Chapter 32: 2017 and A New Sunrise
Over the years, I have become deeply disturbed by the developments within our shared world, within my individual consciousness, and the points of connection between self and other, through language, religion, and philosophy, that have created oppression, repression, and the resultant physical, emotional, and social disease. Starting within myself, I have seen how a lifetime of oppression and repression had brought about a sequence of serious illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity, lived, moved, and had its being enshrined within my own heart and soul. I also saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions had failed in their understanding of humanity, and its basic, innermost needs of a safe belonging, of being loved, valued and listened to.
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. We have all attempted to manage our symptoms in our own unique, yet all too often broken and dysfunctional ways. I have wanted to help myself, my father and several of my male friends to develop greater insight into these issues over the years, but I did not find a consistent interest being expressed by others in exploring these issues with me. But my friend Marty did begin 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.
Together, Marty and I shared over twenty years in a couple’s group, many weekend trips, nights out for dinner and entertainment, and then the book club that we also shared together for the last several years. Marty and I were quite friendly with each other, yet rarely spoke at great length or depth, or showed extraordinary interest in developing a deeper friendship apart from our wives. I noted how his wife organized and dominated his life over the years that I had known him, and how she would all too often speak for him, or even verbally run over him in group meetings. It was common knowledge that when his wife was present, Marty would not consistently reveal himself and his own story, and he would instead defer to his wife through his silence. My own experience of his wife was that she was usually quite willing to listen to what I had to say initially, then she would often fill whatever empty space appeared with herself, rather than wait for me to finish my story. At this point, much like Marty, all further talk from me would end, and I would just listen to her.
This brings me to January 11th of 2017, when I had my first ‘seizure’. I awoke at 2:45 in the morning, went into my office, and sat down. Suddenly, I lost all ability to move, and to even think, though I remained quite aware during this approximately one minute process. It was then that I became aware of a “black mass”, 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 first time that I had awareness of the energy field of my body since July of 1987, when I had my first, and only, experience of detecting my own “life energy field”. 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. In February, I had yet another seizure, this time much milder, and in a public setting.
I did not talk about the seizures, or the black mass, initially, because I thought that I might be losing my mind. I later began talking about it with my wife, and two 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, nothing seemed to have any impact upon the dark mass. I knew that some sort of death was coming my way, though I felt little need to discuss it with a doctor. I did tell my family doctor that I feared that my own death might precede my father’s, when I took my ill father to see her about January 4th of 2017.
On March 5, 2017, Marty suffered a major seizure and was hospitalized. He had been in a four-year recovery phase from malignant melanoma, a process first diagnosed in late 2012. He appeared to have been successfully treated with Interleukin II therapy, a powerful immunotherapy regimen. Now, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. My wife Sharon and I visited him two days prior to its surgical removal. Marty and I talked about our seizures, and I was struck by the similarity of his with my own, though mine were relatively tame by comparison. 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 was also beginning to see a relationship between our problems, but I was hesitant to tell Marty about it.
That next day, Wednesday, at noon, I had another episode of such intensity that I dared not even attempt to get up from the couch. I had previously arisen and briefly lost consciousness, so I was all shook up, yet I still had no desire to get a doctor involved. Sharon came home later that afternoon and found me quite compromised. She listened to my story and accepted my decision not to seek further medical attention, since this was perceived as a spiritual crisis, while she offered her own love and care. Each time I tried to get off the couch, I became quite dizzy. I was also losing my ability to talk. It took all of the power that I could muster to force words out. It was reminiscent of a time 31 years before, when for two days I had an event that prevented me from speaking.
I actually felt like my consciousness was trying to escape, and it took all of my resources just to hold it together. I characterized this present event to Sharon as almost losing my mind, while having an almost neurotoxic component to it.
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 for myself. I continued to listen to the occasional taped “spiritual wisdom” tapes, hoping to hear something that might bring me comfort. I listened to Jack Boland, a master of the recovery process. I owned a tape where he referred to me personally, said he knew me, probably better than I knew myself. He then stated 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. And here I thought that I had already performed that process! How wrong I was.
