful events that humanity has utilized since the beginning of time. Though not everyone who has had a stressful event will have traumatic wounding, all traumatic wounding has resulted from severely stressful events. Anyone who has been gaslit over a long period of time by a wayward parent or partner has been stressed, and traumatized. Anyone who has been made wrong for the errant thoughts and actions of an unconscious abuser has been stressed, and traumatized. Anyone who has been threatened with an eternity in hell for not believing a certain way has been stressed, and traumatized. Anyone who has lived through a natural disaster has been stressed and traumatized.
Trauma’s most damaging impact upon a human being is its capacity to attenuate, or even block, normal emotional expression and interchange with others. Unexpressed energy becomes stored within the body and mind, creating black holes of negative influence on bodily function and our perceptions. Our unhealed emotional issues and traumas become entombed within our bodily tissues. When our personalities have been formed by the layering of our egos upon our wounds, the wounds become inseparable from us and then affect us in ways that aren’t always visible on the surface. And I know that so many of my problems have come about because I was made to understand that my cries weren’t important. This was why I often felt alone in the world.
My belief and understanding are we all suffer under traumatic influences caused by family, culture, or even Mother Nature Herself. Virtually all men and women have experienced oppression, repression, and the resultant diseases of the spirit at some point in their lives, and we have been both the victims and the conscious and unconscious perpetrators of this behavior. Some people experience trauma at home, in the school system, in a work setting, or in the external environment. Society is the greatest inflictor of trauma on the individual. And for the most part, the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions have failed in their understanding of humanity and its basic, innermost need to be valued and listened to. And that’s caused some unnecessary pain and suffering.
We have all attempted to manage our symptoms in our own unique, yet all too often broken and dysfunctional ways. I spent a lot of years sabotaging myself through self-destructive lifestyle choices. And when I look around the world, I see a lot of other people doing the same thing. Suicidal behaviors exist on a spectrum. There are, of course, people who are acutely suicidal. But when I say suicide, I also mean not fully developing our potential, not connecting with our spirit of wholeness within, and chipping away at life. I’m also talking about the person, who because they can’t quite measure up, they don’t talk, they overeat, they don’t exercise, they drink too much, they start using narcotics, and they create accidents for themselves with their reckless behavior. We don’t call that suicide while it’s happening. But then, when we look around us and see so many dying young, there’s no other way to describe lifestyle choices that don’t affirm their value as human beings.
I made a conscious decision to try to kill myself on January 28, 1986. Of course I didn’t succeed, but I have since spent considerable time looking back on that day and the events that led me to that decision. From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic, drug addict, and mentally ill human being, I lost most of my freedom of choice. I understand now that, all those years I turned to substances, I was doing so as an escape from the wounds of trauma, which manifested through anxiety, loneliness, and poor self=esteem..
There has been a marked increase in anxiety, depression, loneliness, substance abuse, and other forms of mental illness in our general population recently. We have a 60 percent obesity rate, 16 percent of people admit to drinking too much, and 50 percent say they’re lonely. Loneliness increases the risk of premature death by over 30%, according to the US Surgeon General Murthy. Research shows that Americans, who have become less engaged with houses of worship, community organizations, and even there own family members in recent decades have steadily reported an increase in loneliness. The epidemic is hitting young people ages 15-24 especially hard, with many reporting a 70% drop in time spent with friends, which was accelerated by the COVID pandemic. Loneliness may not sound like a hazard, but it can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, anxiety, depression, a weakened immune system, cognitive decline, and even death. The body creates stress hormones from that loneliness, and stress hormones wear out our systems and lead to other health problems that cause premature death.
These personal experiences are part of the bigger picture of cultural disease. Turbulent political times and toxic leadership are manifestations or symptoms of a national disease for the major blocks of people who feel that they have been neglected, ignored, or persecuted. Far too many people on either side of the divide have felt that way most of their lives, and they continue to diagnose and treat themselves for their stress, loneliness, and anxiety. Self-medication is dangerous behavior, and it’s much too easy to choose the immediately available remedies of drugs, alcohol, and/or awkward or self-destructive political and religious ideologies to treat symptoms of our national disease. I have personally witnessed mental illness, religious fanaticism, rigid fundamentalism, drug addiction, and early death through many of my co-workers, friends, family members, acquaintances, and even myself. And while I realized that much of my problems reside within me, I share a consciousness with this world that is damaged.
How to Overcome Our Trauma
The mythical story of Theseus and the Minotaur provides us with an allegorical sign that points in the direction of our own healing potential. The Minotaur, according to the mythology, is the creative byproduct of the mating of our divine and animal nature, which is a great metaphor for the fragmented/divided human being who has both exiled his biological self, and his divinely feminine nature, prior to becoming integrated into wholeness through transformation and healing. Theseus had to travel deep into the labyrinth (the human mind) to confront, and defeat, the Minotaur (the fearful parts of our animal and feminine natures, and our lies, fears, traumas, and deep wounds that negatively impacts our life). Yet, Theseus would not have had success, had he not left a trail of string to follow back out of the labyrinth after the Minotaur’s defeat. Theseus left himself this clue or way to finally escape the clutches of a mind under the influence of its darker side. If we can become aware of the mistakes in perception that led us to each dead-end in life, that is certainly a thread, or a clue, we now have to exit the maze. Those with an abusive husband, once they connect with why they stay in a self-destructiv erelationship, have a clue for their eventual exit from the maze. Those with a serious drug or alcohol problem have been given many clues, they just have not yet successfully struggled through the maze of their own mind to find and slay the real beast that keeps them seeking intoxication to the point of their own detriment.
J.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy is a fantastic Middle Earth variation on the same theme, with the heroes Samwise and Frodo taking the Ring back to its source in Mordor. We must confront the dark tricksters and defeat and silence them, or we will remain controlled by them. It is our responsibility to find our freedom, and blaming others for our creations is a failed, though socially acceptable, solution.
Consciousness itself is the Garden of Eden, Adam, Eve, the Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Apple, God, the labyrinth, the Minotaur, the Emperor’s New Clothes, and the innocent boy calling out our lies. And, we are that Consciousness. All of these myths, legends, and stories play out within our minds, the minds of others, while residing within the collective mind of mankind, which we all have access to, to mine for its treasures, or to be victimized by its structures of control over each unconscious individual.. Jesus of Nazareth clearly stated that humanity is the prodigal son, or that very unconsciousness itself.. We have strayed far from Eden, and we have feasted in the pig pen of an unevolved human experience. Yet, the journey back to our true nature or essence, though being a most difficult endeavor, is the most rewarding experience that life has to offer. If we commit to traveling upon new paths of consciousness, eventually Eden will reappear within our interior vision, and we won’t need to spin any more illusions of ourselves in vain attempts to capture the attention of others.
We can all return to our essence, to our original “Garden of Eden” state, but we had better have a clue. Otherwise, we will remain trapped in our labyrinth of self-deception and spiritual corruption until the end. Without the healing of our wounds, loving acceptance of ourselves and each other remains impossible, we remain separated from our true nature, and we continue being dominated by our demons from the past.
We are about to embark on a great adventure and journey into the center of our being, and even of consciousness itself. And we will be using the tools of word formation and story development to aid in our fantastic voyage of self-discovery and, ultimately, healing. Consciously developed stories can become the defining containers for our infinite spirit, and they keep us safe while we uncouple from old pathways of misunderstanding and personal disease, until we redevelop our capacities to live by the power of our timeless, limitless, present moment self, with a new understanding of who, or what, we really are in truth
Like almost everyone else on this planet, I have been subjected to the family and cultural forces of oppression and repression and crazy-making communication and behavior. Over the years, I have also become deeply disturbed by the developments within our shared world, within my consciousness, and the points of connection between self and others, through language, religion, and philosophy, that have created oppression, repression, and personal and social disease. Within myself, I have seen how a lifetime of oppression and repression has brought about self-destructive addictive cycles and suicidal ideation. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity, lived, moved, and became enshrined within my own heart and soul.
I didn’t always understand how past trauma was affecting my present. Earlier in life, I only felt like there was something wrong with me. As a child, I told my friends, “I want to get off of this fucking rock.” Since then, I’ve gone on a search for truth that involved connecting the dots from what is wrong with me to what is wrong with the people and society around me, and what we can do, both individually and collectively, to seek and find healing from the wounding.
A spiritual awakening process beginning in 1987 was the start of my exit from the chaotic mindset that characterized my life up to that point. I had to begin a search for my truth. Insight into myself gained through developing my own honest personal narrative was a huge, necessary step to take. That means I had to start developing my own story. I had to start believing that my words had value. I had to start believing that even though other people weren’t listening to me, that I could start listening to myself and give what I’m hearing value no matter how painful or terrifying the messages that were bubbling up within me.
I had to make peace with the demons in my life, by not just seeing them as demons and tricksters, but as assistance. I had to reinterpret the darkness within my heart and soul and allow that darkness to speak to me because that’s where my story begins. I wasn’t listening. I was pushing it down by denying its value. I was pushing it down by drinking and using. I was pushing it down by continuing to deny the value of the spoken word. And I was suffering because of it.
My present life has become a Miracle Experiment in which I attempt to penetrate both individual and our cultural conspiracy of silence. A miracle experiment, most simply, is the intention and all subsequent effort to heal from traumatic wounding and the consciousness and world culture that such wounding creates and sustains. It is about developing the awareness that allows for us to live in harmony with ourselves, and with each other. It is about no longer ignoring, silencing, or neglecting important parts of ourselves that we felt forced to undertake while being victimized by traumatic influences. It is about bringing our disowned parts back together in a spiritual holism, where we can view life through a new lens of awareness no longer fragmented by unhealthy, self-protective choices made while being wounded. It is about bringing our biological, emotional, and spiritual selves into a harmonious unity of being.
The deleterious effects of trauma are now recognized by many medical researchers and healers as blocks to good bodily health, while our psychiatric and mental health professionals recognize the nearly inescapable labyrinth that unhealed trauma creates within the minds of victimized people. The Miracle Experiment means dealing directly with all of the darkness of our past, seeing it in the light of insight, love, and compassion, and moving onto new paths of conscious evolution. It means eliminating the objectification of reality and the ensuing dualities, and instead perceiving the universe as an extension of our true nature through our avenues of our awareness. And ultimately, it’s about forgiving and letting go and learning to love ourselves and others more completely.
The Miracle Experiment brings the understanding that every time I identify with a person, a process, or a place, I have created either a new path of consciousness, or I have reaffirmed some older, more familiar, potentially worn-out path that I have already been traveling upon, such as, “I am a victim of traumatic abuse,” or, “I am a lonely, isolated person,” or, “I am an electrician,” or, “I am an alcoholic,” or, “I am a son of Beryl and Corinne Paullin.” Whatever I associate myself with either continues my path in old directions, or it creates new words, thoughts, and experiences around a new direction. By identifying my own internalized issues and being willing to heal from them, I could instead say, “I am no longer traveling old paths of consciousness.” Once I’m aware of the paths that no longer suit me, then through mindfulness and meditation, I can stop or at least dramatically reduce thinking time-based thoughts and rehashing and rehearsing painful old memories, to create a new life experience for myself. Because of the innate human capacity to heal and change, I can create my new timeless self in each moment.
The Profound Power of Telling Your Story
The latest studies and understanding of trauma is that over ninety-five percent of its victims still are mute, and cannot speak of its debilitating experience. When people commit suicide, sometimes even the people closest to them are surprised. They never knew the person had these thoughts and intentions inside them. That’s because, when a person is approaching that sort of darkness, they’ve already minimized their pain and suffering. They already believe that nobody wants to listen to them. They feel inadequate, and they don’t know that they have a story, let alone that it has value to others. And, the suicidally inclined person shares a common perception with nearly half of the United States population, which suffers under the immense weight of loneliness. Most Americans have not either sufficiently developed a personal narrative or have not created or joined a social network where their message could be recognized for its value. We are lonely because we don’t think anybody cares enough to listen to what we have to say. And in most cases, we don’t know what we’d say even if someone were listening.
For a long time, I did not have a very comprehensive life story or personal narrative. I usually had little to say in social or employment situations that others considered relevant. Personal shame and a sense of social inadequacy also helped to keep a gag in my mouth. Extrapolate those self-perceptions from the rest of our culture, and it is easier to understand the foundation behind our culture’s conspiracy of silence. These factors must be addressed successfully if we are to overcome our resistance to revealing ourselves to others and get our stories released to the world, where the energy of healing and compassion from others may finally be experienced.
I have a dear friend who is eighty years old and still can’t tell her story. She had several suicide attempts in her life. She raised two daughters and two sons, but they never understood what she was thinking or what drove her to that decision. And now, as adults, her children are struggling with some similar issues. Their mother’s story could save their lives, but she doesn’t have the words or strength or the hope to put her healing journey into words. What got you out of your suicidal ideation? What got you out of your meaningless life experience so that you found a will to live and wanted to give back to the world? Today, my friend is living a wonderful life, but she didn’t have that for a long time. And if she could bring that to a story, then she could give that story to her children and share her healing, guiding wisdom with them.
This is what is said in AA meetings: we share our experience, strength, and hope with those who still suffer with a hope that they can be encouraged by what we went through, grab on to our story, and then emulate it in their unique way to make it their own. When we have a story, we can help lift up that person who is one step below us, and then we have something to share that literally elevates them too. Because they’re looking for meaning, and they don’t know where to find it. But if they can be encouraged by somebody who has found it, that’s hope.
Some people want to tell their stories but they don’t have the language for it. They haven’t developed the language of insight that gives them the capacity to speak what they’re feeling, what their life experience was, where they were hurt, and what they felt during the hurt. And, yeah, this is difficult. But we are intelligent, and achieving an even higher intelligence means developing the capacity to use the myriad of life experiences to create personal insight.
I have looked at my traumatic wounding at the deepest level, experienced a total disillusionment with the lie of a life that comes with accommodating and normalizing trauma, and then reawakened to new possibilities for living. One method I took to facilitate healing was taking several photographs of my baby and early childhood self, trying to place myself emotionally back into those eras, and grieving my loss of innocence and healthy self-esteem during those early years. It was heartbreaking work, and the floodgates of tears opened up, threatening to drown me. Yet grief and unexpressed anger can help us let go of the old, familiar, lonely path of feeling ignored and unloved by the world. Without such freeing insight, we continue on the familiar paths of painful existence, where replication of errors of perception continue, suffering predominates, and the profane reigns supreme. As a general rule of healing, if we can see the problem completely, without self-deception, then that insight generates new pathways for the healing traveler to walk upon.
In 2016, Sheila Hamilton, multiple Emmy winning television reporter and author of All the Things We Never Knew, came to our house and talked about her book with my book club group. It’s a powerful book about her husband’s suicide and how she never understood what was going on with him. And she lamented the fact that David couldn’t tell his story.
My wife has always encouraged me to speak up, and, with her, I always did. But I tended to sit on my voice in other settings. One of my dear friends, Marty, who was a member of the book club and has since deceased, also encouraged me to tell my story. That was when I started trying. And it wasn’t an easy or straightforward process. But there was a story bubbling up that felt like 100 pounds of stuff in a 10-pound bag. It had to get out. One day I begged and beseeched my wife, Sharon, to please tell my story for me, as she had already written a great book and had that capacity. She compassionately and authoritatively reminded me that my story was my own to develop and tell, and it would die with me unless I found the courage and the willingness to share it. I never believed that I had anything to offer. That was the story I carried with me. But that turned out to be false.
I started revisiting my childhood experiences and piecing together the story of my life. I also started piecing together the story of my father’s life, which I knew from his narratives about his family and his sister’s memories. And while I was writing and thinking and making sense of it, I was struck with a profound realization. I saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father. I felt incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents. This can be particularly difficult for men. Men typically inflict their wounding on everybody else in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in dominating or being dominated by others. Philosophies of oppression, and the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. Women and children are usually victimized, as are those with sensitive and/or non-confrontational natures. But if you’re tired of people taking advantage of you, and you’re tired of people trampling on your heart, and you’re tired of staying silent, then you have to examine your experiences and open yourself to these profound realizations.
When I was writing about my search for truth, a time following my 1986 suicide attempt, I reentered the consciousness and the emotional experience of those most troubling times. I did not expect or anticipate this, and when I finished the work, I felt sad and disconnected. I took my sports car for a long drive, which typically lifts my spirits, no matter what may be going on in my life. This time, however, it did not work. I drove for over an hour away from home, and I found no relief. When I began to slow down and look for a place to turn around and come home, a dove flew over my car and seemed to lead me for over twenty seconds to a place to park and turn around. In my mind, the dove symbolized the reassurance that my guiding spirit had not abandoned me and was continuing to lead me to my own promised land. Suddenly, a torrent of tears erupted from me, and a huge release of energy overwhelmed my being. I then felt amazing forgiveness, love, and compassion for the past version of myself, a form of self-forgiveness that I had never experienced before. Can there be a greater gift to give oneself in this life?
Your Life, Your Miracle Experiment
My life’s lessons were not gained in a classroom or sitting at the feet of a guru. My experience and resulting wisdom come from real life, through love relationships, friends, enemies, family, and my work career. In college, I extensively explored philosophy, theology, psychology, and electrical, electronic, and computer engineering. During the course of my work career, I was trained to be a mail clerk, maintenance mechanic, electrician, computer engineer, and instrument and electronic technician. Life has trained me to be a psychologist, a philosopher, an anthropologist, an archeologist, and a spiritual explorer.
This book may not be for the healthy, wealthy, and wise among us. It is designed, however, for those seeking to create their own unique bridge to our healing potential. If you want more out of life than what you’re currently experiencing, if the conspiracy of silence is holding you back, or if you are a concerned witness to another’s dysfunction, then I have written this book for you. I hope that it accurately points in the direction of where our healing might be found. This book will be a failure if I have not encouraged another human being to escape their repressive cycles and their oppression to finally speak their truth.
It is time for all of humanity to also become experts in our own unique life experiences and understand the impacts of malicious and unskilled behavior upon all of us. It is time for humanity to just say no to being agents for the proliferation of traumatic wounding.
Trauma and its wounding result in extreme contraction of our spirit. By being willing to face ourselves, and our grief, traumas, and suffering, we can develop the capacity to move freely through our lives instead of remaining tethered to the pillories of our painful pasts.
Chapter One: Culturally Normalized Trauma
“Every one of us has the capacity to be an oppressor. I want to encourage each and every one of us to interrogate how we might be an oppressor and how we might be able to become liberators for ourselves and for each other.” — Laverne Cox
The labyrinth of the human mind has many aspects to it, and it has been recognized for its creative abilities to entrap the unwary traveler or to provide pathways to transcendence from its wayward inclinations. If we each were truly independent beings, and not involved in an infinite collaborative effort with other members of our species, our path would be a simpler one. For we would be beholden to no one, and thus distracted or diverted by no others. Alas, we are social beings, and we have major hardwired centers in our brains that encourage us to associate with each other and work toward our common good. It is important to understand how that biological hardware, as well as our cultural software, work together to try to keep our natures directed more to order than to chaos. Yet, many of our ordering social algorithms are counter-productive, incite our unaddressed minotaurs to riot, and induce further imbalances into our cultural and personal realities.
Through a process that has existed since verbal consciousness was first formed in humanity, we develop verbal constructs to represent the outside world in our internal universe. Yet, none of these internalized assessments are 100 percent accurate, nor could they ever be. Even though the entirety of human consciousness now shares in the illusion, our ability to communicate verbally is hindered by the misunderstanding of our fellow human beings and their current relationships with others. And what exactly do despair, optimism, faith, and hope look like? We chase their true meaning with our words. How, in an unconscious or semi-conscious experience as a human being, can our infinite spiritual heritage ever be adequately measured through words? In our ignorance and insensitivity to others, we use verbal constructs to oppress, repress, and deny the other, all the while unconsciously honoring the culturally inculcated process of mutual oppression and repression.
The human collective consciousness is the process whereby we have internalized the verbal understandings of all others throughout our history, where ignorant, judgmental, limiting, obfuscating, damaging, soul-destroying concepts of self and others can become socially acceptable modes for assessing ourselves and others. This is internalized and socialized, and this knowledge becomes a collectively shared experience. And, we all know that everybody else knows what we know, while we know what everybody else knows.
The human collective consciousness has been called many other names by seers and seekers over the millennia. The word “Maya” has been given as the name from Hinduism and Buddhism for the tendency to both individually and collectively create a fragmented perceptual universe, where in truth there is only the unity of the universe. In the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, he mentions that “My father’s house/mansion has many rooms,” “My kingdom is not of this world,” and, “Be in the world, don’t be of the world.” These point to the fact that there are two possibilities for living: as a sleeping being in a dark, disfigured world, or as an awakening being in a multi-dimensional human relationship with infinity. The sleeping beings are those who live in the world of Maya without being aware of the many illusions of thought that dominate their minds and lives.
This adaptation and acculturation process has become so ingrained in consciousness, so accepted, so standardized, and so normalized that the individual who even casually practices its dark side continues to contribute to the collective imprisonment of all of mankind through this process. The human collective consciousness informs our understanding of our own lives, how we see others, and how to use its oftentimes twisted knowledge of poor self-esteem and negative judgments of others to help inform our decisions about actions we can take in our own lives. The human collective consciousness can provide both a blessing and a curse, depending on the messages that we mine and how we conform to its social principles. But, regardless of the messages that we hear and apply, we are still directly influenced by all messages, no matter how much in conflict they may be with each other until we have had enough insight into this process to heal ourselves of unconscious adherence to its confusing, conflicting principles. We each have an internal pendulum that swings gently, or erratically, between all of the poles, and our shared consciousness reflects those sometimes divisive inner rhythms.
Our human collective consciousness is how people make gains for themselves, at the expense of others, through socially acceptable forms of violence. One of which we call comedy. The hullabaloo at the 2022 Academy Awards show between Will Smith and Chris Rock is the perfect example. Badinage, persiflage, repartee, and mutual put-downs are part of the tool kit that the human race employs to keep us focused on the failings of others, while also building up our own sense of worth. We laugh at the acceptable insanity that manifests itself through this disparity in self-valuations.
The Common Knowledge Game, Gossip, and The Lemming Effect
Common knowledge is a form of consensus social understanding used in collective consciousness since humans started using language to communicate. Gossip is a term that characterizes verbal exchanges that are defined by our curiosity about each other, and the judgements that often arise and are shared within our social networks Both common knowledge and gossip can influence our actions because we naturally want to follow and fit in with our peers, and their combined energy often takes the form of peer pressure. The interplay of this cultural phenomena with our developing sense of our personal identity helps to create our individual realities. We are both ourselves as individuals and as parts of the society whole.
An item of information is common knowledge if all of the relevant citizens of a community know it to be so (it is mutual knowledge), and all of the citizens know that all other citizens know it, and all other citizens know that all other citizens know that all other citizens know it, and so on. This is much more than simply saying that something is known by all but also implies that the fact that what is known by me is also known by all, etc. Thus, common knowledge implies not only that we all know some piece of information, but we can also be confident that the rest know it, and that the rest know that we know it, and so on. Common knowledge essentially keeps us trapped as it keeps us together.
Effectively, there are two sides to the Common Knowledge Game (CKG), dark and light. What sets up the darker side of the CKG in our minds and hearts is continuous internal access to our negative assessments, or judgments of others and ourselves, of our physical form and our spiritual essence. These negative assessments also include our perceptions of what we believe others think negatively about us as well, which is another self-defeating component of the CKG. This becomes one of the pillars, albeit a dark one, for the CKG, and the reason for the spiritual imprisonment for all of us. What might set up a liberating side of the CKG is the potential energy of a shared belief that we are all good people at heart, and/or that we are all practicing the spiritual understanding that the word “namaste” represents. These internalized collective beliefs are social processes of consciousness that may become culturally inculcated into our awareness, and thus we all might share in the benefits, and the detriments, of collective consciousness as well as collective unconsciousness.
In environments like prisons, the education system, the military, and larger groups up to, and including, American society, behavioral decisions based on private information are almost always weaker than behavioral decisions based on common knowledge. The latter has more binding power, because, in effect, the students, the recruits, and the citizens themselves end up enforcing the warden’s (or society’s) rules. Even if you privately believe that you and your fellow prisoners could escape, so long as you believe that everyone knows that you will be punished for breaking the rules, then you do not believe that you will receive any support from your fellow prisoners (fellow citizens or friends). It is irrational to even raise the subject with your fellow prisoners, as you will mark yourself as someone who is either too stupid or too dangerous not to recognize what everyone else knows that everyone else knows. And because everyone is making a similar calculation, no one ever makes an escape attempt and the common knowledge grows stronger over time, as does the no-escaping binding attitudes. This is why public punishment has been so widely used throughout history.
I first consciously encountered the darker side of the CKG in my employment with the U.S. Postal Service from 1975 to 1985. There were several boundary conditions of the Common Knowledge Game for my continuing employment with that agency. Many of my co-workers, as well as myself, worked there because we failed to achieve our dreams, felt that we could do no other work, and believed that we did not have the skills, qualifications, competency, or motivation to try anything else. Everybody knew that truth, including members of the management team, not only about ourselves but also about all of our co-workers, which in turn, was what the co-workers understood about each other, as well. It was part of a shared story that we told ourselves and joked about with each other on many occasions.
As an apprentice electrician in 1989, I also encountered this common knowledge limitation. Due to the requirements of the Local 48 union apprenticeship, I had to rotate through various employers to diversify my experience. In one company, I was a highly regarded electrician, but then at another, I was ignored and disparaged. The foreman gave me the most menial jobs, and put down “humor” permeated the exchanges between many long-term workers and those not considered to be company insiders, which was me and a few other new hires. When I was laid off, a short time into my employment with this company, my foreman, as he gave me my layoff slip, said, “Don’t be so fucking good, Bruce. You need to learn how to just blend in with everybody else as they could give a shit about what you know or what your skills are.” The common knowledge here is that in this kind of environment, excellence is not rewarded but punished unless you are in the “in” group.
In addition to the CKG, many of the people I worked with also shared a common foe, chemical dependency, which adds several critical internal self-defeating calculations to the CKG. These baseline understandings helped to define my relationship to the Post Office career, as well. I enjoyed my time working as a machine clerk, because of the fast pace and the fact that it was a lifetime-guaranteed job. These kept me from feeling too bad about my personal and employment decisions. Even though I felt trapped by my own insecurities and dysfunctions, I escaped and delayed the inevitable crush of despair through the use of drugs and alcohol. The common knowledge here is that drugs and alcohol can mask the pain of a suffering or empty life, and continued use allows the abuser to wait for a better day if it does not kill them first.
Consider a sexually abused woman, for example. There are many common knowledge parameters to be considered in an abusive relationship, but the following are several items to consider, from the victim’s perspective. Everybody knows that…
- I must be subservient to the male, whatever he says, I must obey. I dare not raise my voice against any man.
- I will bring shame to my family by being truthful, so I must keep silent about the abuse.
- Nobody would believe my word against a powerful man, so I must keep silent.
- I should have known better than to wear that dress, or to place myself in such a defenseless position.
- I should have known better than to be in this person’s presence, and it is my fault that I was attacked.
- If I speak out against this man, I will be crushed by him, and be considered a whore, or a person of poor morals by others.
And on and on it could go. This is the foundational logic embedded within the Common Knowledge Game that would keep a woman silent in the face of sexual abuse by another.
Consider competitive work environments where jealous or resentful office workers seek to demean a common foe, be it a boss or a motivated co-worker, through practicing racism, sexism, religious persecution, etc. This can be several employees practicing typical mutually inaccurate assessments of a party not currently in their presence, such as through ageism, racism, and/or sexism. These behaviors are also typical of what happens in big companies, politics, high school, or in church.
The participants will not attack unless they are sure that the other will attack or be silently supportive at the same time, as nobody wants to be the lone attacker, becoming vulnerable and thus exposing their own intent for aggression. This is indicative of the “bully mind” or “mob mind” and how it acts in the real world. The first person sends out a “feeler” (verbal exchange of internalized culturally inculcated negative assessments of others, or even self) to the other parties with the message, such as, “You know, I am unhappy with Mr. X. He is problematic.” This is like warming up for the attack by gently degrading the third party while awaiting the other’s reply within the group physically or emotionally present, which hopefully affirms our intent. Our verbal or written means of attempting to communicate with the other conspirators may be misinterpreted, so we initially have no collective security in adopting the attack mode. If however, the message of attack is received simultaneously by others within the group, which it does in common knowledge modes of thought, then the attack is on. Note that all parties already know the message. If they are all sexist, racist, or fundamentalist religious fanatics, the judgments against others are already built into their shared social algorithms. They all knew in advance that the other attackers had the message as well because it is common knowledge that others share at least some of their negative perceptions. And they will attack the other, because they always have before, and they have already prepared their internal fortifications, as well as their verbal and social weapons for such an experience.
This is the classic attack/defense posture or mechanism that the entirety of the human race is now participating in. Anybody who has worked in the construction trades, or work areas dominated by men, knows this process quite well. Repartee is one of the kind names given to this culturally accepted and sometimes revered process, whereby we make the appearance to others that we are lightly and without intentional malice impugning the dignity and reputation of others, though our internal motivation may be to bring harm. We call this humor, and some may feel almost hurt when others do not engage in this behavior with us. In schools, the wimps, greasers, jocks, nerds, eggheads, goths, transsexuals, homosexuals, hippies, outcasts, or whatever name that defines the “out group” outside of the popular, socially accepted standards of behavior that characterize a grouping, can be quite susceptible to aggression, antagonism, and bullying. I think that everyone who has attended school has experienced this phenomenon. It follows standard paths of aggression, hostility, belittlement, and debasement, and somehow the aggressor becomes elevated in stature at the expense of the victim. This has been an accepted standard of behavior, though we are finally awakening to darker aspects of this by identifying hostile work environments and instituting regulations for reducing persecution, racial discrimination, age discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual discrimination in the workplace.
Gossip
Gossip has been with the human reace from the beginning of time. Though gossip may have a negative connotation, it certainly has its good side, as well. For early humanity, it was gossip that helped a community understand who was the best hunter, gatherer, and/or provider. As a survival imperative, it was essential to know who were the role models and who were the ones not to follow and learn from. Our ancestors used this community sharing, or gossip, and it was a way to create community, or common knowledge. This gossip helped to socialize newcomers or young people by resolving ambiguity about group norms and values. LIstening to the gossip, or judgements of others, helps the community to maintain a certain stability around what it finds to tbe acceptable, and what isn’t.
When gossip is about a particular individual, we are usually inteested in it if we know the person being referred to. There is a distinction between strategy learning gossip and reputation gossip. Yet some gossip is interesting no matter whom it is about. This sort of gossip may revolve stories about life-or-death situations or remarkable feats. We pay attention to them because we may b e able to learn strategies that we can appy to our own kives.
