“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society” —Jiddu Krishnamurti
Powerlessness and silence go together. We … should use our privileged positions not as a shelter from the world’s reality, but as a platform from which to speak. A voice is a gift. It should be cherished and used.
—- Margaret Atwood
Our nation’s mental health status is an issue of national concern. The intention of this book is to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness, and enhance our understanding of the issues surrounding it. We are now witnessing the cumulative effects of the oppression of our citizenry, and its primary spawn, mental illness, while they cast their chaotic spell over our world. The internal fogs created by the repression of powerful aspects of our most noble essence and shared human spirit is encouraged by our culture, thus compounding the effects of the disease. And, diseases in the mind of mankind spawn diseases within its own body, so our national health and wellness is at risk, too. Until the day comes that we collectively make a change, mankind will continue to suffer in silence, and all of the oppressed, victimized, innocent and sensitive people will remain part of our most vulnerable group of citizens.
In America right now, it is conservatively estimated that there are FORTY EIGHT MILLION citizens suffering from mental illness. That figure works out to nearly ONE IN FIVE Americans who are subjected to being taken by such illness. FORTY THREE percent do not ever get care for themselves. And, the time period between the onset of mental illness, and the victims first treatment for it, averages around ELEVEN YEARS. And, the most common medical disorders for children under of eighteen years of age involve mental health issues, with suicide becoming one of the leading causes of early death. And the sufferers of mental illness impact their families, their friends, their employers, their communities, and, ultimately, their worlds in confusing, destabilizing, conflicting, and even tragic ways.
Many men are experiencing despair. There are underlying social and economic forces at work, as well. More men are finding themselves in a much more hostile labor market with lower wages, lower quality and less permanent jobs. There is greater difficulty to find life partners and reduced prospects for marriage. When the work brings excessive overtime there becomes reduced connections to children, play, and social connections. Resultant social dysfunction continues to build up over time. There’s a sense that these people have lost a sense of status and belonging. There is a sense of loss of a sense of personal empowerment and that they have any say in their lives. And these are classic preconditions for suicide.
The rates of suicide are much higher among men than women, though both suffer immensely under the weight of distress and despair. Drug overdoses and alcohol-related liver deaths are higher. Mortality trends are identical for men and women with a high school degree or less. Under that body count there’s a lot of social dysfunction that is the result of poor job prospects over the course of their lives. Economic and social status continues to decline, and further oppression can be a result. Pain and suffering increases, repression of that pain through dysfunctional responses increases, which spills over into all other areas of the lives of susceptible people. Yet, it is not just economic forces that lead to mental illness, it is the cumulative effects of a civilization that has faltered, while failing to create a collective foundation for good mental health. The creation of jobs alone is not equivalent to the creation of well-being for its citizenry.
The oppression of our citizenry, and our culture’s unconscious response to it, which includes the continued and dysfunctional repression of our pain and suffering, exacerbates a cultural conspiracy of silence. Those who have been traumatized by their own, by their family’s, or even by their community’s mental illness often do not communicate their distress, and suffer in silence. There are many secrets that are kept and held close to the heart, for the victimized and the broken do not have the language, nor the receptive audience to share their trauma and pain with. Some traumas are so painful and distressing that the victim is fearful that the revelation of their disease will bring harm to others, or bring further harm to themselves. And many have been punished for merely mentioning to others that they have been victimized, or are continuing to be victimized.
I am a three-time diagnosed depressed individual, as well as a recovering addict/alcoholic. I have the label and experience of a dual-diagnosis human being. Dual diagnosis is the term used when a person has a mood disorder such as depression or bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression) and a problem with alcohol or drugs. I belong to one of the dark castes of our society, and, collectively, our spirits are stymied, and our voices have been quieted. When we don’t have a voice, the most we can hope for is to be silent witnesses to life.. We thus join with a multitude of others in a conspiracy of silence rather than be robustly interactive participants with life.
Our society continues to play into a conspiracy of silence, only focusing on these difficult issues when convenient to its agenda, when a popular star or athlete experiences the ravages of this disease, or when there is a sensational news story to be reported. Our insurance industry has denied coverage for addictions and mental health therapies until recently, and even now co-payments for treatment and medication remain inordinately high, and out of the financial reach for far too many Americans. And in the most evil of recent developments, the mentally ill have become the scapegoats of immoral and emotionally unhealthy gun rights propagandists who continue to claim that this category of humanity is responsible for all gun violence, as well.
