Book 8 Chapter 1: Troubleshooting And Repairing Broken Systems

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It takes some prior understanding to interpret this schematic representation of a transistor logic circuit

I have witnessed many failed, or failing systems, human and mechanical,  for most of my life. The first failing system that I ever witnessed was our American capitalistic inspired religious and economic philosophies, especially as they negatively, and eventually, catastrophically influenced our world, the family system, and myself.  If we can find the errors in reasoning and historical conditioning, which contributes mightily to each of our personal narratives, we can begin a search for the underlying truth behind all situations, while shedding the cloaks of illusion that continues to clothe so much of the human race.

Stories where our unique personal value have been sacrificed to maintain some unloving sense of family and/or cultural order, or disorder, will be fertile grounds for exploration.  Also, the over processed junk food narratives of the collective human experience can become coupled to our own unique and vulnerable,  sense of self.  This promotes the  creation of  the stampede of self, and other, defeating perceptions, rather than exposing new pathways to an sense of our self enhanced with profound experiences of wonder, love of our self and each other, and an appreciation for the totality of life on this planet. 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….. We need a life guided and informed by the understanding of the totality of our lives, with the threads of our life’s meaning stretching from our sense of self towards infinity and back again, rather than as an imprisoning cocoon around our lives.  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. Without overcoming our wounding by cultivating a spiritually enhanced meaning and purpose, life’s inevitable vicissitudes may cause our lapse into the depths of despair, depression, powerlessness, and extraordinary suffering, with little hope for our escape.  The Big Bang of our entry into Consciousness itself might just turn into the Big Bust, if we unconsciously cling to an unhealed understanding of Life. .

There is one shining example of the poor guidance available for me  in the story of Defender Dan.   In 1968 at the age of thirteen years, I was given a Defender Dan toy machine gun for a Christmas present. It was not a new toy, as it had “minor internal damage that made it an acceptable toy only for a boy, and a father with mechanical skills, who might be able to troubleshoot and repair it.  My father had no interest in assisting me, so if I wanted a functional toy, it was up to me to do something about it.  I was confused as to what was expected from me. .

• Why was I given a gift that had known problems?
• Didn’t I deserve something that was new and perfect?

I certainly did not have a fully developed skill package in troubleshooting and repairing this fairly complex mechanical system, but I liked a good challenge, and I thought that this endeavor might be worthwhile.  At the time I was hoping to understand the thought processes behind the creation and assembly of this toy, perhaps so that I might learn how to harvest my own unexpressed creative potential, and someday design and build unique contraptions of my own.. I tried to get Defender Dan to work, but I could not get it to function properly and with consistency. Though I had no diagram defining the internal parts, and their relationship to each other, I began dismantling it, trying to understand how the parts were related to each other, and how it worked so that I could find the problem and attempt to repair it.   Dad saw the gun parts spread out all over the floor, accused me of destroying the gift, and then proceeded to remove his belt, and whip the hell out of me. .

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That beating hurt in a lot of different ways, for sure.  I was horribly shamed, with the feeling of shame not being unusual to me.  I picked up all of the parts, and deposited them in the garbage can.  The belt swiftly made another visit to my still sore behind, of course.  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.. An insightful person can see how this story captures the essence of our confusion as human beings seeking wholeness while receiving conflicted and inadequate support from others. .

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In April of 1984, I checked myself into the Lovejoy Care Unit, a hospital converted to alcoholism care and recovery.  I had been a drug addict and alcoholic, as well as a person consciously suffering from inner turmoil, since my sophomore year of high school, in 1971. My most important initial consideration was keeping my job at the US Postal Service, where I worked as a maintenance electrician and instrument technician in training, which I was about to lose if I did not stop substance abuse. I was to stay in the Unit for thirty days, while learning, at a puerile, kindergarten level, enough about my disease, and myself, that there might be hope for me.  After an interview with my parents, Claire, my counselor, informed me that one of the burdens that I was carrying was that my father was still trying to live his life through me.  As my primary desire was to find inner peace, a totally alien concept for me up to that point, that information would be helpful in the future, but I was too unconscious at the time to understand its oppressive implications.. .

Poetry:  The Clues Imprisoning Me Within My Personal Labyrinth Prior To 1987 (also in original Chapter 2): PAIN (written while in the Care Unit, 1984)

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Though the dark cloud looms on the horizon, it is also hidden within myself.