We all know from our present day experience of gossip that it is not always benign, and it often serves the purpose of keeping a person in line, or actually shaming or guilting a person out of a certain behavior, or even out of the commnity. So the main point here is that gossip around all community individuals is a mechanism for the community to remain in control, while making it ocmmon knowledge what the expectations of the commnity are for each individual. Successful gossiping entails being a good team player and sharing key information with others in ways that won’t be perceived as sef-serving. It is about knwing when its appropriate to talk, and when it is best to keep your mouth shut. Yet, as we all know, gossip can bring the mightiest, the weakest, the guiltiest, and the most innocent down to their knees.
The Lemming Effect
A great allegory for the social behavior of humans is that of the story of the life cycle of some populations of lemmings. Lemmings are little rodents that live near the cold northern Arctic regions. They are focused animals by nature, meeting only to mate and then going their separate ways. But like all rodents, they have a high reproductive rate when food is plentiful. When population density becomes too high, some of the lemming species migrate in large quantities, and since they can swim, they choose to cross the water in search of a new habitat. Lemmings have been known to follow each other as they plunge off the edge of cliffs into the water below. Even though lemmings are swimming migrants rather than victims of collective suicidal ideation, the myth of mass suicide is still called the Lemming Effect.
Regardless of the lemmings’ real intentions, the lemming story has become a metaphor for people who go along unquestioningly with a group with potentially dangerous consequences. The Lemming Effect is an innate psychological phenomenon, a survival trait, and an inborn instinct in the majority of people. We see this happening in many occurrences from bad collective decisions, such as investing in the dot com boom of the late 1990s, craving the latest Apple iPhone releases, consuming excessive alcohol at a party, following theological assertions like the blood of Jesus is the sacrifice to God that saves our soul, to obsessing over modern-day automobile and fashion trends. This Lemming Effect enables entire segments of a society to lose their sense of judgment and the application of personal wisdom all at the same time. It can be linked to the “mob mentality” phenomenon inherent within collective consciousness itself. If you have ever been a member in good standing in the problem-drinking division at the local bar, you understand the suspension of wisdom and good judgment with your drinking decisions.
We don’t realize how often our decisions are based on other people’s behavior. The Lemming Effect depicts a negative side of the conscious following of the crowd, especially when following leads to falling off the cliff. In real-life situations, it could mean losses of money, self-identity, and slower spiritual development. As it might sound easy to grasp the concept, it is difficult to notice in our own actual behavior. Moreover, social togetherness is sometimes very pleasant and valuable, for instance at a rock concert when one man starts to dance, then more and more people join in until massive amounts of people are dancing together. It is a pleasant example of a positive manifestation of the Lemming Effect. But mass behavior does not always result in a positive experience for the individual.
The Lemming Effect can create pleasant, life-affirming social togetherness, but the effect has some potential negative effects that we need to be aware of at all times. It is healthy and wise to participate in social movements, but we must not lose our heads in emotions. We must be critical of the movements of the crowd that are going against our vision and values. Also, we must do the research, and even experiment with unpopular ideas, before deciding that any massive new movement is for us. We can’t ignore the “leading edge” movements, and we can’t exile people we don’t share ideologies with by dismissing them with “woke” or “libtard” labels, because accidentally standing in the way of the movement could bring harm to us or others. Our politicians, marketers and advertisers, and religious leaders have harnessed the power of the Lemming Effect, and our entire world civilization continues to be manipulated, for good or for evil, by these practitioners.
As Krishnamurti suggests, it’s possible to think that we’re spiritually and mentally healthy because we share our mistaken values and understandings with those around us. Collectively, our ill minds create social circles, or society that is itself ill, and we consider ourselves healthy because we see our values reflected in our spiritually sick fellow travelers.
Living in the Human Collective Consciousness
Now that we have thoroughly investigated human collective consciousness, we have found there are many unconscious or unwritten rules for engagement between all members of society, in addition to the conscious and/or written ones. The unconscious rules have been with us from the beginning, well before the introduction of mega-cities and civilizations, when mankind first falteringly attempted to explore, define, and control inner experience. The conscious rules or laws have been developed over the last two hundred or more generations with the intention of establishing and maintaining the best order and harmony for the ever-enlarging populations congregating together into the structure of cities or settlements. Interesting studies of aggregations of humans into communities has shown quite conclusively that once a group’s population gets above a 170 member threshold, normal socialization begins to break down, as mutual accountability wanes. Apparently, we, as humans, can hold less than 200 other members of humanity in our loving awareness, thus the need for laws to help enforce social norms beyond this critical threshold, where gossip, peer pressure and social conformity no longer can keep the crowd under control.
Hammurabi’s code of conduct and the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament are two great examples from our distant past of the documentation and implementation of rules defining acceptable conduct. As the famous psychologist Carl Jung has pointed out, and beloved author and spiritual explorer Joseph Cambell has extensively commented upon, we are also influenced by collective archetypes that will attempt to define and control us, so it is important to scratch under the surface of our conscious minds to see what unconscious algorithm may be operative. The human race may continue to evolve in spirit and truth as long as it can provide a minimum foundation of safety and security for all of its members, so it is important to remember that not all requirements to conform are misguided or evil in intent.
Because of the Common Knowledge Game and Lemming Effect, there is enormous power in making a public spectacle out of information. We can’t resist crowds. The crowd doesn’t just need to see the event, the crowd needs to see the crowd seeing the event. This lesson in behavioral influence is why religious revival events, rock concerts, and so many of our modern social institutions are staged in front of live audiences. When you sit in front of your TV set and watch, say, a national political convention, you are infinitely more engaged with the event when you see a crowd than when you don’t. We can’t help ourselves. It doesn’t even matter if the live audience is faked and we know that the audience is faked; have you ever listened to a sitcom without a laugh track? It’s just not as funny. The fact is that humans are social animals. We are hard-wired to look for and respond to common knowledge, and smart people—from political leaders to religious leaders to business leaders and concert organizers—have taken advantage of this for years.
What happens when the diseased family structure (alcoholism and drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse, psychological abuse of all types) in many situations of discipline and control exactly parallel the Common Knowledge Game? Eventually, the children learn not to attempt to act out or break free from the oppressive qualities of an abusive parent, or parents, their church and its interpretation of religious thought, or their educational experience. Breaking the spirit of the abused child, and making sure that other members know that such punishment will also come their way, keeps children under control, but also victimized and traumatized. Children entering the school system where bullies are allowed to run free get to experience this process once again in a bigger social setting. And children who attend a church where the dignity of the individual is constantly degraded and threatened with hell through their religious philosophy also will feel the horrific abuse of the Common Knowledge Game. They live in fear that if anyone were to speak out against the oppressors, they would be punished severely, and they would be smacked down.
There are two great acts of insanity that members of our family and culture engage in, and the Common Knowledge Game of human perception:
- 1. There is the perception that if an authoritative and/or beloved political or religious leader or family member brings harm or damage to another, the victim must have somehow deserved it, and they should not expect an explanation, change of behavior, or apology from the aggressor. The victim of the aggression will be judged and punished even more harshly by calling a foul or claiming harm, from the offensive behavior.
- There is a perception that everyone is of questionable origin and value, except for, maybe, ourselves, depending upon whom we are unfairly comparing ourselves. This is a classic component of the Common Knowledge Game. Depending on the needs of the tribe we belong to, and how much we are acculturated within the group, we may devalue ourselves and all others, until we heal, and find our own unique voice and true value.
Our Common Knowledge Game keeps all of us in some sort of order, albeit one that affirms the false truth that we are all broken human beings, with our only hope for salvation lying with chaotic and insane orders of unreality that continue to be inculcated into our collective consciousness. In other words, unless we march to the drummer of our religious and cultural past, we will be judged, persecuted, marginalized, and otherwise thrown to the wolves, with little hope for our own redemption. Woe to the brave individual that strikes out on his own, and attempts to find a new way of being in this world of chaos, distraction, and torment.
Implicit bias and unconscious discrimination against others is an autonomic response and shields the practitioner from their own malfeasance of attitude and behavior. This is the unconscious knowledge component that supports and advises the Common Knowledge Game. Those who believe that they are the chosen of God, to the diminishment and detriment of others of differing racial, ethnic, or national origin promote and perpetuate the biggest, most heinous lie ever told. White supremacist pseudo-Christians use their filiality to Judaism through the Jewish prophet Jesus to justify their illusions of importance and placement in the eyes of their own mistaken understanding of the divine energy of our universe. Either we all are chosen by God, or none of us are.
If you watch the news or get on social media, it’s easy to see our country is in a downward spiral, where telling the truth is no longer a virtue. Instead, the truth is bastardized and spun into alternate-reality fantasies, becoming just another tool to be abused by propagandists. Propagandists are masters at manipulating fear, distrust, lies, half-truths, and specious reasoning, which also help to create new channels of control in the Common Knowledge Game.
How to Step Outside the Game
If we are ready to embark on new paths of consciousness, we must be prepared to leave our old minds and ideas behind. The Common Knowledge Game must be seen for what it is, and its capacity to diminish our sense of self and others must be dealt with consciously. The CKG has become so inculcated into societal norms that we must break free from the mob mind that would have us make self-destructive choices while being carried by their rivers of ignorance and darkness. Changes must happen within consciousness itself, and the Common Knowledge Game that we all unconsciously play must be examined and re-examined again and again until we are no longer subjugated to its darker sides of oppression and repression of the human spirit.
The healthy, sane, spiritually inspired individual steps outside of the Common Knowledge Game and practices seeing him or herself through a new lens with few or no verbal constructs from our personal pasts or our culturally damaged memories. This is the only place where a heart-centered experience of the other becomes possible. Ultimately, if there are any words to be shared about what is experienced, it serves only as a temporary bridge to understanding. These can be discarded at the earliest possible moment, as truth reveals itself from moment to moment, not through the shared verbal constructs of a dead past. When two people are observing the same beautiful sunset, there is little need for words, other than to affirm one’s joy in witnessing it.
To ultimately transform the Common Knowledge Game of mutual imprisonment, we need to become aware of how we see others seeing ourselves. Changing the way we allow our perceptions of how others expect us to behave opens the door out of our own uniquely created prison cells. This is not to say that others’ intentions are always bad or nefarious toward us, as most of us want what is best for us as individuals, and we hope that our best expectations for ourselves are also good for others. Seeing how we have ignorantly been controlled by others, or, more insidiously, how we have used our perceptions of how others expect us to behave and believe, grants insight into the whole process. And it opens the door to a new way of seeing life and being in life with others in more supportive, holistic, and healthy manners. Our words can then carry all of the potential of the love behind the collective good heart of mankind.
It is also of greatest importance to realize that no man, or woman, is an island in this vast universe and that our perception of harmony and balance is inextricably intertwined with the rest of humanity. No matter how healed, balanced, or empowered we become, we are eternally linked with the rest of humanity and the universe in our attempts to create order or balance out of our own unique versions of the collective chaos known as human knowledge. The temptation to follow the herd, or to swim with the lemmings, is built right into the foundational nature of our socialized existence.
When we finally see the complete matrix of the CKG within our consciousness and awareness, we will no longer be unconsciously controlled by its oftentimes imprisoning parameters. In seeing the matrix, you can liberate your mind from its bondage to other people’s opinions and your wayward ideas. Breaking free of the Common Knowledge Game and the Lemming Effect is finding our uncommon knowledge, where wonder, awe, love of each other, love of self, love of the earth and all of its animals, and the desire to help alleviate all suffering in the world spontaneously arise within consciousness itself and guide us to our own unique promised land. We finally can leave the world of our pseudo-knowns to explore the real world, where newness, love, and truth’s unfolding goodness predominate.
Chapter Two: Finding Yourself in the Collective Consciousness
“There are times shells, or walls, are necessary, but more often we can reveal ourselves by being who we are. Neither hiding nor revealing ourselves will prevent our share of pain, but in being who we are, we get to be part of the Universal stream, not just a nut in a shell waiting to fall.” — Mark Nepo
When I look at our culture, I see the rising waters of anguish and despair flooding through it. There are so many broken promises and dreams, so many shattered expectations, and so many lost possibilities that these wounds now define the day-to-day life of far too many citizens. As we witness our families, watch the news, and read the newspaper, we can see the promotion of cultural and individual insanity, with its resultant suffering. Mass murders, early deaths, suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, abuses of women and children, racism, extinction of species, ecological destruction, and all of the damaged relationships that fail to heal will continue to predominate within the collective mind of mankind until we make conscious contact with intelligence, love, and sanity. In the words of Michael Franti: ”Life is amazing, and then it sucks, and then it’s amazing again.” There is so much suffering in the world, and it brings a universally humbling, painful reality. Instead of being consumed by despair, fatalism, and anger, we have to protect ourselves from all that, become healthy people, and retain our sanity and our humanity.
Human suffering and evil are two spiritually destructive forces that humanity has dealt with at each moment of its existence. Failure to address these issues directly and consciously only leads to more suffering and enhances the collective perception of the presence and growth of evil in our world. Pain and suffering without any hope for healing bring anger, despair, depression, loneliness, and suicidal ideation.
While being an unconscious man, I contributed to this disease of the spirit and the overall relationship dysfunctions within the world. I have been subjected to the same family and cultural forces of oppression and repression, spawned by cultural and family mutual control dramas, making communication and behavior between all of us crazy. Being a family man, I have taken note of the mutual-blame game and scapegoating that circulate continuously and serve as justification for each individual holding onto their own version of our cultural disease. All of this just leads to more suffering by innocent family members, friends, acquaintances, community members, and ourselves. Who amongst us does not want life to lean more toward amazing, rather than just sucking?
Things don’t often work out according to our best-laid plans. And often, if we seek out many of society’s treasured goals, we find that goals didn’t live up to our expectations. The problem is not our plans, expectations, dreams, or aspirations. These are sacred and we must retain them. The point is that it’s not solely our fault. We have been let down in ways we never should have been. We have been neglected in ways that genuinely hurt and endure. Our possibilities shrank not because of something we did or didn’t do, but for a bigger reason. Much of it was beyond our control, but once we can see what other options are available to us, we can find our reservoir of hope.
Our world is filled with an infinite supply of life-affirming meaning, and we can experience it if we can tune into it and our whole selves. Yet, news in recent years has been dominated by references to the actions of people living meaningless lives, as indicated by upswings in opioid use, alcoholism, gun violence, murder, mental illness, poor diets, insufficient exercise, and suicide. These factors are a small part of the real story. I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my being, that disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to disease within the body of mankind. This is a difficult but essential truth to contemplate and perceive: our society has created many of the conditions for our early demise through our lack of shared meaning and values.
Wikipedia states: “Collective consciousness, collective conscience, or collective conscious is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.” My male heritage, my experiences as a son of an oftentimes toxic father, and my working with many damaged men in the electrical trades and general employment provided the background for much of my understanding of the popular recent term “toxic masculinity” and the suffering that results from unconscious participation in our collective consciousness. Patriarchy, an important category within toxic masculinity, is mostly responsible for creating the present-day conditions of our diseased world. Men in power would rather have our neighbors, wives, and children assaulted, raped, overdosed through drug use, or murdered through gun violence than promote and enforce healing changes. Thus, we need more women in positions of power and influence, and men need to get in touch with their potential for toxic behavior and attitudes and begin to make necessary course changes in their hearts and souls. Yet both men and women are directly influenced, and often controlled like puppets, by the collective consciousness that we all access and share.
Collective consciousness has a source in our ancestral and genetic predispositions and all of the answers that our culture, our families, and 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. This is the seed consciousness behind the development of our sense of self, where our own answers to the important questions of life give rise to fragmented interpretations of life and the universe. But we are also more than the collective conscious.
The aborigines of Australia have a very attuned concept of our collective consciousness, but they call it “the Dreaming”. The Dreaming is their people’s deep well of memory. It stores a wonderful mixture of sacred, mythical, and practical ideas, passed on from the ancestors. The Dreaming is the place where all of the past exists, the place in which their thoughts, beliefs, and sacred memories remain protected. Its wisdom explains the land, the sky, the sun and stars, and all living creatures upon Mother Earth, including why they are here, how they should be related to, and why all living things should collaborate with each other while sharing the landscape.
Their mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and uncles pass the information of the Dreaming learned from their forebearers onto all who listen. And those who listen remember well, and retell the stories to the children as has been done for over 60000 years, according tto their accounts. The Dreaming keeps this information securely in existence and it exists far beyond the memory of any one individual within the culture.
Individual Consciousness
Once we develop consciousness as developing human beings, our internal sensations, emotions, and thoughts became available to make us aware of who we are. Our internally observed neural activity tells us what we like and don’t like, whom we love and don’t love, how experiences make us feel, what we think, why we behave the sometimes odd ways that we do, and what we want. Because this inward-directed, self-sensing part of our brain can itself be seen as an input, we can be aware of ourselves being aware of ourselves being aware our ourselves, times infinity. Our nervous systems are a vast universe of sensations, feelings, and thoughts. Conscious awareness has added a window to this interior dimension where the immeasurable and the unknowable may be accessed, caressed, or manhandled by our sense of self. The experience of having conscious awareness happens on levels beyond the physical plane, without typical sensorial awareness. It can feel so extraordinary and exalted that it seems like it must be the result of something more than just brain chemistry, perhaps even a manifestation of something of an otherworldly or even divine nature.
Helen Keller gave an outstanding narrative of the beginning of her sense of self, a new self that seemed to arise out of her more instinctual or even chaotic biological response to life. Once she recognized that the letters w, a, t, e, and r represented the substance that she washed with and drank, her unique sense of herself also arose. Understanding the word and its symbolism opened the miraculous door. As she added more words, she could feel herself growing bigger and more engaged with the world with a new, expanding intelligence. And verbal structures became infused with sensorial experiences, creating enhanced memories.
We only need to look within ourselves and at our pasts to see how uncertain our memories are and extrapolate that to our human history, which is also plagued by short-, medium-, and long-term memory loss. Even though our present history has only about 5,000 years of written records, some cultures have historical narratives that have been passed down for at least 30,000 years. The aborigines of Australia claim a 60,000-year narrative, while Central and South American indigenous peoples and their shamans also claim lineages of tens of thousands of years. Western European civilization appears to be an outgrowth of the migration of African tribal members at least 13,000-30,000 years ago. The human race has a long history, but throughout human history, our brains have grown more complex with language and social connection. Much of that information is stored in our bodies and minds. But as individuals, we can only consciously access what we were around to remember.
There are two or more sides to every story, and the epoch of mankind certainly could have been defined historically by its nearly infinite number of interactions between members of our worldwide community, past and present, and all of the resultant stories derived through those connections, be they ordered or chaotic in nature. History is created and maintained by institutionalized powers and transferred to all members of the community. Our history continues to be written to accommodate the prevailing victorious powers and understandings of the age in which it was first written. Many times, the greatest, most courageous, and intelligent heroes of our race remain anonymous, though their stories were captured by others. They died before they could even create a story, thus the survivors, usually less qualified and relatively less informed, are the historians, and their stories, not the story of the real heroes, are accepted as the narrative. Yet, I guarantee that most of these stories were written by men, with their testosterone-laden understanding.
Women within many ancient cultures were regarded as healers and carriers of medicine. They were loved, honored, respected, and protected by the community for those very reasons. It can be surmised that in our pre-history the balance of the masculine and the feminine through mutual understanding, acknowledgment, and equality existed and supported the good for all. Yet, mankind’s story, when told by the historical progression of women, would be much different from the history that men might present. History is rarely described and defined by the ones who were stuck at home caring for the wounded and the children, by the submissive ones, by the artists or sculptors, or by the losers in any conflict. Our history is described, and defined, by those in power, which are predominantly white male influences. Masculine energy has dominated our species’ relationship with the universe, the world, the plants and animals, and with each other for most of recorded time, and well before the human race had any capacity to keep records. The Christian bible is replete with aphorisms and statements relegating women to the background of the church and in all relations with life. There is an imbalance within the field of the human spirit.
The Journal of Current Anthropology described a 2014 anthropological study of skulls of humans over tens of thousands of years that surmised that the reduction of the levels of testosterone in our male ancestors probably led to higher levels of cooperation and collaboration. An obvious conclusion is that the effects of testosterone, though still defining the narratives of our storytellers, our relationships, and our history, aren’t as harmful as they used to be on our Mother Earth and feminine-sourced energy. Yet our planet continues to be ravaged by testosterone-inspired imperialism, overconsumption, and competitiveness between peoples and nations. So testosterone still reigns supreme, overrunning non-masculine-based energy centers, as it has for tens of thousands of years.
This oppression of women and repression of so-called feminine characteristics within the male reflects in the diseased and imbalanced relationships. These principles have also become established as conscious and unconscious norms for perception within the collective consciousness of America and mankind in general. And an unfortunate and dangerous outcome of this division between man and woman is that the man is unconsciously conditioned to see the feminine aspects of himself in an objectified manner. This leads men to try to oppress, control, and dominate those aspects, emotions, and tendencies, rather than integrate them into a complete holism within themselves.
So how on Earth, or in Heaven, do we bring balance back to ourselves?
Finding Yourself in the Collective
I have attempted meditation upon my own source of pain and suffering, and what came to me was how most of what I know about myself and my reactions to the world were created by my fundamental relationship with my parents and my culture. Missing from this were any accommodations to my relationship with my world, the universe, or any concept of a higher power. My sense of self in my early years revolved around internalizing many of my parents’ attitudes. I was acutely aware of what my mother and father expected from me, what I could or could not give back to them to attempt to please them, and my defense mechanisms for managing the fallout when I failed to please them. Beginning early in my life, I also developed the desire to protect them and myself from the results of the conflict that arose in our house, either when I made yet another mistake or when my father overreacted to any situation that brought a sense of fear or threat into the home environment. I developed a need to balance whatever energy was being expressed at any particular moment, and I was very unskilled at those kinds of efforts.
The death of my father in 2017 ended the era of subservience to his needs and the need to protect my mother from my perception of his insensitivity, or even aggression towards her. It also ended the era of incomplete grieving for my mother’s death in 2009. I had to immediately support my mentally deteriorating father when my mother died, and I had never completely worked through the grieving process. With my father’s passing, I was an orphan, and all of the entanglements that kept me wound around their lives were now physically removed. With my father’s spirit no longer overshadowing my own life, I was allowed to develop more fully into a less conflicted, more empathetic, and an overall much better version of myself. For me, this was an extraordinary release because the formation of my sense of self was influenced by parental bonding issues in childhood. Yet, I had assembled my sense of self to the best of my ability. The process was one of self-organization, something that neuroscientists and psychologists are still studying and understanding.
In our world, there are countless examples of self-organizing systems, and all creatures, and the minds of those creatures, are examples of that miracle in action. The evolution of all of Earth’s creatures appears to be primarily organized through the pattern created by the history of the species, and its interactions and successful adaptions with its earthly environment. DNA appears to carry much of that history as a guide for the self-replicating pattern within all cells. Epigenetics is the study of how our behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way our genes work. In recent years, genetics and epigenetics continue to be studied and mined for great knowledge about our predispositions to certain characteristics and behaviors. Yet, for humans, epigenetic research has recently shown that some of these patterns may not necessarily be unchangeable. They may be open to suggestions from changing the external environment or even making attitude and lifestyle adjustments. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change our DNA sequence, but they can change how our body reads a DNA sequence. Up to 5 percent of our genes may be amenable to epigenetic suggestions or adaptations, and the future may show that many more genes may be turned off or on, depending on the need of the organism. And, in a most encouraging development, scientists now propose that as individual human beings, we may be able to influence the organizing or reorganizing of our own consciousness. We may also have a greater influence on our own biological system.
Our consciousness has a self-organizing principle, as it organizes itself into our unique personal sense of being, while also categorizing data, accruing knowledge, and forming perceptions. The uncertainty of self-organization in consciousness is a great mystery of life, though we now know that a healthy integration revolves around how well the impressionable being feels accepted by and connected to the environment that the human body travels through. Thus, happier, self-loving ordered senses of self arise and are supported by myriads of successful interactions with its social and physical environment.
First and foremost is the being’s acceptance and integration into the primary family group. If we do not get the requisite positive feedback from our parents early on, we face tremendous odds against forming a happy, well-adjusted self-organizing principle, or ego. And the enlightening 1995 Kaiser study of adverse childhood experiences shows the deleterious effects of damaging parental behaviors on our adult health, either through omission or commission or other traumatic environmental influences from childhood.
Toxic masculinity inspired traumatic wounding—with its effects of preventing the development of a skilled capacity to relate to people in a peaceful, collaborative, and mutually accepting manner—became a defining characteristic of my life. Coping mechanisms, such as passive-aggressive behavior, became my normal response to the daily challenges of life. I had internalized and normalized an incomplete composite creative advisor, or a trickster, of whom I thought my father and mother were. This became a source of self-talk and feedback for me as a child and then as an unconscious adult.
The same process occurs for our social self, too. There is another identity within us, virtually independent of our inner parental feedback creations, that we use to create internal cultural advisors. As an individual within a culture, I applied the same unskilled balancing mechanism within consciousness, where I would weigh and measure societal needs of myself and others I love, with whatever my personal needs may have been. I felt out of control over so much of my own life, while feeling divided, fragmented, and so unsure of which direction to point my life toward. In several recovery programs, this fragmentation is called the committee, and we all need to do some ferocious work to get that committee to permanently adjourn. There is no peace of mind otherwise.
We must not normalize and internalize what our failed society is, and we must not make it part of the unchangeable forces within our consciousness. We must not bear the burden of our society’s bad behavior. While we are under the control of this diseased culture, we have internalized our society’s failures, and we have mistaken its failures for our own. But if we internalize its failings, the oppressive qualities of this abusive culture will become part of who we are. So where can we find relief?
Alleviate Your Suffering
Creating the basic conditions that support emotional and spiritual growth might be beneficial to the entirety of our human race. People have basic needs regarding personal safety, security, and placement within society. Here are some simple, and not so simple, human needs coupled with spiritual intention:
- To belong, to feel safe while belonging, including the desire to help and protect others while helping oneself.
- To speak up. To feel like we were heard, and not have our spirit layered over with others’ errors in reasoning and judgment.
- To be able to listen to another at the deepest level possible and be present in the spirit of understanding, cooperation, and collaboration.
- To feel whole, and to be able to recognize that wholeness, not only within ourselves but within all others.
- To love all others, as well as to be accepted and loved, with as few conditions attached as possible. Unconditional love was never meant to be reserved only for a mother’s love for her child, so we evolve by being a channel for it.
- To evolve. If we do not, we become subject to the forces of friction and chaos inherent within a closed mind and system, resulting in higher physical and mental disease and dysfunction.
To heal, we must first understand what has us under control before we can learn how to let go of what controls us. We can place ourselves on a new, healthier path of consciousness by considering the sources of our suffering and our role in the collective conscious. Asking questions of ourselves and answering them can point to foundational facts that most of us 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.
Questions to Ponder:
- Why does suffering exist? And why does it visit me so often?
- Who and what am I?
- Are happiness, joy, and freedom possible in my life?
- What am I really looking for?
- What really is prayer?
- 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 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?
- Why don’t I feel peace of mind?
- Why do some people become spiritually and emotionally disfigured by their desire for sex?
- What is the role of objectifying people in ignorance, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and sexism?
- Why do some people 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 acknowledgment?
- 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?
- Why are my feelings so hard to identify sometimes?
- Why are some people always so angry, indifferent, detached, or depressed?
- 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 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?
- Why do I feel that I have to always be competitive, or “better than the others” just to fit in?
- Why is capitalism, dependent on competition and greed, the predominant economic system in our world?
- Why do 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 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 personal transformation and healing?
- Why do I have no desire to contribute to society in a more generous and meaningful way?
Not all these questions will speak to you, but some will. Use them to stimulate interest and curiosity to pursue your own answers. We must keep in mind the profound impact that our parental upbringing and our immersion in our culture over the duration of our lives have upon any potential superficial answers that we might give. It is of utmost importance to understand the fundamental dynamics of our unique sense of self, and how we may not answer these questions in such a way that honors a more fundamental and unknown spiritual essence that we all have.
Why Now?
We all have the internal power to change. We only need to learn how to consciously access the power that is greater than our resistance to change and bad habits and express its infinite healing potential. For me, the choice became between living an inspired life, or leading a self-destructive life. For those who continue to embrace toxicity to their detriment, and the detriment of others, there are healthier, more life-affirming choices to be made.
Why would anybody want to change, anyway? I changed because I was going to die, and I wanted to see if life had any lasting, eternal meaning. I had to stop telling life solely what it meant to me and be watchful and silent enough so that life could reveal a deeper meaning. I had to let go of my misunderstandings of the words that I used.
We will never heal if we allow ourselves to remain helpless and ignore our responsibility for healing our problems. We must ask difficult questions, and each of us must begin the search for the truth of our existence.
- What value is there to our life and our story, if we refuse to tell the world about it?
- What is the value of our love, if it is never shared with all others?
- What is the value of our vocal abilities, if we neglect or refuse to use them? And what is the value of our voice, if we perceive that few care to listen to us anyway?
The investigation of personal trauma, my response to it, and my search for truth is an exercise in compassion, understanding, and healing, and it need not be maudlin in nature. And doing so is important because we must speak truth to power, whether it is the illusory power of our past, or the ongoing materialistic and/or divisive cultural powers of the day, or we’ll lose our breath and become oppressed and overcome by it.
We don’t have to die to find our final freedom. True freedom is the path, the goal of all healthy life experiences, and the only reason that I am still here. We can be healed. Not only did humanity make it to the moon, but each of us also has the potential to reach God, truth, love, compassion, healing, and light after we leave the launchpads of our own lives. Life is more about building a better state of consciousness, with enhancing the life-affirming qualities, and the cultivation of greater insight. We are all capable of making our unique paths on our journey to the higher dimensions of our life experience and its supporting consciousness, and we can develop the willingness to share those inspired words with others.
The deadly Conspiracy of Silence continues; are you part of it? Instead, develop a healing message, walk the talk, and share the journey with others. Prepare for indifference. Prepare to share love with the multitudes of fellow travelers on this lifelong journey. Sometimes, the salvation of this planet, and ourselves, demand that we speak our truth, act upon it with others, and, finally, grow into the somebody that we were destined to become.
Chapter Three: Approaching Trauma More Consciously
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung
Like most of us, I have had many traumatic events in my life. I can never forget the pain I experienced getting whipped by a belt from the ages of four through thirteen, the helpless feeling of being bullied by classmates into my freshman year of high school, the disgrace of being humiliated and betrayed by my father during a baseball game in which I was pitching at twelve years old, the horror of watching my first dog get run over by a car, the falling from the top of a seventy-foot fir tree and sustaining bad bruising from hitting every tree branch on my way down at nine years old, the witnessing of my great grandfather’s lifeless body as a seven-year-old, and the tortured endless nights of nightmares and bed wetting because of my fear of getting out of bed. I don’t remember having been a baby who was stored in a garaged car many cold evenings, though my parents and some of their acquaintances have confirmed that disturbing fact.