I should have died by suicide on January 28, 1986. Death by an overdose was to be my response to a lifetime of not feeling loved, not having been heard, and not developing the capacity to listen to myself. My greatest fear in life, the fear that I had no value, probably took form within me while I was still a baby. That perception was to plague all future iterations of my self, as well. I was to be saved by a twist of fate, a desire to find the truth, a timely intervention by an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and an almost divine intercession. The rest of our mentally ill population can not be guaranteed that such miraculous interventions will happen within their own lives, however.
A book club meeting that was held at our house in November of 2016 was to expose me to the Emmy award-winning journalist and author Sheila Hamilton. She visited our home, and shared with our book club insights into her life, and her marriage with David Krol, her deceased husband who had died by suicide. While reading Ms. Hamilton’s book “All the Things We Never Knew”, I was struck by how Sheila had to piece together what David’s inner experience must have been like, as David did not communicate to others his inner turmoil and chaos effectively.
When Sheila told the group that David’s parents had wrapped him up in a blanket as a baby and left him in the garage at night because of his excessive crying, I had an AHA moment, because as a baby that is exactly what had happened to me, as well. I felt a need to give another voice for our shared disease, as I am a person who had also walked through the gates of hell itself, yet somehow re-emerged to tell my story..
The following work is my attempt to capture lightning in a bottle, and see if a little of my personal experience of “The Mystery” might bring a small light to others. I recount my own drama and internal struggles with mental illness, with the hope that I can bring to verbal light some of the inner workings of my own mind and life as it existed while I was in a diseased condition, and while I was also in relationship with a woman with her own disease. I have been personally impacted at the deepest, most profound levels, by my own mental illness and depression, addictions, anxiety, and panic attacks, and my path through life has made me a reluctant expert in these matters.
I am a product of our civilization, and of our shared humanity. Thus, I am also a broken container for our Spirit, like everybody else, who is not in denial of their own human nature. The act of writing this book was a difficult proposition, as I had to overcome a lifetime of internalized oppression, poor self-esteem, and repression of major aspects of my spirit. The messages that I received from my world, or collective consciousness, as both a child and as an adult are that I have little of any lasting value to give to the world, and that I should just blend in as best I can, and not complain. My conditioned response would be to keep silent, as I had nothing of value to share with the world, and/or the world could give a shit about what I had to say anyway. Who is actually out there that cares, anyway?
Recently, I had to travel on an extraordinary path to develop the willingness to write about my experiences with mental illness, and our individual and collective healing potential. On January 11th of 2017, I had a ‘seizure’, the first of its kind since my drug using days of 1986. I awoke at 2:45 in the morning, and went into my office and sat down. Suddenly, I lost all ability to move, and to even think, though I remained quite aware during this approximately one minute process. 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. Those who understand what our proprioceptive senses are, will know this vision is just that capacity turned inward. 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 was to have another seizure, this time much milder in nature, while in a public setting.
I did not initially talk about the seizures, or the black mass, because I thought that I might be losing my mind. I learned early in life to keep secrets, especially about aspects of my self that I know that others would not understand. 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, reading, and talking with others would not dislodge 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 trust the doctor for ailments of the body, but much less so for ailments of the mind and spirit. I did tell my family doctor that I feared that my own death might precede my father’s, when I took my demented, dying father to see her in the first week of January.
On March 5, 2017 Marty, a friend of mind for over twenty years, suffered a major seizure and was hospitalized at OHSU. Marty 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 Interleuken 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 seizures with my own, though mine were relatively tame by comparison. Marty’s brain tumor was the exact size, and in the same place in his brain that I had perceived the dark mass to be within my own, as well. 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. I told him that I hoped that his brain mass did not indicate a death for him.
