As the slowly shifting sands of time create ever taller hills for lost souls to climb,
It is in this selfish, hateful world of little reason and rhyme, that I must seek the way to truth, to find Love sublime.
What if a real miracle was trying to happen in all of our lives, and too few people cared or were not even aware enough to attempt to look for it? This indifference to or ignorance of our potential to reach for the sublime is the foundation for chaos in our world, and within our own minds..Those who refuse to look at the darkness within our culture, and its effects upon the self, become its unconscious and, unwittingly, its most ardent supporters.. Tragically, in this age, collective outpourings of love and support for victims follow murder-suicides and domestic terrorist acts, rather than prevent such occurrences from happening in the first place. Can we possibly envision an era where we can collectively experience enough healing to actually prevent or reduce acts of heinous behavior, as well as other self and other destructive activities?
We have healing options as a culture, and as individuals. Throughout the ages, Insight and mindfulness has transformed the minds and hearts of its practitioners, making all of us much less likely to become the source of suffering for others. We can all become the living examples of loving non-violence in action. Insight plants the seed of the miracle into our minds, and mindfulness is the great gardener of that miracle, resulting in an abundant, healthy crop of happier and more peaceful, loving, and ordered thoughts.
Yet our world continues to turn towards violence and unrest. Our home planet Earth, and billions of innocent animals, and humans, are suffering and dying because of our collective inattention or indifference to our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Books will continue to be written by fools like me, but only Love and Truth, and a world with a real plan for positive change, can set us free from our needless suffering. The collective failure to face our problems is the foundation for the continuation of our collective chaos. Denial is not a river in Egypt, it is an action of consciousness that continues to prevent us from accepting personal responsibility for the problems we experience, with its resultant damage to self, to others, and to our planet,
Once we overcome our denial, we all have the potential for healing, and we can move towards recovery from the injuries incurred through living our normal semi-conscious human life experience. Yet each one of us must learn to develop the requisite insight to guide us in more compassionate, rational directions.
“The unexamined life is not worth living”
Socrates
The unexamined life pointed to by Socrates is a life lived by rote under the rules of others, without the individual ever examining whether or not one truly wants to live with those routines, rituals, or rules. As we know through historical accounts, Socrates chose death rather than staying part of a collective unconsciousness, and these words are attributed to the philosopher during one of his last speeches before his suicide. As we watch the destruction of our sacred planet Earth by unconscious members of the human race, we see the tragic, epoch ending behavior of a race that has chosen collective suicide through living such unexamined lives.
The truth is that all violent, gun hoarding, hateful, diseased, unhealed, addicted, oppressed, alcoholic, addicted and otherwise toxic human beings, whether the toxicity is caused through personal, religious, economic or cultural values, are living unexamined lives. Early deaths through accidents, murder, suicide, or poor health choices, are at a much higher likelihood for occurrence for all such people. And, a mind hijacked by addictive substances and/or self and Earth destructive thoughts and behaviors will not readily adjust its course, without a compelling and consistent counter-argument being offered to its own unconscious desire for annihilation.
Because of the cumulative effects of our toxic culture, there is now an epidemic of younger, white, middle class men dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast for the past 25 years, and the trend continues in earnest. The increased rates of white mortality has contributed to an equalizing of death rates among all racial groups,. Death rates broken down by race and ethnicity once were pointers to the imbalances of health care opportunities within our civilization, but that may be no longer the case. White men, like all other American men, are now just as susceptible to succumbing to early death due to physical, emotional, and spiritual disease.
As I personally witness, read, and hear about the early death syndrome of the white American male, which may yet still capture me, I now know that our spiritual, political, and economic systems are flirting with catastrophic collapse. Many of my grade school and high school friends have already suffered, and have become emotionally calloused, disabled, or have died, from diseases of the spirit. My sister has already buried two husbands who died prematurely due to poor self-care. I recently visited a cousin who was comatose and near death from delirium tremens in the ICU, and we buried another drug addicted cousin in 2017,. My wife and I continue to witness a son and daughter-in-law who are co-enabling alcoholics ply their self-destructive trade. We have a toxic male nephew who clings to his guns and a most hateful philosophy disguised as Trump style politics, like his life depended upon them. One of our grandsons presently sits in a county jail for carrying a concealed weapon , resulting from a series of poor decisions arising from his use of pot and other substances since he was 10 years old. Most of my best friends from high school are deceased. I have already had three close male friends from my adulthood die young of brain cancer, and several others from heart disease. I can’t ignore this disease of the Spirit which has taken over our country.
Randy Olson (left-1955-2013) Dan Dietz (1955-1997)
A difficult but essential truth to contemplate and to perceive is that the ills of our society have created many of the conditions for our early demise. News in recent years has been dominated by references to the opioid epidemic, painkiller addiction, and heroin addiction as causal agents in early deaths. Environmental toxins, alcoholism, murder, mental illness, poor diets and exercise, and suicide are also major contributors to the upswing in mortality rates, These factors are a small part of the real story, especially for those people who I have known who have been struck down by it. 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 disease within the body of mankind.