It is important to remember that when people are traumatized, their experience of this wounding is often beyond their capacity to communicate to others. This tends to keep victims very isolated, because of the insecurity that this ineffablity generates, even if in therapeutic settings. But the body has its own language, and we may become weighed down over the unhealing years by trauma’s burden that must be carried. Our body posture can suffer, we may look down, or away from people when looked at because of the shame that is felt. This disconnect from the body through shame and hiding may cause the person to almost completely lose touch with their body, and their behaviors will often indicate a lack of care and concern that might otherwise be present in a non-woounded person. And some develop internal narratives that make the victim fantasize about ways to reach out to others, even though they are horribly insecure about making any such contact.
One of the several subroutines or spinoffs that my consciousness ran resulted from accommodating early trauma that I experienced. This part of me was of the nature of the “savior” archetype, which was a part of myself that believed that, for anybody to ever love me, I would have to, literally save them from death or do something heroic in nature. This fantasy became conscious briefly when I was about six years old. I no longer wonder where my need to overachieve or my excessive loyalty to other damaged human beings arose from. This resulted in overpowering grief and incredible guilt and shame every time I witnessed failing health and/or death in friends and family members, including pets. I also could not tolerate abuse in any form, especially when I witnessed male friends exhibiting controlling and/or misogynistic behavior toward their female partners. Sadly, my needs ended more than one long-term friendship
Trauma results in damage to, or loss of, connection to ourselves, our bodies, our families, others, and the world around us. This disconnection is often hard to recognize because it doesn’t always happen all at once, but rather over time. We make early accommodations to our traumas, with the wounds and our need to feel safer and more secure, creating spinoffs of our real selves that were designed to manage our suffering and reduce further attacks upon ourselves. These spinoffs become aspects of our defense mechanisms, and they dominate our awareness to the point of making us believe that this is all that we are, in spirit and truth. Often, the damage wrought by the wounding does not become evident for decades after the original trauma.
Like all others within our society, I have also been traumatized by our culture and religion in both profound and subtle ways. Trauma seems to be a natural outcome of our collisions with life-shattering events and less intense though destabilizing experiences that we were not able to adequately process and heal from at the time of their origin. It is now known that trauma can arise through actual acts or the careless or unconscious omission of necessary love at strategic life junctures. Yet, some even claim that there is no greater trauma than our passage through the birth canal and that the rest of our lives are defined by our response to that expulsion from the safe womb of the mother. No matter how it happens, trauma must be understood and dealt with, or we will be limited by our instinctual responses to its experience.
Our fight-or-flight mechanism is how we respond to trauma and threats within the environment. It operates at a nearly instinctual level, but it can be malleable, depending also upon the situation, our individual value system, and cultural conditioning. We tend to think before we react, and our thinking draws from hints from our biological hardware, our historical patterns of behavior, our genetics, and our training. Society, in combination with humanity’s neural-linguistic capacity, has provided mental software subroutines that enable us to process and act upon information to not only keep us safe, but also to act in efficient and, mostly, culturally acceptable manners. The problem is that many of these subroutines act below the conscious level and are fundamentally defective, having become habits of thought, with many perceptions being created from a dead past. Added to this are self-generated subroutines created through traumatic wounding, and we can see how free will may only be a concept until the self is made wholly conscious, healed, and whole.
All of these subroutines become sacred cows that are not only erroneous representations of truth but also keep us trapped within a limited radius around the whipping post of our own personal and collective ignorance. The human race remains a breeding ground for violence of all types, with its traumatic impacts upon all of us. We are culturally inculcated into ignoring the distressing objects of our perceptions by scapegoating others, denying our unconscious support in the very reality that we are witnessing, and, perhaps, violently reacting against it. Pretending not to see, or not speaking of the evil that we see or hear, results in no healing potential for anyone.
Toxic Masculinity and Our Sacred Cows
Historically, since at least the Greco-Roman times, men have established the rules of mutual engagement. Our world culture’s dominant male energy has a propensity for creating toxic and traumatic engagements. This kind of engagement results in patriarchal systems of political, religious, and economic understanding that maintain the status quo through a multitude of forms of oppression. Yet the status quo remains quite imbalanced, and it continues to bring harm, even to the proponents of these systems and the perpetrators of toxic behavior. To this day, men continue to struggle with trauma-inspired feelings of poor self-esteem, competitive burnout, and lack of meaning, while keeping this disfiguring system of engagement with the world solidly in place.
Women can also perpetuate trauma and suffering, but the statistics are obvious as to which sex is the major perpetrator of crimes against self and others through intentional and unintentional traumatic assaults. As far as incidents of gun violence, men outpace women by an almost 20 to 1 ratio, so it is not even close. Men are the primary vehicles for the delivery of darkness, and they are impacted by the poisoning within their spiritual ecosystem that carrying such energy would predispose them to. Yet, both passive and aggressive males and females can benefit from understanding the effects of trauma in their own lives, and we can all take enormous strides to bring healing to ourselves.
Here are some principles of trauma and culturally inspired toxic masculinity that live in our collective consciousness, and which also lived in the unconscious domains of my mind and heart. I have exaggerated them and linked them with common monetary, sexual, and personal power dynamics. And yes, these principles, or variations of these themes, are part of the Common Knowledge Game (CKG) fundamentals for the erroneous understanding of self and others.
- I am the center of the Universe. The rest of humanity is here either for my pleasure, for my profit, or my disdain. I may attend a church occasionally so that I can create the impression that I worship a higher power than myself. But, I already know that there is no higher power thanHumility is not an option for me; that’s only for the poor and weak among us.
- Truly loving another human being is a sign of weakness, and thus I must continue to suppress all such impulses so that I can achieve my selfish goals. I will carry on a campaign of hatred, judgment, and condemnation of all people unlike myself, all the while claiming to represent their interests at the highest level of my being (with subtlety if one is of the passive/aggressive nature). The ignorant people populating my world will hopefully associate my hateful behavior with their understanding of what love is, thus damaging the hearts and souls of all who may fear, respect, and/or follow me. My schizophrenia will be confusing to others, but may still be normalized, as the people I influence model and support my behavior.
- People, and Mother Nature itself, are most valuable if they can be monetized. If I can’t make money from my relationship with people or our natural surroundings, then I don’t necessarily need them. They will have to prove that they belong in my life in some other selfish, self-serving ways. I choose to neglect the long-term effects of my short-sighted thinking because now is the only moment to profit from others and the Earth.
- Never admit that I am wrong. Always blame somebody else for my problems. Admitting guilt is a sign of weakness and only for those who do not have sufficient monetary and legal power. I don’t need your forgiveness for my mistakes, because, as far as you should be concerned, I do not ever make mistakes.
- I have a right to choose how much drugs and alcohol that I consume. I do not need feedback from others telling me that I am abusing my medicine and/or alcohol. I have earned the right to drink as much as I feel like because I have so much stress in my life, and I make so many sacrifices that I deserve an extra break and release through excessive alcohol and/or drug consumption. I do not have a problem, and if you think that I have a problem with my chemicals, then it is your misunderstanding and not my own.
- Never spend any time in self-reflection or meditation. Developing insight is difficult and time-consuming, and I have more important things to do. I am already perfect, I always have been perfect, and everybody else needs to change to accommodate my needs. If I am not perfect today, I always have someone or something else to blame.
- I have a right to use my strong emotions to intimidate and threaten anybody that I need to get my way. My anger is a weapon to be wielded whenever necessary, and its expression is my first selection from my arsenal of tools for manipulating and controlling my world.
- If I can’t get my way with another human being, then I will cajole or bully them into submission, attack their name and character, and/or impugn their dignity until they either submit or are discredited by my allies.
- Everybody unlike me should be distrusted. Relationships built through mutual trust and collaboration can be threatening to my short-term goals and should not be cultivated, as only alliances of hate and distrust are capable of bringing me to my goals.
- The women in our lives are more suited to be our personal possessions than self-sufficient, independent people, and they are not to be treated as equals. They are better suited for exploitation for family support, sexual purposes, and/or economic gain.
- If I can’t get my way through truth-telling, then telling lies becomes my most potent weapon. If I am caught in a lie, then it is only your misunderstanding of my point, and not what I said, that is wrong. If I tell the same lie often enough, then people will start to accept the lie as the truth.
- If there is no conflict currently in progress, then I must start creating the conditions for the next one and socially position myself so that I can maximize emotional profits and visibility for myself.
- I never will obtain enough money, power, sex, or attention to keep me happy. I must continue to pursue these needs to extremes to keep myself from becoming depressed and losing my sense of personal value in this world. If I achieve my goals, and I am still unhappy, I must set new goals to attempt to fill that big hole in my heart and soul.
- The powers of my penis reign supreme. When it is erect, it always points me in the right direction, regardless of the people who may be hurt by my wayward sexual desires. My self-esteem depends on how many women I can convince to make love to me, and nobody is immune from my advances. One is too many, and a thousand is not enough, when it comes to sexual conquests.
- I am the king of my home. I have created my kingdom to serve my selfish needs. If my rules are not honored, my intentions for the family do not hold up, and family members start to stray, I will coerce, cajole, or threaten all wayward members with violence, if necessary. The family must stay together under my control, no matter what the cost to others might be.
- Perfectionism and full control of others should not be mutually exclusive propositions. I will judge, criticize, and condemn others and myself as needed to align my world with how I think it should be. I will compare and contrast my wealth and success with others to establish the best baseline for my expectations and behavior. My wife and my children are first and foremost my possessions. I will direct and control as necessary, and nobody else has any right to criticize my choices in how I provide and care for them. My whole sense of self-esteem is derived from how deeply they honor and obey me without argument or backtalk. I do not want or need alternate points of view, as mine is the only relevant
- If those closest to me engage in betrayal and destroy my sacred relationship with my family, I must avenge myself and destroy all who have threatened my life and values. My wife is my property and my property alone. If she should ever have an affair with another man, I reserve the right to punish her and my family, up to and including murdering them. If I must die in the process, it is a good death for me.
- Self-sabotage is my unconscious need as I fail to achieve my goals. It is my right to destroy my creations even as I destroy myself, so murder-suicide is an acceptable option when my needs have been dishonored, and I feel that I have no more options to achieve my goals and improve my life situation.
- I’m a failure because I never measured up to my father’s, my church’s, or my society’s standards. I will continue to self-sabotage my success at every bend in life’s road, and I will see life as a self-fulfilling prophecy of incompleteness and loss. I will not even question that my life has other possibilities for it, and I will resign myself to my depressing fate.
- I reserve the right to murder anybody when it suits my needs to protect myself. I will justify my possession and use of firearms by quoting the Second Amendment of the Constitution, as well as pointing to the fear and threats in our world and our country as my justification for stockpiling weapons. I will not listen to reason, as my mind is made up, and you can have my weapons after “prying them from my cold, dead hands.”
This list is abbreviated, as aspects of our collective selfishness cover the entire range of human darkness. Men burdened by toxicity tend toward sexism, racism, isolation, poor judgment against all others unlike themselves, and low self-esteem. While men moving toward spiritual healing tend to unite with others in peace and mutual acceptance and a willingness to share an improving sense of themselves with the world.
There are several choices that most men make in their efforts to cope with an oftentimes distressing and threatening life experience. We may fear being seen negatively or receiving a negative evaluation by those people familiar to us. We may fear being placed in an unfamiliar situation over which we have no control. We have developed a trauma-inspired brain that seeks to avoid any experience that reminds us of a time when we were helpless and unable to escape threats or discomforts. We spend extraordinary amounts of time perfecting the passive-aggressive role, where we don’t reveal ourselves directly to others, but instead, make our presence known through secretive behavior and hiding activities. The converse may also predominate where we may act aggressively and irrationally in situations where we feel an impending loss of control.
Men typically inflict their own wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not-so-subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in dominating or being dominated by others. Philosophies of oppression, and the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. Women are usually victimized, as well as those with sensitive natures.
We may participate in trauma-inspired anxiety reactions or accommodations to our wounding, such as:
- Don’t answer or initiate phone calls. (After all, the phone is the heaviest object in the universe!)
- Be silent, or shut down after brief sharing, whenever in group settings, such as family events or community gatherings. (Well, they didn’t want to hear what I had to say anyway!)
- Hide from difficult feelings through overeating or excessive drinking of alcohol.(Hey, these are two prized self-treatment options, what gives here?)
- Hyperactivity and vigilance around keeping a safe position, in restaurants, religious events, or social encounters. (Keep that exit in sight, you never know when you might need to run for it!)
- Being apologetic for almost anything negative that occurs around us, even if we are not at fault. (Well, it sometimes is a race to get to the victim’s role first!)
- Poor self-esteem, don’t care for self, instead focus on others. Ignore the self, often to the point of masochistic emotional abuse.
- Ignoring our feelings (especially anger) and any warning signals from our bodies, and not communicating honestly with others, through avoiding difficult feelings and perceptions, and maintaining people-pleasing behavior.
- Fighting “terminal uniqueness” that inspires feelings and perceptions like “why am I the only one feeling this way?”, “am I losing my mind?”, and “I am such a failure”.
- Excess competitiveness with others while engaging with greed and the need to keep up with the Jones. (Capitalism is a collective and individual mindset, after all.)
- Proving self-worth in environments where we and others are disrespected, and trying to fit in where we don’t belong.
- Stockpiling weapons. (Well, you never know when you might need to become a one-man militia.)
- Not speaking up for ourselves or for others who are oppressed for fear of being marginalized.
- Over immersion in entertainment.
- Not exercising, and not respecting the body’s needs.
- Use of recreational drugs to the point of habituation (including marijuana).
- Smoking, vaping, or chewing tobacco.
- Using sex as a way to manipulate others, to artificially build self-esteem, or as a disguise for loneliness.
- Workaholism, perfectionism.
- Addiction to risky behaviors and activities in general.
- Having pet peeves that over activate us, or being easily triggered emotionally by the need to wait, or by being ignored, or interrupted in conversation (well, it did not feel good in childhood, maybe we can make these triggers work while in adulthood?)
These attitudes and behaviors are guaranteed to bring poor emotional and physical health to the damaged ones, and they only encourage further repression and traumatizing of ourselves. Life certainly can be quite a complicated challenge, and our responses to it determine whether we can maintain reasonable health and a sense of joy and well-being, or collapse into a deteriorating life situation.
Several recent news articles and studies indicate an epidemic of younger, white, middle-class men dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast for at least the past thirty years. There are many references to environmental causes, gun violence, the opioid/fentanyl epidemic, painkiller addiction, heroin addiction, alcohol abuse, or poor diets as leading causal agents. There is also “white man’s despair,” an expression recently coined that encompasses a wide range of unhappy and unhealed American white male attitudes and behaviors.
A disease of the human spirit has targeted and used masculinity for thousands of years to victimize everybody, all in the name of religion, progress, security, and economic growth. Does anybody still think that the suicide victim, lone wolf arsonist, abusive alcoholic, mentally ill person shot by a policeman, drug overdose victim, morbidly obese person, corrupted national politician and/or reality TV star, or mass murderer is a unique being, with no relationship to the rest of the very humanity that spawned him?
The history of humanity indicates that, collectively, it is acceptable to pass unfair judgments against ourselves and each other; approve of the distribution of weapons of war to countries and individuals; promote the inequitable distribution of resources and wealth with a now monetized Mother Earth’s resources; cultivate excesses and greed as aspects of positive capitalism; incite division, violence, murder, and war; continue injustice and inequity; defend racism and white supremacy; promote religious and philosophical persecution; and create and continue the conditions for addiction and suicide. This self-destructive behavior continues, seemingly unabated. There are large groups of humanity who would rather watch their world burn than collaborate with it to bring a measure of healing to all. And those in positions of power historically haven’t known what to do either.
In the 1980s, during America’s campaign to reduce the proliferation of drug addiction, Nancy Reagan made the famous statement: “JUST SAY NO!” The understanding at the time was that addiction was a personal choice, and by reversing the “yes” to drug use to a “no,” the problem would just disappear. In the absolute, that is quite true. Our real problem as a human race is that our desire to just say no to perceived negative situations or behavior has been overrun by a lack of alternatives to choose from, peer pressure, family and religious training, and our failure to develop or maintain the ability to set healthy boundaries for ourselves. Why doesn’t our civilization say no to the proliferation of traumatic events and the wounding of the innocent? Because it doesn’t work.
We are all susceptible to the damages incurred by spiritual asphyxiation, should we neglect to listen to the stories being told by our most vulnerable family members. The sensitive and the oppressed of our culture define the leading edge of the journey of our own shared human experience and are indicators of our collective spiritual condition. As a culture, we need to remember that the traumatized, the mentally ill, the diseased, and the damaged population, which includes the addicts and the alcoholics, are society’s canaries in the mine. Their diminished lives are direct evidence of a cultural disease, and they become part of the narrative of cultural and spiritual dysfunction.
The possibility of bringing balance and a sense of wholeness into life must be embraced, and conscious movements toward healing will greatly reduce trauma’s burden upon us. When healing from the impacts of trauma is not pursued in earnest, many negative outcomes become possible. Some become addicted to the idea that their only function is to provide for their family, and, having achieved success or failure, they become disillusioned. Some may eventually lose their sense of meaning and direction in life with the loss of a career, marriage, or community. They may become lonely and depressed and may develop profound mental illness and/or become addicted to drugs and alcohol if not treated. Those who somehow hang in there, waiting for a better day, may never see it.
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 our feminine nature and the Divine are built right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. The Golden Rule, which states, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” does not bring great hope or direction to huge segments of the human population, religious or otherwise, because they are ignorant of love’s need for the release of emotional controls over others, self-care, peace of mind, and adherence to collaborative and compassionate principle. As the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “We are made for goodness. We are greatness in the making.” How can we achieve that goodness again?
Facing Your Trauma and Returning to Goodness
Suffering comes in many forms and has many causal agents. Suffering eventually touches all of us through its many different manifestations. Suffering may arise:
- as a direct result of trauma experienced at any point in life;
- through living a meaningless life;
- with a resistance to change and evolution;
- through an act of intentional hostility by others;
- through incurable diseases of the body or mind;
- spontaneously as a reaction to the vicissitudes of life;
- from an inability to do what is right;
- after witnessing horrific acts of violence;
- from the inability to reconcile the belief in God with one’s grief and loss;
- from becoming addicted to substances that were designed to take our pain away;
- from the perceived inability to speak one’s truth;
- from not having one’s voice heard in the face of oppressive powers;
- from contemplating the continuation of our daily pains into a distant, unknown future;
- or from continued bullying or threatening behavior from peers, employers, religions, politicians, or family members.
Many causes of suffering are preventable, however, and they have their origins within our broken, unhealed minds.
Each human child depends upon the quality of love, safety, and prosperity of the family household, and these are primary factors that greatly influence a growing child’s evolutionary path through consciousness. The parents are by intention also designers, builders, and co-creators of the early life and consciousness of the new child, even if the DNA determines a greater portion of the heritage. My father spent five years at a local university learning about psychology, child development, logic, philosophy, and religion, and yet his successful mastering of these subjects in school did not translate into insight as to how to best parent his children. My mother studied Dr. Spock and others, yet did not develop the insight necessary to know that placing a blanket-wrapped, crying baby in a car in the garage at night so Dad could sleep missed the bull’s eye for perfect child care by the widest of margins. All creators strive for perfection, and most parents are no exceptions, yet that desire for excellence is difficult to identify in dysfunctional families, especially by children who were negatively impacted by chronic parental mismanagement. Victims of wounding carry the pain well into adulthood, and even unto death, in situations where the trauma is never made conscious or addressed in a loving, healing manner.
For those who may need help refreshing their memories, or understanding if healing from trauma should be a serious consideration, taking the following test may be of help. The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Questionnaire is ten questions to help people identify their childhood experiences of abuse and neglect. Here is the questionnaire.
Before your eighteenth birthday:
- Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? No___If Yes, enter 1__
- Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured? No___If Yes, enter 1__
- Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever… Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? Attempt or have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you? No___If Yes, enter 1__
- Did you often or very often feel that … No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other? No___If Yes, enter 1__
- Did you often or very often feel that … You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? Or your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it? No___If Yes, enter 1__
- Were your parents ever separated or divorced? No___If Yes, enter 1__
- Was your mother or stepmother: Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife? No___If Yes, enter 1__
- Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs? No___If Yes, enter 1__
- Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did a household member go to prison? No___If Yes, enter 1__
If you answered more than two questions in the affirmative, you are potentially predisposed to a cluster of poor health choices, continued traumatizing of self and others, suffering within the self, and creating a generally troubled life experience. The embodied stress of trauma causes cortisol to be injected into the bloodstream for, potentially, decades, causing stress and inflammation-related illness and disease. These ten questions should not be considered to indicate that there are only ten situations where trauma may arise, as experts in trauma, and your personal experience, and mine, show that there are many other potential sources for deep wounding.
Here are some general examples of stressful events that can result in childhood trauma:
- Physical abuse
- Sexual abuse
- Emotional abuse
- Verbal abuse
- Emotional neglect
- Generally dysfunctional family
- Bullying
- School shooting
- Communityviolence
- Accidents/serious injuries
- Forced separation from parents
- Chronic illness
- Divorce of caregivers
- Cult membership
- Witnessing domestic violence
- Kidnapping
- Natural disast
A Canadian study reported in the scientific journal Psychoneuroendocrinology found that individuals exposed to adverse childhood experiences tend to be biologically older than their counterparts. The authors considered whether accelerated biological aging could help explain the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and poor health outcomes later in life. Their findings suggest that harm, such as abuse or violence, in early life takes many forms and can lead to health consequences many years down the road. The researchers found that the link between adverse childhood experiences and biological age was stronger for more severe forms of adversity, such as physical and sexual abuse.
I scored high on the ACE test. As a child, I had several health issues, and I was restless, discontented, and suffered from a feeling of not being heard or fully accepted. My parents and my culture tried to convince me that their paths and understandings were righteous. I was told countless times to pick myself up by my bootstraps and be mature enough to understand and find where I fit in this challenging place.
The greatest trauma to the human soul is the early damage to our sense of self that causes poor self-esteem and all of the compensating behavior that occurs downstream from the wounding. Without even knowing it, we traumatize others with variations of our original trauma. If our trauma created a sense of self that is insecure and feels unloved or unlovable, our relationships will be held back by just that much and will not dynamically evolve into the fullest of their innate potential. We remain pilloried to the past and lost within the unconscious response patterns of a mind trapped in the labyrinth.
Trauma and suffering are not synonymous, though suffering may arise from failure to directly address traumatic wounding, which only leads to more suffering and the unconscious predisposition toward creating new traumatic life events. And, most of these assaults against our Spirit originate within the family. Though environmental influences, corrupted societal norms, and religious malfeasance also play major roles in the origin and proliferation of traumatic wounding.
My first thirty-one years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed and traumatized by the conspiracy of silence, a silence created by my misguided need to preserve and protect a limited, damaged image of self and all others. We know all too well where we are now, and for those that do not like their present state of awareness, we do have options.
Dealing with Your Trauma
Meditation is a way to access the trauma stored in the body. My friend Paul, during a meditation experience in the early 1990s, literally saw a small semi-human form, vaguely resembling his young self, erupt from a historical wound in his back, crawl up to his shoulder, and fly away. Thirty years of back pain disappeared through that amazing exercise, facilitated by Jerry Jones, the famous meditation teacher.
In 1987, during a profound meditation, I was also shown two complete identity matrices attached to my bodily energy field. I did not recognize them as creations from damaged parts of myself. I was ignorant of trauma and its potential impact at the time, and all I could do was note that they were not there for my greater good. I intuitively knew them to be tricksters. They stayed with me for years afterward, for I did not know what to do with the information. I did not know it at the time, but I performed a spiritual bypass where I was able to postpone dealing directly with them until I had the requisite insight and knowledge to do so effectively.
If it weren’t for the incredible spiritual strength and wisdom of my life partner, Sharon White, I would not have experienced an extremely cathartic event. It was on a Thursday morning in February 2018, and I was preparing to go to the Pilates class that Sharon and I attended. I wanted to get there early so that we could warm up on an exercise bicycle with a little aerobic activity.
But while I was ready to go, Sharon was on the telephone, talking with a friend. I, trying to be innocent, said, “Can we go now?” And she got mad. Her anger released in me the trapped energy of a lifetime. While raging at her, I became aware of a pain so deep and so all-encompassing, it conjured anger from a source that I had never touched before, at least as a verbally conscious human being. Sharon and I went our separate ways for a few hours, while we both tried to understand what the heck had transpired. Leading up to this experience, I had been intensely exploring the entirety of my life, having written seventy pages about my early childhood and trauma, my maturation process, and addictive and self-destructive cycles. All of this writing had placed me, without me realizing it, into the psychic world of all of my past pain and suffering.
After meditation, I had a realization. My wounded essence, and the issues stored in my bodily tissues, had actually cried out for the first time, and I actually listened to it, without my ego repressing it as it had for sixty-one years. And I also saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father. I felt incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents.
Sharon paid the price for a couple of hours, while I acknowledged the wounded baby within me. But, I had an insight that still informs me daily. I saw how we, as humans, keep layering ourselves and our ideas upon what somebody else is saying, rather than meeting the being where they are and responding according to the dictates of our heart center, which in most people, especially men, has been scabbed over by our early spiritual wounding.
My life has transformed from a trauma-induced static state of distress and emotional stagnation to a dynamic, ever-changing experience of life’s infinite possibilities for healing, new perceptions, and enhanced spiritual experiences. I say yes to the present state of evolving enlightenment and no to the diseased mind stuck in the past.
Here are some other options for healing:
- Create a visual timeline. Write onto a piece of paper, a long piece of paper, the years of your life. Start with the birth year, and carry it forward to the present moment.
- Listen to music from the time when the wounding occurred. It will open up emotional vistas, using the wholeness of the self.
- Write extensively about the time in question.
- Work in conjunction with a therapist trained in traumatic wounding.
- Perform a ceremony that indicates finding the wounds and freeing them from our tissues.
- Listen to the stories from family members, friends of the family, and, especially, friends of the parents who may have witnessed aspects of your upbringing.
- Engage in legally sanctioned Indigenous plant medicine workshops where the controlled and conscious use of trauma reducing psychedelics are allowe
- Have an incredibly supportive partner, or a therapist, to watch with you the emotions that arise during the turbulent periods of the introspection.
- Decide to make amends to the world for unconsciously wounding events that were Initiated by our self while in our unhealed, unconscious state.
Freedom from Trauma Now and in the Future
Trauma must be recognized for what it is, which is psychological wounding as a result of a single experience, the repetition of similar experiences many times, or a combination of different experiences that have attacked one’s safety and security over an extended period. It is an assault against our innocence, an oppressive act or series of actions, against our essence, and the unskilled way we have dealt with it becomes the source of much of our repressive tendencies and sufferings. And whether we remember the traumatic event, or not, our bodies remember, and the wounding is stored within the very tissues of our biological self
Not expressing ourselves honestly and openly results in our early demise, spiritually as well as physically. Many people within our society have lost all freedom of choice. I have much compassion for those who still struggle with the sometimes-lifelong effects of trauma with its resultant suffering, and its deadly spawns of fear, indifference to others, disassociation from oneself, mental illness, and alcoholism/drug addiction. Fortunately, we have other places to travel to find our healing, and there already are awakening people to observe and learn from, to gain hints on how to find our way back home to our innate goodness.
We must stop turning away from our own and each other’s trauma and suffering. Can we bring our sense of self, with all of our historical wounding and suffering, and look at it honestly and openly with ourselves and others? When we work through this difficult process, with the insight into our self and each other that we gain, we can arrive at the doors of forgiveness, not only for our self, but for our parents, and for our diseased culture and religions. We must remember that our parents did the best job that they could do, in the era that they did it. And they often fell far short of what is minimally acceptable behavior based on today’s understandings of what good parenting techniques are. If there is no more turning away from the historical lineage of suffering and trauma, we can permanently disrupt the conspiracy of silence that continues to dominate our civilization.
We must remember, our parents and our culture.
- Raised us while still living in their own unresolved trauma.
- Could not understand us and the effects of our wounding, because they did not have the capacity to.
- Could not teach us certain skills, because no such training or understanding existed before.
- Were emotionally and spiritually unavailable, because they had never been taught otherwise.
- Did the best they could with the little that they knew, while following norms of the era in which they existed.
If I Could See The World (by Richard Pope, Sammy Masters, Tex Satterwhite)
If I could see the world through the eyes of a child, what a wonerful world this would be.
There would be no trouble and no strife, just a happy life, with a bluebird in every tree.
I could see right, no wrong, I could see good, no bad, I could see all good things in life I never had.
If I could see the world through the eyes of a child, what a wonderful world this would be.
If I could see the world through the eyes of a child, smiling faces would greet me all the while. Like a lovely work of art, it would warm my weary heart, just to see through the eyes of a child. I could see right, no wrong, I could see good, no bad.
I could see all the good things in life that I never had.
Chapter Four: My Search For Truth and The Answer I Found
“We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.”—Anais Nin
In April of 1984, I checked myself into the Lovejoy Care Unit, a hospital for 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.
I learned a little. After an interview with my parents, my counselor, Claire, 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 U.S. 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. I wanted this position because it was, potentially, far more interesting than my mundane, regular job as a maintenance electrician. There were two parts to the test, and 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 self-annihilation. I even hid from and ignored 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.
Although the word “truth” is a loaded word, this is the exact expression that erupted in my mind after the failed suicide attempt. A search does not begin with answers in hand, only questions. The search had to take me to the deepest, darkest recesses of the human soul and spirit to find another source of wisdom and understanding. And, I would not discourage anyone from taking a journey into the deepest, more horrible corners of life itself, if a path into a new light can be found. I took this path because life had turned away from me. There are countless others just like me.
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 potential. I was starting to see the end of my road, with my out-of-control car crashing through all of the safety guardrails and continuing the race toward 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 with a woman named 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 on Randy’s living room couch at 8:45 a.m. to 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. I made the decision right then and there to end it all, to 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), then 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 whom 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, to see 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 other people’s tendencies toward indifference to each other.
The pharmacist would not fill the prescriptions, however, even though I had one refill left on each one. He told me that I needed to see the doctor again. Even with this setback, 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 use, should the conditions of my life prove that it needed termination. I never intended to take those pills as prescribed, instead telling myself that unless I found a reason to live, 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 U.S. 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 in 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 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 she 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 and the great cocaine that they had shared. 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 toward 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 bribed 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 made it home, miraculously escaping death and a DUI citation. But I still didn’t stop.
