Chapter 1 – To Find Our Voice

—- Margaret Atwood

There has been an epidemic of white middle-aged American men dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast, for the past 25 years. There has also been a marked increase in anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and mental illness in our general population, for both men and women. I have personally witnessed both mental illness and the early death syndrome of the white American male through many of my acquaintances, and I may yet be captured by the phenomenon, as well. One of several causes around both lifespan decline and increased mental illness revolves around chronic abusive drinking of alcohol, and this has been reflected in our bodies by higher incidences of liver and esophageal cancer, especially in people under fifty years of age.

There has also been the recent news reports with many references to the Opioid Epidemic, painkiller addiction, and the progression to heroin addiction by those participants. Drug overdoses killed 72,000 Americans in 2017 alone.  Since 1999, more than 700,000 Americans have died from drug related causes.  America is losing the war on drugs, that is for sure.  Alcohol and drug misuse are only symptoms of our cultural disease, and the abuse of intoxicants may be the way America medicates itself to avoid feeling the distress of feeling victimized by the forces of oppression within our society, failure to find one’s true voice and mission in life, and the repression of our inner natures.

https://www.nytimes.com/…/death-rates-rising-for-middle-age…

In this book I address our personal and collective consciousness, the potential for both dysfunction and recovery, as well as our attempts at connection with humanity’s highest potential. I point out the darkened movements of human energy that become the underlying foundation for “toxic masculinity”, a name coined to encompass all that is detrimental to the male version of the human spirit. I discuss at length the Common Knowledge Game, which refers to the process by which we all become imprisoned by the way that we form words, ideas, and judgements against self and other, while attempting to maintain society’s twisted notions of what normal social connections should look like. I attempt to address difficult human emotions, and problems with expressing them skillfully. I make a commentary on my rocky relationship with American Christianity, and why I am no longer directly associated with that philosophy, though I still have hope for some members within its body.

I indicate my own unique path towards wholeness and healing, through my “miracle experiments”. One definition of the word miracle, according to the Course in Miracles, is the capacity to see things in a new way through a shift in perception.. I do not specifically address our culture’s problems with physical fitness, or environmental, water and food supply toxicity, which are important issues, but are better left to the medical writers, scientists, and environmental and nutritional experts. Yet, for us to survive as a civilization, and for the endangered species of our planet to continue to exist, we also need a new way to engage with our bodies, while purifying the air that we breathe, and the food that we eat. Nothing short of a “miracle” will save us from the historical momentum of collective disease already carrying us to the possibility of an epic downfall.

.Those who continue to suffer and are not following a path of recovery live and operate in the background of our culture, and have a message that may not be spoken and/or cannot be heard or acknowledged because of the power of the collective Conspiracy of Silence. Our culture is broken, which leads to broken people and broken families. Yet, collectively, America has created a culture of denial, where we don’t look at our fundamental problems together, and confront them directly. To the extent that the broken individual might indicate a brokenness of our culture, is the extent that the broken individual is marginalized and minimized by the entrenched power brokers of our civilization and their sycophants. There are many economic, religious, and political leaders who have derived the greatest personal and economic benefits through the exploitation of the those who have no voice, and it is perceived as an existential threat for them to examine the damaged structure that gave rise to their own predominance, while others still suffered. There must be a national discussion about our shared disease, its treatment, and the healing and changing of our culture to reduce the probabilities of its recurrence.

The race is on between those who are spiritually supporting personal and collective Armageddon, and those who are promoting a more holistic, healing approach to living together in lasting harmony, peace and health upon our sacred planet. Those who can become receptive to their own spiritual awakening will become part of a world-wide healing movement, through co-creating the roots of the Tree of Life that supports a new world order of Love, Compassion, and the preservation of our home planet Earth and all of its sacred inhabitants. Those who choose to stay asleep will continue to contribute to the suffering, and the destruction of life in all of its diverse forms, and unconsciously contribute to the ravages that toxic masculinity brings to our shared world. It can be quite the mosh pit dance of conflict between the colliding forces of need for change, and the need for clinging to the status quo.

I have been asked why I seem to perseverate on the damaged American male psyche, and why I don’t instead focus on more pleasant, loving thoughts and activities. The question itself reveals the flaws inherent in living an unexamined life, and the fragmentation already present in our collective understanding of how to bring healing to our self, and to our world. Does anybody think that the suicide victim, lone wolf arsonist, abusive alcoholic, mentally ill man shot by a policeman, drug overdose victim, morbidly obese person, rapist, child abuser, 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? Just because we are not now consciously aware and viscerally experiencing the damaging effects of the unhealed American male psyche, does not mean that we remain unaffected by its self-destructive, and other-destructive, energies. Ignorance never leads to bliss, but instead to more suffering by self and others.