Thursday evening came, and after yet another nearly sleepless night, I got up and sat in the family room. My life’s message was bubbling up within me, and I felt a compulsion to share it with my world. Yet I also knew that there were few, if any, people presently in my life who had the time, or even the interest, in listening. As I lay out on the couch, feeling my own emotional/spiritual death about to overtake me, I cried out in despair to Sharon, to please share my message, since I didn’t believe that I had the capacity to deliver it in a way that others could hear.
Sharon looked at me with acceptance, love, and compassion. She had been listening to my story for close to thirty years, and she had witnessed me sitting on my voice for most of that time. She then stated unequivocally that my message was my own, and must be spoken through me, or not at all. Even my tears, and begging, would not change her mind. I was in such pain and agony, that I knew that I could not go on with my life in any kind of healthy way.
I had the experience of a lifetime of people experiencing me as less of a human being than I am, starting with my own diseased father, followed by a steady progression of angry, sometimes hateful, judgmental power figures. My voice had been silenced by myself and others, even in many settings where spiritually aware, conscious people gathered to celebrate ‘connection’.
This loving act on Sharon’s part by refusing to speak for me was instrumental in the recovery of my ability to speak and to write. I could not let myself die again emotionally and spiritually, so I asked my Spirit how to best deliver my message. A prayer from my past formed in my mind and began with “Grandfather, Great Spirit, Thank You”. All of a sudden I was COMPELLED to write, and I did not stop the process until fifteen pages of a story poured through me. My Spirit chose the format of a parable, perhaps knowing that it would be discarded by those who already believed that they knew me. But the curious ones would read, and appreciate, this aspect of the message.
The dark mass in my body of energy disappeared upon completion of my story, coincidentally at about the same time that Marty’s tumor had been surgically removed. To this day, I remain healed of that darkness, though I am forced out of bed frequently now, to write, and to share with, the One who listens.
As a result of this process, I had an insight that is extremely difficult to talk with others about: an insight about my relationship with Marty and his disease. I saw how I had become attuned to Marty on a psychic level. Some have called this connection radical empathy, some have called it telepathic, some have called it just plain fucking mysterious. Somehow, Marty’s structure of consciousness, his ego mind, had been transmitted to me, and I “felt his presence” within my own sensitive, susceptible consciousness through my love and concern for the man. This is how I was able to sense the dark, golf ball sized mass in my own brain. It was not my cancer; it was Marty’s. And I was also finally able to articulate the forces of oppression and repression within both of us for the first time. The light of my own awareness, shown through Marty’s matrix of consciousness, created the shadows, or words, that ached to reach from the unknown to the knowing parts of myself.
During this period, in April 2017, Sharon and I attended Matthew Fox’s Cosmic Christ Workshop in Tacoma. After Friday evening’s seminar, I had that most interesting, powerful dream referred to in the section on dreams.
We met with Marty and his wife the week following the workshop. Marty’s recovery was going well. I continued to carry a sense of the Transcendence; my powers of insight, awareness, understanding, love, and compassion were at their peak. Sensing his own death may be close, Marty wanted to engage in activity that he had delayed. He wanted to prepare to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.
Yet, we also came to discuss the Cosmic Christ workshop. I wanted to speak from the energy that was uplifting me, but Marty’s wife made sure to dominate the discussion. Even when I tried to share, she grabbed her phone and started Googling the very information that was being delivered from me. It was typical of her, and it was offensive. I understood at a very deep level what Marty experienced with this woman, and my heart opened at a much deeper level for him.
On a late April couple’s group meeting at Marty’s home, I was able to talk about my experience of “transcendent energy” with Marty and Jim. Marty’s wife had disappeared, so we were able to talk at length. Marty was genuinely interested in what I had to say, as well as the potential for spiritual healing. His own father had a spiritual experience prior to his death, and Marty wanted to have a taste of the divine. I promised Marty a copy of a meditation that I had prepared, based on the spiritual experience I had on July 21, 1987. I text messaged it to him the following day.