My retirement money arrived by the end of March, and since I owed and paid my father nearly $3,000, I no longer had enough money for a final trip to Spain. Stuck in Portland, I began to live out of my 1977 Datsun 310 when I was not crashing in abandoned buildings with other homeless people. During this time, I connected with all manners and types of damaged and dangerous people.
I was nearly dead, or so I thought, so I had little fear as I met new people and befriended them. Most were people whom I never would have associated with if I weren’t looking for trouble, but in this phase of my life, I was curious to know them. My only intention was to find the truth of living and of being, if there was such a thing, and to bring no further harm to anyone, save myself.. 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, hit men, felons, murderers, and undercover federal agents, some of whom were still investigating the criminal tentacles remaining from Portland’s infamous Stephen Kessler. I ran with my new friends, and my only intention was to be the best person 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.
As my behavior demonstrates, wisdom and forethought are not all-or-nothing propositions. Some of the greatest wisdom comes from sinners who have plunged into the darkest of darks, even though possessing fine minds. I had developed a lot of wisdom over the years, and it had to live side by side with the self-destructive mechanism of a life not yet judged as worthy of committing to. It may be tough to understand, yet these qualities can and do coexist. I had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.
My first “realization” was that I needed to avoid sex. I committed to no new relationships with women, including no sexual encounters. This was a pretty easy decision for me, as I was so beaten up by my history of misadventures with women over the previous fourteen years.
My second “realization” was that I could no longer smoke pot because it made me feel paranoid. And because I wanted to keep isolated in my need to find truth, paranoia would be counterproductive. Pot also dulled my emotions, intellect, resourcefulness, and curiosity, and I needed those qualities of being to survive in my new world.
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 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 into addiction and inadvertently helped me find the path to recovery. I was to eventually learn how to finally embrace the path to truth and love within my own heart, but not before nearly losing all hope again, and opting for suicide through continued abuse of drugs.
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 for 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, who was an undercover federal agent who would figure strongly in my sober future. I learned to love Ralph, who was an incredibly damaged soul, and his excessive drug use would sometimes concern me. I noticed paranoia 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 toward 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. 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, which lasted for neary two days, thus contributing to the conspiracy of silence that my 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.”
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 an 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 use completely shut Robert down to his humanity, and it left me wondering what my fate might be if I were to find myself in his 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 need to use, and she was also shadowed by a former lover, Jakob, who was incarcerated at the time of our connection. While I was at her place, she was 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 just trying to selfishly take care of themselves.”
I argued that I believed we all have both energies. We can act 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 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 darkness. Dorothy used heroin to cope with her darkness. But when she said her supplier was on the way and offered 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 appearance. I had lost seventy pounds. I had started hearing voices and had become paranoid. And I worked hard not to show anyone that this was happening. 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 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 by 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 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 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 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 still hadn’t used), and he invited me to join him. Sure, why not? I had nothing to lose but a life that was already dead.
I was following Frank 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 an 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 he did not spare me criticism. He initially could not understand why I thought it necessary to be where I was, though he was the only person 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 within this dangerous world has to end. 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, in 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, and 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 kept 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, and I was fortunate to have not harmed anyone. He then brought out a hypodermic needle 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.
A light went on in my mind, and I saw the utter insanity of the person I was and the insanity of my life. I stood up, laughed at the guy, called him and myself nuts, 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. Yet, for the first time in my life, I consciously entertained the intention of bringing harm to no one, including myself.
With five dollars left in 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 my family. My grandparents were happy to see me, but they were concerned about my appearance. I claimed to have the flu, and my 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.
I returned 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 Twelve Steps of AA Revised To Reflect My Present Spiritual Understanding
- Through our 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 judgment and/or lack of forgiveness in our relationships with others, we lose our freedom of choice, bring unnecessary trauma into our lives and 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.
- With our newfound 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.
- We decided 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 in our lives. We want to access the power to continuously evolve, and we want to cultivate our hearts to be more loving to ourselves and others. We decide to let go of anything that impedes our progress toward happiness, healing, and wholeness. We realize that without the deepest desires and intentions to change our behavior, we will not be transformed.
- 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 newfound 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.
- We admit that we were not being truthful with ourselves and with others, and by talking with another whom we may trust, yet not be beholden to, about our errors in judgment and actions toward ourselves and others, we can better deal with the shame and self-judgment 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.
- 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, our family history, and our cultural conditioning, with all of their embedded trauma.
- We open our hearts through humility and the willingness to change to embrace a new possibility for our life. Our newfound 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 emotionally charged memories that keep us trapped in a dead past. Rejoice, for the old demons are being transformed into the new angels!
- While we were unconscious of our higher potential as human beings, we bring emotional, spiritual, and perhaps even physical harm to other innocent beings, and we want to 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 of 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.
- 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 others. Our guilt will not be assuaged at the expense of others. We make full application of our newfound wisdom and our renewed desire to bring no harm to any sentient being. We want our world, and our 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 judgment will continue to support that intention.
- 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 by old modes of thought, and now we are more focused on the beauty of the present moment.
- 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.
- 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 we 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 we 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 limitations.
Beyond the Twelve Steps
Outside of meetings, I was enlightened by a new teacher, a recovering alcoholic named Jack Boland, who had released to the world many series of tapes on recovery and spirituality. On May 16, 1987, John, my coworker at the Fred Meyer warehouse, gave me one of his tapes on recovery, and for this, I am eternally grateful. I listened to these tapes over and over, and something miraculous happened.
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 releasing me from my spiritual imprisonment was my 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 newfound sobriety. After that era of my life, I certainly was ready to move away from ignorance, the effects of trauma, and suffering. My desire to bring harm to no one in the underworld culminated in my continuing intention to no longer bring harm to myself and to resume a family relationship with overtly healing intent.
Chapter Five: Troubleshooting And Repairing A Broken System
“If you seek help from the speaker, you are lost. There is no help from anybody, of any type-that is a dreadful thing to realize for oneself. You have to realize the appalling, frightening fact that you, as a human being, have to stand completely on your own feet, there are no Upanishads, no Gita, No Bible, no leaders, no avatars, nothing that can save you, you have to save yourself”—Krishnamurti and The New Mind
Growing up, I was not provided with many clues for how to successfully manage the labyrinth of life and 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 this toxicity, while supplying many of its own forms of darkness.
My early exposure to the 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. The threat of eternal damnation to Hell given to a six-year old boy did not go well with me, and I had my first taste of judgement of this cult of people, laughing with other non-religious friends at the stupidity of all such beliefs and nonsense, yet wondering if somehow these misanthropic statements might have some truth behind them.
I could not 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 to me in the story of Defender Dan.
In 1968 at the age of thirteen, 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 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 this endeavor might be worthwhile. Though I had no diagram defining the internal parts and their relationship to each other, I began dismantling the toy, 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 or 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 to avoid blame, embarrassment, or other discomforts. It also points to the promises that we keep even though we may have never 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 that 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 cannot always and often won’t hear our cries for help, but also causes much of the suffering that inspires our agonized cries. Calls to 911 or 988 may work for some, but most others who need help will ignore or bypass those options. Our unwillingness to speak or 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 oftentimes 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 contribute mightily to each of our personal narratives, we can begin a search for the underlying truth behind all situations and shed the cloaks of illusion that continue to clothe so much of the human race.
Some Stories Of Traumatic Wounding
The effects of trauma mutes the potential for story telling from about ninety-five percent of all sufferers. The stories about the wounding that our religions, culture, and families have wrought upon humanity throughout the ages could fill hundreds of millions of book pages. I will limit my stories to three main themes: The impact of trauma upon indigenous people by the white race as reflected through my family experience and education, the impact of trauma on my father, and ultimately, myself, and the impact of trauma upon my first wife, Donelle.
My grandmother Beatrice Henry was a granddaughter of the marital union of an English sailor by the name of George Gay, who had crashed his ship off of the coast of Northern California in 1829 and quickly relocated to near Salem, Oregon, and a Willamette Valley Indian woman from the Yamhill/Carlton tribe in 1863. My grandmother, who was one fourth Indian, lived in an era when it was best to ignore one’s Indian heritage, for there was much disrespect for Indians exhibited by the white race, with many basic rights denied to them, and she became ashamed of her Indian heritage. I was to note later in life how this shame, and her internal compensation for it appeared to make her more intolerant of other races not white in nature, especially those of asian descent. This shame was, ultimately, to lead to our family to not apply in time for membership to the Grand Ronde Indian Tribe, and we lost all potential tribal rights and incomes from their settlement with the US government, as well as their casino ventures. My grandmother, mother, and uncle all had more native Oregon Indian blood than many of the present members of the Grand Rhonde Indian reservation.
My grandmother, when it finally came to her time of dying in 1995, came to live with my wife Sharon, and myself for the last three months of her life. She had been discharged from the hospital after cancer treatment, and her kidneys had stopped working as a result of the unnecessary chemo and its destructive impact on her weakened body she had received after the encouragement to my mother and uncle from her oncologist. When she arrived at our home, she was toxic and could barely recognize us, lapsing in and out of consciousness. One night, she cried out, and we came running into her room, to see what was happening. My grandmother stated to us that she was seeing a large group of Indians dancing in a circle around her dying body, giving prayers to the Great Spirit, while attempting to create a safe atmosphere for her to experience her last living hours. She awoke the next day, totally rational, and she was able to get out of bed for the first time in a week. She was back to her normal self again, though she was still dying, yet she no longer was burdened by her shame of her heritage.
In 1991, my wife and I traveled north to British Colombia, Canada to visit a friend, Carolyn. Carolyn requested that we bring up a case of tobacco, so that some Indian friends of hers could use it in prayer offerings to the Great Spirit. We were to drive to the Alkali Lake Indian Reservation, a now world-famous tribe of Indians who had turned the corner on their alcoholism, and were, almost to a man and woman, on the difficult path to recovery and healing from their wounds. We were to stay a night in Chief Gladys’s home, and attended an evening sweat lodge ceremony, where the tribe was seeking healing from the generations of abuse at the hands of Catholic priests and the surrounding community of white people. There was so much sexual abuse, beatings, and early deaths by this tribe, and it was no mystery to me why, previously, there was so much alcoholism within this tribal community.
I had attended several sweat lodge ceremonies in the past, yet most had been arranged by white people emulating what the Native American’s had been practicing for hundreds of years. The sweat lodge is a cleansing, healing ceremony, and an important part of the spirituality and tradition of Native Americans. This sweat lodge was populated mainly by the women of the tribe, with my wife Sharon and I as honored guests of the ceremony. The heat from the steam was so intense that I buried my face into the ground. Yet, the higher the heat, the greater the capacity to purge ourselves of our grief, and wounds. The women screamed and wailed together in a most heartbreaking chorus that I had ever heard. Their collective pain, grief, shame, and suffering came out in this sacred space. They were no longer hiding from their traumatic wounding from the Catholics, they were directly confronting it, while the sweat, and the tears, rolled down my face, I knew that I had experienced the most powerful display of collective intent to heal that I had ever witnessed or experienced.
The Catholic Church has been at the forefront of abuse of Indigenous peoples around the world for at least the last 600 years. In a Church declaration in the late 15th century, it was documented and ordered that explorers operating under the guidance of the Catholic Church were allowed to imprison, enslave, and steal from any Indigenous peoples that the whites encountered in their journeys of exploration and conquests of the “new world”. In 2022 Pope Francis visited Canada from July 24 to the 29th, with stops in the provinces of Alberta and Quebec, and the territory of Nunavut. The trip mainly focused on apologizing for the Catholic Church’s role in the Canadian Indian residential school system and reconciliation with the country’s Indigenous peoples. Thousands of children had been murdered, or starved to death, while learning the “white man’s ways”, many of which were buried in unmarked graves, and hidden from sight from the outside world. As you might imagine, his outreach did not bring great peace and healing to the Indigenous peoples, and it may take generations for true forgiveness to happen between the Chruch and the Indigenous people.
In 1993, while working for an electrical construction company, my boss and I had several conversations about Native Americans, my Indian heritage, and the rights of all peoples within the United States. Rich R. stated emphatically to me that anyone of Indian descent had no real rights, other than what the government saw fit to give them. After all, Rich emphasized, they were defeated by our race, our religion, and our government, and the only rights they deserve as a defeated nation are the ones that the white race sees fit to give them.
The story with a direct impact upon me as a young human being is the story of my father’s upbringing, and its impact upon his attitudes, and understanding of how to be a parent. Beryl Donald Paullin, was a product of the Great Depression, having been born in 1927. His Father, also named Beryl, was a Fire Chief who was respected within the community, and also feared in his home because of his abusive nature and alcoholism. 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.
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, was one of the first Oregonians to receive a kidney transplant, and that 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 and his brother and sister had an older sister that they never knew of, until very late in their lives.
Gloria (or Susie) as most people now know her, was his younger sister, and both Susie and my father suffered under 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 both 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. Susie carried a most unfortunate and hurtful story about my father all the way to the end of my father’s life, which was that it was my father’s fault that Edward was almost beat to death, because my father, at four years of age, tipped over a lamp, and broke it. Edward’s near fatal beating supposedly arose from that event.
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. My Uncle Ed was a masterful storyteller, and I always enjoyed it when he grabbed my ear, for his epic tales about family, friends, and his work at the Crown Zellerbach paper mill, where he was the lead electrician for over forty years.
In 1943, at 16 years of age, Dad enlisted in the Marines, as he wanted to serve his country, get away from his family of origin, as well as he thought of himself as a “dummy” ,with no faith in his ability to successfully finish high school at Benson Poly Tech. His mother promptly collared the local Marine Corp recruiter and forced dad’s return home from the service. He re-enlisted in the Navy the moment he turned 18 years of age, and was assigned duty on two different warships, the West Virginia, and the Wisconsin, during his two years in the Navy. Upon his return from active duty in 1947, he returned home, where he threatened his dad with death if his dad ever laid a hand on his mother again. Dad moved on from that relationship with his mother and father, not seeing either of them again for quite some 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 after my mother’s death in 2009. 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.
Dad still had a fire in his heart, and an incredible desire to succeed. He worked harder than anybody around him, the sign of a classic “overachiever”. He endlessly drove himself, and he was going to overcome his upbringing, and prove to the world that he had higher value than the poor self-esteem that his verbally and physically abusive father had inculcated him with. His perfectionism and zealousness for order and efficiency was utilized to its best advantage in his future employment with the US Postal Service. That same attitude tended to, at times, challenge others, especially those that he attempted to help, or manage, as both a general manager with the Postal Service, and as a friend and family member. A person with a passive/aggressive personality, like me, had the most difficulty with him. Those who were self-assured or had found their own voice, and engaged him directly, had the best relationship with him, and he really enjoyed engaging with others in stimulating, challenging discussions. Those who took the time to get to know Dad, also found a way to love him, in spite of his rough edges. But it was hard to get to know him because too many times he would lead with a derogatory remark, or insult, and bad first impressions rarely get changed.
There are some who thought that my father was a horse’s ass, but that is the view one sometimes gets when in second place, having been passed by his race horse of a mind. A man like my father, who lived a full life, could have his own book written about him, and not scratch the surface of all the people that he impacted, positively or negatively, and all of the experiences that he had, all of the humor that he shared, and all of the wisdom that he developed. My sister, my wife, and I wrote several pages of “Beryl-isms”, which are quotes directly from my father about life in general. I have presented a few of his “top 50” statements, which he repeated many times over the last few years of his life. In parenthesis, I have included a few of my replies to his common statements that I used to give back to dad as part of our “conversation”..
1). Don’t wait too long to retire. People think they need to work those extra years, they work that extra one or two years, thinking they need the money, and death takes over, and they never make it to retirement (well, Dad, I retired early, but we will have to wait and see if that has any beneficial effect on my longevity. Right now, my main goal is to try to outlive you, oh immortal one!).
2). Oh those rich people, all of that money, and they still have to die anyway! (and the rest of us, we have to die too, darn it!)
3). Why do you need to know, are you writing a book? (well, as a matter of fact I am!)
4). I really took the system, didn’t I? (after being retired and on pension for 35 years, contributing $22,742 to your pension, and getting over one million dollars back, I would say that you did!)
5). Come back again when you can’t stay so long (well, I am working on that one!)
6). Don’t you have something better to be doing? (yes, but you are the priority of the moment, so try to enjoy it while I try not to suffer too much)
7). Sure am glad that I am retired, or is it retarded? (um, I won’t touch that one)
8). I might be here, but I am not all here (then where is the rest of you?)
9). You know, having a dog like Rocky adds 7 years to my life (yes, but your dog took 7 years off of mine!)
10). (to any waitress) Say, you sure are looking good this evening. Would you like to come home with me and serve me my favorite meal? (argh! So embarrassing!)
11). I am not trying to be pretty, and I never will win any beauty contests (I can’t argue with you on that one)
12). The doctor needed a urine, stool, and semen sample, so I just left him my underwear (oh, boy, what a bad joke!)
13). You couldn’t hit a beach ball with a banjo! You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn! (comments made to me both as a youth when pitching or batting on little league baseball teams, and while playing golf with him as a child and as an adult)
14). When I get to Heaven, I am going to have a talk with the “Old Man” about my wife dying before me. Wives are supposed to outlive the husbands. Either I should have died first or we should have died at the same time (Maybe mom finished her work before you did. In what form would you have wanted a simultaneous death, like in a murder/suicide, or in a car wreck?)
15). Son will we all meet again in heaven? (are you sure that you really want to hang out with the same crowd for eternity?)
16). Heaven is not ready for me yet, and Hell is afraid that I will take it over, so that is why I am still here (maybe you are still here to provide a few more lessons for the living. I know that I sure am getting a crash course!).
17). I am in no hurry to die. Nobody I know has ever come back from the dead and told me what a great time that they are having after death. (yes, and wayward religions continue to capitalize on that mortal fear, ignore the fact that heaven is here and now, and do not effectively teach us how to die to ourselves and our fears and suffering to experience heaven in advance of bodily death)
18). I provided care for you all of those years when you were young, now its your turn to take care of this old man (I should have read the contract more carefully before my birth!)
19). You should always be best friends with your sister. Never let anything get in the way of that friendship, because she will find a way to love you to your death, as you should love her as well (Well, Dad, you sure have shown commitment to both your brother and your sister, especially over the last twenty years. Somehow you all endeared yourselves to each other. Thank you for being a success in that aspect of family love, and overcoming the chaos created by your parent’s relationship. I think that Pam and I are on a good course right now)
And on and on it could go. My dad was a great story teller, and fountainhead of wisdom, one-liners, humor, self and other deprecation, and sarcasm. My personality was so much less colorful than my father’s, yet it is easy to see that I truly am my father’s son. I have many of his same attitudes, and I replicated many of some of the same deficiencies in my own life that my father also experienced.
My father died on September 15, 2017. Dad died in his own bedroom on a Friday evening, and had the look of awe and wonder in his eyes and face. He had found his promised land, where loneliness, depression, and dementia disappears, and where ‘bums’ are converted back into the saints and angels that they always were, but were rarely recognized by others as being so. It took nearly my entire life to release my own misunderstanding and judgement towards my father, and allow for him to express himself in the only way that he knew how to, while still providing a loving protection for him in his time of greatest need.
I met Dion on our trip to South Africa in April of 2023, where he came to be my tour guide. In the 1980’s he had been imprisoned by the white supremacist apartheid government led by P.W. Botha after participating in a peaceful protest. He and 81 other protesters were incarcerated for nine months, with many of them tortured every day. He told me that had the USA not boycotted South Africa for its apartheid ways, he would have mysteriously “vanished” like hundreds of protesters before him. Dion had nightmares for many years after his incarceration. He was traumatized, and his property had been stolen. He found that his healing was a very slow process, though by talking about the trauma, its emotional impact upon him lessened over the years.
The Catholic representatives had condemned apartheid since the 1950’s, but there was not enough of a presence in that country to have any meaningful impact. It wasn’t until a certain critical mass of internal, and external, protests, and in some cases attacks, against the government of Botha, and then deKlerk in the 1990’s, that change began to happen. The late reverend Desmond Tutu of the Anglican Church was a huge force for doing good over those years. It has been said that there was not a lot of praying going on inside of the sacred walls of the late reverends church.. There was concrete planning going on to overcome an oppressive, murderous, apartheid white Christian government. Thoughts and prayers are akin to mental masturbation, and are just forms of narcissistic procrastination, so the real workers for good got busy.. Only real, accountable action in this world has any real, lasting, transformative power.
After the elimination of the apartheid government, a truth and reconciliation process was proposed and supported. The Reverend Desmond Tutu promoted the truth and reconciliation process, where victims of abuse, and family members of those tortured and/or murdered, were given the opportunity to face their tormentors in a safe environment. The problem was that there were no representatives from the former government, or leaders of the white race based churches who continued to support the atrocities, nearly to the end. The cultural power brokers were let off of the hook, while those that they inspired were the ones who had to face the music.
Dion Fabe’s extended monologue to our tour group about the traumatic cultural effects on individuals, and their entire racial/ethnic community, from South Africa’s former white supremacist/apartheid national misunderstanding was a compelling story in collective wounding, confrontation with those oppressive forces, and the difficult path to healing while co-creating a new national community. Dion and his wife currently supports up to 16 distressed babies at a time, often at their own expense. These neglected, abandoned babies are from mothers with alcoholic/drug addicted backgrounds. He also manages “Hannah’s Place Of Safety”, a Facebook group using his charity’s name that I follow.
The most challenging story for me to tell is about my relationship with my first wife, Donelle, and aspects of her journey. She figured largely in my life before my sobriety. I first met Donelle, through our mutual friend Randy, in 1971 when I was a sophomore in high school. She was the most beautiful young woman I had ever met, gorgeous beyond all description, and she was incredibly intelligent and a very caring person, too. I had a sense that I had witnessed my future when I first saw her. I did not see her again for several months, but she had left an indelible mark on my soul, and I just could not forget her. We started dating two years later.
My life experience with Donelle ended up becoming some of the most compelling, heartbreaking, and depressing experiences that I could never have envisioned for myself, or her. She had a nervous breakdown late in her senior year and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. She would report to me that she felt like she was being controlled by something within her. She could not verbalize it, and she could only proclaim:
“I am controlled, I am controlled”.
She was briefly hospitalized and was placed on some powerful, experimental medications. She experimented with recreational drugs, and she was pretty accepting of me when it came to my drug use. She did not try to discourage me from using but instead found a way to fit in while our friends and family used drugs together. At this point, the damage that drugs were doing to me was overshadowed by the thrill and rush of their effects and the socially connective activity around their procurement and use.
I was hesitant to marry Donelle, fearing that she would yet again destabilize, and collapse into psychosis yet again. She had several “mini breakdowns” during the period from 1973-1979 that were controlled through new medications, or additions to her old regimens of drugs (she took up to four different pills at a time, several just for side-effect mitigation of other medications!). After dropping out of college the first time, in 1976, I began to spend some real time with her again, just working the swing shift at the Post Office during that period. It was a relatively stress-free period, though I was quite the party animal. We were married in September of 1979, after having lived together for four years.
Donelle was making great progress, and she only needed to finish her last term to graduate in great academic and practical standing. Well, it was too good to be true, because she had the worst breakdown of her life to that point, resulting in my need to have her committed to the Oregon State Hospital in July of 1980, less than ten months after our marriage.
I absorbed more than my share of alcohol and other chemicals to help me cope with my own dysfunction, while I watched my lover disintegrate, and then, occasionally, resurrect herself, from the effects of her disease through medications. Yes, we both had lifelong diseases to fight, but hers was a losing battle. She eventually became a homeless street person, and the State of Washington finally accepted responsibility for her care after I walked out on the whole process. That was around the time I began my search for the truth, though I was working with very few clues about which direction to head in.
Over the many years that I knew Donelle, I tried to be the best support person that I could be, but I was damaged goods as well, so I failed in my mission. She deserved better than what I could give her because I suffered under my limitations of selfishness, addiction, and sense of personal powerlessness. With mental illness, we all tend to fail together as a family, as a culture, and as a human race. Those who can bring forgiveness, insight, compassion, and a sense of the Spirit are the true blessings for the sick within our society. The great gift we can give is a non-judgmental listening ear, and to keep our hearts open to the stories that are told.
In 1987, I visited Donelle at her apartment near Camas, Washington. We had been divorced since 1984, but I still kept in touch with her on occasion because I was concerned for her. I had just gotten sober, and I wanted to make amends to her as part of the Twelve Steps. This time, she was in the middle of a complete multiple personality disorder type of nervous breakdown. She had candles lit throughout her apartment, and the setting was quite eerie. I sat down with her to talk, and I noted that she looked so young and innocent, and I was struck by the change in her appearance and countenance. As she spoke to me, I felt like I was witnessing a six- or seven-year-old girl, with a new persona that was now speaking through her. She told me about heinous abuses she’d suffered while institutionalized. We talked for a long time that day, and she was wise in unexpected ways.
I had occasional contact with her from 1984 through 1996 but then didn’t hear from her for over two decades. She died on my birthday in 2022, further cementing for me our connection. The hardships of her adult life resulted from her relationship to traumatic abuse as a child at the hands of a pervert and a beast of a man. They were magnified by our damaged male-dominated culture, poor professional mental health care options, as well as any unknown genetic predispositions she may have had. The most painful aspect of Donelle’s story is that she never got to tell it, at least not in a way that could have helped her overcome the traumatic abuses she suffered from her family, the people tasked with caring for her in the institution, and society.
Telling Your Story and Why It’s So Hard
Having a life narrative allows us to shape and control the way we see the world and the pieces of ourselves that we share. But I’ve met so many people who don’t have a life narrative. They don’t have a story that embodies the wisdom that they’ve gained and the problems they’ve overcome.
This is part of the conspiracy of silence. It’s not an intentional silence, but it’s a silence based on the fact that we don’t have words to talk about our personal pain. And this conspiracy of silence is taken advantage of by the people around us, as well as our political, religious, and economic leaders. The culture takes for granted that if we have nothing to say, we’re doing okay. If we don’t know how to say our truth, then our silence is interpreted by others as a tacit agreement or as we have nothing to offer, when, in fact, we do.
Humans have both a loving and a lying nature. But our tendency to lie overrules our tendency to love. We tend to hide behind our lies, and often, in doing so, deceive ourselves first and foremost. We keep our secrets close to our chests and fear the day when everyone finds out. The conspiracy of silence embodies all of the shameful ideas that we have thought and acted upon. A compelling part of this conspiracy is that others also share in this activity of keeping dangerous secrets, secrets that are attacks against ourselves and others, and the truth. This mutually imprisons all of us.
On the other side of the spectrum of our grand conspiracy of silence lies those who have finally embraced their healing potential. The conspiracy also indicates a hesitancy to talk with others about our spiritual potential, and our innate ability to connect with and manifest a more aware, intelligent state of being. We may remain silent because of our own perceived inadequacy in presenting a supporting and compelling argument for our point of view, fearing indifference and rejection from others. Some shut down all points of view in disagreement with their own; others feel resistance to any truth not already understood and applied. Many just turn their heads, and their words, away from the resistant person. It takes strength to successfully confront negativity while maintaining compassion and equanimity, thus not being threatened or degraded by the contact. This is a critical part of the conspiracy of silence. We become invisible to each other, the less curious we are about others, the less curious we are about ourselves. We become invisible to ourselves when we sit on our voices and fail to listen as our inner voice cries out for justice, peace, healing, and change.
The conspiracy of silence is all about preserving the established order and enhancing the status quo, and it is built right into the framework of our collective consciousness. Our collective common knowledge attempts to keep us in alignment and resonance with each other, no matter how out of phase with the truth that this knowledge may be. The resultant toxic silence has become the manifestation of religious, cultural, and political conflicts intended to keep most members of society from talking about underlying issues related to trauma, wounding, oppression, misogyny, child abuse, patriarchy, and a whole spectrum of issues. The conspiracy continues whenever evolving people become too fearful to speak their truth and share their insights for fear of being further attacked and marginalized.
Not expressing ourselves honestly and openly results in our early demise, spiritually as well as physically. Some aspects of life just seem to elude our ability to effectively communicate around them and never get incorporated into our personal stories, and thus they add to the collective conspiracy of silence. Also, other people’s stories and garbage get backfilled into the holes and empty spaces within our own stories, becoming embedded within us and adding to our internal confusion and chaos. We must choose to no longer adhere to old, worn-out patterns of behavior inculcated into us by our culture, our religions, our so-called teachers and teachings, our misunderstandings of our parents, and our creator. We each must penetrate the conspiracy of silence and bring the light of a loving heart and healing words to the hidden darkness. Our outdated sense of self will have to end, and we will have to find a new path of consciousness for this present-moment healing event to have any hope of transforming the heart, body, and soul. We need to follow new paths of consciousness while dispelling the illusions created by our society and our fantasy thinking. The conspiracy of silence has to be exposed and disrupted, again and again, if necessary, to stop the silencing of our true identities.
If we don’t speak up for what our needs are, then how are we ever going to make any progress with ourselves, within our families, and with this culture? Regardless of how difficult it may be, we, as human beings, are responsible for bringing our truth and our stories, no matter how incomplete they may be, to the collective experience, including our family, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors, and our religious and political leaders.
I believe that we need to address difficult human emotions and problems by expressing them skillfully. I spent most of my career as a systems analyst, doing electronic and computer design engineering and electrician work, and in that profession, I did a lot of troubleshooting and repairing of systems. I assisted in the building and subsequent technical support of the operation of multi-billion dollar chip fabrication plants in Oregon, and I helped maintain the pumping and delivery systems of the entire fresh water supply to the City of Portland, among many other less economically significant endeavors. I love functioning systems, and I am intensely curious as to why some systems succeed and some fail, even after successful periods of operation. My intention is always to bring repair and balance back to any malfunctioning system. And one of the first steps we always took when working on any system was to understand it. Before we can begin any process of repair, we have to understand the system. And so, that’s where the process of finding your story starts.
Troubleshooting Your Broken System
There is the story of a beautiful 1957 Chevrolet that Fred had owned since his father purchased it for him as a sixteen year old. Fred kept the car exterior in perfect condition, washing and waxing it monthly. Fred kept the interior spotless, and the car literally sparkled in the sunlight. Yet, last year, it stopped running. Fred did not have enough money to pay a mechanic to repair the vehicle, and he had no experience with engine maintenance, and was fearful of undertaking the study necessary to become proficient as a mechanic, so the car just sat in the garage for weeks. There was to be a car show and rally at the local fairgrounds one weekend, and Fred really wanted to be there. He called up his friend Jerry who owned a towing company, and requested a tow to the fairgrounds. Fred’s car made it to the rally, and he was glad to be, mixing with his many local friends and acquaintances, and showing off his car. The afternoon, though fulfilling and fun, was coming to an end, and Fred had to turn his attention to how to get his car back home. Jack, an old friend from high school, came by to tow the car, but asked Fred if he could look under the hood, and perhaps see what was wrong with the engine. Fred was uneasy about having someone touch his car, so he politely declined. He called up Jerrry, and had his car towed back home again.