That next day, Wednesday, at noon, I had another episode of such intensity, and duration, that I dared not even attempt to get up from the couch. I had previously arose from the couch, and briefly lost consciousness, so I was all shook up, yet I still had no desire to get a doctor involved. Sharon came home later that afternoon from her creative writing class, and found me quite compromised. She listened to my story, and accepted my decision not to seek further medical attention. This was perceived to be a spiritual crisis, and she offered her own love and care. She monitored my blood pressure, and whenever she noted when my breathing became shallow, she offered me a paper bag to breathe into, to prevent a panic attack.
Each time I tried to get off the couch, I became quite dizzy. I continued feeling quite physically subdued, and some sort of anxiety reaction was also happening with my body/mind. 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 during a portion of my trip through the underworld. I lost my voice for two days when confronted with the reality that there were dangerous people I was associating with, and this fact had finally, and powerfully, struck home with me.
The present time, I actually felt like my consciousness was trying to escape, that I might be losing my mind, and it took all of my resources just to hold it together. I did not want anything to do with a psychiatrist, or another neurological exam, having been through a horrible experience several years before, when I had experienced excruciating headaches. I tried to go about my normal activities, while being grateful that I did not have to provide care for my disabled father, whose care that week was taken over by others.
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 went about my limited daily activities as best I could, but I became quite conscious of my own fear and anxiety around Death, both of self, and of Marty. I continued to listen to the occasional taped spiritual wisdom tapes of some of my past teachers, hoping to hear something that might bring me comfort. I listened to one special one from Jack Boland, a nationally renowned speaker and master of the recovery process. I owned a tape where he referred to me personally, and stated that he knew me, probably better than I knew myself. 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 . Those who understand this statement UNDERSTAND. And here I thought that I had already performed that process many, many years before! How wrong I was.
Thursday evening came, and after yet another nearly sleepless night, I got up and sat in the family room, and awaited for Sharon to join me . My mind had become extremely active, and a dam burst within my mind, unleashing a torrent of words and thoughts. I felt a compulsion to share this message 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 to what Spirit was trying to pour out of my mind. I have witnessed that people become bored after reading about twenty words on my Facebook pages, and if there is not a clever or cute meme to look at, they just move on to something more distracting. As I lay out on the couch, feeling my own emotional/spiritual death about to overtake me, I cried out in despair to Sharon,
“Please share my message, I don’t have the medium to carry, or the capacity to deliver, this message in a way that others can hear, or understand!”.
Sharon looked at me with acceptance, love, and compassion. Sharon 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.
“Bruce, your message is your own, and must be spoken through you, or not at all. “
“But Sharon, that puts me head butt up against my greatest fears, and I know that I will never be heard!”
Even my tears, and begging, would not change her mind. She is a published author, and well respected within her community. I, on the other hand, had no such experience and background. 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, and I did not know what to do. I had the experience of a lifetime of people perceiving 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 male and female power figures, with a few very notable exceptions. I did not know how to act or feel differently. My voice had been silenced not only by others, but also by myself in the past, and this extends even unto the present time.
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, first created from a dream in 1992, 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, without reading, by those who already believed that they knew me. But the curious ones, the ones who had an inner Spirit that had not been yet stymied, would read, and appreciate, this aspect of the message that I now felt compelled to give to my world.
It took less than two days to write, and it was the first story I have ever written. I was never a writer, and before recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, most of the insight that I had was irrelevant to recovery and healing, and certainly was not worth writing about. While hospitalized for a month in 1984 for alcoholism, the journal that I was required to write about my daily insights seemed to be written by our society asking for permission to continue to be dysfunctional, rather than me getting in touch with my pain, and making progress with healing. People pleasing stories may be easier to read and write, but they sure lose their allure when one finally decides to move into the neighborhood of truth and real insight into self.
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. Yes, I have finally learned that I need to listen to myself, more than just listening to other “authorities”. Some nights, I may only sleep 3 or 4 hours, and so I get out of bed to write until my wife Sharon awakens at 5 am. I have now written well over 300,000 words about recovery, healing, insight, and spirituality, which is miraculous considering that I never had anything to say until recently. I will spare you, by beloved reader, by limiting this work to only 50,000 words.
Creativity, and spiritual healing, when finally accessed, doe not conform to our conditioned mind’s expectation of how it should unfold. 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 in the final year of his life. 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, and some would call it insane thinking on my part. For me, this is a natural outcome of prayer, meditation, mindfulness, tuning into a wider frequency of being, and enhanced attention to my dream world.