In the message, I included the meditation, a “thought experiment” designed to be a verbal bridge from the non-verbal part of myself to my conscious mind. It was based upon the spiritual experience of July 21, 1987. It was a guided journey to let go of controls, to be carried into an unexplored realm of experience, to find a place of absolute stillness where a teaching could emerge. It spoke of eliminating time-based thoughts, of recognizing forces attached to our energy fields, and of the gap between self and other as the source of all illusion. It was a technique for shaking the mind free from its certainties.
Then, I shared a dream I had that morning, of being in a noisy industrial plant where an electrical system needed reconditioning. I was working on an electrical panel, and Marty’s security lock needed to be removed. I interpreted this for him:
“Marty, you have a resistance to your own healing. You must remove the self-protective mechanisms and controls that you, and perhaps your wife, have layered over your consciousness for many years. These controls lock you out of your own greater good. The very state of consciousness that made the melanoma possible is still embedded within your mind and heart. Infusions and medications, though potentially helpful, alone will not get the job done.”
I expressed my ultimate confidence in him, in his beauty and his potential, and planned on living into this dream with him for a long time to come.
Marty was able to maintain good health for only a few more weeks. My meditation had little positive impact. My intention was to help him release his understanding of who he was and experience his divine nature. Marty was a man of highest intellect and character, yet he had not ever experienced the release of his great creation, his ego, into the great Unknown, though he certainly desired to.
Three weeks later, Marty, Sharon, and I hiked Dog Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge. He had just started a new targeted drug therapy. We took our time, and Marty persevered with great spirits, encouraged by his performance. We began preparing for a Pacific Crest Trail hike to fulfill one of his dreams. Two days later, he began losing all use of his left leg and arm, and then became wheelchair bound. It was postulated that he was experiencing a reaction to the new medication, Keytruda. The potential metastases to his brain had already caused concern that it would impinge on his sense of self, and on his competent, highly intelligent mind.
Dying, death, and transformation now took on a special urgency for Marty. Because of the complications, he lost much of his treasured independence and the desire to even scan Facebook. All of his energy became devoted to just getting through the day. He was prescribed anti-inflammatory medicine, and he continued on anti-seizure medicine.
Marty communicated to me his sense of being inarticulate in relation to these new experiences. His life was transitioning from one that was highly engaged, physically active, spiritually stimulating, and socially interactive, to one that was physically inactive, threatened with the loss of intellectual competence, humiliating, depressing, and devoid of normal joy and physical intimacy.
A story came to my mind, which I sent to him in a text message. I wrote to him about life as a lifelong adventure hike, with the beauty of nature on one side and a wicked forest fire on the other, burning away our past, our hidings, and all the knowledge we hold so dear. I listed the losses he was experiencing: independence, mobility, intimacy, control over his body, and the desire to keep living on dying’s terms.
A story came to my mind after our morning’s meditation, of which I sent to Marty in text message form, and I include parts of it here as a small record of our journey together. The message is as follows:
“Marty, all of your descriptors are perfect, and they will change, as you change. While in meditation, the following images came to my mind:
Life can be like a lifelong adventure hike (perhaps the Pacific Crest Trail of everyday life?). On one side of the trail we are witnessing the unbroken beauty of nature and of our own wholeness and connection to it, and the joy of unfettered movement of an innocent mind and healthy body while walking through the magic and mystery of the unknown. Yet, on the other side of the trail, a wicked forest fire has erupted, obscuring our view, threatening our safety and freedom, and taking us out of the beauty and wonder of the new moment. Its flames are now, more than gently, lapping at our back side, burning away at our past, burning away at our clothing, at all of our hidings and holdings, and at all the knowledge and memories that we cling to, and hold so dear.. When you search for names to characterize this process, I understand at the deepest level why it is hard giving it a new name, or calling it “good” or perfect while still being so painfully “burned” by one aspect of it. Losing independence in life and in decision making is a most difficult proposition.
