If it’s painful for you to hear my story, it’s OK. That’s part of the process because my story includes pain, so don’t stop listening because you are uncomfortable. If you would just move past your discomfort you might learn something about empathy and compassion and mercy and justice. —-Pastor Gricel Medinas
As a human race, all that we will ever see, unto eternity, is our Self. Can we see our Self with love and compassion today?—–Elisha Scott
Going my way?
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All human beings should consider joining a recovery program, as we are all challenged and threatened by our human condition. And because most of us are not now actively seeking healing and personal transformation, we are susceptible to the sometimes capricious currents that carry an unhealed life. NO ONE IS IMMUNE from the damaging effects of living in an unconscious world, and we all pay a spiritual, emotional, and physical price for our collective, and my individual, avoidance of engagement with evolutionary options.
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Once we begin our program of recovery, we also need to create a new life affirming story for our self. Our initial stories in recovery will start with the repetition and rehearsal of the painful stories of suffering from our pasts. There is short-term value in sharing stories of this nature, and after a healing period, we should feel no guilt or shame in revealing those parts of ourselves to others.
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I first experienced long term sobriety in 1987, though I did not have a lot to talk about, except while with other recovering individuals. With my dramatic change of mind and heart, it took a substantial period of time to develop the language to surround this energy with, and to talk about the new present moment experience.. Stories get developed after the fact about our life experience, unless we are patterning ourselves from the disfiguring stories thrust upon us by our families, our religions, our cultures, and our diseases. In these cases, those outdated stories become the rickety structure that we attempt to weave our new life experience around, and thus we don’t fully claim, or find our own unique identity, or story.
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Most people love a good story, and this medium for communication has been proven to be an extremely effective method for the transmission of our wisdom and human values to others. Even the belief in God, whether or not “God” actually exists, has its own origins in the need for mankind to create a story around its own origins, and to give its existence some sort of context and meaning. I have read about and heard from a few parents that their young children were so close to “God”, that when they first learned to talk, they would tell their parents about talking directly with God, or hearing God talk to them (or Jesus, or whatever their cultural background would predispose them to refer to). I did not have that experience as a youth, and, in fact, I could not fathom the possibility of such a “miracle”. Prior to recovery, my bullshit detector would sound off long and loud whenever I heard such a story.
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There was nothing special or spiritual about my birth or early childhood, and, in fact, I was on the opposite end of the peace spectrum from those luckier, supposedly divinely blessed children. When I was a baby. I was quite the disruption to my family, because I cried almost non-stop, and my crying kept my father from sleeping. I was wrapped in a warm blanket, and kept in the car in the garage until my father left for work. This potentially destructive isolation of a developing baby was far more common in the baby boomer generation than the reader might be aware of.
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When the cries for love and survival go unheeded, fear and a sense of abandonment becomes the primary creative companions to the developing brain of a baby. While I was still a boy, up to nearly nine years of age, it was every night that I had horrible nightmares so terrifying that I could not get out of bed to go to the bathroom, for fear of what was going to get me from inside of the closet or under my bed. The disabling dream stories that I created were a direct result of the troubling marriage of fear and a sense of abandonment. One only has to look at the life that I experienced to get to the truth that those dreams were representative of my daytime reality, too.
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As a result of my early training and nature, though, I had a good, loving relationship with my mother. I had an often times troubled relationship with my father, whose acceptance and approval of me meant a lot, but he infrequently expressed his heart and feelings skillfully.. I came to feel that the world outside of our family had a lot of dysfunctional similarities, as well . There were quite a few friendly adults who were my parent’s friends, or who were loving relatives such as my aunt and uncle, and my maternal grandparents..But my father and my world appeared to be dramatically impacted by men abusing their personal power, men who were impacted by what I now know as toxic masculinity.
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I was ill equipped to successfully deal with many of the interpersonal challenges within peer relationships. Because of poor self-esteem, self doubt, poor insight, and general anxiety around my relationship with the world I as an easy target for escapism, isolationism, and those hucksters hawking quick fix solutions for longer term problems. As a young person, the thought of becoming an astronaut, and traveling through space far away from this planet, motivated me to excel in school, in both mathematics and science. I saw scholastic excellence as my ticket to get free from my social dis-ease, feelings of inadequacy, and my sense of disengagement from the resident aliens who also shared planet Earth with me. I longed for a way “to get off of this fucking rock”, and that became my driving intention for life.