While being an unconscious man, I have been a contributor to the overall relationship dysfunction within the world. I have been subjected to and contributed to the same family and cultural forces of oppression and repression, which contributes to crazy making communication and erratic behavior between all of us. Being a family man, I have also taken note of the mutual blame game that is continuously circulated which serves as justification for each individual holding onto their own version of our cultural disease. And I have found that most people do NOT appreciate feedback about this errant behavior.
If I wanted to make more ‘friends” and be accepted by groups of damaged people I certainly would not be offering this material as it is written. Instead, I would have presented positive affirmations, four minute meditations for success, or a three step enlightenment technique for transcendence, all to be performed in whatever spare time the practitioner can find. But that is NOT where the truth lies for me, and I now believe the same to be true for the rest of humanity, as well.
If I still have the reader’s interest, buckle up the seat belt, for we are in for quite a ride. Those who do not want to stay grounded in their own unconsciousness, but instead want to understand why they are not soaring upward into the new, unexplored dimensions of love, being and doing, will find value in this work. By the complete seeing of the old, the damaged, the diseased, the suffering, and the distraught, is the door of true insight opened to a new way of being in our minds, hearts, and in the world. To keep silent in the face of the injustice, ignorance, oppression, and collective darkness masquerading as the light within our culture is to continue to allow oneself and others to remain oppressed and spiritually diseased, and to compromise one’s own integrity and dignity.
To develop the capacity for insight requires a tremendous depth of desire to know one’s self in a different, more profound and holistic way. Overcoming a lifetime of suffering, ignorance, indifference towards and/or oppression by others, and repression of one’s emotional and spiritual nature can be a most difficult proposition. An inscription on a temple at Delphi stated: “Know thyself, and you will know the Universe and the Gods.” We must develop the strength of will to wrestle with our own demons, and angels, to successfully travel the path of transformation. Insight, or “knowing thyself” has been the path to the Gods since the mind of man first postulated the existence of a unique self, and of a God, and then began the establishing of the rules of engagement with those mental creations.
One of the earliest insights that I have made is a direct result of a science class that I attended in fourth grade. Mr Hill, our Principal and co-teacher of our class, was going to perform an experiment, and he wanted to teach the students about the power of observation. Each member of the class was to record everything that they observed onto a note pad, so as to completely describe what they witnessed.
Mr. Hill heated a portable electric stove, then grabbed with some insulated tongs a thin sheet of metal and set it onto the burner. The metal immediately began to distort in size, and became quite disfigured, and the metal no longer looked like it did before. I watched, yet I had no words to describe what it was that I had just witnessed. I had never seen anything like that before, and I was struck dumb by it. I saw two kids writing feverishly on either side of me, and in my need to be accepted, “fit in” and not look stupid, I looked at each of the two student’s writings, and saw how they described the event. I used their expressions to help me to create my own descriptions.
As a child, I saw how dependent that I was on other people to give a description about events that I did not have the words for. Someone else had the description of what I could not yet describe, so I used borrowed words to fill in the gap. Extrapolate this need to fit in and to belong to all collective gatherings of human life, including religion, politics, and society, and it is easily seen the potential foundation for shared learning, and its alter-ego, illusion and superstition, within all such bodies of experience. As an adult, I have seen how the mystery of life can sometimes get overrun by society’s need for order by establishing and maintaining a continuity of reality and a shared understanding of events between all of its members.
The description is never the actual event, yet those who did not have the experience, copy and worship the description, and overlook the event that may be still happening right under their noses. They have never developed the capacity and/or the willingness, to give their own unique description of an event, for they are either in fear of offering a different or contrary version of the event, fear that they might look stupid if they don’t agree with the herd, or they have never witnessed the event itself and are dependent upon others for their descriptions.
Education and indoctrination brings a measure of order to all of us. Yet it can also teach the student about other people’s perspectives on matters of individuality, self-expression, and the potential for a connection with a “power greater than our self”, while confusing and delaying the individual’s direct connection and link to his own higher truth and nature. We easily can become hypnotized by other people’s thoughts and attitudes. It becomes easy to mistakenly associate all other’s points of view as being our own, until we finally decide to break free from our own second-hand, culturally inculcated reality for the understanding of self, and other, and begin our awakening process.
Awakening is an interactive process, and it is encouraged and facilitated by the pain and suffering that we experience as human beings, while engaging with the so-called “real world”. Many Americans live in alternate universes, where pain and suffering are not directly dealt with, or are to be avoided at all costs. Immersion in fantasy and denial of our personal and collective responsibility towards the ills of this world also reigns supreme in major sections of our culture. This is fueled by addictions to media devices, diversions of our life force into entertainment and worship of TV and movie personalities, hypnosis by false religious and spiritual leaders, alcohol and drug addictions, and personal and sexual power abuses. To facilitate healing, we must reject the false leaders, hypnosis, hero-worshiping and idolatry, and we must become our own leaders, with awakened powers of understanding and compassion. All of the sleeping beauties, and the ugly ones with warts, will continue to sleep, until their nightmares become so frightening that they either have to wake up to the “kiss of the healing prince, or princess”, or die.
In this time when divisiveness seems to rule the United States, and when heartless terrorists, politicians, and unskilled family members victimize our most innocent of beings, be they human or animal, it can be difficult to feel the miracle of life that is constantly with us. Yet, to not have a more loving, peaceful, and spiritually guided experience is to live a life devoid of much of the greater meaning available to us as human beings. Without a collectively shared intention to honor each other’s dignity, and the dignity of ALL LIFE on our planet, oppression of our spirits and the continued destruction of our planet will remain the guiding forces dominating mankind.