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

Before we can proceed into a new world order of better health, increased happiness, peace, and preservation of our sacred planet and our relationships with the totality of life upon it, we must first completely see where we came from, or our self-destructive history will repeat itself. No human being remains unaffected by our damaged common core of consciousness, whether we personally express it, are impacted directly by it from others, or only read about it in the newspapers or on Facebook. For the truth is, our core of collective consciousness gets transmitted from our individual minds to the rest of the conscious universe, and we receive back from collective consciousness, as if it were an eternally uttered prayer shared by all of humanity.

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

The light of our country, though still burning brightly for the healing and the hopeful, still attracts all manners of darkness to it, as evidenced by heartless terrorists, capitalists, and politicians victimizing our most innocent of beings. While witnessing victims of persecution and oppression within our own homeland, including our immigrants, our minorities, our homeless, our mentally ill, our children, our old, our diseased, our poor, our disabled, our sacred animals, or our environment itself, it can be difficult to feel the miracle of life that is constantly with us. Yet, to not have that experience, is to live a life devoid of much of the greater meaning available to us as human beings. And, the American male, who carries most of the self-destructive, earth destructive, socially destructive, and feminine destructive energy within humanity, is paying a huge spiritual and physical price for the errors in both the presentation of our lives to the world and the experience of others’ contributions to our own lives. We, as a gender, continue to carry the historical fallout from many generations of callous indifference to the needs of others, and to our own spiritual needs for wholeness, love, healing, and compassion.

Toxic masculinity is a disease of Spirit that has targeted males since the beginning of civilization, and it continues to strike down men to this very day. Our world remains both addicted to and intoxicated by its masculine hubris, greed, indifference and insensitivity, and the resultant domination and subjugation of all life upon our planet. Callous, ignorant, hate inspired masculine energy runs rampant in our world, victimizing and destroying sacred life in all forms, while extremists of all types, including capitalists, politicians, and other opportunists profit from our own destruction. I have seen how men run in tribes or packs defined by their acts of self-destruction, the destruction of others, and the destruction of our planet. And I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my own being, that disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to the predisposition towards disease within the body of mankind.

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

I have watched an endless parade of friends, family members, co-workers, and acquaintances suffer from mental illness, alcoholism and addiction, and/or meet an early death, and I nearly died prematurely, as well. Most of my grade school and high school friends have already suffered, and have either become disabled or have had early deaths. Both of my best friends from earlier in my life died young from alcoholism and poor health choices My nephew has a bipolar condition along with alcoholism, and has alienated himself from important parts of his family I have a cousin who in February of 2018 was comatose and near death from the DT’s in the ICU, and who continues to drink, and we buried another drug addicted cousin in August of 2017. I have also witnessed two close family members who are practicing alcoholics continuing to ply their self-destructive trades, as well as one of our own grandsons has been addicted to pot and other substances since he was 11 years old. I just can’t ignore this disease of the Spirit which has taken over my family, and our country.

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

In many cases, those early deaths or disabilities from mental illness and/or alcoholism were, literally, a divorce from their lives, as their lives were so unfulfilled and unhappy, and they had lost all hope for any positive change. In some of the cases that I am familiar with, the men were not happy at the end, and their death appeared to be a welcome release for them. Some had lost their careers, and could not recover from that. Some had no meaning in their lives, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to the idea that their only function was to provide for their wives or family, and, having achieved success or failure, they could not recover from that. Some were just waiting for a better day, and when it never appeared, they could not recover from that. Some were lonely and depressed, and they could not recover from that. Some had profound mental illness, and they could not recover from that.

The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.

– Lois McMaster Bujold

What is the hidden story, the real back story to all diseased men and their lives that may not have been told to their families, to their religions, to their culture, to their employer and co-workers, and to their Gods? Were any of our male victims of society able to listen to themselves, and identify their own unique pain and suffering, and bring it to the light of Love and Reason, to search for, and eventually find a newer path to healing and meaning? Or, did they blindly follow down the well-worn path of premature deterioration and death that unconscious humanity, through engaging in our collective common knowledge game, the road defined by “sin”, suffering, and dying, is doomed to trudge upon?