It appears to hover in the distance, just beyond my reach, and it patiently waits my most vulnerable moment.

I then feel the initial mist from its clouds, suspecting that I am its intentional target.

A piercing wind picks up, hugging me with its frozen arms, and I vainly look for protection

As the torrential downpour begins, I feel my tenuous hold on peace and safety eroding beneath my feet.

As it strips back, layer, upon layer, upon layer, upon layer, of my consciousness, exposing a bedrock bereft of sanity.

Exposing long forgotten mental relics, threatening old, unhealed memories, and dangerous old habits,

Stinging, piercing, hurting me at my core, obscuring visions of glorious, yet impossibly distant futures,

Washing away all tenuously held possessions of sanity, and hope.

Uprooting the feeble foundation of a life desperately, but futilely, attempting to, yet again, reconstruct itself,

Carrying a powerless, helpless, desperate soul back into toxic chemical valleys, amid a dark, swirling depression, Ravaging, drowning, then decaying.

Pain,

Why?

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Pain Part II

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Growing without roots, with a will that won’t bend,

Weathering life’s storms, which never seem to end.

No longer waiting for the sun that was once promised to arise,

How could truth’s light possibly shine in dimmed eyes?

Having reached with futility for all the high goals of life,

With no spiritual growth, while consumed by inner strife.

Devoid of healing affection, and a stranger to real love,

Unrealistic hope was what my failed dreams were all made of.

Despair meets each day, summer has now changed into fall,

Looking at life, I am totally disgusted by it all.

Dying of loneliness, and holding life by only a thread,

With me rotting inside, hopefully, I soon will be dead.

Pain,

Why?

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THE FOOLS

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

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

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

While striving for material success, and its dubious fame

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Needing more purifying inner flames, while snuffing every divine spark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our lives are overblown toxic gas bubbles, just waiting to be burst!

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The poetry indeed proved helpful in providing 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. In June of 1984, while still working at the US Postal Service, I was sent to  their national training center in Norman, Oklahoma, for a three week class on repairing mail sorting equipment.  I was also there to challenge a digital logic course, which was a prerequisite to advanced training.  As I had already mastered similar subject matter in previous computer engineering courses at the University of Portland, I asked to challenge their version of this course work. I needed to pass this test to have any hope for advanced placement, which would elevate me into a new, more challenging career as a computer technician, which was, potentially, far more interesting than my mundane  regular job as a maintenance electrician.

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After my three week training on sorting systems, on the last day that I was in Norman, I was given the test for advanced placement. There were two parts to the test, which I needed a 75% score to succeed.  The major portion of the test, I aced, scoring 70 out of 70 on the digital logic portion.  The last 30% of the test was devoted to complex schematics of electronic control systems supporting optical character readers and other equipment I had not yet worked on.   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 points, failing the test by a mere five points. On the flight home, I relapsed back into drinking behavior from a recently achieved sobriety at the Care Unit.  I was so disappointed at this seemingly unfair turn of events, that I became re-dedicated to my own self annihilation, even ignoring and hiding from the presence of my Care Unit counselor Claire, who serendipitously appeared on the same plane back to Portland, 

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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. My search for truth in Portland’s underworld community ended on March 17, 1987 when an undercover Federal agent that I had befriended drove me to my father’s doorstep, and told me that he could no longer offer support or protect me from the dangerous characters that had become my running mates.  We had talked extensively many times over the last several months,, and he knew of my “search”, and stated to me, unequivocally, that my search would either end in death, or with the healing of my relationship with my father.  I had to finally face troubling relationship issues with my father, my family, and my society, and my unconscious, trauma inspired incomplete responses to them.  Working the 12 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.

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I was eventually to find that my father represented, in a perfect way, how my life experience had become overshadowed by the needs and concerns of our culture, and its own unconscious needs to dominate, control, and oppress, especially those who did not conform to its often conflicting,  twisted values. My father had great difficulty, in times of stress, in recognizing the intrinsic value of all life, including my “baby self”, and my essence as a young boy.  My father showed to me, in a perfect way, what that dark, negative end point looks like from a lifetime lacking in true collaboration and emotional integrity while sharing life force with others. My father achieved his goals in life, yet at what cost did they come to him, and to the people who he influenced and controlled? What cost did I have to pay in my reactions, over the years of my life, against what my father represented, without having a clue about better alternatives?  Just what is the cost to a society that blindly plows forward while supporting ideals that do not conform to the development of its children’s highest nature, and truth? .