What does the process of awakening look like, and how might I begin the journey? I now have my own life experience to refer to, having eschewed most other points of view that have been in conflict with the unfolding of my greater good. The process of awakening begins early for some, and later for other, and not at all for the most unconscious among us. For me, it has been a lifelong process, which began in my most unconscious of years as a young person.
Up until nine years of age, I did not like falling asleep, as sleep might open the door to yet more terrifying nightmares, which I was all too accustomed to. By this time, my dreams had finally began to evolve beyond the continuous nightmare phase that I was accustomed to, but uncertainty about their possibility of arising still prevailed within my mind. This was during a period of time when I slept very little, as I usually got to sleep no earlier than midnight, even though I my enforced bedtime was 8:00 PM.
In preparation for sleep, while lying in bed for all those hours, I would review the day every night, and see where I could have done things better, or said something a little differently. Somehow I had intuited that by improving my daytime behavior, my nighttime dream world might become more peaceful. And I had begun to have many unusual dreams, most of them which I quickly forgot. Yet at the age of nine, I had another amazing insight through the avenue of my dreams. To this day, its message still rings loud and clear in my mind, no matter how poorly, or successfully, that I may be applying its principles.
Here is THE DREAM:
The priest, having received his directive from “on high”, then returned to his village along the lake in the high mountain region. He gathered all of the villagers together, and informed them that they were to take every golden figurine, every sacred symbol that they owned, and they were to throw them all into the lake, and never to think about them again. Then, he told each villager that they must each go into their own home, and face the “evil one” without any protection or care from any of their gods or their symbols of the sacred.
Lake Titicaca Peru-Bolivia-South-America
The priest then returned to his own home, having tossed all of his own idols and treasures into the deep blue lake. He stripped himself bare of all clothing, and then began to summon the forces of the dark. He became surrounded by a fog, and as he lifted his hands, sparks started flying out of his fingertips at the unknown force of darkness that lay just beyond his visual field, still hidden beyond the boundaries of the fog. The priest refocused his energy into his arms, and hands, and the sparks grew into a steady energy field, extending from his body, his heart, and his spirit, towards his unknown adversary. He was determined to overcome this force, this dark energy, and he redoubled his efforts. The priest’s heart began to race out of control, he began to sweat profusely, and a growing sense of fear and dread began to take hold of his entire being, as he finally understood that his energy could not last forever. Yes, for him to continue this battle, he must sacrifice all of his life force. Yet, he felt that he had no choice but to keep engaging the enemy, to finally see the face of the force that had terrorized his village since time began. He desperately strained and stretched to see the object of his fear and disdain, even as the ebbing energy field flowing from his fingertips continued to cut through the fog. Suddenly, a face began materializing before his faltering gaze. As he collapsed to the floor, almost drained of all life, he could no longer fight an undeniable truth– the face of the evil one might be his own!
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. – –Anaïs Nin
This insightful dream says it all, and even the unimaginative among us cannot miss out on the unmistakable message that is contained within it. Projection is a name given by psychologists to this experience, where we finally realized that the conscious world that we feared, the conscious world in which we created idols and gods, and self-protective psychological mechanisms, to protect us from the perceived or potential evil, was actually a world that we created through our own ignorance, both collectively, and individually. This manifests in all of the horrors that we witness on the world stage daily, and in all of the family and cultural dysfunction under which we were raised. We are all wounded by this process, and rather than find a way to heal from it, we ignorantly arm ourselves against further assaults from others, even though we are part of the attack against our own self in the first place.
Oh shadow boxer of evil, when will you ever tire? Becoming co-champions of a nightmare world creates conditions which are perpetually dire!
Stop breathing life into those illusions will all those mental pugilist blows, and await the peaceful messages from the only One who All Knows!
A most hurtful way that human beings acting out of their own wounded natures project their negativity is by continuing the attacks against those that they have already hurt. It is just heartbreaking to be a witness to, or to be on the receiving end of, attacks against our souls and being by those who have already hurt us, and who cannot or will not acknowledge their own culpability. The victim is made wrong for having feelings, and for expressing their anger, fear, distress, or heartbreak at having been attacked, either in the past, the present, or both. Because the perpetrator does not want to face his own bad attitudes and behavior, he lashes out, and makes wrong, those who attempt to speak up for their own life, and rights. If all cannot accept responsibility for wayward thoughts and actions, healing and forgiveness, whatever those words may point to, remains an impossibility.
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. 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, the Hispanics, the Immigrants, 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.
In my junior year in high school, I was required to keep a daily journal, and record my insights into myself for a writing class. The problem was that I had no insight, at least as far as being able to put into words what the interior nature of my mind and life looked like.I did not spend a lot of time giving descriptions to events happening around me, and, instead, listened to others as they described their own experiences, which I either accepted and supported or rejected and judged against. But for me to give a description of the interior dimensions of my own being seemed an impossible task. I had to submit something, and in my desperation to get a decent grade i went to a bookstore, to find a book to help me to ‘look at myself’.