My love, compassion, and concern for Marty gave me the temporary ability to sense the dark, golf ball sized mass in my brain. It was not my physical cancer, it was Marty’s. Yet this “black mass” came to represent the cancer of oppression, and repression, within both of us. Death was to find Marty six months later, when the pain and suffering from the effects of the metastasized cancer and adverse reactions to new treatments drove him to select the Death with Dignity option. Yet repression, and oppression, continues, and a dark mass remains on the collective mind of mankind, and now I pursue the path towards a more universal version of recovery from spiritual disease.
We need to explore the relationship between the conspiracy of silence that permeates our culture and world civilization, and the incidence of degraded health outcomes that have resulted through reduced opportunities for healing, growth and evolution. Why do we continue to support potentially soul damaging techniques for engagement, dialogue and communication, when other more effective and loving means are available? Why do we clamor for peace and healing, and simultaneously make preparations for further confrontation with others, and for war? When we look deep within ourselves, do we even perceive that we have choices as to how to frame our view of reality, or is our life like witnessing a marionette speaking somebody else’s words? Are we able to locate all of the cultural and familial controls whose spell we are now under, and consciously examine each one, eschewing those which are impediments to our health and well-being? Finally, are we able to find our own truth, and then, find the courage to speak from it to those who might have need to hear it?
Our culture is only starting to come to an understanding about the causes of the epidemic of white middle-aged American men dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast, for the past 25 years. There has also been a marked increase in anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and mental illness in our general population, for men, women, and our most vulnerable of citizens, our children. For the adults, one of several causes around both lifespan decline and increased mental illness revolves around chronic abusive drinking of alcohol, and this has been reflected in our bodies by higher incidences of liver and esophageal cancer, especially in people under fifty years of age. There has also been the recent news reports with many references to the Opioid Epidemic, painkiller addiction, and the progression to heroin addiction by those participants. Drug overdoses killed 72,000 Americans last year alone. Since 1999, more than 700,000 Americans have died from drug related causes. America is losing the war on drugs, that is for sure.
Alcohol and drug misuse are only symptoms of our cultural disease, and the abuse of intoxicants may be the way America medicates itself to avoid feeling the distress of feeling victimized by the forces of oppression within our society, failure to find one’s true voice and mission in life, and the repression of our inner natures. Other symptoms include our culture’s increasing problems with obesity, poor physical fitness, hoarding of weapons of war, or environmental, water and food supply toxicity. These are important issues, and their proliferation is directly dependent upon our often times toxic Capitalist economic principles and culture, so healing and enhanced awareness in this arena will lead to more effective solutions in our future.
Those who continue to suffer while eschewing the path of recovery live and operate in the background of our culture, and have a message that may not be spoken and/or cannot be heard or acknowledged because of the power of the collective conspiracy of silence. Our culture is broken, which leads to broken people and broken families. Yet, collectively, America has created a culture of denial, where we don’t look at our fundamental problems together, and confront them directly. Those who currently belong to certain religious, spiritual, or philosophical tribes tend to blame others rather than accepting their own roles that contribute to our shared disease. To the extent that the broken individual might indicate a brokenness within our culture, is the extent that the broken individual is marginalized and minimized by the entrenched power brokers of our civilization and their sycophants.
It is extremely difficult in finding a way to reach an individual, or a society, that has unconsciously made a decision to slowly and painfully commit suicide through toxicity and addictive cycles, while all remain in rigorous denial of that fact. Each toxic human being, be they an unconscious power hungry man or woman, alcoholic, drug addict, or mentally ill person must find their own unique “bottom”, where the pain of the disease causes a change, or turning point, in their lives. Insanity, loss of job, loss of family, admission to a mental health or addiction recovery facility, jail, DUI, threat of death, or near death experiences, and deaths of close friends or family members also suffering have been known to bring the desire for healing to many of us. A confrontation from those we may have harmed can have rather dramatic effects on our desire to change, as well. It took all of the negative life cycle outcomes to convince me to change behavior. Living in hell for an extended period of time brought me to death’s doorstep, yet I did survive, and the process helped me to seek for a deeper light.