Like Jerry, the vehicle for our conscious awareness needs a tuneup from time to time, lest we risk a total breakdown. We have to develop the willingness to open up the hood, and take a look around, or we will have to be dependent on therapists, gurus, ministers, psychiatrists, or other well-meaning professionals to tow us around, rather than being the autonomous human beings that we were created to be and are capable of becoming..
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 choose to awaken, which I finally did at the age of 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 more positively. 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 the past understandings that live 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.
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 secondhand/passed-down story of dysfunction that I inherited from our culture and my ancestors. We can never completely heal from our trauma without first becoming aware of our internalized, unconscious subservience to those controlling agendas.
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 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 is 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?
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 an individual? Is it transient or constant in nature? This step includes asking ourselves basic questions.
- 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 effect on all relationships?
- 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 is it universal in its expression?
- When and Under Which Conditions Does TheProblem Happen?Developing a detailed timeline 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 backward: start at the time an error was reported (as exactly as possible, perhaps using the timeline approach), and work backward through available memory and history. Usually, we only have to look as far as the last time we 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 timeline of events, and it will provide us with a frame of reference in which to investigate.
- 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’s 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.
- Is There a Fundamental Flaw in the System? Does It Appear Ubiquitously?Some designs just never quite reach their true potential for the 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 end one’s suffering is the manifestation of love. Love must be the guiding light while facilitating repairs and regenerating any broken person, place, or thing. Bringing a hammer to a situation that requires a jeweler’s screwdriver is a typical overreaction, is self-defeating, and reveals a life needing greater sensitivity and insight into itself. We want 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 reduce resistance. There is 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 spiritual system by increasing our capacity to embrace, understand, carry, and transmit higher consciousness, which utilizes its 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 reign supreme.
Stories where our unique personal values have been sacrificed to maintain some unloving sense of family and/or cultural order, or disorder, will be fertile grounds for exploration in your life. Also, the over-processed junk food narratives of the collective human experience can become coupled with 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 underperforming 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 Six: Insight and Mindfulness
“The unexamined life will be painfully lived”—-Jack Boland
When I was a kid, I had a strange and profound dream. I witnessed some sort of ancient priest, perhaps even a shaman, within a fairly primitive culture. The priest, having received his directive from on high, returned to his village along a vast lake in a high mountain region. He gathered all of the villagers together and informed them that they were to take every golden figurine and every sacred symbol that they owned, and they were to throw them all into the lake and never to think about them again. Then, he told each villager that they must go into their own home and face the evil one without any protection or care from any of their gods or their symbols of the sacred.
The priest then returned to his own home and tossed all of his idols and treasures into the deep blue lake. He stripped himself bare of all clothing and then began to summon the forces of the dark. He became surrounded by a fog, and as he lifted his hands, sparks started flying out of his fingertips at the unknown force of darkness that lay just beyond his visual field, still hidden beyond the boundaries of the fog. The priest refocused his energy into his arms and hands, and the sparks grew into a steady energy field, extending from his body, his heart, and his spirit, toward his unknown adversary. He was determined to overcome this force, this dark energy, and he redoubled his efforts.
The priest’s heart began to race out of control, he began to sweat profusely, and a growing sense of fear and dread began to take hold of his entire being, as he finally understood that his energy could not last forever. Yes, for him to continue this battle, he must sacrifice all of his life force. Yet, he felt that he had no choice but to keep engaging the enemy, to finally see the face of the force that had terrorized his village since time began. He desperately strained and stretched to see the object of his fear and disdain, even as the ebbing energy field flowing from his fingertips continued to cut through the fog.
Suddenly, a face began materializing before his faltering gaze. As he collapsed to the floor, almost drained of all life, he could no longer fight an undeniable truth: the face of the evil one might be his own!
Psychologists call this kind of experience projection, where we finally realized that the conscious world that we feared, the conscious world in which we created idols and gods and psychological mechanisms to protect ourselves from the perceived or potential evil, was actually a world that we created through our ignorance, both collectively and individually. This manifests in all of the world’s horrors that we witness daily and in all of the family and cultural dysfunction under which we were raised. Such insanity is promoted through our misguided perceptions, as we imagine what another person is thinking, and then make them wrong for thinking it. We are all wounded by these processes, and rather than find a way to heal from it, we ignorantly arm ourselves against further assaults from others, even though we are part of the attack against ourselves in the first place. If we go the way of our unexamined and wayward thoughts, we will be carried away by them into an endless maze, where we will continue to attack ourselves, and each other, until we face the truth about our wayward, conditioned perceptions.
What if a real miracle was trying to happen in our lives, and too few people cared or were not even aware enough to attempt to look for it? This indifference or ignorance is the foundation for chaos in our world and within our minds. Those who refuse to look at the toxic masculinity darkness within our culture become its unconscious and most ardent supporters. Indifference and hatred continue to threaten to destroy everyone and everything. Tragically, in this age, collective outpourings of love and support for victims follow domestic terrorist acts, rather than healing and preparing the culture enough to prevent the heinous behavior in the first place. But through insight and mindfulness, minds and hearts are transformed, making all of us much less likely to become the source of suffering for others. And we become living examples of loving non-violence in action. Insight plants the seed of the miracle into our minds, and mindfulness is the great gardener of that miracle, resulting in a more abundant, healthy crop of happier, peaceful, loving, and ordered thoughts.
Profound Insights of the Self
One of my greatest insights happened in my fourth-grade science class. Mr. Hill, our principal and co-teacher of the fourth-grade class, was going to perform an experiment to teach the students about the power of observation. Each member of the class was to record everything they observed.
Mr. Hill heated a portable electric stove. He then used insulated tongs to place a thin sheet of metal onto the burner. The metal immediately began to distort in size and disfigure. When he was done, the metal no longer looked like it did before.
I watched, yet I had no words to describe what it was that I had just witnessed. I had never seen anything like that, and I was struck dumb by it. I saw two kids writing feverishly on either side of me, and in my need to fit in and not look stupid, I copied off their papers and used their words to help me create my own descriptions. Even as a kid, I depended on other people to describe events that I did not have the words for. As a result, I have seen how the mystery of life can sometimes get overrun by society’s need to establish and maintain a continuity of reality and a shared understanding of events between all of its members.
Someone else had the description of what I could not yet describe, so I used secondhand words to fill in the gap. Extrapolate this need to fit in and to belong to all collective gatherings of human life, including religion, politics, and society, and the potential foundation for illusion exists within all such bodies of experience. The description is never the actual event, yet those who did not have the experience, copy and worship the description, and overlook the event that may be still happening right under their noses. They have never developed the capacity and the willingness to give their unique description of an event, they are in fear of offering a different or contrary version of the event, or they have never witnessed the event itself.
In my junior year in high school, I was required to keep a daily journal and record my insights into myself 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 did not spend a lot of time giving descriptions of events happening around me and instead listened to others as they described their own experiences, which I either accepted and supported or rejected and judged. But for me to describe the interior dimensions of my being seemed an impossible task. 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 completely out of touch with the majority of my classmates, as well as with myself. I had hoped that finally graduating from high school might change, if not end, much of my social anxiety and sense of disconnect. Of course, this could not be further from the truth. When I entered my freshman year at the University of Portland in 1973, I was lost again, and I had no internal maps to guide me through the complexities of college life. The use of pot, alcohol, and relationships with emotionally diseased people continued in earnest, obscuring any clear vision of my goals, and I constructed many self-destructive roadblocks that impeded all progress.
Looking back, this verbal and emotional disconnect would have been great stuff to write about in the high school class, but I was living a lie, without having the words to even describe it. And telling 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 and the inability to communicate my distress with others doomed me to a deteriorating life experience. This limited my choices so much that for many days, and years, I felt trapped in a prison, with interior windows sometimes only opening to Hell. I did not even have an adequate description to communicate my hell to others, and this is the secret behind the motivation for many mysterious suicides. The answer to these problems is mindfulness.
Cultivating Mindfulness
A man got into his car, and put on Jimmy Cliff’s song “I Can See Clearly Now.” Then he began driving during a rainstorm. Not more than one block down the road, he slammed head-on into another car, critically injuring himself and the other driver. The policeman who showed up on the scene investigated the accident and noted that the man had failed to turn on his windshield wipers. When the driver awoke from his coma, the officer interviewed him about what happened and asked him why he didn’t turn on his windshield wipers.
“Officer, I did everything right. I was playing the right music in the background, and I trusted that I was seeing all that I needed to see. I just did not think that I needed my windshield wipers.”
The officer immediately cited him for reckless endangerment and reckless driving. Because even though the man was unaware that he was doing something wrong, that didn’t make it any less wrong or destructive. Our unconscious behavior causes damage every moment of every day. As human beings, it is always raining somewhere inside our minds or even in our hearts. Mindfulness means turning on those windshield wipers and leaving them on!
The examined life demands that we take inventory of ourselves and that we make every effort to understand the motivations behind all of our thoughts and actions in this world. The deeper we dig, the more we learn that we are connected at a much deeper, more profound level with the rest of humanity than we previously understood. This is how the healing we undertake as an individual can have a ripple effect on the rest of humanity. We all influence the individual and collective consciousnesses that we experience as human beings.
Mindfulness means taking personal inventory and improving our 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 myself” that lives within my internal reach and restores me to sanity, no matter how often I might fall. My willingness to change is my greatest asset and opens the door to the highest power. 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. We don’t need to believe in any concept of God at all, but we do need to access our willingness to change, for that openness will point to our own unique higher-powered life experience.
Mindfulness is meditation with our eyes wide open. Insight and mindfulness work together to bring the parts of ourselves back into alignment with each other and reduce the profound impacts of brokenness and chaos in our lives. It is a lifelong process, and personal awareness is as necessary as brushing our teeth and eating healthy foods for our overall well-being. With mindfulness cultivating the seeds planted by insight, a new order can grow and bring our world back into alignment with the higher orders of peace, health, and collective well-being.
Each one of us has a self-organizing principle, or we would not remain integrated and true to our sense of self, and we would dissolve into chaos, fragmentation, and insanity. For me, God is a historical name for the self-organizing principle of consciousness within each one of us, plain and simple. The story of Genesis is a myth or parable about how the organizing principle of consciousness itself, God, unfolds in space and time; our responsibility for using the naming process to create an accurate representation of the outer world; and how it makes a more peaceful, happy experience for self and other.
According to the book of Genesis, the world was the picture of disorganization and uncertainty; everything was formless and void. But God (the mindful, self-organizing principle within our consciousness) changed everything. His action began as His Spirit was moving. The Spirit of God was brooding, studying, examining, lingering. And only after this hovering did God take action and start bringing order. God illumined everything about the world, day after day, bringing order out of chaos. When he was satisfied, he could rest. Because God is the very organizing principle of our consciousness, then ultimately it is our personal responsibility to direct the internal construction project.
God’s actions in creation help us understand how we approach our lives and the ways this awareness can help us today. For God still brings clarity to confusion. God replaces disorganization with organization. Uncertainty is replaced by certainty. Chaos is replaced by order. Those who are aimless are given new plans. Emptiness is replaced by meaning and purpose. And any sense of darkness is replaced by a new light or understanding. This is a process that is now known as mindfulness, but it has been known to godly people for all of time.
God does not judge us, we judge ourselves, and, thus, we can become more godlike in nature and manner, once our blocks to love’s awakening and awareness are acknowledged within. There is no white-bearded man in the sky, ruling from the golden throne with angels circling his head. But, there is wisdom within us when it is cultivated, and our insight and true knowledge become angels to us, as they lift our spirits, and our understanding and connection with each other, the world, and all of the life upon it.
We are responsible for incorporating love, rationality, and understanding into our worldviews, and this successful action creates the lord within us that informs and guides all of our actions. We must bring order out of the chaos that we created through ignorance in our minds and in the minds of those people who are part of our community. We must separate the light from the dark, and we can only rest when we have become one with the goodness at the center of our being and the center of everyone else’s being. We must become mindful, or, in the words of Alcoholics Anonymous, continue to take personal inventory. And when we miss the mark, promptly admit it and change course, rather than waste time defending our illusions.
While watching our minds during mindfulness and meditation, we will see many trains of thought passing through. While physically and emotionally engaged with the outside world, we will find many trains of thought passing by, as well. The first thought response to any situation is usually a conditioned response, which means, to be mindful, we must pause before acting on each thought. There is always another train of thought ready to take the place of the last thought, and this next train might be the better response. That next train has a much higher likelihood of being filled with more spiritually inspired passengers, especially when it arises from the pause moment. This is almost the equivalent of taking a deep breath before taking action. We can have a happier, more peaceful, and loving train of thought ride just by pausing before acting and not jumping on the first train that passes through.
A fixed truth about life is that if we can’t honestly look at where we are in life, we will never find the true motivation or foundation for change. The non-examined life always results in a damaged, dysfunctional life, and that characterizes both individuals and the collective society in which they participate. Our misunderstanding of life, no matter how Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or whatever system we claim to believe in creates infinite opportunities for chaos and disharmony with each other, and we feel betrayed by and suffer endlessly from all of the wounds incurred through well-meaning, yet fragmented belief systems.
We are typically healed through the power of awareness in the present moment of experience. I am forever walking into the unknowable present moment. Living into the truth of what that is now is the new story of my life. There is but one mind, but its truth cannot be experienced except by resting in the unknown of the present moment. No teacher will affect our salvation, we must work it out for ourselves. The God of our misunderstanding only needs our humility, patience, and sincerity to approach it successfully. The medium for healing is our own consciousness and the consciousness of our spiritually aware helpers, and this is always happening now.
Meditation
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 not have any childhood training, nor did I spontaneously develop capacities for insight, positive change, and growth. 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 more positively. By developing the power of insight, I brought a new level of healing and awareness into this new, present moment of experience.
Then I began my meditation practice. In August of 1987, I met Marie Schmidt, a practitioner of Joel Goldsmith’s The Infinite Way, which is a movement involved with mysticism and spiritual healing. She was an eighty-seven-year-old who taught every Sunday at the old YWCA on 10th Avenue in downtown Portland. I had seen a simple advertisement for her tape group while attending the International New Thought Alliance conference in Portland. The tape group was a combination of a meditation group and a forum for listening to the taped teachings of Joel Goldsmith, a spiritual healer and mystic who first began his healing practice shortly after the Great Depression began. She had been holding weekly meditations and listening sessions for Joel’s actual messages since 1962. Marie would sit in the front of the room and lead a fifteen-minute meditation, followed by the playing of a one-hour-long cassette tape. She had a collection of at least 300 tapes with over a thousand hours of his recorded messages, which I copied and memorized and she ended up giving to me.
Needless to say, I was captured by this group, which was attended by mostly older people. And I devoted myself fully to intense meditation practice. My arrows of perception became radically redirected inward in the spring and summer of 1987, after 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, by 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 saw myself and the world as two separate experiences or entities.
All the world is populated with my brothers and sisters, be they human, animal, or plant manifestations of the Great Spirit. I had to make peace with the fact that all of the insanity that I witnessed in the world was also an expression of the insanity within myself, even if it had not yet been made conscious of all of its ramifications. Yet, all of the love I witnessed within the world was also an extension of myself. I saw that I had a choice to make, moment to moment, as to how to see the world, for how I saw the world also defines how I see myself. My long-lost self started speaking, and I was the vocal cords for amazing revelations during an apocalyptic meditation event.
When this life-altering meditation occurred, I was released from my body of thought, I let go of the controls, and I entered into a place of infinite peace and silence. I was shown that no teacher will affect our salvation; we must each work it out for ourselves. I was shown how to think no thoughts derived from the past while embracing the new necessity to travel new paths of consciousness. I was shown that there was no such thing as “me” or “you” in an awakened reality, and to laugh at any perceptions that create duality and separation from my planet, the rest of the human race, and the animal kingdom. I was shown how past trauma attaches itself to our field of energy, sapping us of life force. In an incredible moment of inner seeing, I witnessed two embedded entities freeloading on my energy field. Once again, not yet being too conscious, I did not know what to do about the dynamic, destructive duo, which I intuitively named my tricksters. I also immediately intuited that they were not part of me for my greater good.
Through these experiences, and many following years of introspection and intuitive detective work, I discovered that I had suffered two major wounds or traumas, which had attached themselves to my field of energy or life force, tethering me to a troubled past with its dark interior modeling of reality. I was shown the very nature of the perceptions that kept me imprisoned. I was shown how to let go of the toxic masculinity-derived controls that imprisoned me. I was shown, at the very foundation of myself, an infinite creative potential that does not recognize the “you” or the “me,” but only its own infinite life. This creative energy can only laugh at the constructs of our perceptual universe. I was shown if I could follow new paths of consciousness that were not time-dependent, I could let go of my controlling traumas, my heartbreaks, and my separation from my true self and others. And I could share in the joy and laughter of a universe that loves itself while being amused at the wayward creations that keep popping up to tell us otherwise.
After much, much meditation and mindfulness and writing about traumatic influences in my life, I saw once irrefutable yet now questionable knowns from my past controlling my perceptions in the present.
My Meditation for Letting Go of the Controls
I would like to present a unique meditation or thought experiment. Keep in mind that the whole of life, as far as humanity is concerned, is only a thought experiment. The problems arise when people assume an unproven theory is a fact.
This can be both a teaching and an interior journey, and it can be useful for accessing the one Real Teacher that lies deep within all of us. Thousands of years of conditioning and education have kept our innate capacity to tune into our interior dimensions for personal change and evolution as more of a threatening proposition, rather than as the natural avenue toward freedom and self-discovery. In the end, the mind has found the present moment—imbued with the healing potential of its infinitely supportive sacred silence—becomes our Teacher.
This thought experiment is a representation of my unique meditation experience from July of 1987. Well-meaning teachers and healers attempt to give guidance to those spiritually inclined wanderers who may have lost or ignored their personal direct connection with intuition and insight. Thus, my experiences may serve as a template for other fellow travelers, though all must create their unique path back to a spiritual home.
This meditation is only a sketch to be filled in by your unique journey toward Truth. It only points in a direction, and this meditation is not for everybody. Here’s how to do it:
After quieting the body by sitting down comfortably, breathe consciously and deeply for a few breaths. Usually, following our breathing will quiet the mind a bit, which is important if this experiment is to bring any results. Poly-vagal breathing exercises that naturally reduce stress can be quite helpful. The rhythm is to breathe in for a four-second count, hold your breath for two seconds, and exhale for six seconds. Repeat the cycle for up to five minutes, if necessary. If your flight or fight response has been overactive, this will quiet down the adrenal glands and reduce cortisol-induced inflammation.
Now ask yourself if you’re ready to listen for the truth of the moment. Are you willing to travel to a new place in consciousness and conscious awareness that you have never traveled to before?
Ask yourself if you can let go of all thought controls that keep us pilloried to the past, controls that keep us in the judgment of self, and/or others, while also keeping us from experiencing a deeper appreciation for what this moment might be able to bring to us.
Now visualize for a moment that you are driving a car, heading in a direction that you feel quite familiar with. Before arriving at the usual destination, ask yourself what would happen if you let go of the controls, even for just one moment. Remember that all of your known neural pathways become overused over time. These pathways create deep ruts leading to graves if we stay imprisoned by our past with all of its knowns.
Is it possible? Keep trying, until you can see yourself actually letting go of the steering wheel of your conscious mind. As you let go of the steering wheel, imagine, now, that the car that was carrying you disappears. And find that you are now being carried into some new, unexplored realm of experience.
If the territory in your interior visual field is familiar, you will need to restart the thought experiment and find a different method or path to the interior dimensions than I am providing here.
If you have let go of the controls, you will now find yourself being guided by a teacher, spirit guide, or messenger that has not revealed who or what it is, what kind of form it might take, or why it might or might not exist for us in this new moment.
This thought experiment is a technique for shaking the mind free, even if just for a moment, from the lifetimes of its knowns or certainties. Truth does not come into a mind that has already been crystallized into a structure that does not permit curiosity and insight. Otherwise, we will only find a continuation of our past as it extends into an all-too-familiar future.
Living a Mindful Life
Since I have been in recovery, I have been involved in the 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 overcome some degree of dark internal force, and it is their journey that becomes the stuff of great stories and legends. I am trying 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 selves.
It is extremely difficult in finding a way to reach an individual or a society that has unconsciously decided to slowly and painfully commit suicide through toxicity and addictive cycles, while all remain in rigorous denial of that fact. Each toxic human being—be they an unconscious power-hungry man or woman, alcoholic, drug addict, or mentally ill person—must find their own unique bottom, where the pain of the disease causes a change or turning point in their lives. Insanity, loss of job, loss of family, admission to a mental health or addiction recovery facility, jail, DUI, the threat of death, or near-death experiences, and deaths of close friends or family members also suffering have been known to bring the desire for healing to many of us. A confrontation with those we may have harmed can have rather dramatic effects on our desire to change as well. It took all of the negative life cycle outcomes to convince me to change my behavior. Living in hell for an extended period brought me to death’s doorstep, yet I did survive, and the process helped me to seek a deeper light.
American society has created the perfect conditions for our population to practice insanity, mutual control dramas, and addictive behaviors. But it remains up to us as individuals to create our own conditions for recovery. It is this very matrix of misunderstanding that we all must eventually embrace within ourselves, see it for what it 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 reside.
Self-awareness, personal inventory, making amends to all that we have harmed, working a strong spiritual program, mindfulness, meditation, eating healthier, 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.
Insight and mindfulness, meditation, walking away from self-destructive dependencies, maintaining dialogue with others, speaking my truth, fighting against the oppression of others, and repression within my own heart and soul, following new paths of consciousness, working out my own salvation, and helping others on their own paths are ways to develop collective awareness, heal, and bring peace of mind to my own interior universe. I cannot love others or my own life completely until I make peace within my own heart and soul.
Through insight and mindfulness, the difficult emotions that arise within the human experience are experienced in the most sacred, honored way of the Spirit within us. We become more free and honest human beings. And, a few of us get to experience the real miracle, where we see from that aspect of our nature that can watch our thoughts arise, without being the self who remains unconsciously controlled by them.
To this day, depending on how conscious I can or can’t be, I can be dramatically impacted by the wounds, or I can soar high above it all through maintaining the principles of an open heart and a quiet(er) mind, which neutralizes the unhealthy illusions of self that can be so troubling. But my lack of healthy self-esteem did take me into hell very early in life. I didn’t find recovery until I was thirty-one years of age. And, for me, my only hope was to find the Truth that underlies the whole of life and attempt to derive a new sense of self through re-connection with this lost essence. A new openness to life and all of the possibilities that shared love can create has caused a resurgence in the respect that I now give my body through enhanced physical activity, diet, and placement in healthier outdoor settings and social situations. It helped to guide me in ways my father could not have embraced, nor given me any mentoring with, as he was too unconscious. Yet it remains an ongoing healing for me, as more layers get peeled back through continued insight.
In December of 2022, I participated in a unique one-day spiritual retreat. It was a powerful experience that allowed me to see the possibility of transcending limitations that had been holding me back for many years. I had been experiencing auto-immune disease, and I was seeking the cause, if any, in my consciousness. Espree, the facilitator, after deep meditation and personal sharing, asked me why I did not recognize myself as a beautiful person. I replied that, though I knew of my interior beauty and the beauty of the natural world, my body showed evidence of aging. I have had skin cancer repeatedly, I have a “turkey neck,” and I have gained a lot of weight since dramatically reducing aerobic fitness routines in the last two years. These facts kept me from acknowledging a truth that Espree wanted me to see.
I told her that I had long ago left that part of my biological, sexual, and cultural self that sought a more perfect body in the quest for mating. My search ended with my life partner, Sharon, coming into my life in 1989. Yet I forgot to consciously cultivate my love for my body and express gratitude for its continued existence as the vehicle for my consciousness. Espree then stated that if I only perceived my beauty to be an interior phenomenon, then I was just living out of my head space, as beauty and love are of the whole being, including spirit, mind, and body. We are the very incarnation of Mother Earth and our Universe in human form. We are all of immeasurable beauty and significance, and these two qualities that we possess are irrefutable and irrevocable, regardless of our biological, social, and/or personal agendas or the ill-informed negative opinions of others. Otherwise, our failure to conform to the standards and expectations of others will create internal informants who become tricksters and fool us into accepting disfigured visions and versions of self and the innate perfection of life. That was quite a call on me!
I remembered the times growing up when I felt rejected by many peers, often because of my appearance. My wife reminded me of the time that a woman named Marsha rejected me as a potential lover because I did not have the sculpted body or classic handsome features of the well-to-do men who had been her lovers. I was not emotionally impacted by her assessment, as I had little interest in sexual relationships, having only recently emerged from the underworld and found complete recovery from the damage to my body and mind from years of drug abuse and heavy drinking. I treasured my platonic friendship with her, though we did often sleep together without contact. Yet, was the indifference I exhibited and claimed for myself only a facade, and a manifestation of a deeper self-denial, self-neglect, or self-hatred?
Marsha had the loveliest face and the most perfect body of any woman I had ever met. She took great pride in her appearance and worked hard to maintain it. Yet, even she was not happy. She visited with her rabbi several times, trying to get to the root of her problems. She had an auto-immune disorder and the medical profession had offered her little help toward permanent healing or remission. She thought that, perhaps, God could heal her, both of her physical condition and the general suffering that she experienced. Her rabbi, quite succinctly, said that he had wasted much of his early life searching for God through Jewish scripture and abiding by its endless laws and rules, and he never found a healing Truth. It was not until he embarked upon a path characterized by intense exploration of himself that he finally arrived at the doorstep of Truth. He advised Marsha to learn about herself and her judgments against herself and others. He told her that she must explore the darkest corners and most closely held secrets of her life, her relationship to her body, her family, her friends, her employment, her charity work, and her connection with Mother Nature. He told Marsha that she had to recognize what the sacred wasn’t before she could find the right path to where God was. Her rabbi stressed that if Marsha was to find the healing balm that God could provide, she first had to find herself.
The rabbi’s message is one for the ages and one for all of us. He recommended that Marsha, even though she was not an alcoholic, explore twelve-step recovery groups, and practice the Twelve Steps to get her on a proven path toward spiritual healing. That is how I first met her, at the 1987 International New Thought Alliance conference in Portland, Oregon. Jack Boland, the world-famous expert on recovery spoke there, and several years later, in 1993, he had the temerity to tell me, and others, that he knew us better than we knew ourselves. He stated to me, personally, that I needed more pain in my life to motivate me to dive deeper into my true self and find a more lasting, satisfying recovery. Well, Jack, my friend, how right you were!
It has taken me a while, but I now realize that one of the dark forces that had dominated my early life was continuing to act as a subtle informant to the unconscious conspiracy of silence around my traumatic wounding. I had failed to fully turn the dark black holes of negative influence that developed in my early years into the beauty and light of a healed present-moment experience.
Something that my mind tells me now is obvious was not so obvious before. The self-negating fact was so close, and so institutionalized and normalized within my understanding of self, that I had accepted it and made it an unconscious subroutine and part of the foundation that supported the incomplete and inaccurate understanding of who I thought I was.
I too have an auto-immune disease. I judge myself harshly. I am an evolving consciousness, so by remaining open to the wisdom of others, my own improving insight is enhanced and supported by all such collaborative efforts. Compassionate feedback helps all of us to see where we are and where we can find improvement. Compassionate feedback, mindfulness, and meditation help to keep us better connected to “what is,” and the light of that enhanced awareness can bring transformative change and healing. Never forget, if we have judgments against ourselves, no matter how obvious or subtle, we also have hidden agendas with all others. All that we see, and will ever see, unto whatever concept of eternity we now entertain, is ourselves. How we see ourselves determines everything.
Wonder, love, connection, healing, wholeness, collaboration, and good mental health all lie within the realm of possibilities for all men and for humanity. With the acceptance of personal responsibility, one human being at a time, for all of our negative perceptions, we can transmute their dark energy into a lighter, healthier energy through insight, mindfulness, and meditation. We will then find the perfect peace and goodness that some claim we have always been looking for since mankind first arrived on this planet.
The compulsion to hide from ourselves can be lifted. We can know love and forgiveness of ourselves, and others, as we thought would never be possible. We can become a light unto ourselves and others, and that light can sustain us for the rest of our days. We can be at peace and understand, perhaps for the first time in our life, how to live life on life’s terms. We can finally find what we were looking for our entire life, so please do not give up before the real miracle of your life reveals itself. Finding your real healthier, saner self is the greatest challenge of life.
Those who find what they are looking for, find the secret of spirituality and the secret of a successfully lived life. Happiness, joy, and freedom become our life’s most enduring companions on our journey. Difficulties, sorrows, heartbreaks, deaths, depression, anxieties, and even relapses may still arise, but we now have healthier tools for dealing with the adversity of life. We no longer hide from life, but instead remain engaged with it. We ride life’s occasional tsunami waves, rather than be drowned by them. We learn that it was not life’s loads that broke us, but instead, it was the unconscious and unskilled ways that we carried them. Now we have the developed spiritual skills to successfully manage life’s unavoidable burdens, while creating the conditions for new opportunities in life and for prosperity in its many forms, including enhancing our relationships with each other!
Chapter Seven: The Uncommon Knowledge Theory
We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.
—-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
What if I were to tell you that everything that you think you know about yourself is only a theory, and potentially an unproven one, at that? Everything that you think you know about your significant other, your children, your parents, and even your best friends are only theories. Everything that you think you know about your planet, including the plants, animals, insects, oceans, rivers, and rocks and dirt are only theories. And everything that you think you know, or believe, about God, the Bible, Christianity, or other religions are only theories. And what if I were to tell you that you can’t be real, yet the only fact about you that can be apperceived is that I am here?
Mankind has used religion, spirituality, philosophy, and the science of observation for thousands of years to help understand the world, and for insight into the self. Science, religion, and spirituality are based upon a combination of facts, laws, theories, or mythological stories. Scientific and cultural education and religious indoctrination bring a measure of order to all of us. Yet they can also teach the student about other people’s perspectives on matters of individuality, self-expression, and the potential for a connection with a power greater than ourselves while confusing and delaying the individual’s direct connection and link to his own higher truth and nature.
The truth that supports us lies in a sacred silence well under our internal matrix of memories and personal and collective accumulations of information and knowledge. There is a deeper truth, another reality or state of being, that is accessible once we discard our concepts of time. The seemingly infinite world of your verbal creation pales in comparison to a non-verbal potential that lies undiscovered and unappreciated within your heart and soul. By understanding what we know, what we will never know, and who the knower is, we can make life better.