Hugh Prather had written a book called ‘Notes To Myself’, and I stumbled upon it, and bought it. I was so empty of complete statements about myself and my life that I copied statements from Hugh’s book, and tried to ‘personalize’ them so that it would not be obvious that I had copied his work. I got my passing grade, felt very relieved, and continued on my awkward, highly dysfunctional path through high school. I was near the top of my class near graduation time, yet I was completely out of touch with the majority of my classmates, as well as with myself. I had hoped that to finally graduate from high school might change, if not end, much of my social anxiety and sense of disconnect. Of course this could not be further from the truth. When I entered my freshman year at the University of Portland in 1973, I was lost again, and I had no internal maps to guide me through the complexities of college life.The use of pot, alcohol, and relationships with emotionally diseased people continued in earnest, obscuring any clear vision of my goals, and I constructed many self-destructive road blocks that impeded all progress. I was to walk away from a full-ride scholarship with the US Air Force due to my own disease of the Spirit.
Looking back, this verbal and emotional disconnect would have been great stuff to write about in the high school class, but I was living a lie, without having the words to even describe it, and the telling of the truth to others, let alone to myself, would force me into changes that I could not embrace or consider as possibilities. The absence of personal honesty and insight, and to be verbal around it, and the inability to communicate my distress with others doomed me to a deteriorating life experience. This limited my choices so much that many days, and years, I felt trapped in a prison, with interior windows sometimes only opening to Hell. I did not even have an adequate description to communicate my hell to others, so this is the secret behind the motivation for many mysterious suicides. ..
I undertook a crash course in insight, when In April of 1984, I placed myself in the Care Unit for alcoholic recovery at Portland’s Lovejoy Hospital for a month. My initial intention was to maintain my job with the U.S. Postal Service, as well as, maybe, stay sober for a little while. I was assigned a female Christian counselor named Claire, who was my guide while residing in this facility. During an interview with my parents, Claire was to note that my father had poor boundaries, and was attempting to live his life through me. Conversely, I was to find, I had unconsciously and unintentionally patterned myself after my father, by both adopting and then rejecting my father’s mode of understanding as my own.
Claire was to try to steer me towards Jesus Christ as some sort of new container image for my hopes for healing, but that image was not to serve me well. The corrupted theology and philosophy of present day Christianity was a total turn off for me. The lifelong struggle to find the self that could be the ever expanding container for my hopes and dreams for the future, and for my healing in the present, was not to be found in white man’s Jesus, my father, my culture, or myself, The journey of self discovery was not to end here. The question remained:
Just who in the hell, or the heaven, am I?
While I was in the Care Unit, a requirement was to keep a daily journal, and to document our “internal weather” while undergoing reorientation into the new life of sobriety. I remained quite uncomfortable recording my interior universe. Little had changed within me since high school in regards to becoming honest with myself, and finding any hidden gems to discover, and write about. I found that i could write a lot if what I wrote had the intention of pleasing others ,especially if they were female, or if I wrote poetry.. And, if I could make somebody else wrong for what they were, and cast myself as the VICTIM, or, more regularly for me, if I accepted full responsibility for the mistakes of others, and thus cast myself as the AGGRESSOR, I could also find something to write about
Up to this time, I had never written a poem, nor had any inclination to do so. I found that in the writing of poetry, I could start to capture my unskilled attitudes, anguish and isolation in verbal form. Through my new found willingness to write about my suffering, I created two poems about the pain and suffering that had led up to my placement in the Care Unit. These poems are from the hand, and heart, of a toxic man who was in the initial stages of awakening.
PAIN
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 sense of 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.
Part II
Yes, 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?
There is no mystery to me as to why some people choose suicide, continued ignorance, or continued addictions over recovery. I made that same choice several times. The potential for recovery is only that, a potential, unless one develops a conscious continuous intention to break free from the tight grip of grief, loss, and heartbreak, and seek for a new container for experience. Pain, and suffering, without any hope for healing, brings a need to escape through addictions, or through unskilled actions and expressions including hatred, irrational anger, despair, depression, loneliness, and suicidal ideation. My stay in the Care Unit had placed me in conscious contact with my “lower powers”, while giving some hope that there might be a “higher power” lurking around that might be of assistance to me.
Every day my desire for PEACE was acknowledged, all the while attending the daily groups, and counseling sessions. I attempted to practice the 12 steps of AA, for alcoholic recovery, which demands insight, and rigorous honesty. My chances for healing were still much less than average, due to fundamental flaws in the basic makeup of my personal consciousness, and awareness. A lifetime of oppression, insanity, and repression of spirit, does not just magically disappear because others, or even myself, thinks that it might be a good idea. This first foray into intensive recovery from addiction was not to be a success for me. The three year period following the relapse became a most challenging, and at times horrifying period of my life, and I was to slip into a phase of life where my life system experienced catastrophic failure. Yet it was through this failure that the light of understanding redirected me to new paths of understanding.
To follow new paths of consciousness means to become aware as a human being, become open to new ways of seeing and doing, and listen to the heart, and to the heart of others, as we travel these uncertain paths of life that lay before us. We must become conscious, and maintain the conditions for healing, to continue on an awakening path. I must make verbal, as best that I can, that which defies description, no matter where those revelations place me on the spectrum of human energy. And, I must continue to accept personal responsibility for all of my thoughts, words, and actions, while supporting others to do the same. We must try to walk together, or I will die alone.