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My life prior to drug addiction was quite lonely at times, especially for several years prior to age 9 years while living in our West Linn home along the Willamette River. Yet, I made the best of it. When I was not in the outdoors climbing trees, building forts, riding bicycles, studying tadpoles in local ponds, skipping rocks in the river, playing “doctor” with the neighbor girl while she played “nurse” with me, or exploring fields, forests, or islands in our neighborhood, I would spend copious amounts of time reading. The steady reading of fictional books, especially science fiction, enabled me to take vacations from a world that never seemed to me to be very welcoming..
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One of my favorite SF books was Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, which I read as a twelve-year-old boy. In this book, the main character, Michael Valentine Smith, is adopted by Martians after the death of all Earthlings except for baby Michael on a Mars mission that had crashed upon landing. Michael learns from the Martians, who end up raising Michael until near adulthood, that all, ultimately, is God. Michael was eventually rescued, and returned to Earth. When Michael proclaimed to all of Earth’s inhabitants after his introduction back upon Earth that “Thou Art God” I had my first ever feeling of hope that there might be a God available to be present in life, maybe even in MY LIFE. I read that book over and over again, as it gave me so much hope, but the hope, with its concurrent “God chills” or horripilations, were ephemeral, and did not last long after each reading of the appropriate passages in the book. It was with this book that the seed was planted for the idea that the search for God may well be my ticket out of my loneliness and misery, that the search must somehow begin and end within myself..
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In the era of my life from 1971 to 1987, I led a highly dysfunctional life. After succumbing to peer pressure to use recreational drugs as a sophomore in high school, I quickly became addicted to alcohol and drugs. I was an addict from the start, and I knew that I would either die as an alcoholic/addict, or I would kill myself by age 30, if I had not yet recovered from my disease. What I did not know was what would happen if I survived my affliction, what kind of life there would be for me to live, and what kind of person that I could become. I had made no preparations for how to live life without substance abuse, nor would I, at least initially, have adequate language to describe my hopes for the sober life, other than in the simplest, vaguest of terms.
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With my timely exit from Portland’s underworld community, in March of 1987 and my own exit from the drug-induced and culturally supported insanity, I hoped that a new world waited to welcome me. But, but the world did not just reach out and grab me by the hand, and lead me down the path to recovery and reintegration back into the community. It would be a mistake to assume that I was totally conscious about what was going on, and the direction that I was headed from 1987 forward. All that I knew was that after I had made “conscious contact with the God of my understanding”, my old life seemed to disappear. I had an ability to describe the world that I had left behind, but I had no language to describe the new world that I was entering into, or the new experiences that were unfolding in the new life of sobriety. I had never felt like I was an accepted and honored part of the outside world in the first place, so finding my new people, and my language, were important endeavors to me, once I was firmly on the path to sobriety and enhanced spirituality.
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This desire for a loving integration into the wholeness of life arose several years before, when I yearned for peace during a tumultuous period preceding my stay at the Care Unit in 1984.. While addicted, I could not fulfill the conditions for the experience of peace. The transformation was many, many years in the making, but when it appeared within me in 1987, I was no longer tormented by my social insecurities, or my feeling of disconnection from God, my fellow-man, or from the plants and animals that grace this beautiful planet that we share. Somehow, I had “let go of the controls” of my old ego state of mind, and a new order started revealing itself, from moment to moment. At times I felt like a “guided missile”, never knowing the destination for my life, but trusting whatever it was that had launched my new life into existence would get me to the right place at the right time..
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I still had memories of my former life, yet they no longer informed my day-to-day thoughts, my decisions, or my overall outlook on life and love. I did not know who the “new me” was, though the “new me” always had a smile, and felt continuous joy. I had a series of spiritual upheavals which defied my rational mind, and I did not have the words to describe or contain the experience for many years to follow. It was as if a new person had landed in my consciousness, the “old me” had died, and now I was informed, moment to moment, by a powerful force of peace or silence, or Love itself.