Losing the ability to get out of bed and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night by oneself can be demoralizing.
Losing the ability to plan for the day to day exigencies of life can make one feel less than empowered.
Losing the sense of intimacy with one’s partner, who is now more or less the primary caregiver, and not the lover, feels a bit like love has abandoned us for now.
Losing strength and mobility, and being dependent on another for all movement around the house, and now, around all of life, feels like life is almost stripping us of our dignity.
Losing control of one’s bladder and bowels, and wearing supplemental underwear, and the insertion of pads onto our beds to trap our incontinence, can feel like adding insult to injury.
Losing the use of the left arm and leg, and then not having others respect one’s sense of loss, feels like the world has become insensitive to all suffering individuals.
Losing the desire to keep living on dying’s terms, while all of the other losses kept accumulating and accelerating, can make the thought and actions related to Death With Dignity an attractive option.
Yet, your journey, with this measure of suffering becoming folded into it, is part of humanity’s unbroken wholeness, of which we all remain a most treasured, though challenged, part of. Can you begin to trust that Love itself is always guiding, and coming out in its many new, challenging forms? Love is soon to become your new and only garment, and any holding back will only increase your pain.
Marty, our hike along the path goes on, and the “forest fire” keeps burning for all of us. Hope and anticipation push us forward, knowing the “view ahead is always changing.” Yet, the past keeps burning away in ways that are uncertain and often stir up anxiety. Around the next bend lies only the unknown, ready to bring whatever comes. And at that same bend, the “fire” will have burned away everything unlike your true nature, revealing who you were “in the beginning, before the world was.” Naming it is a challenge unique to each of us. Some articulate souls write great books and draw attention to their words. You don’t need that.
I shared how my unwillingness to talk or write much stemmed from being shut down for most of my life. I spoke of Toxic Masculinity, Toxic Religion, and Toxic Capitalism as the cause of so much suffering, and how we had both been victimized by this type of male energy. I thanked him for caring, for listening, and for how our hearts had merged at this most troubling of times. I wrote, “
I will walk with you, in freedom, to whatever extent we can. I walk with you, in pain, while we must. I will walk with you into the unknown… I will walk with you into death, each in our own time, and in our own way. I will integrate part of my individual destiny with your own, and, ultimately, join with Destiny itself.”
At the end of the letter, I quoted the title of my wife Sharon’s book:
“Whose Death Is It, Anyway?”
It is all of ours.
In late June, I began to accompany Marty to his Men’s Cancer Survivor Support creative writing group at OHSU. During our weekly drives, he communicated that he and his wife were having insurmountable issues. They were no longer intimate, and Marty struggled to feel love for his wife anymore. He wanted a divorce, yet was powerless. He believed his wife was insane, and I found it hard to disagree. Marty was also starting to have hallucinations. He and his son wanted him to be relocated to a neutral care facility, but his wife insisted that if he moved, she would move with him, sleeping on the ground next to him if necessary. Marty felt trapped. He believed the cancer treatment would have no positive outcomes, so he needed to plan for his own assisted suicide through the Death with Dignity process.
Near the end of August, Marty related to me how it would be better to die quickly, so that more money would be available for his wife. I was shocked by his lack of self-worth. I told him he was worth every penny he spent on himself, but he could not accept that. He had already spent $840 on his end-of-life drugs and felt it was a burden. He stated that he had to die, so that she could live. I was distressed, a helpless witness to a self-imposed crucifixion.
His wife considered herself a minister and a teacher. She was studious and had a rigid understanding of “facts,” which became her idols. She had little sense of humor and no capacity to embrace the unknown. When her husband began his dying process, I became actively involved. She would rattle on endlessly about how to best care for him, even though I was successfully navigating the difficulties. Her husband became unhappy with her care, considering her incompetent and uncaring.