Recently, In January of 2017, I had further insight around my relationship with my parents, and my father. I took my father to the doctor, and my number one concern, next to my dying father’s needs, was that my father was going to outlive me. Why would such a concern erupt within my own mind? The stress of providing care for a moderately demented older man had exacted quite the toll, even though it also provided great spiritual benefits to me. My father was quite passive and gentle the last several years of his life, in contrast to his earlier years. But the historical momentum established through my sixty-two years of relationship with him just did not magically end or transform itself, and I continued to feel some internal challenges to my equanimity.
My relationship with my father had created much of the irregularities in the foundation for my own vision of life and of love, especially in my youth. My father showed to me, in a perfect way, what a potential end point looks like from a lifetime lacking in true collaboration and emotional integrity while sharing life force with others. My father achieved many of his goals in life, yet at what cost did they come to him, and to the people who he may have influenced and over which he exerted control? And, what is the cost to a society that blindly plows forward while supporting ideals that threaten the dignity of others, and do not conform to the development of all of its citizen’s highest nature, and truth?
I saw how my own father’s ignorance and needs early in my childhood negatively impacted my own mind’s formation. There was a revelation within me that as a result of my father’s sometimes toxic influence in my life, I had unwittingly and unconsciously created fundamental internal feedback mechanisms that contributed to my personal dysfunction, and my unskilled interactions with our world. 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 conflicted, twisted values. A manifestation of this was that my father had difficulty, in times of great stress, in recognizing the intrinsic value of all life, including my baby self, and my essence as a young boy.
Most of what I know about myself, and my reactions to the world, was created by my fundamental relationship with my parents. My sense of self in my early years revolved around internalizing many of my parents’ attitudes. I was acutely aware of what my mother and father expected from me, what I could or could not give back to them to attempt to please them, and my defense mechanisms for managing the fallout when I failed to please them. Beginning early in my life, I also developed the desire to protect them and myself from the results of the conflict that arose in our house, either when I made yet another mistake, or when father overreacted to any situation that brought a sense of fear or threat into the home environment. I developed a need to balance whatever energy was being over expressed at any particular moment, and I was very unskilled at those kind of efforts. I learned the power of the lie to deflect negative attention from myself. But the biggest revelation was that I had internalized and normalized two incomplete creations, or tricksters as I now call them, of who I thought my father and mother were, which were to become sources of self-talk and feedback for me as a child, and then as an unconscious adult.
But a most compelling and controlling dark agenda that I had either created or inherited revolved around my self worth. Through the history of my relationship with my parents while very young, in addition to whatever fundamental and universal factors that are innate through being alive and aware in human consciousness, I created two BLACK HOLES in my developing mind.
A black hole is a region of space/time exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—including particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform space/time to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event. Within the human psyche, I have witnessed the existence of consciousness “black holes”, or singularity points, and two dark assumptions became the source of much of my own suffering.
We, as a human race, have a predisposition towards creating “black hole events” where no light (love, compassion, empathy, healing thoughts) escapes from our consciousness. These events occur especially during times of collective distress including mass hypnosis and the resultant mob mind activity that leads to wars, genocide, racism, xenophobia, hysteria and fear. These also occur as a result of traumatic injuries to ourselves, as a result of the incomplete responses to the capricious actions of others and the vicissitudes of life.
We, as individuals, have a real talent for creating black hole events within our personal worlds, as well. Our concepts of time and space certainly get distorted, as present day events occurring in our lives get distorted within our minds by traumatic events of our past, or black holes of past influence through which the light of our ever unfolding “present moment of life” gets sucked into the darkness of a singularity point of a traumatic event from our past. I remained tethered to a past that never was through this very process.
Our minds are the generators of consciousness, which simply stated, means our brains generate internal feedback, develop and support our own internal self-concept, create internal imagery associated with our understanding of the “outer world” and support our verbal relationships with and actions towards all others. We attempt to match the “outer reality” by forming internal verbal and emotional linkages within ourselves, and this helps us to stay relevant and abiding within some measure of resonance and continuity with our perceived external universe or community that we presently share with others.
This light that we internally emit, and eventually share with our worlds either through action or verbal expression, is influenced dramatically by our own secret, internal agendas, whether we are conscious of those agendas, or not. While these agendas remain unconscious, they become the equivalent to our own internal black holes. All streams of consciousness that our minds and hearts attempt to express become trapped in the swirling vortices of these powerful forces, and these internal black holes continue to influence virtually every aspect of our lives. And, if not dealt with consciously and carefully, these black holes will eventually draw all of our internal light into them, and we become unwitting agents of our own internal darkness.
To repress or deny these internal forces is to continue to feed them. As we get in touch with our fears, angers, hatreds, or whatever name for manifesting darkness that we might give to them, it is important to realize that these are great forces, and once they are harnessed, NOT REPRESSED OR DENIED, these black holes will continue to keep us connected to the real world, and, as we transmute their energy, the light within us uses these once dark energies for the good of ourselves, and for all mankind.