Major sectors our culture continue to remain overly judgmental, uncaring and even indifferent to the plight of the suffering, and close their minds, hearts, and ears to those in need, so that they can continue relatively unbothered in their own selfish, self serving worlds. This indifference leads to those remaining silent in the face of the assault against their own neighbors, thus adding to our conspiracy of silence. There are many economic, religious, and political leaders who have derived the greatest personal and economic benefits through the exploitation of those who have no voice, and it is perceived as an existential threat for them to examine, acknowledge their own faults, and make changes to the damaged structure that gave rise to their own predominance in the first place. There must be a national discussion about our shared disease, its treatment, and the healing and changing of our culture to reduce the alarming probabilities of its recurrence.
The race is on between those who are spiritually supporting personal and collective Armageddon, and those who are promoting a more holistic, healing approach to living together in lasting harmony, peace and health upon our sacred planet. Those who can become receptive to their own spiritual awakening will become part of a world-wide healing movement, through co-creating the roots of the Tree of Life that supports a new world order of love, compassion, and the preservation of our home planet Earth and all of its sacred inhabitants. Those who choose to stay asleep will continue to contribute to the suffering, and the destruction of life in all of its diverse forms, and unconsciously contribute to the ravages that toxic living brings to our shared world. As a result of the division, it has been quite the mosh pit dance of conflict between the colliding forces of the need for revolutionary change, and the need for clinging to the status quo.
I have been asked by two male friends with strong spiritual connections as to why I continue to perseverate upon my own woundedness, and the damaged American psyche, and why I don’t instead focus on pure mysticism, Buddhist philosophies, and more pleasant, loving thoughts and activities. The question itself reveals the flaws inherent in absolutist philosophies, living an unexamined life, and the fragmentation already present in our collective understanding of how to bring healing to our self, and to our world. Does anybody think that the suicide victim, lone wolf arsonist, abusive alcoholic, mentally ill man shot by a policeman, drug overdose victim, morbidly obese person, rapist, child abuser, corrupted national politician and/or reality TV star, or mass murderer, is a unique being, with no relationship to the rest of the very humanity that spawned him? Just because we are not now consciously aware and viscerally experiencing the damaging effects of the unhealed American psyche, does not mean that we remain unaffected by its self-destructive, and other-destructive, energies. Ignorance never leads to bliss, but instead to more suffering by self and others.
Before we can proceed into a new world order of better health, increased happiness, peace, and preservation of our sacred planet and our relationships with the totality of life upon it, we must first completely see where we came from, or our self-destructive history will repeat itself. No human being remains unaffected by our damaged common core of consciousness, whether we personally express it, are impacted directly by it from others, or only read about it in the newspapers or on Facebook. For the truth is, our core of collective consciousness gets transmitted from our individual minds to the rest of the conscious universe, and we receive back from collective consciousness, as if it were an eternally uttered prayer shared by all of humanity.
The light of our country, though still burning brightly for the healing and the hopeful, attracts all manners of darkness to it, as evidenced by heartless terrorists, capitalists, and politicians victimizing our most innocent of beings. While witnessing victims of persecution and oppression within our own homeland, including our immigrants, our minorities, our homeless, our mentally ill, our children, our old, our diseased, our poor, our disabled, our sacred animals, or our environment itself, it can be difficult to feel the miracle of life that is constantly with us. Yet, to not have that experience, is to live a life devoid of much of the greater meaning available to us as human beings.
The American male, who carries most of the self-destructive, earth destructive, socially destructive, and feminine destructive energy within humanity, is paying a huge spiritual and physical price for the errors in both the presentation of our lives to the world and the experience of others’ contributions to our own lives. We, as a gender, continue to carry the historical fallout from many generations of callous indifference to the needs of others, and to our own spiritual needs for wholeness, love, healing, and compassion.