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In any electrical circuit, resistance to the flow of current is ubiquitous.  To reduce resistance, we can either tune the system by adding capacitors and inductors,  shortening conductor length or increasing its size, or increasing the applied voltage, all of which effectively reduces resistance.  There are also the 2nd law of thermodynamics issues, which are entropy, heat related circuit degradation, and eventual chaos.  For humanity, the resistance to the flow of healing energy is also ubiquitous.  Yet, we also have options for tuning our own spiritual system, by increasing our capacity to embrace, understand, carry and transmit higher consciousness, which utilizes its own unique healing algorithm..  Like in a high resistance electrical circuit, those who vehemently resist change and do not embrace their healing potential will eventually have their life system ruled by the spiritual equivalent of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, where degradation and chaos  reigns supreme. .

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My Clues For Defeating The Minotaur, and Exiting the Labyrinth, From 1987:

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My arrows of perception became radically redirected inward in the spring and summer of 1987, after a series of three most profound spiritual experiences and my exuberant practicing of meditation, coupled with a newfound willingness to travel upon new paths of consciousness,. The period of May 24 through July 21 gave me major clues/clews for transcending my limited and limiting life experience. I was given a vision to bring healing to myself, through allowing the Divine Feminine to love and nurture me unconditionally, while also learning how to pass that healing energy to others. 

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I was shown how my perception can be transformed, so that I no longer just see myself, and the world, as two separate experiences or entities.  All the world is populated with my brothers and sisters, be they human, animal or plant manifestations of the Great Spirit. I was to have to make peace with the fact that all of the insanity that I witnessed with 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. 

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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.  The arrow of perception always returns back to me, much like a boomerang. The last of the big three experiences, on July 21, 1987, revealed to me an incredible amount of new and unique wisdom, when I was to somehow, miraculously, “sit in the lap of my True Self”.  My long lost self starting speaking, and I was the vocal cords for amazing revelations during an apocalyptic meditation event. 

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A short summary is that I was released from my body of thought (“let go of the controls”), and entered into a place of infinite peace, and silence.  I was shown that “no teacher will effect 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 a “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 a rare moment when I could actually witness my “life force energy field”, or, using Rupert Sheldrake’s terminology, my morphogenetic field.  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 immediately intuited that they were not part of me for my greater good. 

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Through these experiences, and many following years of introspection and intuitive detective work, I was shown that I had suffered two major wounds, or traumas, which had attached themselves to my field of energy, or life force, causing me to be tethered to a troubled past with its dark interior modeling of reality. I was shown the very nature of the perceptions that kept me tethered to the past.  I was shown how to let go of the toxic masculinity derived controls which imprisoned me.  I was shown, at the very foundation of myself, is an infinite creative potential that does not recognize the “you” or the “me”, but only its own infinite life, and this creative energy can, literally, only laugh at the constructs of our perceptual universe.  I was shown if I could follow new paths of consciousness which were not time dependent, I could let go of my controlling traumas, my heartbreaks, my separation from my true self and others, and share in the joy, and the laughter, of a universe that loves itself, while being amused at the wayward creations that keep popping up that would tell us otherwise.

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A mathematical equation was given to me as a clue and, ultimately, was revealed to me as a guide for how to let go of those controls from my past which kept me tethered to its whipping post of my own ignorance and disease.  The healing spirit within all blesses us with a unique clew/clue, if we are earnest and dedicated in our desire to seek for and find the real truth about our existence.

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Oh marionette’s dancing image trapped on the screen of mankind’s mind, With suffering and pain inspired beliefs in control , what freedom is there to find? Find release from those controlling, self-imprisoning strings To prepare the revelation of inner wisdom that only liberated  Intelligence brings. .

I truly was a disfigured marionette’s powerless toy on the end of a suffering life’s strings.

A revealing, and quite fascinating mathematical equation was also given to me. My Spirit knew full well my extensive experience with mathematics intuitive understanding of some of  its complexities. If you are not a mathematician, do not despair, the equations intent will be developed through a written understanding..  If you never took differential and integral calculus, just continue your reading on the next sentence after “solution”.