A recent book club meeting that was held at our house in November of 2016 exposed me to the Emmy award-winning journalist and author Sheila Hamilton. She visited our home, and shared with our book club insights into her life, and her marriage with David Krol, her deceased husband who had committed suicide. While reading Ms. Hamilton’s book “All the Things We Never Knew”, I was struck by how Sheila had to piece together what David’s inner experience must have been like, as David did not communicate to others his inner turmoil and chaos effectively. When Sheila told the group that David’s parents had wrapped him up in a blanket as a baby and left him in the garage at night because of his excessive crying, I had an AHA moment, because that is exactly what had happened to me, as well. I felt a need to give another voice for our shared disease, as I am a person who had also walked through the gates of hell itself. Somebody has to speak up for David, and for the people who suffered like David, and myself, and that person is me.

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

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

I recount my own drama and internal struggles, with the hope that I can bring to verbal light some of the inner workings of my own mind and life as it existed when I was an addict/alcoholic and mentally ill person, as well as while I was upon the journey back to wholeness. I am a three-time diagnosed depressed individual, as well as a recovering addict/alcoholic. I have the label and experience of a dual-diagnosis human being. Dual diagnosis is the term used when a person has a mood disorder such as depression or bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression) and a problem with alcohol or drugs. We are one of the dark castes of our society, and, collectively, our spirits are stymied, and our voices have been quieted. When we don’t have a voice, the most we can hope for is to be a silent witness to life, rather than a robustly interactive participant with life, with little hope for ever being seen for who we really are.

The following story indicates my path towards wholeness and spiritual integrity, while moving away from both my own personal insanity and our culture’s schizophrenia. I document many hard-earned insights that I have been given into the life that we all share. This is a presentation of my own unique perspective, and it will not conform to others’ expectations of what the “Truth” should look like. Please forgive me in advance if my insights and realizations appear obvious and simple, or challenge basic sensibilities. Though it is not my intention to be offensive and argumentative, I hope that some new energy is stirred within the reader. It is not my intention to create more “spiritual froth” with trite all-encompassing statements like “love heals all wounds”, or “love is the only power”. Love of this type and nature can be a most elusive spiritual resource, and is not what the vast majority of the human race initially seeks or believes it to be. The following work is the documentation of my own “hero’s journey” towards that noble human value.

This book is a mantle woven together by the words and stories that I have chosen to represent the whole of my life experience. I wear this garment in honor of all those who have preceded me, and for those who still walk beside me in spirit, in love, and in healing. I honor my deceased parents and grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and the countless generations past. I honor those who have sacrificed their lives to diseases of the body, and of the Spirit, be they the addict, alcoholic, mentally ill, victim of violence, or the so-called normal person who struggled with comprehending the insanity in their own life, and of their civilization, and died before finding healing. I honor those who are still alive, and suffering under the forces of oppression and repression that characterize much of life lived under our present economic, religious, and political systems. I honor those who will take the time to consider this work, and I also honor those who will never find the opportunity or the willingness to do so. Finally, I honor my wife Sharon White, who suffered with me through some tough times during a relapse in 2007, caring for my dying father the last several years up to 2017, and for the actual writing of this book.

My life certainly has not been newsworthy or extraordinary in any obvious ways. In my youth, I was the person who was best described as one who was on the “outside looking in” on life, versus the one who was on the “inside looking everywhere”. I never really quite fit in, when it came to living life. But, the best part of my story lies in the lessons learned from a life experienced from both perspectives, with much of my personal truth having been derived from the movement through my family and its history, as well as through the bigger picture painted through my movement through our culture and civilization. There is a direct connection between what unfolded in my life while being a masculine energy dominated addict, alcoholic, and isolated, mentally ill human being, and the dysfunctional patriarchy that continues to unfold in our world today.

My personal story will be told after I discuss the collective influences of consciousness on the individual. In my personal story I use more than one linear time line, with some overlap between the stories. There will be no lurid tales of debauchery (well, maybe a reference or two), nor overt acts of aggression or crimes against my fellow-man, though I certainly carried the capacity for all manners of the evil inherent in the human mind. In my journey through Portland’s underworld community, I associated with people who had acted on all manners of ignorance, evil, and darkness, and many lives had been destroyed or damaged as a result of their behaviors. While a practicing addict/alcoholic, I had the potential to damage or destroy many lives, especially through driving. I was pulled over seven times for drunken or reckless driving, though I never got a DUI because of my capacity to appear sober, no matter how intoxicated that I was. I drove intoxicated over two thousand times, and though I never hurt or killed anyone, there were a few wrecks, and many near misses. In alcoholic blackouts, I accessed incorrigible attitudes and contemplated egregious acts, but good fortune saved the day for me, and for the world.

Conceptually, this book can be seen as consisting of two parts. There is my personal history, with some references back to our shared reality, or collective consciousness. There are my lessons learned about collective consciousness, with a lot of references back to my personal experiences. The two parts are inextricably intertwined, and the separation will be seen to be mainly for clarification purposes. My life since my birth in 1955 is the obvious link between the two creative aspects. There are the individual, cultural, and divine vibrations which constitute the rainbow of my being, and the colors of my rainbow stretch throughout all phases of this work.