Toxic energy has damaged our masculinity, and is a disease of the human spirit that has been in existence since the beginning of civilization, and it continues to strike down men to this very day. Our world remains both addicted to and intoxicated by its masculine hubris, greed, indifference and insensitivity, and the resultant domination and subjugation of all life upon our planet. Callous, ignorant, hate inspired masculine energy runs rampant in our world, victimizing and destroying sacred life in all forms, while extremists of all types, including capitalists, politicians, and other opportunists profit from our own destruction. I have seen how men run in tribes or packs defined by their acts of self-destruction, the destruction of others, and the destruction of our planet. And I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my own being, that disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to the predisposition towards disease within the body of mankind.
One only needs to look around, and view the effects of toxic masculinity, and several of its ugly spawn, toxic religion, toxic politics, and toxic capitalism, to see that repression of our collective emotional/feeling natures, including the feminine and the Divine, is built right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. Our POTU$ is the perfect representation for all of the ills of our culture, and to the extent that the men within our culture practice his unholy principles of engagement with the world, and with its women, and men, they also share in his disease of mind, body, and spirit.
What happens to a culture defeated by the dark unhealed energy? We don’t need to look too far to see the insanity around us, the monetization of humanity and the world, mass murders, early deaths, suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, abuse of woman, and children, extinction of species, destruction of our ecology, and see the relationships that now continue to a very bleak future, unless the men and women in this world awaken, and rebel against the prevailing dark attitudes of our dying culture.
Randy Olson (left-1955-2013) Dan Dietz (1955-1997)
I have watched an endless parade of friends, family members, co-workers, and acquaintances suffer from mental illness, alcoholism and addiction, and/or meet an early death, and I nearly died prematurely, as well. Most of my grade school and high school friends have already suffered, and have either become disabled or have had early deaths. Both of my best friends from earlier in my life died young from alcoholism and poor health choices My nephew has a bipolar condition along with alcoholism, and has alienated himself from important parts of his family I have a cousin who in February of 2018 was comatose and near death from the DT’s in the ICU, and who continues to drink. He is presently suicidal, and has expressed interest in bringing suffering to the rest of the family. We buried another drug addicted cousin in August of 2017, who, through her own self-directed treatment of pain coupled with the ignorance of her doctors, missed pancreatic cancer, and she died a miserable death within a week of a correct diagnosis. I have also witnessed two close family members who are practicing alcoholics continuing to ply their self-destructive trades, while ostracizing my wife and I, as well as one of our own grandsons has been addicted to pot and other substances since he was 11 years old, and he just has not been able to put a productive life together. I just can’t ignore this disease of the Spirit which has taken over my family, and our country.
In many cases, those early deaths or disabilities from mental illness and/or alcoholism were, literally, a divorce from their lives, as their lives were so unfulfilled and unhappy, and they had lost all hope for any positive change. In many of the cases that I am familiar with, they were not happy at the end, and their death appeared to be a welcome release for them. Some had lost their careers, and could not recover from that. Some had no meaning in their lives, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to the idea that their only function was to provide for their wives or family, and, having achieved success or failure, they could not recover from that. Some were just waiting for a better day, and when it never appeared, they could not recover from that. Some were lonely and depressed, and they could not recover from that. Some had profound physical health issues, and they could not recover from that. Some had profound mental illness, and they could not recover from that.
What is the hidden story, the real back story to all diseased men and women, and their lives that may not have been told to their families, to their religions, to their culture, to their employer and co-workers, and to their Gods? Were any of our victims of society able to listen to themselves, and identify their own unique pain and suffering, and bring it to the light of love and reason, to search for, and eventually find a newer path to healing and meaning? Or, did they blindly follow down the well-worn path of premature deterioration and death that unconscious humanity, through engaging in our collective common knowledge game, the road defined by “sin”, suffering, and dying, is doomed to trudge upon?
This book is a mantle woven together by the words and stories that I have chosen to represent the whole of my life experience. I wear this garment in honor of all those who have preceded me, and for those who still walk beside me in spirit, in love, and in healing. I honor my deceased parents and grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and the countless generations past. I honor those who have sacrificed their lives to diseases of the body, and of the Spirit, be they the addict, alcoholic, mentally ill, victim of violence, or the so-called normal person who struggled with comprehending the insanity in their own life, and of their civilization, and died before finding healing. I honor those who are still alive, and suffering under the forces of oppression and repression that characterize much of life lived under our present economic, religious, and political systems. I honor those who will take the time to consider this work, and I also honor those who will never find the opportunity or the willingness to do so. Finally, I honor my wife Sharon White, who suffered with me through some tough times during a relapse in 2007, caring for my dying father the last several years up to 2017, and for the actual writing of this book.