Equation:  LIM dT/dt=Truth, as dt approaches zero, where d=delta (or the change in a value or quantity), T =F(t,y), where F=the function of,  t=f(time),  y=f(timeless) Solution:  Lim dT(t,y)/dt=Constant(s) + INFINITY (If thought were only a function of time, then the rate of change of thought with the  change of time would create some collection of constants (connecting links between memories, knowledge, traumatic wounds and their resultant perceptual stream, etc.).  Yet, if thought were not a function of time, then as the change in time approaches zero, timeless thought would be considered infinite in relative value.  Examples of the domain of timeless thoughts might be within peace, joy, beauty, wonder, curiosity, and love, amongst many names indicating passageways to the unknown of the present moment)

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This is a simple “rate of change” expression, and, in theory, its solution provides an understanding of how one quantity changes with a change in another quantity.  It is my clew/clue for how to successfully enter the labyrinth, confront the Minotaur, and find my way back out again.  If I remain stuck in time based, trauma supported memories and perceptions, I also remain stuck in the labyrinth, PERIOD, perpetually fighting new and more creative iterations of Minotaurs..

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My  constants had to be recognized for what they were:  habits of thought and perception, all based upon past knowledge   After much, much meditation and mindfulness, and writing about traumatic influences in my life, I saw that the vast majority of my constants are what we call our “once irrefutable yet now questionable  knowns”, all of which has a decided time frame reference in the past, even as we access them in the present moment in bringing forward new perceptions..

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It is important to remember that the arrow of perception is mostly shot outward by the sensory and  time biased I, or self, that we are.  We also coexist with a creative,  timeless nature, as well, which has a much more difficult time communicating with the time-based part, because of time’s incessant, almost bullying activity that overlays the timeless…Yet, if the arrow of perception were pointed to our center, where both time and time-less based selves are dancing internally,  we would be having a much different life experience.  And this arrow of perception is shot from our meditative heart. .

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In a recent development, my sister wanted to accompany my wife Sharon and I on a trip to Hawaii.  My wife was hesitant to go on another vacation with my sister. The last trip to Belize in 2019 was a fabulous trip, except for a two hour period when the worst aspects of my sister’s dysfunctional attitudes made themselves evident. My sister needs to be always right, and heaven help the person who calls her out when she is obviously mistaken. My wife called her on an obvious mistake about directions, and we all suffered the wrath of an unhealed tyrant. That experience, though revealing of my sister’s agenda, was no fucking fun, for sure.

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Late in 2021, we vacationed at a resort on the Big Island of Hawaii.  On our second evening there, we had a nice dinner planned at one of the on site restaurants. My sister decided it was time to reveal some parts of her hidden past, when she was a rookie firefighter for the US Forest Service in the 1970’s.  My wife and I listened intently and with some amusement at her escapes.  There was no arc to her story curve, and it left me feeling a little flat.  Yet, since it appeared to be the time for family sharing, I felt that I could share a snippet of my search for truth, my descent into the underworld, and my return to wholeness. My sister ended up calling my search for truth stupid and worthless, and that I should have chosen the happy, carefree path,

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HUH?.

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My sister was the perfect representative for our father’s poor positive acknowledgement and listening skills. Some of our family dysfunction could be characterized by poor personal and interpersonal valuations. A healthy sense of self esteem was an alien concept. In one fell swoop, my sister negated 34 years of my life experience.  My sister continued in her role as enforcer of the dysfunctional family code.

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There is a psychic door that began to creek open, behind which all manners of potential disease, division.fragmentation with its spiritual disfigurement, and self-defeating attitudes. The very self-destructive mechanisms that had been overcome by my search for truth were revealed to still be alive, though living in suspended animation since I found the reason for continuing to live, where I had found the actual personal meaning for my own life.

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In software terms, many times the creators installed a “back door” where the NSA or other spy agencies could access files otherwise inaccessible to the general public. My own personal software had its own “back door” where only someone with special knowledge could access it, and set in motion the momentum for self destruction. And, of course, it was my sister who held the key.

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I did not stand idly by this time and let the family virus reinfect me, however, like I did for the first 31 years of my life. I confronted her, got angry with her, and let her know that the rules of the family no longer apply to me. She had always assumed the role of my father in his absence when we were growing up, and she had a particularly cruel, unfeeling way to punish me when I was quite young and vulnerable. There is no one like a family member who can locate the difficult emotional buttons, and push them until the desired outcome is achieved. In this case, it was to minimize my value, and my life, just like my father had a tendency to do. .