Theories and Laws and Spiritual Awakening
In science and mathematics, a theory is a statement proposing an explanation for the processes that we witness. A law is an observation that becomes an assumed fact; a theory is the explanation of that observation. The Law of Gravity and the Theory of Relativity are good examples. Just because a law is an observable fact, or a theory is intuitively obvious, we cannot prove them to be true. The apple always falls down from the tree, doesn’t it? Yet the observation of matter converting into energy with E=MC2 is not observable, at least not through our normal senses. A theory requires experimentation under various conditions. A law has no such requirements for experimentation.
A theory may become obsolete with time. This is not the case with a law. A theory can be replaced by another better theory; however, this never happens with a law. When people say, “Relativity is just a theory, not a fact,” or, “Evolution is just a theory, not a fact,” they show that they do not understand how science works. Theory is as good as it gets. There is always room for further evolution of our scientific theories, thus no limit is placed upon learning and refining all theories to best represent what we now observe through continuous process improvement, which supports higher qualities of awareness and enhanced realms of intelligence and understanding.
Even incorrect theories have their value. Discredited alchemy was the birthplace of modern chemistry, and medicine made great strides long before we understood the roles of bacteria and viruses. Improving our theories often leads to exciting discoveries that were unimaginable under the old way of thinking. We should not assume that all of our current scientific theories will stand the test of time. A single unexpected result is enough to challenge the status quo. However, vulnerability to some potentially better explanation doesn’t weaken a current scientific theory. Instead, it shields science from becoming unchallenged dogma. This is not the case with religion, which clings to all understandings from the far distant past as if their entire faith was dependent upon adherence to such dogma.
So what do we accept as our laws and theories? And what do we accept on faith about the nature of ourselves, our world, our God, and our universe? Are we relying upon the statements of others? Do we practice blind faith? Or are we active observers of the phenomenon of our lives? If we base our understanding upon our observations of ourselves, others, and the world, we can then extrapolate upon our known facts or laws to build our bridge to personal and potentially universal truth.
The Uncommon Knowledge Theory points to the potential for spiritual awakening. Just as the Common Knowledge Theory points to a shared or common ground of understanding or shared bias, the Uncommon Knowledge Theory points to a potential for collective understanding that has not yet arisen in human understanding. There may be millions of people working in the direction of personal healing and spiritual transformation, yet this is not a commonly understood or embraced phenomenon by the vast majority of mankind. It has a direct relationship to insight, intuition, mysticism, and a desire for enlightenment with the expression of universal love and transcendence. For many people, it remains latent and unexpressed within the human heart and soul. It remains only a theory, or a potentiality, until it is brought into awareness and practiced as if it was real, or the truth. And, it might be found that the more the theory is practiced, the more the Uncommon Knowledge Theory might be an undiscovered or ignored law in the first place.
There are two possibilities for living. In the Common Knowledge Game, we experience life as a sleeping being in a dark, disfigured world. Or through our Uncommon Knowledge Theory, we can live as an awakening being in a multi-dimensional human relationship with infinity. The sleeping beings, or those dreamers practicing unconscious knowledge, are those who live in the world of personal illusion without being aware of the fantasies of thought that dominate their minds and lives. Their present moment remains dominated by perceptions arising from wounding from their personal and cultural past, without sufficient application of healing awareness to that fact. The awakening ones can see through the chaos of the dreaming, unaware mind, and they are no longer unconscious servants of their own brokenness or to values of patriarchy and toxic masculinity, which are primary support pillars for the Common Knowledge Game, especially through religions with a long history.
Awakening is an interactive process, encouraged and facilitated by the pain and suffering that we experience as human beings while engaging with the so-called real world. Far too many Americans live in alternate universes, where pain and suffering are not directly dealt with or are to be avoided at all costs wherever possible. Immersion in fantasy and denial of our personal and collective responsibility toward the ills of this world also reigns supreme in major sections of our culture. This is fueled by addictions to media devices and social media platforms, diversions of our life force into entertainment and worship of TV and movie personalities, hypnosis by false religious and spiritual leaders, alcohol and drug addictions, and personal and sexual power abuses. Researchers are now suggesting that people experience addiction to social media in ways that are similar to drug and alcohol addiction. In 2021, a bipartisan group of lawmakers concluded that social media use could lead to severe mental health problems, including sleep disorders, depression, and suicide To facilitate healing, we must reject our infatuation with social media platforms, false leaders, hypnosis, hero-worshiping, and idolatry, and we must become our leaders, with awakened powers of understanding and compassion.
The Power to Change Your Life
In the absolute, we are the space that we witness, either through our eyes, the telescope, or our mathematics, we are the time or the timelessness that we experience, and we are all of the people and cultures that we are presently having relationships with. All that we will ever see, unto eternity, is ourselves. Insight is life, and life is insight. In truth, none of us are on the outside looking in; rather, we are all on the inside, looking everywhere potentially without limit.
With the exit from Portland’s underworld community in March of 1987, and my own exit from the drug-induced and culturally inculcated insanity, a new world waited to welcome me. But it did not just reach out, grab me by the hand, or lead me down the path to recovery and reintegration back into the community. I was not totally conscious of what was going on and the direction that I was headed from 1987 forward. All that I knew was that after I had made conscious contact with the God of my understanding, my old life seemed to disappear. I could describe the world that I had left behind, but I had no language to describe the new world that I was entering or the experiences that were unfolding in the new life of sobriety. I had never felt like I was an accepted and honored part of the outside world in the first place, so finding my new people and my language were important endeavors to me once I was firmly on the path to sobriety and enhanced spirituality.
This desire for a loving integration into the wholeness of life first arose several years before, when I yearned for peace. While addicted, I could not fulfill the conditions for its experience. The transformation was many years in the making, but when it appeared within me, I was no longer tormented by my social insecurities or my feeling of disconnection from God, my fellow man, or the plants and animals that grace this beautiful planet that we share. Somehow, I had let go of the controls of my old ego state of mind, and a new order started revealing itself from moment to moment. At times I felt like a guided missile, never knowing the destination for my life, but trusting whatever it was that had launched my new life into existence would get me to the right place at the right time.
I still had memories of my former life, yet they no longer informed my day-to-day thoughts, my decisions, or my overall outlook on life and love. I did not know who the new me was, though the new me always had a smile and felt continuous joy. And during this time, I had a series of spiritual upheavals that defied my rational mind, and I did not have the words to describe or contain the experience for many years to follow. It was as if a new person had landed in my consciousness. The old me had died, and now I was informed, moment to moment, by a powerful force of peace or silence, or love itself.
Before 1987, there were many people with their disfiguring concepts roaming around in my mind, but now that “committee of the many” had permanently adjourned. There was now only one peaceful presence, a new ordering principle for my consciousness. A friend from a men’s group claimed that I was a walk-in, a term used to describe when the old ego departs a body to be replaced by a new being.
My family still saw me in terms of the past, for the most part, as my history created great scars on their psyche, as well as the friends and acquaintances of my years before recovery. But they could appreciate that the new me no longer required their extra concern or care, as I was now an independent, upright, fairly conscious human being. I made healthy choices in my relationships, and I chose a new, fulfilling career to replace all of the career wreckage from my past. I was but a boy again, though, while still learning the ropes, meeting new friends, discovering new possibilities for myself and others, and occasionally still sipping from the inner healing springs of the miracle that can quench the spiritual thirst of all who seek it out.
This new being, this upgraded Bruce 2.0 was like those miracle babies and children that I had always envied and doubted. During most of the time after June of 1987, until I met my present wife Sharon in August of 1989, I spent over six hours a day in prayer and meditation, and probably as a result experienced blessed states on an almost continuous basis. I heard and felt God, and I was taught on the inner spiritual plane about aspects of life and consciousness that I had no way to learn or know about otherwise. This was not a Christian God, a Jewish God, or the Buddha Mind, but those names certainly pointed to the new reality that I had somehow accessed and been dramatically changed by.
We all have access to inner wisdom not borne of our personal experience, yet it lies mostly ignored in the recesses of our hearts and souls for much of our lives. I was given a new blank slate to write my new self upon, a new possibility for living and being in this world, aided by this new connection with my wisdom. The world that I once wanted to depart from so badly was now paradise on Earth. And I knew that Heaven was not a concept for the future, but a living reality only for the present moment. But I could not carry the old me into that world. I had to leave all of my verbal and non-verbal memory possessions behind, so to speak, to stay in tune with the new spiritual music.
I have noted from my understanding and experience of others who have had dramatic spiritual experiences that, initially, they couldn’t describe or communicate what had happened. This lack of articulateness is quite common for several years that follow such an upheaval. Those who have a strong religious background try to use the language of that system of thought to interpret and communicate their unique opening. For those who do not have a well-established religious background, or who might need other language or images to convey their experience, the search through historical literature to see what others have written about their own cosmic events has been helpful. There is an attempt to try to use a language that others might understand, but unless they too have had spiritual lightning strike them, the search for an equally enlightened and awakened peer group is liable to be fairly unsuccessful, at least initially. Then some just throw up their hands and give up on the idea of ever communicating with others about the transcendent state. And, finally, there are those whose minds are irreparably damaged by the experience, and though they may remain connected to the Spirit, their behavior and style indicate a person who is insane and operating well outside of socially and culturally accepted standards.
I could not communicate with others what I was experiencing for many years after 1987. I would refer to my rebirth, and talk of the old me with those who were interested, especially in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. The people who met me after my rebirth could not believe that I was ever addicted or dysfunctional in destructive ways. And I learned to not wave that recovery flag at every new person I met, so that they could have an honest chance of knowing me for who I now was, rather than who I might have been long ago. My movement through all of these new relationships helped to define the new me, who I was now, how I now related to and appreciated others, and how I now loved unconditionally almost everyone that I met. All of humanity became my brother or sister in this new reality, and my lifelong sense of dreadful separation from others had been lifted. I then set out to find my people and find out where I might fit into the new world order that was revealing itself within my mind and heart. In my naiveté, I assumed that most others naturally came by this understanding and that I was finally catching up, spiritually, with the normal folks who never were so unhappy as to consider alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide for themselves.
I eventually became active in the great outdoors again through hiking and backpacking. I resumed bicycle riding with an association with Cycle Oregon over several years, and I learned tennis. I also ended up excelling in road and trail racing as a runner, albeit an older runner (in the master’s division), competing individually and also appearing on several championship or near-championship level Master’s teams in both the Hood To Coast and Rainier To Pacific races. I got a redo of my life. I got to experience success and failure based on my own decisions and actually glean wisdom from my interactions with life, rather than hate myself and/or others for its sometimes difficult teachings. And, yes, the new life was quite fertile ground for learning.
This new life also provided me with some of the language that I needed to communicate better with others what I had experienced on the inner plane. It also started to provide me with the language needed to describe the foundational consciousness that predisposed me and our world to dysfunctional and self-destructive behavior. But I was not to get the full message until much later in life. Having allowed myself to return to the world after this second birth, I subsequently gained insight into the matrix of collective human misunderstanding that was the foundation for our collective consciousness as a human race. What is left, after the garbage is cleared? It might be considered similar to the process of metamorphosis, which brings forth the butterfly from the caterpillar. If the butterfly could talk, I would assume that it would much rather talk about its new freedom and the ability to fly, rather than its previous form of life sliding over the dirt. Yet, the only life that the butterfly arose from was with ground dwellers, and that is where all of its past stories were created.
Getting Closer to Here and Now
A black hole is a region of space/time exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—including particles and electromagnetic radiation, such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform space/time to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event. Within the human psyche, I posit the existence of consciousness black holes or singularity points that prevent us from living our best lives.
We, as a human race, seem to have a predisposition to creating black hole events where no light, such as love, compassion, empathy, or healing thoughts can emanate from our consciousness. These events occur especially during times of collective distress, including mass hypnosis and the resultant mob mind activity that leads to wars, genocide, racism, xenophobia, hysteria, and fear.
We, as individuals, also have a real talent for creating black hole events within our personal worlds, as well. Our concepts of time and space certainly get distorted, as present-day events occurring in our lives get distorted within our minds by traumatic events of our past, or black holes of past influence through which the light of our ever-unfolding present moment of life gets sucked into the darkness of a singularity point of a traumatic event from our past.
The prison guard with one of the primary keys to releasing me from my spiritual imprisonment remained my 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 newfound sobriety. The real fruits of healing from that relationship were not to become apparent until many years later.
I developed some insight into how my father’s ignorance and selfish needs early in my childhood negatively impacted my mind’s formation. There was a revelation within me that, as a result of my father’s sometimes toxic influence and my mother’s unskilled participation in my life, I had unwittingly and unconsciously created two fundamental cores to my personal dysfunction. I came to refer to these forces as tricksters and a thorough examination of all of my inner demons showed that they were traumatically created through incomplete, unskilled interactions with life. Their presence initially kept me from being helpless as I attempted to navigate the world as a young being, offering their own extremely limited versions of interior guidance. But, these miscreations kept me from developing into my greater good as an independent, free adult human being. It was these two fundamental cores that swirled around another unknown force of darkness within me as if drawn and disfigured by an infinitely powerful locus of negative influence.
Our minds generate consciousness, which means aspects of ourselves generate internal feedback, develop and support our internal self-concept, create internal imagery and understanding of the outer world, and support our verbal relationships with and actions toward all others. We attempt to match the outer reality by forming internal verbal and emotional linkages within ourselves, and this helps us to stay relevant and abiding within some measure of resonance and continuity with the perceived external universe or community that we presently share with others.
This light that we internally emit, and eventually share with our worlds either through action or verbal expression, is influenced dramatically by our own secret, internal agendas, whether we are conscious of those agendas or not. While these agendas remain unconscious, they become the equivalent of our internal black holes. All streams of consciousness that our minds and hearts attempt to emit become trapped in the swirling vortices of these powerful forces, and these internal black holes continue to influence virtually every aspect of our lives. And, if not dealt with consciously and carefully, these black holes will eventually draw all of our internal light into them, and we become unwitting agents of our internal darkness.
To repress or deny these internal forces is to continue to feed them. As we get in touch with our fears, anger, hatred, or whatever name for manifesting darkness that we might give to them, it is important to realize that these are great forces. And once they are harnessed, not repressed or denied, these black holes will continue to keep us connected to the real world. As we transmute their energy, the light within us uses these once-dark energies for our own good and for all mankind.
I have identified a black hole within my internal universe, which had created powerful forces of control, keeping me separate from my greatest good. This vortex drew all of my internal light toward itself, and by the time this internal singularity point worked its dark magic to its fullness, I actually flirted with the end of my own life. Such is the way these black hole events can influence and control our lives, making peace of mind and positive, loving connections with others virtually impossible. I have attempted to deal with my trauma directly and honestly, lest my entire life becomes a continuation of further black hole events. I have identified that the fear that my voice will never be heard, resulting in my death, is my unique black hole. Insight finally reveals that this is a direct result of my failure to be fully integrated as a complete, healthy human being, manifesting a more holistic or divine intent.
These black holes may remain, even after making profound spiritual and emotional changes. Their dark influence, however, continues to recede once there is a committed intention to stay connected with insight and spiritual healing, where all true light comes from. As I strive to stay balanced internally, so shall my walk through the rest of my life remain balanced, as well. Insight keeps these forces herded within the spirit of wholeness, which utilizes our energy in more sane and mutually beneficial ways.
And, for more than one of us, these black holes are eventually transformed into white holes, where no darkness can escape, and all of our experience becomes enlightened. We can’t short-circuit this process by substituting the pleasant-sounding spiritual froth produced by other great spiritual thinkers and trying to layer those messages over our unexamined inner universe. Well-meaning advocates of this process become unwitting contributors to the repression and oppression of the human spirit. Only after we do the real inner work can these teachers assume their rightful position in our consciousness, as fellow travelers on the path to truth, which has no final destination. Our most profound words and thoughts only present the illusion of a final resting place, when, in fact, truth is eternally unfolding into each moment as a brand new, unique manifestation.
I have my moments with the white holes, and I continue to strive to experience this phenomenon with both increased frequency and intensity. A path of insight and meditation is quite helpful, and association with others who share in this new reality has produced almost miraculous results.
What might a man performing a thorough self-examination through internal probing discover about himself and the subconscious guidance and direction of those black holes within his unique nature? To uncover the treasure, we first have to dig through the dirt; and believe me, it can be a toxic waste site. It is no wonder to me that few enter into this unexplored realm within. There is a vast kingdom within that searches for its rightful king, but will we ever rise and assume our proper place? It feels infinitely complicated when we begin to contemplate the name “I” that all of us have given to ourselves, especially since there are hundreds of thousands of “not I” or “you” verbal and relationship associations built into our personal construct.
This process requires patience, time, experience, and humility, but eventually, insight is developed whereby we can see the forces of corruption within our own hearts and souls, and through the seeing, we also begin to facilitate the healing.
Chapter Eight: Empathy, and The Mystery of the Path Between You And Me
Nothing is more important in life than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing. Not career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we are going to survive with dignity.
—Audrey Hepburn
Humans are social creatures; we survive through our connections to others. But because of the Lemming Effect and Common Knowledge Game, the potential for both corruption and healing exist within our social connections. Another facet of the most fundamental truths of our existence is the extraordinary potential for the depth of our connections to each other, and how strongly that connection influences all of us, for good and for bad. If we learn to collectively embrace this universal fact, we would have a clue as to how to reduce disease and distress in our world without just tattooing more medical technology upon our bodies and souls.
Modern America faces several societal problems, including COVID-19, cultural divisiveness, addictions, obesity, cancer, and gun violence. These pandemics are creating more opportunities for eruptions of drama and anxiety, which interbreed with any potentially unhealed pain and suffering already inherent in our lives. We must become more conscious of how the unconscious actions of others, and our unfulfilled healing responses, tend to introduce more traumatic influences into our own lives. Following a healing path means being spiritually present for others while recognizing and transforming, both individually and collectively, all internalized trauma dramas.
Love, hate, and indifference are three terms that we use to help describe the quality of our relationships with each other. To some extent, in various proportions, all of us employ these three qualities of energy exchange in our lives, depending on the person and/or the situation involved. As human beings, we experience love and hatred as powerful emotions, which guide all subsequent feelings and perceptions in predefined directions. Love is an open system of friction-free energy exchange, and hate is more of a closed, attenuated system of energy exchange, both of which bind us to each other in easily identifiable though divergent manners. As we know, love is the open channel that compassion may flow through, while hatred is the closed channel that traumatizes both the receiver and the giver of that energy.
Indifference is a quality of attention that attempts to keep everybody and everything separate from the observer, and the emotionally detached individual is choosing to live in a closed system or spiritual vacuum. Those practicing total indifference live in an isolated world, with little real emotional connection with anybody or anything other than their own emotions, thoughts, and feelings. Indifference is often the result of traumatic influences. And it results in the emotional and spiritual oppression of others and repression of the personal spirit as well. For most normal people, indifference is only applied to special situations and is not applied to a complete life experience. Yet, the quality of indifference gives the practitioner the illusory sense of having no personal accountability to that which is being witnessed. Personal responsibility for a collectively shared error in the heart is denied, and the potential for a shared healing experience is negated.
What is Empathy?
Empathy, in both its positive and negative expressions, is a mechanism for transporting emotional energy to create a form of resonance or connection between sentient beings. And empathy is always in play in both love and hate relationships. In positive empathy, energy flows freely in both directions, between the “giver” and the “receiver.” There is a shared sense of the expansion of the self. In negative empathy, energy flow is uneven and dominated by one party, potentially resulting in forms of oppression of the other, repression of aspects of the self by the giver, and potentially the repression of aspects of the self by the receiver. There is a strong sense of the contraction of the self by at least one party in this energy exchange.
Contemporary research into neuroscience tells us that our brains, like those of other primates, contain mirror neurons. These neurons are triggered in our brains when someone else is sad, angry, or happy. And those mirror neurons, in coordination with other pre-cognitive and cognitive functions, help us to feel what we would experience if we were in that person’s place. If our experiences are similar enough, we can empathize in a way that promotes a connection, which can be soothing to the other person. The effort to understand someone else, when made in good faith, can go a long way toward helping them feel better and even, sometimes, to change their behaviors. This can be considered to be a collaboration between the spirit of the individuals in communication. The conscious intention of empathy is not to change another person’s behavior, though most find that through the empathetic connection, each participant is taken beyond the former boundaries of their understanding of self and others.
Human beings are usually quite empathetic beings. Studies are showing that all animals, especially mammals, share this oftentimes sublime characteristic. It is very difficult to harm another person if we can sense the suffering that they are presently experiencing or that we may be causing them.
Empathy has been found to have not just a positive aspect to it, but empathy can also drag an unsuspecting empath into the ditch with someone who may be of low consciousness. Negative empathy is a state of being so sensitive to other people’s experiences that we become overwhelmed by their suffering, to the point where we begin to suffer ourselves. This has the opposite effect of the collaboration that occurs through positive empathy, instead becoming an alliance of shared mutual personal pain, which eventually results in new forms of emotional isolation. The extreme form of this empathy is the stigmata syndrome, where the empath takes on so much of the suffering energy and experience of a hated or a treasured person, that they manifest in their bodies and minds the wounds and symptoms of the person that they have become obsessed with.
Empathy, positive or negative, is one of several powerful transmission vehicles for the human collective consciousness to be carried to us as individuals, as well as acting as a return vehicle for our individual experiences to be delivered back to the collective field. Collective consciousness contains the knowledge that human beings have accrued over eons of time. It contains a vast matrix of dedicated/fixed pathways of responses to all manors of environmental and social interactions. This is the entirety of our species’ training that has been transmitted to or handed down to, countless generations of human beings through parental interactions, education, religious training, and the lifelong social and emotional training gained by our continuous interface with other members of our species. Yet, so much of this common knowledge is a result of incomplete or inaccurate information, and it is the accumulation of all the theories embedded in our cultural past. If we act in a knee-jerk reaction or unconscious manner to any societal or environmental stimulus, our response is all too likely to be dated and inappropriate. The Judeo/Christian religious metaphor here is that our “firstborn” thought may need to be “sacrificed” to make way for the truth of the moment.
Life’s journey is forever like a dotted line pathway. It is the quality of our connections with each other that fills in the space between the dots. Empathy is the major vehicle for our consciousness to transcend our apparent differences, enabling each of us to connect the dots in a mutually affirming manner. It is only through each other that we can see who we really are. I am you, and you are me, and together we are everything, apart, we are still chained together by whatever separates us. We find our shared meaning, which links us together on our journey in Spirit.
Hate and Love
Constructive anger is spontaneous, arising from being an active witness of the present moment. It is always relevant and productive. It wakes up the oppressed and repressed spirit and helps generate extra motivational energy for constructive engagement with a world needing change. Constructive anger gives all parties involved an opportunity to share in the perception of a wrong or injustice and share in a plan to right the wrongs. Hatred, on the other hand, is fueled by deliberately divisive energy.
Hatred arises from the historical deposits of unresolved anger or repressed pain and suffering within our memories, and it looks at punishment and/or the destruction of others as a primary objective. Hatred develops from the collective deposits of darkness that our culture has handed down to us over many generations. It arises from our personal painful and negative memories incurred over the course of our lives. Hatred, both collectively and individually acquired, becomes entrenched as a mostly unconscious dark power broker within our minds, keeping each of us pilloried to the past and emotionally chained to the object(s) of our hatred. We are no longer free to respond to each new moment as it unfolds, instead substituting old patterns of self-defeating and oppressive responses to others while repressing the desire to connect with peace and love.
According to the latest research on the human brain and its capacity to form perceptions, the brain works by “predictive coding.” It integrates new information based on the beliefs provided by old information. A typical human being moving through the world is not just passively perceiving sensory inputs, but actually assembles a model in the mind based on what is expected. This mental setup allows the perceiver to move unbothered through the world, taking in each detail without too much analysis. The brain has been found to have the capacity to over-predict, at times expecting something to be there that is not. That expectation can create a self-hypnotic suggestion, and a non-existent thing can be perceived as if it was really there. This fact has been verified by mystics, sages, and quantum theorists, so it should not be passed over like an unpopular dish at dinner time.
Historically, the human race has fallen prey to toxic leadership. As human beings in social environments, we have come to expect that our leaders will lead with integrity and morality, though inevitable weaknesses will occasionally make themselves evident. If our leader is of high enough integrity, we may even want to pattern ourselves after them, should we also aspire to any leadership roles in our future, including taking charge of our own lives. Patterning after others who are successful is considered to be a normal and natural response, while also being an evolutionary adaptation. To survive and prosper as a species, we became willing to adopt attitudes and perform actions that others may have succeeded with in the past, as well as remain open to a new understanding that will complement our unique role.
Yet, there are many times when we pattern ourselves after an adored member of the status quo or the institutionalized understanding of the past, and we may be led down deceptive paths of reasoning that result in poor social and personal health decisions and outcomes. We may become subtly or profoundly traumatized through these relationships. “What would Jesus do?” can be a benign question, and may even lead the Christian questioner down a more spiritually centered path, as long it does not lead to more conformity to dogma or the practicing of other systems of traumatic oppression, such as the religion’s historical institutionalized misanthropy, including misogyny and racism.
We all suffered because of the collective narrative of hatred being shared by the victims and their accusers. The only way to permanently remove spiritual eyesores from our vision is to heal our inner sight and realize that profound changes in our consciousness eventually impact our world and remember that, “All that we will ever see unto eternity is ourselves.” Because our minds are inextricably intertwined with the collective consciousness of the world, we will continue to have ample opportunities to bring healing to the world and our sense of self.
What can be most difficult to consider is the truth that people who habitually hate others also hate themselves. Some may try to hide from self-loathing and hatred through false narratives of their greatness while deriding and demeaning all unlike self. The multitude of lies and deceptive behavior and the need to manipulate others’ perceptions show an absolute need to hide from the truth and a diminished sense of self. This is manifested through continuously projecting out of this mind, by accusing the innocent and the guilty of one’s own personal shortcomings, deceptions, and criminality.
This communication style is absolutely crazy making for any rational, intelligent human being, and the witness to this expression can feel like the fabric of sanity is being ripped apart right before their eyes. For those not under a hypnotic trance, this spiritual depravity is easily perceived and felt. The unwary watcher in an involuntary and forced relationship with this disfigured being, through negative empathy, can inadvertently share in others’ hatred of self. This is a manifestation of the stigmata syndrome, where the entrained observer inadvertently takes on the negative energy of the person under observation, and through the mirror neuron phenomenon or negative empathy, shares in the disfigured spirit that this darkness continues to manifest.
Mindfulness allows us to see what is immediately before us and choose between the knowns of the past and the unknown present. Forgiveness is an openness to the mystery of the present. Forgiveness, however, does not forget or excuse the offender from his misdeeds, especially while the offender continues abhorrent behavior. Forgiveness releases the practitioner from the damage of incurring negative perceptions of others. We still must act consciously and decisively against all forces that continue to imperil our lives, our families’ lives, and the life of our planet. We must continue to be willing to speak truth to power, whether the power is in the White House or our own hearts.
Love unifies, while hate fragments and traumatizes. As human beings, we must be conscious enough to choose the best way to present ourselves to the world and ourselves, as we face the challenges of the insanity within our world. Our world is in greatest need of hearts that are expanding through mutual positive empathy, rather than contracting through negative empathy or indifference. We did not create the world as it is now, we cannot control it, nor can we cure it. But we can evolve, and collectively we can address the disease of the spirit that is dominating and devastating our world civilization and all of the life upon it.
We must sacrifice our misunderstandings of who we mistakenly thought that we were, and who and what we thought the rest of creation was, allowing for the new universal truth to resurrect our understanding of self and others. Failure to do so will make us more vulnerable to unconsciousness, where the process of negative empathy and, in the extreme, collective suffering and the stigmata syndrome may expose us to spiritual chaos and potentially death. The world will always remind us how far we are collectively from healing. We do our best to remain engaged with the world, while not allowing the world to overrun our morals, ethics, and spiritual intentions. And we need not spiritually die because of the “sins” of the world, whether it is toxic capitalism, toxic masculinity (and patriarchy), toxic politics, or toxic religion. We always retain freedom of choice and must exercise and accept personal responsibility for those choices, in all of our lives. If our choices bring harm to ourselves or each other, we are free to choose again. We make amends wherever possible after any error in our presentation, which keeps our empathy channels fully open.
We must remain spiritually vigilant as we continue to be a conscious presence engaging with a world still dominated by toxic masculinity, toxic politics, toxic capitalism, and toxic religion. We must be able to access our anger, not hatred, as we address the injustices wrought upon the human soul through the ignorance and toxicity of others. Love will be our guardian as we make the difficult confrontations with those who do not respect or honor the wholeness of life on Mother Earth that we all share in love and truth.
Anger, Self-Awareness, and Mastery
Anger is not a shortcoming to be denied, but a creative force that tells us when something is wrong.
– Austin Channing Brown
We have been formed out of the sacred elements of our Universe, and we have access to all of its immense energy and possibilities for existence. We are created with both a feeling nature supported by our biology, love and emotions, and a thinking nature supported mainly by our biology, history, education, intelligence, and intuition. Yet, many of us have been hypnotized out of our own basic wisdom, while also developing an aversion to listening to our feelings for what they are telling us, and instead allowing our intellect to rule the inner kingdom. Mainly by our need for social conformity, we have been fooled into ignoring our own divine energy, intelligence and insight. We either find our authentic self, and express its energy, or we will remain oppressed and demoralized and fail to realize our full spiritual potential.
There are those purporting to be spiritual teachers and advisors who admonish their followers to abhor using human emotions in their dealings with the public. Specifically, I frequently hear that a requirement for maintaining spiritual integrity is to not express anger in any form and instead to substitute “loving thoughts” and “forgiving actions.” Really?
These so-called spiritual savants or gurus must not have families. What is the real teaching here, do you think? It is so much easier to talk about love and light for all beings, especially when one does not have to deal directly with the most challenging of human relationships. From the middle of 1987 to early 1988, I spent over six hours a day in meditation and prayer, and I had very few problems with my relationships with people. I lived in perfect peace and harmony within myself. Also, I had no children and nobody to call me on my isolation and (potential) loneliness. All in all, it was beautiful for me, yet totally disengaged from the challenges of integration into society and family and friendship development. I value my time in the real world, where the beauty and pain of human existence are my greatest teachers. Mysticism has a place in our world, yet I struggle to find how to best stay in alignment with its ecstasy and enlightenment while maintaining a normal human experience. Perhaps I will drink again from its deep waters when I have finally wearied of this world.