As a culture, we need to remember that our mentally ill population, which includes the addicts and the alcoholics, are society’s “canaries in the gold mine”. We are all susceptible to the damages incurred by spiritual asphyxiation, should we neglect to listen to the stories being told by our most vulnerable family members. The sensitive and the oppressed of our culture define the leading edge of the journey of our own shared human experience and are indicators of our collective spiritual condition.
The conspiracy of silence is built right into the framework of our collective consciousness. Dead men tell no tales, but the nearly dead MUST continue to tell their stories, with respect for themselves and others, until our civilization finally wakes up. To not express ourselves honestly and openly results in our own early demise, spiritually as well as physically. We each must penetrate the conspiracy of silence, and bring the light of a loving heart and healing words to the hidden darkness. We can then bring hope to all of the canaries in our society who are now struggling for air.
“If you really, really knew me, you wouldn’t love me”
—This is often heard in many recovery meetings, and one of the foundational beliefs behind our collective conspiracy of silence, which supports poor self-esteem, and distrust of others.
We are only as sick as our secrets”
–This is another aphorism frequently heard in recovery meetings. Shame keeps those secrets secret. My present understanding is that we will remain as sick as our secrets, while being victimized by society’s secrets, as well.
There are many in our culture who have calloused hearts, which reflects in both toxic and criminal behaviors, and crazy making communication styles. Those who have witnessed the way that many men abuse their physical privilege, and take advantage of their positions of power and influence to oppress, victimize and control others spiritually, and sexually, can become disheartened and demoralized. Members of my own sex have also suffered under toxic influences from other men, as well as from our own wayward intentions. There are no positive mental health outcomes for those who suffer under such abuse. My heart goes out to all women and men, past and present, who have been abused by unconscious male power dynamics and abhorrent sexual behavior. These darkened and traumatizing actions made lifelong victims of my first wife, and at least one other woman who I had a long term relationship with.
Our political, religious, and economic leaders, and those whose professional practice includes mental health, have found that they have limited options for dealing with the disease, resulting in feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and even institutionalized indifference. On that down side, there are those within our culture who misunderstand or ignore, over-medicate, ostracize and marginalize, Isolate and imprison, abuse and punish, degrade and dispose, and just plain “give up on” the mentally ill. On the up side, there are many family members, therapists, psychologists, spiritual advisors, and psychiatrists who have given their lives, hearts, and souls to the care and healing of our mentally ill, and my heart sometimes breaks FOR ALL OF US, as we struggle to manage both our own lives, while also being of service to these fallen fellow members of our family and society.
The psychiatric profession would do itself wonders to finally gain the necessary insight to understand the underlying message here, for we are all being impacted by our cultural INSANITY, and far too many American citizens will continue their own unconscious descent into darkness and mental illness. The mentally ill need better guidance, and our sick society needs better guidance, before it is too late for all of us. Chemicals can carry a disabled personality only so far, and then the river of spirit, with healing and insight, must carry the diseased human being the rest of the way to sanity. Yet, better than treatment is a plan for prevention, which a resistant society will not take the necessary measures to enact.
Our culture’s stories revolving around mental illness points to a problem with professional bias. Each patient is trying to tell the world a secret, yet due to the conditions of their disease, they cannot reveal it. The mentally ill, like all semi-conscious human beings, do not yet have a safe container for their troubled feelings around whatever has traumatized their lives. It takes each patient a unique period of time to connect with the willingness to access the source of their pain and suffering. And it takes a specially trained listening ear to hear the broken person’s deepest meaning, as it can be buried among ancient pain relics from far distant places and times, and, in the extreme, disassociated personalities. Many patients in need of healing may well head for the door, figuratively or literally speaking, if there is a perception that they are not being listened to with compassion and empathy. That is the primary reason many never even reach a professional’s doorstep, for the isolation and fear informs the broken person that there is nobody alive who will understand them, and embrace them with love anyway.