It was around these cores that the whole of my consciousness swirled around, as if drawn and disfigured by two distinct, though interconnected, loci of negative influence. These dark masses of influence interacted with my internalized representations of my parents, and I now posit that these forces are the precursors to all manners and types of mental illness, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and multiple personality disorder.
My two major black holes within my own internal universe created powerful forces of control, which contributed to my sense of powerlessness, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and isolation. Black hole number one is that my voice will never be heard, and because my voice has not been heard, I have no value. Insight number two was that I must be alone in this universe, with only death awaiting me. Insight finally reveals that these two are actually connected, and are a direct result of failure to be fully integrated as a complete, healthy human being. This formative consciousness is certainly not the foundation for a healthy integration into the world.
These two vortexes drew all of my internal light towards themselves, and by the time that those internal “singularity points” worked their dark magic to their fullness, I actually flirted with the end of my own life. Such is the way these black hole events can influence and control our lives, making peace of mind and positive, loving connections with others virtually impossible.
The black holes may remain, even after making profound spiritual and emotional changes. Their dark influence, however, continues to recede, once there is a committed intention to stay connected with insight and spiritual healing, where all true light comes from. As I strive to stay balanced internally, so shall my walk through the rest of my life remain balanced, as well. Insight keeps these forces balanced internally, so that the spirit of wholeness within us can utilize our energy in more sane and mutually beneficial ways.
And, for more than one of us, these black holes are eventually transformed into “white holes”, where no darkness can escape, and all of our experience becomes enlightened. We can’t short-circuit this process, by just substituting the pleasant-sounding “spiritual froth ” produced by other great spiritual thinkers, and trying to layer those messages over our unexamined inner universe. Well meaning advocates of this process become unwitting contributors to the repression, and oppression, of the Human Spirit. It is only after we do the real inner work, that these teachers can assume their rightful position in our consciousness, as fellow travelers on the path to Truth, which has no final destination. Our most profound words and thoughts only present the illusion of a “final resting place”, when, in fact, truth is eternally unfolding into each moment as a brand new, unique manifestation.
I have my moments with the “white holes”, and I continue to strive for experiencing this phenomenon with both increased frequency and intensity. A path of insight and meditation is quite helpful, and association with others who share in this new reality has been shown to produce almost miraculous results. If this experience is to become our real new reality, then there is work to do! Please, let us not rest on another person’s “spiritual laurels”, for by this culturally and religiously ingrained process we will be delayed in finding our True Passion.
After the death of my father in 2017, I had the privilege and challenge of reading and sorting through a lifetime worth of writings and papers from my parents, and from myself. After reading some of my mother’s personal writings, I was struck by the pain and suffering that she experienced remaining married to my father. He was not a person with the soft touch, when it came to communicating with those that he loved, especially during challenging/difficult periods of life. He was what those in the field of recovery refer to as a “dry drunk”. He was a poor listener, and he could be opinionated, judgemental, angry, obnoxious, overly competitive, and hurtful. He was a member of a huge class of human beings now known as toxic males, and his behavior was to become a major influence for my own choices for how I was to present myself to the world
With the death of my father, it ended the era of subservience to his needs, and the need to protect my mother from my perception of his aggression towards her. It also ended the era of incomplete grieving for my own mother’s death, as I had to immediately support my mentally deteriorating father when mother died, and I had never completely worked through the grieving process. I was finally an “orphan”, and all of the entanglements that kept me wound around their lives were now physically removed. With my fathers’ spirit no longer overshadowing my own life, I was allowed to develop more fully into whatever, or whoever I am.
For me this was an extraordinary release, because the formation of my sense of self was influenced by parental bonding issues just after birth, and through my first 4-5 years. Being placed on “formula” right after birth, and being placed in a chilly car in the garage at night so that my father could sleep better (I was just another “damned crying baby”) left me as a young being feeling abandoned, and lonely, from the beginning. Though I loved my parents, I certainly did not want to grow up and be like them, and inflict this pain on innocent children. Yet, I was not able to offer to my developing self a viable alternative to being like my father, being extremely limited creatively, and my resultant dull, though at times insightful, personality reflected that darkness. Coping mechanisms such as passive/aggressive behavior became my normal response to the daily challenges of life. Toxic masculinity, or, more precisely, an unskilled capacity to relate to people in a peaceful and mutually accepting manner, was to become a defining characteristic of my life.
I came to perceive the collective impact of male unconsciousness upon my individual existence, with some insight into my own father’s sometimes toxic involvement in my own mind’s formation. I saw that the two tricksters roaming through the inner recesses of my heart and soul gave me limited guidance and kept me from being lonely as a young being, yet kept me from developing into my greater good as an independent, free human being.
In our world, there are countless examples of “self organizing systems”, and all creatures, and the minds of those creatures, are examples of that miracle in action. Our bodies appear to be primarily organized through the pattern created by the history of the human species, and it’s interactions with its earthly environment. Our DNA appears to carry that pattern within our very cells.