If our minds are fed anything other than facts, especially within established communities of human beings, we create illusions, and our worlds tend to end up in chaos. The result is individual and cultural hypnosis and schizophrenia, where we lose personal power, and we can be too easily bullied by the wayward opinions and false insights of others. Too often those who claim to have real knowledge are as lost as everybody else, even though they may be claiming righteousness, religious or otherwise. When we try to fit into a situation or setting where our heart tells us we don’t belong, honor those feelings and investigate where they are coming from. If we feel that we are already swimming in the divine ocean, then we can watch and wait, see who is swimming with us, and join with them as indicated (or reach out and help lift another up, as they request help). Our cultural spiritual dementia needs to be challenged, lest we all lapse into deeper degrees of anxiousness, powerlessness, and unreality. Confronting a difficult reality takes more energy than most of us care to bring to the table, yet not doing so diminishes our standing in truth, life, and love.
On the other hand, an institutionalized expression of anger becomes hatred in disguise, and that characterizes the oppressive nature of far too many male-originated and -dominated philosophies. When anger becomes an automatic response to all situations where a threat is perceived, then the intelligence of the moment is denied, and we are susceptible to bringing needless harm to our bodies and our minds, as well as to others.
When I was eight, my family went on a camping trip with another family, and during the stay, the dad of the other family, Bob, severely overreacted to my sister and me. When we told my parents that he’d become excessively angry and threatening to us, my father confronted him about his rage. Bob got angry again, denied that he threatened us, and then commanded me to get my story straight before complaining about his behavior in the future. Several years later, while in a fit of rage with his wife, he intentionally crashed his car head-on into another car at a high rate of speed, killing himself and crippling his wife for life. The act of calling out someone for being disrespectful or engaging in hurtful behavior will not necessarily guarantee any immediate positive outcomes, but it disrupts the conspiracy of silence, if only for a moment.
Repression and oppression help nobody in the long run, though they maintain an order of false peace and control for the status quo. In the seeing, or the development of insight into self, change is facilitated. Everybody needs to become more conscious of the self and fine-tune how we respond to our emotions. Most importantly, we must accept personal responsibility for our emotions, see how they impact ourselves and others, and make necessary adjustments if we have behaved inappropriately.
Constructive Anger and How to Respond
Anger is a natural, normal response, in any particular new moment, to any assault on our being, on those we love, or on our inner sensibilities. Anger, among all other emotions and in balance with those aspects of ourselves, helps us to manage our response to the outer world, which is at times quite the aggressive, distressed, ugly, oppressive environment. Anger is not positive or negative energy, it is human energy. And like all aspects of our humanity, it needs to be understood in the context from which it arises and when and how it expresses itself.
Anger can bring fear to the unaware among us, because of an incomplete or unhealed response to its expression in their past. We have all been persecuted, at one time or another (or many times), by the angry parent, boss, co-worker, or stranger driving next to us in a car. Or, how about the rapist or child molester who tries to attack us or our children? According to classic psychology, humans engage in fight or flight behavior when they experience fear and/or perceive that they are being attacked. Whether we choose one or the other depends on any number of circumstances, and one size does not fit all.
We all feel a need to be in control and to conform to social norms, especially those “norms” expressed in the Common Knowledge Game that dominates the unaware human consciousness. Philosophies and theologies that stress the need to repress aspects of our human nature should not be accepted at face value. By their very nature, any umbrella philosophy or theology devalues the intelligence of the moment, and it intentionally and/or unwittingly contributes to the suppression and repression of sacred human values and emotions.
Anger, when balanced, keeps us as complete beings, capable of accessing and expressing wholeness with emotionally intelligent actions appropriate to the activity of the moment. In other words, we can get mad. We can express our anger in appropriate ways. Doing so is beneficial.
There is wisdom deep inside us all, waiting to inform all of our thoughts and actions in this world. And this world requires ultimate intelligence to navigate through it successfully, without bringing harm to ourselves and others needlessly. Anger and fear are not to be repressed by any healthy human being, but instead are to be witnessed, studied, and utilized intelligently for wise action in this troubled world. In the words of Bob Marley, “Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights!” But, make sure that the anger is appropriate to the moment and not some formulaic response that the unhealed, unbalanced nature within yourself offers up under many questionable circumstances. Often, the best response is to step back from the situation for a moment, and take a few deep breaths, and then offer your point of view.
To respond successfully in anger, we need to measure how mindfully we can engage these threats and successfully group our thoughts and actions with others also engaged in the situation to either fight the oppressors or speak our truth and be heard. We do not engage in mass protests because we want to go for a walk with a bunch of strangers; we engage in protests because we want our voices heard. Channeled anger is an effective, time-tested method for standing up to those who would keep us silent in the face of their own misdeeds.
Anecdotally, we hear of those rare few who have successfully mitigated dark, evil circumstances through some fortunate intervention of prayer, or luck. In these stories, those who are attacking us somehow are diverted and their aggression moved elsewhere. Stories of Gandhi’s non-violent protest against British occupancy of India’s lands get a lot of play in so-called spiritually aware circles. Remember, though, the many years of British occupation before that stand, and Britain’s diminishing will to keep their empire extended throughout the world. We only need to watch the news or read the paper to see that these anecdotal stories do not embrace the reality underlying most of the final acts and resulting actions of the aggressive ones. Murder, rape, child molesting, intimidation, oppression, misogyny, road rage, terrorism, and paternal violence in all of its forms keep manifesting and have throughout history. Those who are inspired to make peaceful approaches to these problems must continue, yet, so do those who aggressively confront the forces of oppression and darkness.
I had very poor training since birth in how to successfully navigate group energy, up to and including the whole of society that we all participate in. As a boy, when family discussions turned into arguments, many times I found myself either raising my voice against the angry voice of my father or retreating into submission and fear at the threat of being attacked for contradicting the flow. And I internalized that I was probably wrong anyway and would be punished if I stepped out and asserted myself too much. I learned that I could undertake less obvious means of rebelling against authority, sometimes through indirect or obvious destructive behavior.
Passive-aggressive tendencies have haunted me most of my life, and becoming self-aware has gone a long way to keep me from employing those unskilled coping mechanisms unconsciously, though I am still occasionally haunted by their presence. Doing the inner work of insight, maintaining mindfulness, and identifying those sources of suffering within myself have not instantaneously removed all of the darkness within. But it also has not removed from me the responsibility to call out the external agents of oppression and repression, no matter how much I might love them or want to protect them or myself from the ramifications of asserting what is right, true, or proper in any situation.
Alcoholism, depression, mental illness, murder, suicide, participating in the continued destruction of our sacred Mother Earth, and other manifestations of disempowered male energy result from the loss of integrity and stifling one’s feelings and voice. And, this is not yet another spiritual theory; this is the actuality of American male life and of my life. Sitting in meditation and quoting other spiritually enlightened individuals may have brought me a temporary measure of peace. But this whole process became yet another opiate, and it never brought the change required for my spirit’s emergence into its unique wholeness. Thoughts and prayers are great preparation for action, but without action, thoughts and prayers are only mental masturbation.
Achieving Higher Consciousness
As we see the totality of the movement of thought as time and its nature of keeping us tethered to a past, or to a future that is always an extension of this past, we can free ourselves from those illusory controls. We can live a life based on the ever-unfolding now or present moment, thus unleashing vast reservoirs of intuition and spiritual power.
Each of us has infinite potential. Yet, each of us must break free from the conditioning of our personal past and our cultural past. Four pillars support higher consciousness, which are:
- Negative: through negating what is not real, seeing what might be real.
- Positive: through constantly affirming the goodness inherent in life, reading the writings of mystical poets and saints, and being grateful participants in life, we may experience Grace.
- Transformative: through re-creating or re-birthing ourselves through educational means and/or mystical connection and bringing forth into the world a new person or our new understanding of ourselves in the image and likeness of a more universal consciousness.
- Creative: developing and/or expressing our innate ability to co-create with the Universe by expressing ourselves through art, music, writing, or other means. We must access the deepest of desires to transcend the boundaries of self and reimagine our existence.
We must travel new paths of consciousness, letting go of all controls that keep us tethered to the past with its incomplete perceptions and understandings. In the end, no teacher will affect our salvation, for it is a personal journey, where we must accept responsibility for the totality of our lives, and make all necessary adjustments in the course that will take us to our spiritual goals.
The further along the path of Truth and Love that we travel, the more we understand that all we will ever see unto eternity is an extension of ourselves. How we see ourselves today determines the quality of Love and Truth that we manifest in our lives. How we see ourselves today determines how much spiritual power can be brought to our damaged planet, which now depends upon us. How we see ourselves today determines how much, as awakening beings, we can bring healing to our shared, damaged human consciousness. There is no power in Heaven or on Earth greater than “I am.” Do not believe anyone who tells you otherwise, even those childhood advisory voices still remaining within ourselves.
Hatred, indifference, positive or negative empathy, love, healing, and mutual destruction are parts of our infinite potentiality. The choice is ours to make for our own unique life experience, when we have become more healed and conscious. There is a silence within each of us attempting to inform our consciousness as to how to best exercise our free will. What is your choice today? The silence continues to reach out to the turbulence within our world and to bring balance back to our unbalanced souls.
In this silence, we can enter the temple of greatness, into a sacred chamber that exists above and beyond all knowledge, cultures, and religions. We become supreemely conscious here, and this is not the silence of suppression, the absence of things to think about, or the expression of pouting or anger. All of our competitiveness and goal setting and achieving fall away while we experience the delight of being a pure avenue of awareness.
What are we now aware of?
It is the silence of reverence, awe, and perfect peace.
In this silence, we see the limits of time, and our memories. There is a unique quality of movement that is not caused or understood by thought. We see the basis for the arising of unnecessary tension, anxiety, fear, regret, guilt, and grief are caused by our clinging to concepts of time, whether looking back upon our pasts, or looking into the unknown future. We come to understand that we have to be PRESENT to be at perfect peace. This movement of time independent awareness leads to the Unnamable, the Immeasurable, the Truth.
Chapter Nine: Knowledge, Facts, Insight, And The Whim
“Information can help us to know why we are ill and which illnesses we have, exactly. But wisdom is to know how to heal them.” —Dr. Alberto Villoldo
What we, as a human race, presently accept as knowledge can be defined in many ways. Our capacity for embracing logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning from both personal experience and through the transfer of shared knowledge, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, insight, critical thinking, and problem-solving all point to the manifestation of intelligence. Our knowledge is based upon familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. Knowledge can also refer to a theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. Intuition is a perceptual attribute that gives us the ability to know something directly without analytic reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and unconscious parts of our mind, and also between instinct and reason. A whim is an unconscious knowledge, an act of will drowning in capriciousness and/or eccentricity. It appears as a sudden idea or turn of the mind, and its action is mutually exclusive of the actions of wisdom, knowledge, and intuition. By accessing all aspects of our intelligence, we can become wiser people.
The conscious being has an infinite capacity to witness life and then create knowledge around those interactions. It only takes one time getting bitten by a snake and suffering mightily under the influence of its poison to create and share the knowledge that it is vitally important to avoid physical contact with serpents while doing outdoor chores or walking in the desert. The unconscious being also has the same infinite witnessing capacity, yet their choices for how they see themselves and their lives can be so self-limiting as to make them prisoners in their own homes. In the snakebite situation, a more unconscious person would use the knowledge of the potential damage from a snakebite to create fear-based stories that would keep the person behind closed doors, avoiding the outdoors altogether, or even obtaining and carrying a loaded firearm just in case they need to protect themselves. On the other hand, the curious and conscious ones might just walk around the snake, study it, and fearlessly learn the lessons that the snake has to offer.
Yet each category of awareness, be it conscious or unconscious, must arise from the same pool of potentiality, where the mystery of collective consciousness and the entrainment of all its individual minds create and maintain the appearance of whatever order and reality that each individual both anticipates and actually experiences. Finding the real truth behind each new situation that presents itself to awareness is challenging.
It has been said in certain contest guidelines: “You must be present to win.” This is also true as far as knowledge goes. Being a witness to an actual event gives whatever story one creates and shares credibility, at least up to the point that the storyteller can be trusted and has been accurate and honest in the past. If a personal memory is not available to convey a teaching or a message, listening to the stories of other firsthand witnesses can be beneficial. A great example is that of the knowledge that fathers pass on to their sons around issues of family philosophy/religion, self-esteem, growing up into manhood, accepting personal responsibility, sexuality, learning to ride a bike or drive a car, and future community involvement. The less experiential the teaching, the less staying power of the message, so it is important to keep the listener engaged with all of their senses if possible.
I first came into a conscious collision with the whim versus wisdom dynamic while I was in the sixth grade. The principal wanted a representative from each class, from both the fifth and the sixth grades, to attend a conference for parents in the auditorium on a weeknight. It was an honor to be selected, according to our teachers, and the students were advised to select from among themselves who would be the best representative.
As a community of grade schoolers, we had a difficult enough time establishing the process for how to select the representative, let alone who it should be. The teacher helped by instituting two male overseers, one from the fifth and one from the sixth grade, who were to facilitate the determination process by asking for volunteers or nominations and discussing their qualifications. The boys expressed frustration with the process, and even though our teachers offered up two good candidates from each class, on a sixth-grade boy’s whim, a quiet, shy girl was selected for that class. She had been, in the past, teased and bullied by me and others, and I could immediately see that this process had the potential to victimize her. I was right; they continued to harass her. This selection process dramatically impacted me and has influenced my understanding of group dynamics ever since. Many of us, relying upon the opinions of others, have made many decisions against wisdom and in favor of the opinions of others, who may be engaging in whimsical or non-critical thinking of their own.
We must learn to trust ourselves and our ability to apply our experience and knowledge with a little bit of our developed insight. Typically, learned wisdom that does not conform to what our latest intuitive hit suggests must be scrutinized further, and an intelligent balance must be struck between those two poles. Intuition and wisdom are not mutually exclusive and complement each other.
Wisdom is spawned from experience. It is best embraced and expressed through our storytelling and our intelligent actions in the world. Sound bites just do not carry enough of wisdom’s energy. We must be careful not to integrate memes and sound bites into a quilt of understanding because the stitching will unravel, and we will be left appearing and acting like less than the wise people we can be.
Whimsical thinking is respected because of its lack of adherence to established patterns, which can be attractive to creative people, non-conformists, and insane individuals, so there is a spectrum of benefits to be gained by accessing it. But whimsical thinking must be set aside when intelligent action is required. Be wise, watch out for whimsical thinking, and make those difficult, challenging decisions that are beneficial for our life and for our world’s life too.
Wisdom exists deep inside us all, waiting to inform all of our thoughts and actions in this world. And this world requires ultimate intelligence to navigate through it successfully, without bringing harm to ourselves and others needlessly. Anger and fear are not to be repressed by any healthy human being, but instead are to be witnessed, studied, and utilized intelligently for wise action in this troubled world. The capacity for insight brings change, the actual seeing awakens the capacity for lasting internal change.
Healing through a heightened awareness must be individually experienced, and then the fruits of the experience can be collectively shared with other interested parties, such as in AA meetings or friendship circles. Here we can create the strongest atmosphere for the healing of self and others. We don’t need an edifice for this, yet our own home can become the foundation for community healing. If we belong to an enlightened group of people who attend church, there is also an immense potential for mutual support. Our intention must start the process, though the healing intentions of others can bring us together into a healing formation. This is where the miracle of the collective/shared mind of love-inspired mankind can work its wonders. The right group of people, sharing love and healing together, creates palpable energy, and this can characterize some recovery groups, depending on the quality of recovery present and being expressed in those groups.
Individuals who are toxic, addicted, or mentally ill and not yet ready to face their shame, guilt, fears, and insecurities consciously will not have an easy time of it in recovery or the search for greater meaning in their lives. There are many healing and/or religious paths to take, methodologies for achieving and maintaining sobriety, and therapeutic modalities and medications available for mental illness. 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. This may be all that the sufferer needs for now, especially if they have little inclination toward personal awareness, insight, and spiritual evolution.
Life in the Information Age
The printing press opened civilization up to much more advanced opportunities for education and information transfer and sharing. The internet has opened humanity up to the potential for the real-time witnessing and sharing of other people’s adventures and learning experiences, almost without limits. Watching a multi-media presentation will carry more potential meaning and information to the higher intelligence centers of the brain than just a meme or soundbite, which arouses the more basic areas of the brain where fear is most prone to rule. There is never a shortage of information, but there is always a question about the accuracy of the information and how it is to be presented.
Today, we live in what many call the Information Age, and we are in absolutely no danger of running out of information, particularly in data form. There is a general perception that we are overwhelmed with data, making the ability to store, process, analyze, interpret, consume, and act upon that data a primary concern. There are potentially infinite streams of information available, yet most information may have little or no use to our discerning, conscious minds. However, there is so much more to reality than what just greets the eye and appears on the screens of our cellphones and/or computer monitors. Scientists, mathematicians, theologians, artists, philosophers, enlightened politicians, and Google algorithm writers continue to struggle toward some unknown destination that our collective search for truth continues to guide us toward as a human race. The exponential increase in available information does little to settle what the truth might be, let alone where to start the search.
Many types of knowledge actually breed division and separation between human beings. It is easy to tell the difference between the ministers, politicians, teachers, teachings, and knowledge by feeling within our own inner chambers of consciousness how their messages impact our hearts. Understanding what we now consider to be sources of knowledge is all important as well.
With the idea of fake news being so casually tossed about these days, it is important to keep in mind that fake news has always been with us. It can be traced all of the way back to the days when we first started naming objects and attaching emotional linkages to our observations. Everybody sees things somewhat differently, though similarities outweigh differences by super-substantial amounts. But the human mind tends to focus on the differences, and thus temporarily accentuates those divisions while examining the objects of its reality and reassembling the new information into its own unique information matrix known as our personalities.
Our first thoughts aren’t always the best. All of those divisive philosophies that pit “me versus you” or “us versus them” will bring fewer positive results than the uniting philosophies that bring people together in the spirit of cooperation and caring. Yet it almost seems like the divisive ideas are for many, and for me, by instinct first in line for consideration. So it is important to not act out of impulse. Yes, being mindful is waiting out that first racing train of sometimes fearful, angry, or hurtful thoughts. Watch it as it passes through the screen of awareness and wait for another peaceful train of loving thoughts that may lie underneath all of the other noise.
The goal might be to make love the leading thought considered, but in my reality, it does not always automatically arise, nor should it, just because I think it is a good idea. It is important to note here that ideas that initially appear counter to our prevailing philosophy may have legitimate origins, and discovery and exploration of the mind and our individual experience of it should continue without fear and self-judgment as we attempt to discern the truths being communicated. If our prevailing philosophies are not subject to change, then we risk excess friction in all of our relationships, especially as we slip further and further away from the new, upgraded truth trying to be revealed.
My main coping mechanisms for dealing with America’s and my dark side are practicing spiritual healing principles and communicating with others who also share my interest in spirituality and recovery from the human condition. My path, and the paths of all others, take us to unique and valuable viewpoints, so it is of prime importance that we find our voice and share our knowledge. Through multitudes of these energy exchanges, we all may benefit from each others’ experiences and contribute to the formation of a more peaceful, healing collective consciousness in America.
It is important to understand the internal headlights that our minds use to search for knowledge and truth. The headlights tend to encourage self-fulfilling predictions/prophecies, so looking there will bring amazing insights and enhance the potential for healing experiences. What information really is or isn’t important? Which attitudes, insight, and knowledge lead to greater measures of wisdom, and, potentially, freedom from our inhibiting and restrictive knowns, especially in situations where our knowledge appears to conflict with the truth?
By staying in familiar painful ruts, the view at least does not change too much. And far too many people stuck in those ruts are not even aware that they are engaged in self-defeating attitudes and behaviors. Or, if they are aware, they have already given up hope that another life is available for them.
Mindfulness, insight, and meditation help to create a more stable foundation for thought, feeling, and action. Remaining socially connected through real-life interaction (versus predominantly through media devices) keeps the heart and mind refreshed and engaged holistically. Giving and receiving presence to each other has much more value than the mere information that might be exchanged. For us to continue to trust in technology solely for our heart connection is like only eating popcorn for our diet: satisfying in the short-term and deadly
in the long run. We need to feed each other new ideas and words from the deep storehouses within each of our hearts. This is where intuition, empathy, compassion, and healing all arise. To continue to be fed only from the internet is to continue our connection with cultural hypnotism, which leads in its self-defeating directions.
Virtually all relationships and all interactions with others have a lesson built right into them. We confirm our present reality with the interactions, or we entertain new information that needs synthesizing within our present-day psychological sets to create a modified reality. Teachers come in an almost infinite variety of forms. Spiritual healers and teachers are important to note here because they tend to attract the most vulnerable and receptive of all learners. I have met quite a few healers, ministers, teachers, and leaders for those on the spiritual path. Most have the best of intentions, and their hearts were in the right place and permeated with the desire to be of greater service to humanity and their spiritual evolution.
Speaking up and participating in human interactions are important. Why would I withhold myself, and my truth, from situations that should have demanded my participation? Why would I withhold my own assessments of what is real and true and right in the face of this assault upon my sensibilities? Why would I devalue myself, and my truth, so much that I would carry the perception that I have nothing to say, or that nobody would ever listen to me? It has taken me nearly sixty years to become willing to speak my truth to the living human representatives of our collective consciousness. I was never insightful enough to fully recognize that the world I was adopting and adapting to as a child was an inaccurate representation of a more fundamental truth. But like many other children, I rebelled at the fake news and pseudo-science that churned out of the religious mills and minds of Americans. I took a very passive-aggressive approach to the spiritual lie that we as Americans are living. The pain of the lies that I cultivated before any spiritual recovery necessitated that I medicate myself out of the pain of separation and loneliness. I no longer punish myself by negating my self-worth, yet our culture continues to unconsciously spawn millions of suffering people who also question their value, which is the origin of insanity. Confronting a difficult reality takes more energy than most of us care to bring to the table, yet, not doing so diminishes our own standing in truth, life, and love, and that has been my experience.
We have all been victimized by the cultural and familial conditioning of the information-processing centers of the brain. These cause certain streams of awareness to be represented by erroneous concepts or attenuated or terminated prematurely by fear before any reasonable assessments can even be made. Our cultural headlights for looking into ourselves have had much of their light blocked by years of unacknowledged road debris accumulating on the lens. Yet, we first have to see that there is a blockage, as it will not clear on its own. Our internal seeing can ultimately liberate us from the erroneous views foisted upon our innocent hearts and souls by the well-meaning but oftentimes ignorant teachers of our pasts, and those who may not have yet cleared up their internal lenses of perception. But we each must look, acknowledge what appears to be there, share our perceptions with others, learn from each other, and thus create more accurate, updated knowledge. Sometimes, just accepting the fact that we only truly know a little bit, compared to the whole of the knowledge available, will keep us humble enough to remain open to the vastness of the unknown.
The unknown is the opening in our mind and heart that the higher power speaks through so that we can find the truth and spirit of this new moment. Do not fear the unknown, as it can be so much more than we could ever anticipate or imagine. Even after our most sincere and deepest prayers, there still must be an opening created within our minds where we can listen and watch, without fear or judgment, for the answer. And the answer is always provided and rarely understood. The unknown can be a long-neglected best friend even for the curious and the conscious. An overactive mind runs over the quiet truth that is revealed in each moment, so take off those mental workout clothes, and take a breather!
Finding Truth
Truth can only be experienced in each new moment, in the ever-unfolding unknown and unknowable moment that is now. This unique new moment can only reveal itself to a mind no longer burdened by the past and its version of knowledge. Where does our reliance on technology connect with a search for truth? Search engines now serve you what they think you are looking for. A quick type into Google, and you are being fed an illusion and/or probably just another Capitalist and/or Christian theory. If the truth that we find on Google brings pleasure to us, remember that it is somebody else’s truth and not necessarily our own.
So, just what is Truth, anyway? Truth is the antidote for all inaccurate, secondhand, toxic, and limiting theories. Truth is not just for the saints and sages. Yet, very few people have any interest in it because they believe they are already covered by their religion and that only their savior has the truth or is the truth. Some believe that they already understand it, or, for others, that there is no such thing as truth. Sadly there is also a category of human beings who are so absorbed with their material world existence that the search for truth never even begins. For these people, it does not sound very interesting or entertaining.
Truth is extremely difficult to conceptualize because the truth is elusive. It exists above and beyond all of the words used to chase it with descriptions. Truth is oftentimes best described through poetry and music, where more of the brain becomes engaged in the energy attempting to be shared. Our words still serve a valuable function. But they will forever remain only pointers or place-holders for the energy that must be personally experienced, or it will never become psychologically real to the witness.
There is only a God when there is no longer a “me” questioning what is, while still trying to justify my own opinions or ignorance. In that silence, infinity finds its expression, and the observer is observed. And there is no longer a need or a desire to find God, for God has found us. Yet, there is no longer “us,” only the witnessing of infinity by one no longer limited by a verbally intoxicated mind. Love flourishes in this silence, and moral and ethical action becomes spontaneous and natural. All that we will ever see, unto whatever eternity that we can perceive, is ourselves. How will we see ourselves today?
Pythagoras is credited with saying, “Know thyself, and thou will know God, and the Universe.” And Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” These two quotes set the stage for the eternal tension between what is truth and what is falsehood, and the spiritual requirement not to create and worship idols, physical or verbal. They also point to the supporting conditions behind one’s potential for spiritual evolution and final ascendancy out of false knowledge and the suffering that results from entertaining such thoughts.
What if your life is fulfilling the prophecies of your religion and culture, rather than that of your true self? Find the self, and the life that has a great future, and then discard the one that will die with our rotting civilization. Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whose prophecy are you now willing to fulfill?
Chapter Ten: Reimagining Our Journey Through Consciousness
“It is what it is, but it is not what it seems.” —Paul Hewson
We all love a great story. Storytellers are revered throughout society. And as humans, we all create stories around our individual lives and all of our relationships with each other and with the world. We also listen intently to the stories told to us by our parents, teachers, religions, history, and society about who we are, who others once were or now are, and whom we might aspire to become. Many of our stories, both individually and those created by society for us, are steeped in illusion, ignorance, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. Far too many stories are just illusory dramas about our attempts to control others and, sadly, our failed attempts to control our own lives and our emotional experiences around all of these intersections and collisions with each other. But these stories have an amazing hypnotic appeal, especially to those who have not undertaken the process of insight and healing. At some point in our lives, each of us must begin a search for truth, lest the entirety of our life experience is lived and experienced without true integrity, the potential for healing and completeness, or alignment with reality.
Some aspects of life just seem to elude our ability to effectively communicate around them. They never get incorporated into our personal stories and thus add to the collective conspiracy of silence. Also, other people’s stories and garbage gets backfilled into the holes and empty spaces within our own stories, becoming embedded within us, and adding to our internal confusion and chaos.
But it is each of our responsibilities as conscious, or semi-conscious, human beings to bring our personal truth and our stories, no matter how incomplete they may be, to the collective experience, including our family, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors, and our religious and political leaders.
Names and stories are only a convenient form of communication, and they are never comprehensive and inclusive enough to completely reveal the true nature of what they were created for in our minds to represent in the first place. The process of naming is the way that our consciousness weighs and measures new forms of life, ideas, and experiences, in the attempt to insert the unknown and the mysterious into a present context for understanding, which becomes the latest iteration of our story.
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. If our need is for change, we must find a way to see under the vast matrix of details that only float on the surface of the mind. We must also personally explore and experience the movements through consciousness and find 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 the mind and will not pry open the healing doors to insight and wisdom.
I intuited quite early that words have access to imagination and knowledge built in, and that extends 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. I can remember as a young boy around four years of age having a doll named Percy who spoke with me at times. It even spoke to me once over the telephone. Percy was to me what God was to other innocent children, a reassuring voice that would speak to me and remind me that I had value. I almost had my sister convinced of it, as well, and she was six years old at the time.
Illusions can become contagious if not recognized and reined in early. In some of the early times of my life, before my addictive cycles, I carried with me a sense of isolation, depression, and a strong feeling of generalized anxiety. From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic and drug addict, and mentally ill human being, I lost most of my remaining 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. Many of us could see the insanity of those still claiming for themselves good mental health, while the choices of those supposedly “healthy people of the world” continued to bring the promise of destruction to our planet Earth. While we contemplated our own end, we witnessed a world in its own collective march toward suicide. The story of Armageddon, as both an individual and as a collective event, becomes very real to those trapped by their illusions of powerlessness, helplessness, and despair.
We are the loosely knit tribe most susceptible to the oppression by others, and the repression of ourselves. We are the prime candidates for political and religious propaganda. We may seek a new tribe that gives us a sense of safety and purpose, even if our anticipated benefits come at the expense of other innocent people or groups. We have become limited caricatures of ourselves, as we continue to play to stereotypes that those in power have thrust upon us. We do not have the emotional and spiritual intelligence to discern what is true and what is false about ourselves. The stories that continue to be told to us keep us connected with an extremely limited view of our people, all the while keeping us disconnected from our true natures and more realistic stories of ourselves.
If you tell a lie often enough, you are prone to start to believe it yourself. All of the internal defense mechanisms engage to support the story and maintain the lie’s existence and the corruption that living a lie creates. This is how lies can become part of our nature. Be careful out there, the world and our minds can be a dangerous place. Unlike television sitcoms, where the programs have the potential to resolve the contrived issues before the ending of the episode, life carries our issues for prolonged periods, sometimes whole lifetimes, if we do not find a way to dislodge our lies and our stories of disease and dysfunction from the cells of our bodies and our consciousness.
There is no freedom to be found, if we do not first see that we are trapped. Pay attention to all of our stories, many of which have created quite a mess to sort through. Constantly question reality, search for available facts, and learn not to unconsciously accept statements from authority figures. Many times reality is only someone else’s opinion about what is, so a cautious, probing mind is required to maintain or re-establish personal integrity, healing, sanity, and reason.
It has been a great challenge and adventure to live this life. It has also been a great fulfillment for me to have lived long enough and to have become articulate enough to put my unique experience of life into words. Finding my unique story, and finding the supportive silence underneath that story, is the journey of my salvation, the hero’s journey toward healing and integrity.
Connecting Through Stories
My wife and I were friends with another couple, Marty and Eddy, for many years. Marty and I were quite friendly with each other, yet we rarely spoke at great length or depth or developed a deeper friendship beyond our wives. He was the kind of guy who let his wife organize and dominate his life. She often spoke for him or even verbally ran him over in group settings. We were in the same book club, and it was common knowledge that when his wife was present, Marty would not consistently reveal himself or his own story. He would instead defer to Eddy through his silence. Eddy was not a bad person or intentionally oppressive, yet her relationship with Marty exhibited how repressed people remain that way until they assert and affirm their presence in public.