Be mindful oh Mankind, of all the painful secrets that we must keep, By sharing with others we may awaken, or by our suffering silence just die asleep —–Bruce Paullin
The following story indicates my path towards wholeness and spiritual integrity, after moving away from both my own personal insanity and our culture’s schizophrenia. I document a few of my hard-earned insights that I have been given into the life that we all share. This is a presentation of my unique perspective. Please forgive me in advance if my insights and realizations appear obvious and simple, or challenge basic sensibilities. Though it is not my intention to be offensive and argumentative, I hope that some new energy is stirred within the reader. It is not my intention to create more spiritual froth with trite all-encompassing statements like “love heals all wounds”, or “love is the only power”. Love of this type and nature can be a most elusive spiritual resource, and is not what the vast majority of the human race initially seeks or believes it to be. The following work is the documentation of my own “hero’s journey” towards all such noble human values.
There have been several messages bubbling up within my consciousness that have hinted at the collective errors in human reasoning, and this work is the culmination of my attempt to honor all of those “whispers of the Spirit”. My personal truth demands of me that I deliver these words, regardless of what others might think, or how resistant I might be in sharing them. In the face of the evil and ignorance that predominates our world mind, those who have the sensitivity of the artist, the skill of the musician, the message from a miraculous healing, or even the voice of the marginalized prophet, must continue their best efforts to bring forth the Word, even while our civilization continues its seeming inexorable slide into chaos, hatred, and planetary destruction.
I would prefer to entertain my own participation in the cultural conspiracy of silence, yet my own healing demands that I share my understanding and experience at the deepest levels that are available to me. One of the greatest gifts that we can give to each other is a non-judgmental listening ear, and to keep our hearts open to the stories that are being told. I struggled mightily with manifesting my potential for this, though I have dramatically improved over the years since 1987. Because I found a way to listen to myself, and listen to all people in my life, both past and past I now can better relate our shared story.
In some of the early times of my life, prior to my addictive cycles, I carried a sense of isolation, depression, and a strong feeling of anxiety around life and the unknown. From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic and drug addict, and mentally ill human being, I lost most of my remaining freedom of choice. I belonged to the “death wish core group” of Americans, who lived lives of desperation, addiction, suicidal ideation, and mental illness. We all sought an early death, either by our own hands, through our addictions, or by the poor health and relationship decisions that we continued to make. Many of us could see the insanity of those still claiming for themselves good mental health, while the choices of those supposedly “healthy people of the world” continued to bring the promise of the destruction to our planet Earth. While we contemplated our own end, we witnessed a world in the midst of its own collective march towards suicide.
In my personal story I attempt to use one linear time line, with some minor overlap between the stories. There will be no lurid tales of debauchery (well, maybe a reference or two), nor overt acts of aggression or crimes against my fellow-man, though I certainly carried the capacity for all manners of the evil inherent in the human mind. In my journey through Portland’s underworld community, I associated with people who had acted on all manners of ignorance, evil, and darkness, and many lives had been destroyed or damaged as a result of their behaviors. While a practicing addict/alcoholic, I had the potential to damage or destroy many lives, especially through driving. I was pulled over seven times for drunken or reckless driving, though I never got a DUI because of my capacity to appear sober, no matter how intoxicated that I was. I drove intoxicated over two thousand times, and though I never hurt or killed anyone, there were a few wrecks, and many near misses. In alcoholic blackouts, I accessed incorrigible attitudes and contemplated egregious acts, but good fortune saved the day for me, and for the world.
Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil leads to continued propagation of evil
Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil, heal no evil!
My life certainly has not been newsworthy or extraordinary in any obvious ways. In my youth, I was the person who was best described as one who was on the “outside looking in” on life, versus the one who was on the “inside looking everywhere”. I never really quite fit in, when it came to living life. But, the best part of my story lies in the lessons learned from a life experienced from both perspectives, with much of my personal truth having been derived from the movement through my family and its history, as well as through the bigger picture painted through my movement through our culture and civilization. There is a direct connection between what unfolded in my life while being a masculine energy dominated addict, alcoholic, and isolated, mentally ill human being, and the dysfunctional patriarchy that continues to unfold in our world today.