Our minds also have a self-organizing principle, as it organizes itself into our unique personal sense of being. The activity of self-organization in consciousness is the greatest mystery of life. The greatest story that I have read around this mysterious process is that which was recounted about the life of Helen Keller. As a young person, she had lost her sight and hearing, and she could not develop the capacity to communicate. As a mute, she appeared to be living a basic life characteristic of many intelligent animals. but not having the ability to communicate with her world. When her teacher was finally able to show her that the letters W A T E R, represented both the substance that she drank, and that which she was bathed in, she had an insight, or a revelation. And, according to Helen, the perception of the word water, as associated with the physical experience of water, initiated her own self awareness. Literally, Helen was birthed as an ego as a direct result of understanding this one word WATER in her mind. Of course Helen went on to become a beloved author, political activist, and lecturer.
Parents are always quite pleased when their children speak their first words, and they then know that they have a viable, healthy child. Usually, the first word is “Mom”, but it can be others. The initial words become the initial organizing energy around which the developing being initiates the launch sequence into consciousness itself. In biblical terms, the word becomes flesh, and dwells among us. It is a mystery of why and how this process actually works, and neuroscientists continue to study the brain, and the human mind, as they attempt the impossible, to locate the physical source of our sense of self.
Sociologists and psychologists have found that healthy integration of self revolves around how well the organism feels accepted by, and connected to the environment that the young person travels through. Thus, happier senses of self arise, and are supported, by myriads of “successful” interactions with its social and physical environment and, giving positive, life affirming names to those experiences. First and foremost is the beings’ acceptance and integration into the primary family cell, or group. If we do not get the requisite positive feedback early on, we face tremendous odds against forming a happy, well-adjusted self organizing principle, or ego.
My first 31 years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed by the conspiracy of silence created by my subservience to a damaged image of self, and other. My own true nature had been masked over, or silenced, through that process. A lifetime of oppression of myself and the unconscious repression of my feeling, loving nature had brought to me a series of near fatal illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity continued to live, move, and have its being enshrined within my own heart and soul. I saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions remain burdened by their own limitations of understanding and intelligence.. I saw that my own suffering was shared by most of the other people that I knew. I saw that those who still suffer have little energy to provide emotional support for others who still suffer, as well.
There is so much suffering in the world, and eventually all members of humanity share in its universally humbling, painful reality. Human suffering and evil are two spiritually destructive forces that humanity has dealt with each moment of its existence. Failure to address these issues directly and consciously only leads to more suffering, and enhances the collective perception of the presence and growth of evil in our world. Many causes of suffering are preventable, however, and they have their origins within broken, unhealed minds of men unwilling to embrace the possibility of change. It is the resistance to change and evolution that is the origin of many forms of suffering and the proliferation of evil.
Suffering may arise through an action of intentional hostility, or it may arise spontaneously as a reaction to the vicissitudes of life. Suffering may arise from an inability to do what is right. Suffering may arise through incurable diseases of the body, or of the mind. Suffering may arise through the trauma of witnessing horrific acts of violence. Suffering may arise from the inability to reconcile the belief in God with one’s own grief and loss. Suffering may arise from becoming addicted to substances that were designed to take our pain away. Suffering may arise from the perceived inability to speak one’s truth and to have one’s voice heard in the face of the oppressive powers of the day. Suffering may also arise from contemplating the continuation of our daily pains into a distant, unknown future.
The suffering from my past provided the foundational material for my exploration into human suffering. The intention behind the documentation of my life experience in this book is to provide an example for others, and to be a representative voice for those who either choose to, or who cannot speak up for themselves. What I have observed is quite subjective, and the population that I have witnessed is fairly small, compared to the whole of the population that has been impacted by our cultural disease. I offer my apologies in advance to any widow or family member who might be offended by what appears to be judgmental or incomplete representation of the facts, but whatever facts are presented are backed up by my real life experiences..
Speaking out against the injustices of the world, and attempting to be inclusive of all those who suffer is an act of compassion, empathy, and spiritual justice. But, finding one’s courage to speak out brings the risk that the speaker with be seen as yet another voice of oppression against those already burdened by their own unique version of suffering, and who have not yet claimed their own personal power and responsibility. Wisdom dictates that I avoid becoming the voice for a resentment, injustice, or grievance of others, unless I have already experienced the difficult truth behind their pain. Because I have lived a life inclusive of intense pain and suffering, I know this path intimately, having nearly sacrificed my life at thirty years of age to the cumulative effects of the disease of toxic masculinity.
There is a direct connection between what unfolded in my personal life while being a suicidal, masculine energy dominated unconscious man and alcoholic, and the patriarchal evil that is unfolding in our world today. Our world remains intoxicated by its masculine hubris, greed, insensitivity, and the continuing domination and subjugation of all feminine energy, including our Mother Earth. And, the world is in the midst of its own collective march towards suicide, should ignorance, greed, and Trump style politics and economics predominate into the future.
Many men have lost their careers, and could not recover from that loss. 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 sexually or physically abused in their youth, 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 traumatized war veterans who suffered immensely, and could not recover from that. Some were just waiting for a better day, and when it never appeared, they could not recover from that. Some were lonely and depressed, and they could not recover from that. Some had profound mental illness, and they could not recover from that. Some had a profound need to speak up around their own pain, and when they could not find a loving ear with the capacity to listen, they could not recover from that.
What happens to a culture dominated by the oppressive effects of toxic men? What happens to a society that remains out of balance within itself? What happens to a civilization when women are oppressed, and their holistic wisdom, is neglected in favor of self serving patriarchal ideology? What happens to a man defeated by the dark energy of unhealed masculinity? As we witness our families, watch the news and read the newspaper, we can see the tragic answer.