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Those who have made their own hero’s journey away from personal, family, and cultural toxicity are much more open to self-healing, rather than self-destruction.  Those on the healing path reset their bodies and minds to a healthier baseline, or to a state of peaceful homeostasis. Most will learn to practice healthier eating and sleep patterns, stress reduction techniques, such as meditation and mindfulness, conscious breathing, perform exercises such as Tai Chi, Yoga, Pilates, etc., practice the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and/or mindfulness techniques,  enlist the help of a therapist, and/or meet another person who has transcended their own suffering and self-destructive tendencies.  They will have plowed the fertile healing grounds, and may anticipate the healthiest present state of existence, with the most productive spiritual harvest..

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Those who remain silent about their own responsibility for and participation in their own projections of hatred, ignorance, pain, suffering, intolerance onto others, remain a fixture of our culture’s conspiracy of silence. It happens on the cultural level, and on the personal level. We are all victims of racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, and all other malicious, malevolent attitudes and behaviors, trickling down from our politicians, corporate boards, employers, family members, co-workers, acquaintances, fellow drivers on the road, or the person in the cashier’s line with us at the grocery store.

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Our country and its citizens owe an apology and reparations to all of the minorities it has persecuted and punished, such as the Indians, the Blacks, Browns, Reds, the Hispanics, the Immigrants, the Gays, Lesbians, and Transgenders, the Infirm, the Old, and the Poor. Our Christian religion owes an apology to the Muslims, homosexuals, to the infidels, to the secular, to the “Jewish faith who crucified Jesus”, and to all who have been persecuted because they were non-believers or non-conformers.

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The temptation to follow the herd, or to swim with the lemming, is built right into the foundational nature of our socialized existence. Life is always a self-fulfilling prophecy, yet whose self are we fulfilling? What if your life is fulfilling the prophecies of your religion and culture, rather than that of your true self? While unenlightened forces dominate human consciousness, oppression and repression are born, and nurtured. This creates more damaged human beings, who continue to remain unconscious, and this unconsciousness is overpopulating our planet. The fate of these damaged people is to continue to damage themselves, each other, and the very planet that supports and sustains them, until they find their self and its truth.

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Find the self, and the life that has a great future, and discard the one that will die with our rotting civilization. Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I see a great future for our planet, if enough of us break free from the effects of the collective oppression by others and, ultimately, the repression of our Spirit. If enough of us find the only self that can be free, collective liberation becomes more of a possibility. What on Earth is humanity waiting for? This moment, we can all be free. Our normal individual life experience is replete with examples of our relationships to Mother Nature, to our family, to our neighborhood, to our nation, to the principles behind our economy, to our natural or adopted life philosophy and spirituality,  to our religion and any associated prophets and/or deities (if any), and to all of our wounding and suffering.  These intended and unintended connections  give us ample opportunities for understanding what influences take us away from, or towards our personal truth and  to a better place to live spiritually, emotionally, and physically.  Heaven need not be an arcane concept for the hope for some sort off after death paradise, but attainable as an actual living reality for the present moment. . Let us praise and honor the light that has shown through our lives at every juncture, from birth until now, and whether we recognized it or not, for that is the only Christ that may be experienced, in our narratives, and in the now.  If we are still looking to Jesus for our salvation, it is time to consider looking for the unique threads of timelessness within our self, and our own infancy, childhood, and life experiences.  That is where we crucified and buried the  Christ. Are the threads of love wound stronger around our heart than the unraveling intentions of an often hateful, indifferent world that can mercilessly tug at them?  We have the power to resurrect the dead within us, so what is our choice for today? Healing of trauma precedes full awareness of our noble nature, once the labyrinth created by our wounding is finally made conscious and exited.  The liberated life no longer sees the Minotaur at every turn, and the release from the labyrinthine mind reveals infinite new paths of consciousness to travel upon, and results in life long effects on our potential for and experience of joy, creative expression, and spiritual evolution.

Please, save yourself.

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

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

Without the light of love, and connections with each other and our world with our full heart and soul, whatever threads we are holding onto will break, and the Minotaur will have won.

What is our choice?