I give a thumbnail sketch of my mother’s, father’s and grandparents’ lives to provide a rudimentary foundation for my story. My personal history is extensively developed, including my childhood, my first love, where I address issues around my first wife and her mental illness , my fall into addiction, suicidal ideation, and, ultimately, my immersion into an underworld experience, and the remarkable awakening that occurred after my exit from that world. My history is presented like a winding, dotted line path, a path with many intersections with itself as it jockeys between the past and present. I defy the analytical mind’s need for the linearization of time and reality, and the offending elements of the story will be confusing to some, and irritating to others. My real life was not lived in a straight line path, nor will my story be presented that way, either.

I discuss prayer, and several spiritual and cosmic consciousness oriented events. I eventually bring my life experience up to the present moment, after documenting a relapse which occurred two years prior to my mother’s death. I refer to a life-altering friendship with a long-term friend who died in 2017. I finish my life’s story with some of the greatest teachings that life has revealed to me. This project has taken on epic proportions for me, and it appears to be quite fragmented, and repetitive at times, qualities which parallel my real life experience.

I offer my apologies to any widow or family member of a diseased or deceased man who might read this story and become offended by what appears to be judgmental or incomplete representation of the facts. What I have observed is quite subjective, and the population that I have witnessed is fairly small, compared to the whole of the population that has been impacted by our cultural disease. My intention remains to provide a voice for my own process, as well as for those who cannot or will not speak out against the ills of the society and the minds that created the conditions for their own disease or early demise, be it through heart attacks, brain cancer or cancer in general, alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, murder, or “accidents”.

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

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

The conspiracy of silence is built right into the framework of our collective consciousness. Dead men tell no tales, but the nearly dead MUST continue to tell their stories, with respect for themselves and others, until our civilization finally wakes up. To not express ourselves honestly and openly results in our own early demise, Spiritually as well as physically. We each must penetrate the conspiracy of silence, and bring the light of a loving heart and healing words to the hidden darkness. My conditioned response would be to keep silent, as I have nothing of value to share with the world, and/or the world could give a shit about what I have to say anyway. Extrapolate that response to all of life, and we can perceive the isolating framework that imprisons much of the American male psyche.

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

—Often heard in many recovery meetings, and one of the foundational beliefs behind our collective conspiracy of silence, which supports poor self-esteem, and distrust of others.

I am using this book to communicate, as best I can, the unfolding new reality bubbling up within my heart and soul. But, this new reality exists side by side with my typical human response to life, no matter how much I attempt to walk the path of spirituality, healing, and wholeness. The statement that the “poor will always be among us” even refers to me. The personal me, the collective me, and the divine me all walk together as one being, and now it is my day-to-day responsibility to stay in balance, and to try to bring myself back into equilibrium whenever I get disturbed.

This is not solely a self-help or pop psychology/spirituality book. I will not be appealing to the ego, nor will I explicitly attempt to make anybody feel good about life, and their prospects for economic, social, or spiritual success. I am not seeking money, respect or adoration from the reader. I am not engaged in any people-pleasing need, or out of any passive-aggressive need to hurt the world, without letting the world know why I was angry or distressed with it in the first place. All that I ask for is the suspension of judgement for a few hours. and the treatment of this manuscript like it is a meditation on life. Those who are able to tune into this work with their heart, and attempt to listen to what has been written here, may find compassion, insight, and wisdom revealing itself, as I attempt to reveal my own life.

I walked through many miles of underbrush, stickers, thorny bushes, weeds, stinging nettles, mud, and too many mine fields to count, to get to my mountain top, so be prepared for an uneven journey to the place in the book where the greatest, most far-reaching views are finally presented. Life is sometimes like the childhood game of Chutes and Ladders, so I will not be expounding solely from upon neither the spiritual mountaintops of peace and love for all beings, nor from the darkened valleys of mutual judgement and condemnation, suffering and death. What value is a story, if it is never told? What value is love, if it is never shared?  Through this book, I will not be whispering my message to the world, as I have learned to turn to volume up a notch  or two, especially in areas where I need to hear myself the most.  And, just because I finally am listening to myself does not guarantee that others who are conditioned to ignore me will suddenly change behavior.  Sometimes, a bird sings in the forest, even though there are no other birds to listen to it.  The real miracle is not that others listen to us, it is that we finally are listening to ourselves.

Newness happens in the world when long silenced people get their voice enough to sing dangerous alternatives.
– Walter Brueggemann

Can I hear me now?