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Before 1987, there were “many people with their disfiguring concepts” roaming around in my mind, but now that “committee of the many” had permanently adjourned, and there was now only one peaceful presence, a new ordering principle for my consciousness. And not only did I not have the language developed for the new story, the small story that I did begin to tell did not necessarily meet with a friendly reception from others. When I told my story, I would usually be met with silent stares, a quick change of subject, or general disinterest., though a friend from a men’s group claimed that I was a “walk-in”, a term used to describe when the old ego departs a body, to be replaced by a new being. The act of writing a book about this experience has vigorously renewed my perception that there just is not a whole lot of interest in the material that, even now, I am trying to present to my world.
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My family still saw me in terms of the past, for the most part, as my history created great scars on the psyche of fellow family members, as well as the friends and acquaintances of my years prior to recovery. But, they could appreciate that the “new me” no longer required their extra concern or care, as I was now an independent, upright, fairly conscious human being. I made healthy choices in my relationships, and I chose a new, fulfilling career to replace all of the career wreckage from my past. I was but a boy again, though, while still learning the ropes, meeting new friends, discovering new possibilities for myself and others, and, occasionally, still sipping from the inner healing springs of the Miracle that can quench the spiritual thirst of all who seek it out.
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This new being, this upgraded Bruce 2.0, which appeared in the summer of 1987, was like those miracle babies and children that I had always envied, and doubted. During most of the time after June of 1987, until I met my present wife Sharon in August of 1989, I spent over six hours a day in prayer and meditation, and probably as a result experienced blessed states on an almost continuous basis. I now “heard and felt” God, and I was taught on the inner spiritual plane about aspects of life, and consciousness, that I had no way to learn or know about otherwise. This was not a “Christian” God, or a “Jewish” God, or the Buddha Mind, or “Christ Consciousness”, but those names certainly pointed to the new reality that I had somehow accessed, and been dramatically changed by.
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As hard as it is for me to write about this now, or, understandably, for the reader to believe this story, I was taught by the “Master Teacher”, whoever, or whatever, that might be. We all have access to inner wisdom not borne of our personal experience, yet it lies, mostly ignored, in the inner recesses of our hearts and souls, for much of our lives. I was given a new blank slate to write my new self upon, a new possibility for living, and being, in this world, aided by this new connection with my own wisdom. The world that I once wanted to depart from so badly, was now paradise on Earth, and I knew that Heaven was not a concept for the future, but a living reality only for the present moment. But, I could not carry the “old me” into that world, I had to leave ALL of my verbal and non-verbal memory possessions behind, so to speak, to stay in tune with the new Spiritual music.
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I have noted from my understanding and experience of others who have had dramatic spiritual experiences, is that, initially, they experienced a state of being poor communicators around the event. This lack of articulateness is quite a common, for several years that follow such an upheaval. Those that have a strong religious background try to use the language of that system of thought to interpret and communicate their own unique opening. For those who do not have a well established religious background, or who might need other language or images to convey their experience, the search through historical literature to see what others have written about their own cosmic events have been found to be helpful. There is an attempt to try to use a language that others might understand, but, unless they too have had spiritual lightning strike them, the search for an equally enlightened/awakened peer group is liable to be fairly unsuccessful, at least initially. Then there are also those who just throw up their hands, and give up on the idea of ever communicating with others about the transcendent state. And, finally, there are those whose minds are irreparably damaged by the experience, and though they may remain “connected to the Spirit”, their behavior and style is indicative of a person who is insane, and operating well outside of socially and culturally accepted standards.
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I did not have the capacity to communicate with others what I was experiencing, for many years after 1987. I would refer to my “rebirth”, and talk of the “old me” with those who were interested, especially in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. The people who met me after my rebirth could not believe that I was ever addicted or dysfunctional in self-destructive or other-destructive ways, and I learned to not wave that recovery flag at every new person I met, so that they could have an honest chance of knowing me for who I now was, rather than who I might have been long ago. It was my movement through all of these new relationships which helped to define for me the “new me”, who I was now, how I now related to and appreciated others, and how I now loved unconditionally most everyone that I met. All of humanity became my brother or sister in this new reality, and my lifelong sense of dreadful separation from others had been lifted. I then set out to find “my people” and find out where I might fit into the new world order that was revealing itself within my mind and heart. In my naiveté, I assumed that most others naturally came by this understanding, and that I was finally catching up, spiritually, with the “normal folks”, the folks that never were so unhappy as to consider alcoholism, drug addiction, and/or suicide for themselves.