Men, and women, tend to clamor for politicians, economic, and religious leaders who do not challenge them, and who continue to support them in their ignorance. The election of our 45 th POTU$ is the perfect example, and is a symbol for all of the ills of our culture. To the extent that the men within our culture practice his unholy principles of engagement with the world and the women and men within it, they also share in his disease of mind, body, and spirit. Men seek to run in packs with others who also share in their diseases of the spirit, and they remain a most powerful, deadly force to be reckoned with.
And, insanity continues to expand and explode all around us, with lies being propagated by our spiritual and political leaders becoming accepted by the naive. Mass murders, early deaths, suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, abuses of woman and children, extinction of species, destruction of our ecology, and all of the damaged relationships that fail to find healing will continue to predominate within the collective mind of mankind until we make conscious contact with rationality, love, and sanity…
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
—– James Baldwin
Trump looking just OK?
The effects of toxic masculinity, and its ugly spawn, toxic religion, toxic politics, and toxic capitalism, is the continued repression of human emotion, the feminine, and the sublime possibilities for existence. Over many centuries, men have built mutual oppression right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. Toxic masculinity values and principles underpin much of the Common Knowledge Game (CKG), which is the modern name for the phenomenon of socialized understanding of self and the other. The following are guiding energies that tend to shape men’s thoughts and actions created through the CKG of understanding in today’s America.
- Unconscious, harsh and inaccurate self and other judgement, with resultant poor self-esteem inculcated into boys from birth by our wayward fathers, religions, and cultures.
- Remaining ignorant or fearful of our own feelings, including anger and grief, or expressing them unskillfully, We have been trained to ignore or to hide from our own feelings
- Letting stress go on unabated in our lives, without challenging its points of origin
- Loss of emotional and physical safety in home, school or work environments
- Not communicating honestly with others, while carrying the painful feeling of not being heard or appreciated,
- Eschewing deep and meaningful relationships with others,
- Excessive competitiveness with others while engaging with greed, trying to “keep up with the Jones’ “,
- Attempting to prove self-worth in environments where self, and others’, worth is disrespected, thus trying to fit in where we really don’t belong,
- People pleasing, at the expense of our personal integrity and truth.
- Not speaking up for ourselves or for others that are oppressed for fear of being marginalized,or further victimized
- Over immersion in entertainment, binge watching of television, obsessive video game playing, and excess reliance upon Snapchat, Facebook, or other social media platforms for social awareness and connection
- Excessive eating and/or eating excessive sugar, salt, or processed foods
- Not exercising, not hiking in Nature and thus staying away from its healing balm
- Excessive drinking of alcohol, use of recreational drugs to the point of habituation (including marijuana),
- Smoking and chewing tobacco, all the while knowing that behavior is killing us
- Using sex as a way to emotionally hide or escape, or to control or manipulate others, We are selfish with our sexuality.
- Workaholic behavior, and forgetting how to laugh and play well with others. Because of our lack of prosperity, employers abuse our work ethic to encourage us to become workaholics, which ends up keeping us out of the connecting, healing currents of friendships and family relationships.
In our efforts to meet the needs for economic security, continue our family line, and meet our sexual needs, we often make sacrifices that diminish our health, our sense of well-being, our community connections, and our personal integrity.
Oh marionettes dancing image upon the ATM screen of the world’s mind, with its economic beliefs in full control, what freedom do you expect to find?
Release yourself from those controlling, spiritually binding strings, to prepare your heart for the healing wisdom that only my Intelligence brings!
Toxic men have their gun in one hand, their penis in the other hand, and no room for a bible, let alone understanding of its real message.
The primary contributor to the continuing cultural disease and dysfunction is men’s unwillingness to make fundamental changes in attitudes and behavior. White male privilege, patriarchy, and toxic masculinity are three useful terms denoting the entrenched, institutionalized nature of our dysfunction, which is a major disease of the human spirit. This disease has its deadly flames fanned by our cultural denial of a deadly truth, which is the foundation for the conspiracy of silence. Our unskilled male behavior collectively remains a national disgrace, as we continue to dishonor each other, our animal brothers and sisters, the environment, and our planet Earth.
Men are still predominantly in control, and continue to skew the narrative away from the truth that MEN’S ATTITUDES ARE THE PROBLEM. Our ideas for addressing the problems of gun violence, addiction, greed, and sexism tend to avoid obvious, rational solutions, because we don’t want to face ourselves. And, failure to face ourselves will lead to the same self-destructive end that eventually happens to all humans and their attempts at maintaining civilization.
A prime example is the NRA and the corrupted politicians who do not act to reduce the proliferation of automatic weapons. These allied forces are sponsors of national terrorism. Just how many automatic weapons does it take to make America’s gun owners feel safe? It is just that many weapons that it takes to make America unhealthy, insane, fearful, and outside of the picture of potential national healing. Gun violence directly stems from a national mental illness, and guns are never the proper medication to alleviate the symptoms. One automatic weapon is too many, and 300,000,000 is never enough, so goes the divided, self-destructive collective mind of America.
There Is Something Fundamental Here