Marty began to show great interest in my Facebook posts beginning late in 2016, and this opened the door to a different level of sharing between the two of us. Marty had malignant melanoma that was in remission at the time. We began to discuss difficult issues we had never touched upon before. I saw how similar Marty was to me and that we both shared a hesitancy to speak our truth, even though we were both considered to be intelligent people. Marty acknowledged that he was stuck and hoping to have a spiritual breakthrough, yet he felt helpless as to how to make it happen, short of a miracle occurring. I still was stuck, too, but I had hope that I might be able to marshal the necessary spiritual resources to take me to the next level. But as our friendship deepened, and I continued to piece together my own story, our spiritual selves became inextricably intertwined.
On January 11, 2017, 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. I saw a black mass, almost the size of a golf ball, in the left portion of the brain area of my inner field of body awareness. This was the second time that I had an awareness of my body’s life energy field after my only other experience of it in July of 1987, when I first saw two embedded traumatic wounds, appearing as “tricksters”..
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, while playing cards at a mutual friend’s home. I did not talk about the seizures or the black mass, initially, because I thought that I might be losing my mind. After all, I had been under a ton of stress with the care and support that I was required to give to my father, who was mentally deteriorating while nearing ninety years old. I later began talking 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 seemed to have any impact on the dark mass. I knew that some sort of spiritual death was coming my way.
Then, on March 5, 2017, Marty also suffered a seizure and was hospitalized. Although his cancer treatments had seemed successful up to that point, the doctor found a new golf ball-sized tumor in his left brain hemisphere. It would need to be surgically removed. Sharon and I visited with Marty in the hospital. Marty and I talked about our seizures, and I was struck by the similarity of his seizures with my own. I told Marty 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 Marty’s mass did not indicate a death for him. Yet, this was to begin the era of death terrors for my dear friend, and I was to experience my peculiar version of the terror as well.
That next day, I had an episode of anxiety 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, yet I 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. She offered her love and care. She monitored my blood pressure, and when she noted that my breathing became shallow, she offered 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 dizzy. I continued feeling physically subdued, and the anxiety reaction continued with my body and mind. I then began losing my ability to talk. It took all of the power that I could muster to force words out. I 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 my wife Sharon as losing my mind. Sharon saw it as me having a panic attack.
Thursday came, and I had not improved much. It also was the day that Marty’s tumor was being removed. I had dual concerns, for Marty and 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 myself and of Marty. I continued to listen to Jack Boland’s spiritual wisdom tapes, hoping to hear something that might bring me comfort. While I was listening, Boland said that he wished pain, not peace of mind, to all who had not yet fulfilled their interior spiritual obligation to cleanse their hearts, as this is the great precursor to any lasting spiritual progress. That was when I understood.
Marty had been encouraging me to tell my story, and the pain and suffering I was experiencing complementary to his was my spiritual purpose going unfulfilled. Telling our stories is that important.
What value is a story, if it is never told? What value is love, if it is never shared?
Once upon a time, an old woman ran through the streets shouting: “Power, greed, corruption! Power, greed, corruption!” For a while, people stopped to hear, to think, and to discuss the problem. As time went by and nothing happened, they simply went back to their business. Finally, one day, a child stepped in front of the prophet to say, ”Old woman, no one is listening to you.”
The woman stopped yelling and said, ”Oh, I know that.”
The boy was puzzled. “If you know that you have failed, then why do you go on shouting?”
“Oh, child,” the old woman answered, “you do not understand. I do not shout to change them. I shout so that they cannot change me”
Dead men tell no tales, but the nearly dead and fully alive must continue to tell their stories, with respect for themselves and others, until our civilization finally wakes up. Not expressing ourselves honestly and openly results in our 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 life, and we can perceive the isolating framework that imprisons much of the American male psyche.
We are all as sick as the secrets that we keep from each other and ourselves. Choose wisely, oh mankind, the secrets that we must keep, because by our choices we all may awaken or stay sick, isolated, and asleep.
Some aspects of our lives just seem to continue to elude our ability to communicate around them, and they add to our cultural conspiracy of silence. Life was never an easy journey for me. Had it not been for some deep need to understand my dysfunctional process and find the underlying truth amid my personal chaos, I would have passed away long ago. Some wounds are so deep and primal, that pasting new names onto aspects of the disease is not enough.
But, the act of creating stories and context and being conversational about the details of life does not dislodge the detritus from our field of consciousness. We must uncouple from the fragmentation of our wounded, time-based minds and instead anchor our sense of self to the healing silence, the sacred silence, at the center of our being.
The Pearl
Of what value to us is our ego? Our ego can be likened to the shell of an oyster, which is rarely recognized for its beauty. Like the oyster shell, our personality may be appealing to some, ugly to others, or just plain uninteresting. Yet we all have access to different, unknown, and potentially sublimely transformative layers of ourselves, even though the personality often fails to consciously engage with them.
In an oyster, natural pearls form when an irritant, usually a parasite, or perhaps the proverbial grain of sand, works its way into the shell. As a defense mechanism, a fluid is used to coat the irritant. Layer upon layer of this coating, called nacre, is deposited until a lustrous pearl is formed.
The pearl developed inside gives the oyster its unique value to human beings, who prize the oyster’s positive response to a major irritant in its life. But, the shell has to be opened, for all to witness the beautiful visual delight developed and hidden within.
The ego is formed and continuously affirmed in an environment where spiritual discernment has not yet sufficiently evolved. Our ego is our static assessment of a dynamic, changing world, and it is constantly engaged in a state of “catching up” with the truth. It can be likened to taking a picture of a movie in midstream and assuming that the picture represents the entirety of the movie. Wisdom is gained through our experiences in the journey through space and time and the reinterpretations of and the release from all of the illusory static images stuck in our memory. Wisdom is the perception that our memory may be clogged with a lifetime of the accumulation of static images, all out of context with our present-day intentions to evolve and heal. Life in the now is eternally dynamic and changing, while the fragile ego clings to its static fantasies and hopes spawned from its past.
If we resist conscious, rational change, our ego will hold onto worn-out understandings of life and become out of touch with the ever-unfolding new reality. Yesterday’s truth is today’s superstition, and yesterday’s inaccurate assessment of others is today’s isolation and pain. So it is imperative to keep an open mind to change. Otherwise, the ego will be left behind and suffer according to the cognitive dissonance it allows itself to experience.
At all the intersections of the points of conflict between our inner world and our outer world, there are choices to be made. When a conflict arises, do we resist any new message or lesson being offered by another, especially when their understanding does not conform to our own? What about that daughter-in-law who hangs up on you or the husband who talks more than he should and is unwilling to change? What about that person who promotes a way of viewing life that does not conform to our own? These are irritants, and if we use the irritant to justify an inaccurate judgment against or physical separation from the offending party, we may have pushed away a layer of nacre for our internal pearl of wisdom. Our judgments are only verbal measurements of an ever-changing environment. Any judgment should be a temporary rest stop that is left behind when we move in resonance with the new reality continuously unfolding before our eyes. This is the way of forgiveness.
Change is irritating and often threatening to the ego. Our egos exist to help bring context and balance between what we are witnessing now with what we have experienced in the past. It helps us assess what actions in life we must undertake to meet our social and societal obligations. It is our mind’s conscious attempt at bringing a balance between the world of form that we share with all of life and the almost secret world inside of the personal mind. We might believe that we are keeping secrets from each other, but the truth is that we all share the vast majority of thoughts and inclinations with our fellow humans. And we are only in denial of that fact when we don’t believe it and fail to act with compassion toward ourselves and others.
If the oyster was a closed system and did not allow for an internal response to irritants, whatever parasites or grains of sand that entered into the oyster might cause its very destruction. Because the irritant has been addressed and stabilized through the deposit of the layers of nacre, the oyster continues to thrive. Though it is now growing an internal body consisting of the layers of the nacre, which are forming into a most lustrous pearl.
So too do we, as humans, have the capacity to make pearls. But we must approach all irritants with love and compassion, or we will produce no spiritual nacre, only more pain and suffering. All of the forgiveness that we offer to ourselves and all offending parties in our world also creates lustrous layers of nacre. Do not judge another by their shell, but instead, wait until they can open themselves up and reveal the pearl of the greatest price.
We all experience the effects of thoughtless, capricious human activity. Bring on those irritants, as they are the gatekeepers to new layers of consciousness! Remember, most people ask for forgiveness, rather than permission before they engage in their controversial behavior. Our wisdom, created through spiritually discerning the irritants in life, is our shiny pearl.
The point is to learn meaningful lessons from the pain and not assume that it arose out of nowhere. Unaddressed pain tends to take over small centers within the mind. Over some time, the traumatized mind loses its ability to be an avenue of present-moment awareness, and it becomes fixated upon a past that cannot be healed. The institutionalized pain embedded within our memory becomes virtual scabs over our unexamined wounds. Are we just forming scabs that only partially cover our wounds? Or are we facing our brokenness, in spirit and in relationships, that contributes to the formation of a healing spiritual nacre within our own minds and hearts?
But truly, what is the pearl of the greatest price? It is your pearl, strung on the same string as the rest of humanity. Our stories imbued with collective wisdom create the necklace of ultimate value. We must each build our own unique consciousness of truth and love, and then our stories become part of the ever-unfolding wisdom of mankind.
Enlightenment
“The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t graps theml. There is a pattern in creation. If we look outside at this tree, it has roots which search beneath the pavement for water, or a flower which sends its sweet smell to the pollinating bees, or even our own selves and the inner forces which drive us to act, we can seee that we all dance to a mysterious tune, and the piper who plays this melody from an insccrutable distance—whatever name we give it–—Creative Force, or God—escapes all book knowledge…”—–
Albert Einstein
With our eyes, we only see one percent of the entire spectrum of light. Yet, there are other forms of light that we may witness, if we can develop the sensitivity to its presence. There are even those, known as “seers” who see way beyond the standard views afforded to us by our eyes and our training. Those that see deeply, and well beyond and behind the veils of illusion that most of humanity lives behind, are considered to be either insane, or spiritual lights, or perhaps a blend of the two. Those that can see into the heart of Truth are a rare breed indeed, and our culture rarely honors and acknowledges such lights until well after their deaths.
Who does not want to be the light of the world? Do we even know what that question truly implies? The world of art has attempted to capture what an individual living in the light might look like. Over many centuries, we have seen artists’ renditions of saints and sages, with paintings often showing the blessed person as having a golden light about them, usually concentrating around the head. Is this divine light a real phenomenon, or only an artistic interpretation of that which may not be completely captured by art, science, religion, and philosophy?
The physiological truth about humanity is that humans do have the capacity to emit light through bioluminescence, yet that light is not readily witnessed by normal human eyesight. Humans do not innately embody luciferin, which would give us the capacity to glow like fireflies. Yet what about that inner glow, the glow that erupts within one’s heart and soul when finally touched by transcendent spiritual power?
I believe that we can experience the power and a life greater than any limited, personal sense of self because I experienced it for myself. I no longer look to the darkness for the light. I found my light, a light that dispels the darkness of others, their religions and economic philosophies, and the darkness of my historical self.
Leonard Cohen said that his teacher once told him that the older that we get, the lonelier that we will become. This is because, as we go through life, we tend to overidentity with being the hero of our stories. We take on the role of “hero” in our journey towards healing, yet we still remember all too well being kicked arokund, humiliated, and disgraced. Being the hero of our story is a temporary vehicle for us to borrow until we no longer need those stories from our dysfunctional pasts to give meaning in the present. When we let go of our “rental vehicle” we can find our rightful place in the universe, and experience a love more satisfying than anything we have ever known before..
It is important to remember, many of us have to take the posture of being the hero, at least for a healing time period, to give us the extra motivation to follow new paths of consciousness on our way out of the distress of our younger years. The real deepest meaning of the word hero is “to serve”, so the humility that is gained through being roughed up a bit on the way to enlightenment helps us to better serve the community of which we claim to be members of. If we have found wisdom, we have allowed ourselves to be shattered, and return to our homes, humbled, but with a newfound sense that we no longer need to identify with the parts of us that needs to win, needs to be recognized, and needs to know. This is where our tranccendence truly takes root, and grows into a unity with the tree of life, where we can live by the sunlight of truth.
To find the light of truth, there must be a release from the controls of the crowd, whether it is the crowd of old thoughts or the crowd that blindly follows others. I am saddened that mankind is becoming increasingly dependent on its technology for communication, while not concurrently developing the sensitivity to connect with the energy that we all share in and with which we communicate with each other continuously. Our technology, especially the hand-held media devices that we use to entertain and hypnotize ourselves with, only serves to continue the energy of the past, without offering alternatives to the present collection of corrupted choices that humanity has seemed eternally resigned to make.
Scientists, though able to define relationships and the laws that dictate behavior between all observable and quantum phenomena, are only now beginning to understand the ramifications of the real law of our existence, which is all that we will ever see, unto eternity, is ourselves. Science provides laws for what we see, yet unlike enlightened spirituality, provides no laws predicting or supporting what is possible for humanity. Quantum mechanics will not be understood fully until the self-centered perspective toward infinity is replaced with the understanding that the collective, as well as the individual, is present in each of us in each moment of existence, and definitely impacts both the seer, and the seen..
The impacts that we all have on each other are not yet fully understood. Yet prayer, meditation, and mindfulness prepare the mind for the unknown source of all true creation. It is a much more collaborative effort being a human—or any other form of life on this planet—than our minimally conscious minds understand at this time. There are mysterious threads of energy that connect all of life together into one unified whole, yet we continue to create understandings that often fragment our world view, and the objects of our perceptions within it. Ultimately, science, religion, medicine, and technology will all be united as manifestations of mankind’s expression of true being.
The ego is created from our desperate call for love, from a world that has not yet learned how to love. The most significant question remains: why care, or why bother? The sacredness and the sanctity of our universe depend on our recognition of who we are, and how we express our understanding of that connection. Therein lies the absolute necessity that members of the human race seek true enlightenment.
If we can’t drill down to the foundation of our world’s and our individual problems and find and replace the foundation, there is little long-term hope for any of us.
If the desire for liberation from the damaging and fatal illusions of our deteriorating society is great, we are ready for our transformation. By letting go of the societal controls that keep us imprisoned in an outdated image of ourselves and the unrealistic and unhealthy expectations of others, we become ready to travel onto new paths of consciousness and to a new era of transcendence in our lives.
I grieve with the rest of humanity for the early deaths of all damaged souls and the loss of human potential to the rest of humanity. Please, America, listen to, and retell their stories, so that we can all heal, grow, and love together in a new, transformative environment that can celebrate wholeness and our individual contributions to it from both the male and female perspectives. May all sentient beings be released from suffering. May all spiritually and emotionally damaged men be released from the cultural conspiracy of silence, which contributes to personal and collective suffering.
With all of the antifpathy being expressed towards those in our culture who are waking up, or “woke”, it is important to understand what the conservatve tribes are judging against. The mischieve makers of our political and religious conservative fear meaningful change, and rush to create an “us vs them” diatribe, to distract from the need for our culture, and ourselves, to make necessary corrections in course, and even to evolve in love and in truth. We are not monsters, nor should we be feared, but there are always political points to be made in this divisive culture. We typically don’t stock up on AR-15’s, or form militias to protect our rights, and our needs. We do not allow unconscious fear to dominate our lives, and instead look directly into the face of any fearful situation, to see where our experience, intelligence, intuition, compassion, and love can assist in making decision that benefit the whole, rather than just special interests.
Typically, a person moving on the path towards enlightenment exhibits the following traits:
- We read books and have no desire to burn anyof them, no matter how controversial they may be
- Weembrance science, and scientific methods for understanding the world, and reality itself.
- We are willing to change ourminds when confronted with new information that disproves previous understandings
- We understand thatmost issues are not black and white, but exist on a spectrum
- We believe in the equality of all people, all races,all ethnicticities, all gender identifications
- We like to shareour prosperity with those considered less advantages
- We cooperate and collaboratewith each other with a minimum of tribalistic, or us versus them attitudes
- We respect the rights of everybody, including ourselves
- We believethat our culture, religion, and arts are manifestations of our creative nature, and we have the right to re-create each according to the dictates of our evolutionary progress in understanding
- Wecare for Mother Earth and all of its life as if our lives depended upon it, because it does.
Conclusion: Thoughts On That Which Is Beyond All Thought
“Bruce, I don’t have the time to listen to your problems, I have too many of my own.”——Tony to me in Fred Meyer pharmacy line
I never had the perfect family, and even those who claim to have, still had to grow up in a damaged culture and make accommodations to that damage. Putting food on the table and basic survival are hard enough, but we all have to do it within the existing toxicity. And so we judge each other. We naturally seek to understand ourselves and our relationship with the whole, yet we become self-conscious, judgmental, and/or uncomfortable with those assessments. The loss of our connection with nature and our imbalanced and inaccurate perceptions of self and each other contribute to our sense of isolation, loneliness, and vulnerability. But we can take responsibility and make changes in the way we think and view the world. If we do not make ourselves aware of the reasons behind the choices that we make in life, we remain unconscious human beings with little true freedom.
Even if you remain lost in the shadows, having vainly pursued the mythical Garden of Eden, the dangerous Minotaur in the labyrinth, or the dark Kingdom of Mordor, there is still hope for you. To be insane in an insane world, to be a stranger in a strange land, is the true new normal for many people presently wandering upon the face of this troubled planet. How we deal with insanity determines whether we remain imprisoned or eventually find our freedom. Blaming others for our present station in life is self-defeating. Yet, that is the first response of an immature mind, a mind not ready and willing to make the necessary adjustments in the course to create a new life experience.
Mass hypnosis, oppression, mental illness, drug addiction and alcoholism, indifference, self-hatred, and its most destructive spawns murder and suicide have been a scourge upon the fabric of human consciousness for time immemorial. Our mental journey far away from Eden begins with the loss of self-esteem and mutual respect, loss of personal meaning, and the loss of clarity in making good choices for our life. This confusion morphs into depression, alienation, isolation, anxiety, despair, and loneliness. Suicide, the ultimate act of repression against self, and murder, the ultimate act of oppression of the other, appear as a reasonable choices for the final act of protest against life for those suffering from the terminal effects of oppression and repression. Suicide and murder are cruel acts against those with loving intentions, and they are tragic forms of violence against self, family, friends, and the supporting community.
Self-destructive attitudes, indifference, suicide, and murder are perceived to be the only solution for desperate souls who can’t afford to care or have reached the end of their options. Our society continues to supply potential perpetrators and victims at a catastrophic rate, and that rate will only increase as the diseases of planned political divisiveness, oppression of those not in the cultural “in” group, and addiction and mental illness within our culture continue to increase. I have known and buried far too many friends and family members who were waiting for a better day and life while abusing drugs and alcohol or collapsing into mental illness.
People who do not seek recovery will always be among us. They cannot or will not give themselves to the life-saving practices of insight, mindfulness, meditation, making amends, and compassionate care for Mother Earth and its life. Some suffer from grave emotional disorders, many of which are trauma inspired, yet they are unaware or don’t care to address such difficult issues. My story has disclosed in a general way what an unhealed life was like for me, what happened to me on my way to healing, and what I am like now. If you are interested in healing, you have to really want it, and there must be the deepest of desires to finish successfully. This energy will keep your ship afloat while confronting the difficult logjams and icebergs of life that would sink you otherwise. Remember, we are dealing with the human mind and a diseased culture. The combination of the two creates a powerful, cunning adversary until we find a way out of their labyrinth. It may be too much for us, but there is help, and it is our willingness to change and to be part of a worldwide collaborative healing initiative.
My own wait for a better day has born great fruits for me, but the fruit was not acquired passively or through waiting for the outer conditions of my life to improve. I first had to confront my suffering and the sources within my mind, memory, and heart that would push me toward self-annihilation. Suffering need not lead to death for those who choose to awaken.
Life can be an extremely humbling experience. Those blessed few who stop resisting life and develop the capacity to accept defeat are the ones most receptive to healing. When we are defeated, we become the most open to life-affirming change and growth. After accepting the grace innate within the willingness to change, we can accept personal responsibility for the rest of our lives. We finally learn that the willingness and capacity for changes in our attitudes and behaviors can become our higher power.
When our goal has finally been spotted, or it has spotted us, we each can make our own unique path toward it. The trail that each one of us blazes is as important as any path made by any prophet, saint, or savior who has ever lived or will live. Only our ego or the egos of the hero worshippers of other faiths who have not yet realized their own highest truth that would say otherwise.
To make dramatic changes in my life, the desire had to come from a place deep within myself. I did not change because my wife and family, my friends, my minister at church, my employer, my political leaders, or my people-pleasing attitudes cajoled or advised me to change. I had to value myself differently and become conscious that my behavior was causing irreparable harm to myself, to other human beings, to our animal brothers and sisters, and to the sustainability of life on this planet. I understood that my behavior was insane and that I had a death wish for myself and/or others. I sought a higher power or energy to overcome my insanity.
Bringing healing to a situation is about recognizing what we are not doing well and accepting where we can improve, right now at this moment, to help unfold more holistic intentions. Positive change follows the heart’s intentions if the heart is pure. If it is a desire from the heart, never stop seeking that which seems unattainable, for it is the heart itself seeking its own highest expression. Please do not stop until Life’s Miracle reveals itself to you.
Many of us don’t believe that we have the seed for greatness within us. Many of us believe that somebody else is our greatness. We look outside ourselves, thinking that our greater good will come to us from Jesus Christ or that perfect woman or that perfect man or that perfect job. We think that somebody else will do the work for us. We’re always looking outside of ourselves. But this is an inside job too. Yes, the good can come from the outside; but if we’re not doing the work to bring it out from our inside, then it throws life out of balance and creates dependencies. Your story of healing brings more balance to yourself and all of your relationships.
We are as sick as our secrets is an aphorism used extensively in recovery groups. And the truth is that our world does not heal until we do. It is our responsibility to find our freedom and stop blaming others. Otherwise, we will remain trapped in our labyrinth of self-deception and spiritual corruption until the end. Without the healing of our wounds, loving acceptance of ourselves and each other remains impossible, we remain separated from our true nature, and our pasts continue to dominate us. When we don’t tell our stories, the conspiracy of silence still reigns supreme, and our religions, economic policies, politics, and collective consciousness continue to give more support to our fantasies rather than to facts and reality.
If you can see beyond the limited vision of the self and get to the deeper reality hidden within the soul, the potential for an inspired and higher-powered human experience lies buried there under the detritus of a traumatized history. By going on a search for truth, the entirety of our life experience can be lived and experienced with true integrity, the potential for healing and completeness, and the best alignment with reality. It’s the difference between continuing the struggle and newer, more diverse, and healthier possibilities for life.
Since 1987, I have chosen to live life more fully, with enhanced personal awareness, good health, and honest expression of all feelings. I experience joy and happiness the majority of the time, and I have maintained almost continuous sobriety. No one knows what our final destination in life will be, but living your story becomes an experiment in consciousness. If we are not experiencing miracles of any nature in our day-to-day life, it only indicates that we are too firmly entrenched in the ruts created by our past. Insight is the greatest benefit of finding your story—insight into self and insight into the people around you. Now I have peace of mind continuously. It isn’t fleeting, but a constant presence in my life that never existed before.
Make peace with your story, develop your own timeline, develop your personal story, and be the hero of your journey. Do whatever it takes. Find and cherish your own story no matter how difficult it is initially. Because as you heal and grow, that story starts to take on significance until it becomes part of the grand story. It should no longer be “his story,” or “her story,” but instead, the united “our story.” Like Tony at the pharmacy, we all have had problems listening to each other. We all have had problems listening to ourselves. Yet, our stories must be told, and we must listen to other people’s stories with respect and compassion for ourselves and others. Every good story has an ending. And, so do our bad stories. What value is a story, if it is never told? What value is love, if it is never shared? What is the value of speaking, if nobody is even listening? What is the value of writing, if there is nobody left to read?
We all have infinite value, whether it is ever recognized by another or not. Discover, enjoy, and celebrate infinity rather than the limitations thrust upon us by the deafness of our culture and families of origin. Sing your song like your life depends on it. Because it does! All of our lives depend on each others’ stories. The sun shines, and the artist interprets its light upon the beautiful landscape and paints a classic piece of art. The wolf howls in the lonely, cold, snow-covered wilderness, and miraculously another wolf a great distance away howls back at him, reassuring both that each other is still there. The bird sings alone in the forest, yet a hiker stops for a moment and listens, and her heart begins to sing and soar with the bird. The divorced and lonely man sings in the shower, and the UPS driver making a delivery to his door hears him and is so impressed by the man’s voice that he encourages him to try out for a local band. An isolated man stumbles upon the miracle of silence within his being and a resultant bridge of words subsequently connects this sacred silence to his latest writings, creating beloved poetry and healing balms for all.
Ultimately, if our culture, and we as individuals, want to embrace and express a healing and transformative energy to ourselves, and to each other, we must adopt the attitude of the Mother of a newborn child. All that Mother sees is her love for her newborn, the very expression of her being. The hardest insight to gain is the necessity to see the world through the eyes of the divine Mother, for the world, the world that we see within our own mind, is also the very expression of our creativity, and our being, as well. No more turning away from the necessirty to give love to our newborn baby, which is our world, please. We can all learn to follow that loving thread of goodness, which always leads us out of mental labyrinths, while continuing the great adventure of our lives..
Yet, never forget that Mother can tell when a diaper needs to be changed, and the baby needs to be cleaned up. Mother cannot just turn away, and pretend the movement of stool and urine did not occur, Mother directly addresses the issue, and makes all necessary changes, without complaint. It is the dharma of being a mother, after all. So shall we become responsible for not turning away from the soiled clothing of the world that we witness. We had better be prepared to actively engage our world as it soils itseelf, and provide necessary cleaning of the offensive parties as required. The most resistant ones to cleansing, and healing, may have to be avoided for awhile, until they become sick from their own odour,and desire a change however!
Insight changes attitudes, insight changes behaviors, and insight changes lives. Always question prevailing attitudes and philosophies of the people in power, be they politicians, employers, pop psychology or spiritual gurus, or religious figures. Healthy skepticism is warranted whenever a person or organization tries to exert pressure on individuals to conform to certain beliefs or traditions. Never sit idly by while witnessing injustice or unfair and hurtful judgment and action meted out by the people in power against innocent people. By your silence, you are supporting the ignorant and the evildoers. They will use your silence to claim that you were in full support of their abhorrent behavior. Do not join in their conspiracy of silence.
The closer I get to my God, or the creator of my creations, the more anonymous I become, and the more my story becomes about the truth of life and a little less about myself. My story may have little or no value to you, yet, there is a story, long neglected within your own heart and soul, patiently awaiting its delivery to our world. Your world awaits the King or Queen within you. You only need to pick up your unique crown of the truth of being and wear it with integrity and love.
Someday the world will wake up and realize that the power of our awareness will open all doors to the long-forgotten or neglected rooms of our consciousness where infinite power resides. Our culture will remain eternally antagonistic toward a collective healing truth until a majority of its citizens embrace the potential of healing for themselves. Closed minds and hearts, and the turning away from others’ problems, only continue an oppressive, heartless society. We, as individuals, must accept personal responsibility for our lives and bring healing intention to our brokenness. Our collective healing intention will eventually become the shepherd that motivates others to do the same. Then our broken culture will find its healing.
I am humbled and amazed by both the miracle embedded within the sacred silence of a mind that has found a healing peace, and the bridge from that space and place to human consciousness through the Word. May the Word arise from that peace and not from the chaos of our troubled pasts. As I contemplate the entirety of my life, I see a simple truth arising from the complexities of its details. Silence born of ignorance, oppression, and repression brings suffering, disease, and early death. Silence born of healing brings joy and love into our world. This same Silence brings forth the capacity to listen with the heart for the deepest meaning embedded within All of Life in its infinitude of forms, and it returns dignity to each sacred manifestation of life.
Is anybody now interested in listening?
Those who learn to listen, hear the “voice of God,” the “music of the Spheres,” unconditioned intelligence inspired by the Buddha mind, and the eternal thoughts that can redefine our new path through Consciousness itself.
Had my father survived, he would have been 94 years old in April of 2023. And, it would not have been a very happy birthday, because dementia was really taking a toll on the poor man.
The last conversation that I had with my father was 6 hours before his death. This is what we exchanged with each other:
Dad, you are still in bed, and its 2:30 in the afternoon, what’s up, it’s such a beautiful day outside.
You know son, I am always tired now, but I am about to get up.
Well, Dad, this might be the last sunny day in a long time, so why don’t you get up, and go out on the porch and have a cigar? I’ll put a chocolate bar on your table, and a drink for you.
I’ll get right up son. By the way, who is caring for me this evening?
Well, Dad, Madison is caring for you this evening.
Oh, poor Madison!
Dad, Madison benefits by being with you, as you do with her.
I will be with you beginning this Sunday morning, and I will be with you for the next three weeks as usual. You know we are planning one final trip to Hawaii with you, right?
Oh son, I am happy just staying at home. I have everything that I need here.
Well, OK dad. I am going to leave now, as I need to prepare for Marty’s funeral tomorrow.
When will I see you again, son?
Dad, it will be Sunday morning, OK?
OK, son, you know that I am dependent on you. Please take care of yourself.
Oh, dad, you know that I am dependent on you, too. You be careful too!
I love you, son.
I love you too, Dad.
I leave his room, not knowing this is to be our last exchange.
The next day, at 10:58am, as I stand in back of the hearse, as a pall bearer in Marty Crouch’s funeral, I prepare to receive Marty’s body to place into the hearse. I receive a call from Madison, which I cannot take, so I hand the phone to Sharon.
Sharon is informed that my father is deceased. Sharon has to leave the service for preparation of my father’s body. I return to father’s house, after meeting my obligation to Marty. The whole family is then traumatized again, subjected to spiritual assault by the police, and the medical examiner. In trauma understanding, this is called the “second injury”, which is an unconscious hurtful action by others in the face of a wounding. I then let them “HAVE IT”, like only my father, and now myself, could do. That ME came around to where he should have been, at the beginning. The police left without further incident.
Wow, in life and in death, my father really knew how to place his unique stamp on my life! Sometimes, it takes nearly an entire lifetime, to learn to unconditionally love and accept a father.
That is my story. And, I have written eight books, in my own unique effort to bring healing to my personal and collective world..
Is my father in a “better place”?
Everybody has a theory.
I am in a better place, that I know for sure!
My father, when I first learned how to speak, wondered aloud if I would ever shut up.
No, father, in whatever form “father” may now take, including the oppressive voices of our culture and religions, I will never shut up.
Can you hear me now?
Had Tony listened to me at the pharmacy, rather than exhibit indifference, my life may have headed in another direction. I was a victim of the Conspiracy Of Silence with a terminal disease. With my emergence from the underworld, the world still could not listen or care less. But I found my message and the willingness to share it with others.
Will the world ever listen to itself and find true compassion and healing?
I have broken the conspiracy of silence, and I have lived well beyond my expiration date. My miracle experiment continues in earnest.
My world can never be the same.
How about yours?