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I eventually became active in the great outdoors again through hiking and backpacking, I resumed bicycle riding with an association with Cycle Oregon over several years, I learned tennis, and I also ended up excelling in road and trail racing as a runner, albeit an older runner (in the master’s division), competing individually and also appearing on several championship or near-championship level Master’s teams in both the Hood To Coast and Rainier To Pacific races. I was able have a “redo” of my life, and experience success and failure based on my own decisions, and actually glean wisdom from my interactions with life, rather than hate myself and/or others for its sometimes difficult teachings. And, yes, the new life was quite fertile ground for learning.
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This new life also provided me with some of the language that I needed to communicate better with others what I had experienced on the inner plane. It also started to provide me with the language needed to describe the foundational consciousness which predisposed me, and our world to dysfunctional and self-destructive behavior, but I was not to get the full message until much later in life. Having allowed myself to return back into the world after this second birth, I subsequently gained insight into the matrix of collective human misunderstanding that was the foundation for our collective consciousness as a human race. I had no inclination to attempt to describe the “light” as the mystics and poets experienced it, for I saw the futility of that path of “via positiva” for me. My path was primarily informed by two major categories for spiritual liberation. These two are “via transformativa” and “via negativa”. which are the techniques using personal responsibility, insight, meditation, as well as other agents for spiritual evolution. If the debris field of human consciousness has been healed and cleared, via negativa.and via transformativa have been successfully accessed, integrated together, and applied to one’s spiritual journey.
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What is left, after the piles of historical garbage is cleared? If might be considered similar to the process of metamorphosis, which brings forth the butterfly from the caterpillar. If the butterfly could talk, I would assume that it would much rather talk about its new freedom,and the ability to fly, rather than its previous form of life sliding over the dirt Yet, the only life that the butterfly arose from was with ground dwellers, and that is where all of its past stories were created. Could you imagine that butterfly going back and telling his caterpillar friends about the potential for a new life, and what the “ground dwellers” might say in response? How about
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“get lost, you were never one of us, anyway?”
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“well, it must be nice for you to fly, but it is just not for me right now?”
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“have you heard about the great tasty leaves that parsley plant has?”
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are three potential responses from those who think that change is threatening, unnecessary, irrelevant, or impossible, for themselves.
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There is new life available to all, yet I won’t devote too many words on that one. I am not a poet, and I don’t need to draw a big audience for those who are the seeker moths of our world who blindly follow the latest human “light”. The “light” is best experienced personally and, initially, non-verbally, for then there are no conflicts created between “the word” versus “the truth of the moment”. It is best to see this process for oneself. The word will forever remain a shadow, cast by the light built into the divine heart of mankind, as it tries to define the “undefinable”. Yet, if the heart is in the right place, the words formed and delivered will become more attuned to and resonant with the energies pointing to the healing of self and of the other.
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“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
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I am attempting to document my journey into truth through this message. I will first address the seed consciousness, the human collective consciousness, which gave rise to my own personal story, which is my interpretation of my life and of my universe. My consciousness is comprised of all of the answers that our culture, my family and I have dreamed up to some of the great questions of life. My life up to this point in time and space has been an attempt to answer the following questions, and adjust to the basic underlying principles that were supporting those questions.:
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- Just what is “God”, and what relationship does “God” have to reality, and to me?
- What is a “well lived life”?
- Who are my “people”, and where are they located?
- Will I ever fit in? Will anyone ever notice me?
- Why don’t I feel peace of mind?
- Why do I always seem to “self-destruct” right at the moment when I am about to achieve great success?
- Will I ever understand myself, and others?
- Why is expressing real emotions such a double-edged sword?