Yet, she would not stop her irritating teaching mode. I finally confronted her. “Please stop trying to teach me about stuff that I don’t need to know. Can’t you trust that your husband and I are successfully navigating these difficult times together?”
“Oh, Bruce, you are just going to have to treat this like it is an AA meeting,” she replied. “I have to give you this teaching. Just continue to listen until I am complete.”
“Actually, I don’t want or need any of your teaching. You teach fear, and distrust of me, as well as the Unknown. Please get into your car, and leave for a while, so that we can all breathe a little easier.”
It only took me 23 years to speak my truth to this knowledge dominatrix. My love for her husband took precedence over my own feelings of inadequacy. Confronting a difficult reality takes energy, yet not doing so diminishes our own standing in Truth, Life, and Love. So I spoke out, and she actually listened.
I continued to help with small tasks and attend the writing group with him until two weeks before his assisted suicide. I came to deeply miss the only man who responded to my philosophically challenging Facebook posts. Somehow the disease in our shared lives led to another form of death, the end to our friendship. Love goes before all of us, but while chaos’s clouds obscure the view, it is hard to see the path. It remains a mystery to me how to plan for and successfully navigate the rivers of life that carry us into death. Death really sucks for those with much life left to live. I am not fooled by the promises of a “reward in the afterlife.” That thought is more addictive than opiates. The fear of death can be conquered without it being masked by illusions. That is the path of today’s spiritual warrior.
Marty chose to exercise his right to the Death With Dignity process on September 10, 2017, without ever informing me of his decision. What he had informed us was that there was to be a party at their home on Saturday, Sept 10, as a celebration of life. I was stunned and hurt by his decision. I saw that he had regained full use of his left arm and was starting to regain feeling in his left leg. His main fear, however, was that future metastatic lesions in his brain would take away his sense of self.
We attended the Michael Franti concert that evening, after making an early exit from Marty’s “celebration.” I cried almost the whole way through Franti’s song, “Life is Better With You.” Life was better with Marty in it.
Marty took nearly twenty hours to die, ultimately dying on September 11, 2017 (yes, 911). We were not included in any preparation, planning, execution, or support. Sharon, a hospice nurse and expert on Death and Dying, was almost totally shunned by his wife during the last three months. The only reason I was present was due to a direct demand from Marty.
My father died on the day of Marty’s funeral. The notice of my own father’s death coincidentally occurred at the moment that I was helping to place my friend’s body into the hearse. I was now dealing with the care for, and eventual death of my father; the protracted dying process and death of my good friend Marty; and the insanity of the wife of my now deceased friend. Facing this two-fold challenge placed me in a position for “accelerated understanding and spiritual growth” and generated unexpected anxiety. I used to say “growth is highly overrated” in a humorous manner. Now, I looked for real humor in the face of adversity and kept coming up short. Apparently, the teacher was Death Itself.
In a eulogy I wrote but was not used, I said:
“2017 was the year when I finally learned how closely two male human beings could connect, and ultimately become ‘one’ on a journey of exploration… You introduced me to Death in a way that has changed me forever… Through your death, I have been Destroyed, and I am now Renewed. Rest in Peace, Marty.”
Marty’s final creative effort from the writing group was a story about visiting his green burial plot in Riverview Cemetery. He wrote:
“I looked up the hillside and remarked to Doyle, ‘Look, a coyote loping through the midst of the people and their pets with such obvious self-confidence… Yes, I recognized my sign, the age-old sign of the trickster, the shape-shifting presence of the coyote. May he safely inhabit this place forever.’”
Marty, though I miss you, you are now safe, healed, and whole.
I began to experience the “BIG THREE” of depression, anxiety, and the occasional panic attack two weeks following the deaths of Marty and my father, and it plagued me several times over the next three months.
We arrived at the Oregon coast, at Cannon Beach on October 2, 2017. We met our dear friend from Arizona, June, and her love interest, Michael. As we walked on the beach, I tried to relate to Michael the experience of my friend’s recent death, my father’s death, and the disturbing appearance of insanity in my friend’s marriage. Michael looked up at the nearby mountains, appearing not too interested. He attempted to redirect my attention.