- Where is the love that I feel is missing from my life?
- Why do I have no desire to contribute to society in a more generous, meaningful way?
- Why do I feel that I have to always be competitive, or “better than the others” just to fit in?
- Why do I not feel satisfaction when I achieve the greatest goals that I have set up for myself?
- Why does guilt control so much of my life’s experience?
- What is oppression, and what is my relationship to it?
- What is repression, and why do I participate in it?
- Is it possible to speak or live a lie long enough that we no longer can accept or believe the truth?
- Is a person’s silence because of an absence of opinion, or from a fear of speaking the truth?
- What is good “mental health”?
- Why do people continue to experience poor self-esteem?
- Why are some people always so angry, or depressed?
- Why can’t some people be more emotionally and spiritually present for others?
- Why do people feel that they need to engage in mutual “control dramas”?
- Why do some men become spiritually and emotionally disfigured by their desire for sex?
- Why do some men exercise excessive emotional control over their partners?
- Why do people cling to certain groups of people, and reject all others?
- Why don’t people get along better with each other?
- Why do people endlessly pursue entertainment and/or use drugs and alcohol to excess, and ignore their own personal transformation and healing?
- Why is just more knowledge so much more important than intuition, wisdom and insight to most men and left brained dominated women?
- Why is collaboration such a dirty word for a national political process?
- Why is competition and greed, as presently coupled with Capitalism, the predominant economic system in our world?
- Why does our society, and our world, and much of the world’s population, continue to avoid experiencing peace of mind, with beauty, wonder, and the innate internal integrity of our (potentially) divine nature?
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My life story became my improving attempts at addressing these questions, and adjusting to whatever answers, if any, that came into my awareness at any particular point in time.. There is nothing really “new” being written here, though this is the most important writing that I have ever attempted. Please forgive me in advance if my insights and realizations appear obvious and simple. When they come to an innocent mind for the first time, they bring with them the sense of profundity and wonder..
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I had many teachers on the “outer plane” who continued to point the way to a higher, more spiritually integrated life, while I measured their messages against what was bubbling up within my own mind and heart as my own internal answers to life’s great questions. Words started forming within my mind that were to become the verbal bridges connecting my internal “non-verbal” state of being to reach the surface of my mind and the outside world with its infinite interwoven matrices of verbal intelligence. Just sitting around smiling at people was not getting the job of connection and communication accomplished, but I was always flooded with joy, and carried a constant smile on my face, which did open many doors to friendship with others. I was no longer a sheep looking for a shepherd, as I became a more conscious wanderer on life’s path, looking for fellow travelers and collaborators to exchange companionship with while we collectively reached for our greater good.
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I had no desire to fly solo, but instead to fly with a new flock, populated by those who were flying the same direction that I was guided to fly. Finding our spiritual family or core group, or “my people” is a common healthy desire for all of us. As human beings we have the potential to be “free birds” in our own unique way and manners, though we remain part of the greater “flock of life”. It is important to find, and continue to fly in, the flock of our own choice. We are social creatures, and to deny that absolute fact is to deny reality, and to deny our own greater good, and the greater good of humanity. It is a challenge to all of us to find that right group of people who our spirit can soar with. We all have tried to fly with turkeys, and that is not to be our lot in life, unless we continue to choose that for ourselves.
We are all free to choose again, so choose wisely, and fly united!
Let’s fly united with goose sense!
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A long term solution to finding reality, and truth, is to discover what is not true about ourselves, for we are constantly projecting all manners of personal illusions, and delusions, into our perceptual universe, while living in unconscious states. We are not alone in this, but just because the collective human experience is steeped in illusion and delusion does not give us permission to follow that well worn rut into the grave. A variation of the 12 Steps of Alcoholic Recovery is posted below, to reflect my present understanding of its principles, and application into the real world, the world that might exist once it has been cleansed of our misunderstanding of ourselves, God, and each other. This is a codified form of mindfulness, for those seeking a philosophical and loving connection with our Buddhist brothers and sisters. It is a long, happy life, for those who finally find their personal Truth.
12 Steps Revised To Reflect My Spiritual Experience
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, or 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.