Suddenly, a strangely uncomfortable feeling came over me. My heart started to beat harder, my skin tingled, and I felt light-headed. My condition continued to deteriorate, yet all that I felt comfortable sharing was about my sore foot. We neared our hotel, and the anxiety reaction was threatening to overwhelm me. At dinner, I had lost my appetite. June commented that I looked gray. I had to leave the table immediately.
I went back to our room and lay down. The world felt like it was spinning. My heart sounded like a drum. I became so concerned that I went to a medical portal to ask a doctor if I should be hospitalized. The response brought some temporary relief: a stress-induced anxiety reaction. I returned to dinner feeling better, but later that night, I began to feel nauseous again. My heart beat wildly, and my body started shuddering as if I was frozen. Sharon crawled into bed and held me close. Her warmth brought some comfort, yet my foot ached like I had never experienced pain before.
I was awake all night, meditating on my suffering. I came to realize that I really needed to communicate around the absolute insanity of the family activity surrounding the death of my dear friend and my father. Michael had shut me down at the moment I needed to talk most. By not communicating, the anxiety reaction launched me into outer space and brought upon me a sickness I had never experienced before. Oh, that blessed pain, for it would lead me further down the path to my own ‘liberation’.
As I meditated, I realized how much of what I know about myself was created by my fundamental relationship to my parents. I had never developed a complete sense of self. My sense of self revolved around internalizing their expectations and my defense mechanisms for managing the fallout. I felt a need to “balance” whatever energy was being over-expressed, adding to my passive-aggressive component. It was as if two extra self-organizing personalities—my creations of who I thought my father and mother were—occupied my ego mind, crowding out the “real me.”
With the death of my father, it ended the era of subservience to his needs and the need to “protect” my mother from my perception of his aggression. I was finally an “orphan,” and all the entanglements were now physically removed. My father’s spirit no longer needed to overshadow my own life. For me, this is an extraordinary release. Being placed on “formula” right after birth and in a chilly car in the garage at night left me as a young being feeling abandoned. Though I loved my parents, I did not want to be like them.
Up to this point, I have perceived the collective impact of toxic male consciousness upon my individual existence. I saw that I had two Tricksters roaming through my heart and soul, and their continued presence, though they kept me from being lonely, kept me from developing into my greater good. My first 31 years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed by the “conspiracy of silence” created by my subservience to a damaged image of self and other.
Who, or what, am I now? I am a mystery, even to myself. The transition times from what I thought I was to who I am predestined to become create intense anxiety. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment.
That next day at the beach, on Tuesday, I experienced the most beautiful perfect peace and sense of wholeness that I can recall. The rest of our shared day was characterized by a strong sense of the sacred. The beauty of the ocean, our friendships, the taste of our food, even the continuing pain in my foot, all felt like lyrics of a heavenly song connected by the rhythm of Love.
The conspiracy of silence has to be broken, again and again. The silencing of my true identity through adherence to old, worn out patterns has to end for this healing to have any hope of transforming the heart and soul.
In this moment, I am no longer anxious. I am free. “I” will not be denied.
The amygdala in our brains under duress from trauma creates new paths, leading in unhealthy directions. For me, my number one intention for healing is to avoid situations or people where poor communication and suppression of emotions has become ‘normalized’. I now have intimate knowledge of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. It is inappropriate to keep these issues secret.
I have found help through professional therapy, exercise like yoga, immersion in nature, meditation, rest, and honest communication with friends and family. Insight, prayer, service to others, and medication can also be helpful. It is also important to avoid anxiety-producing behaviors like excess coffee, and to allow feelings to arise without judgment. Writing can be helpful, but it is best to have friends who respond directly, in person, where our humanity shines brightest. Facebook just cannot get the job done.
For those who still suffer, please heal yourself.
