First Book ( for Melinda)-Never Published-Penetrating The Conspiracy Of Silence, or How I Lived Beyond My Expiration Date–Part One Latest Revision: July 17, 2018

PART ONE:  INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Conspiracy of Silence

—-(definition from Wikipedia) An agreement, either formal or tacit, between two or more parties not to discuss some matter nor to reveal any information concerning it, especially in order to avoid blame, embarrassment, or other discomfort.

“Our lives begin to end, the moment that we become silent about things that matter”

—-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Don’t speak, unless you can improve upon the silence.

—-Quaker Proverb

Choose wisely, oh mankind, the secrets that we keep

For by our choices, we may awaken, or just die asleep

—-Bruce Paullin

“If you really, really knew me, you wouldn’t love me”

—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.

INTRODUCTION

In 1995, my grandmother, Beatrice Henry, was hospitalized after becoming extremely ill.  She was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma, and given a prognosis indicating a short period of time left for her to live.  The oncologist had suggested to the family that she would respond positively to one round of chemotherapy, to “reduce pain and suffering”.  Well, the toxins released by that therapy overpowered her kidneys, and sent her into a form of systemic toxicity, causing temporary loss of consciousness, and accelerating her physical deterioration.  My wife Sharon and I asked to have my grandmother stay with us during her dying times, as there was no way that I wanted my grandmother to die in a hospital or care facility.  While staying with us, she gradually regained her consciousness and awareness, and was able to walk short distances again, but the treatment was quite the setback for her.  One day, one of her three granddaughters, Carla, brought her newborn son, Kodiak, over for grandma to see.  He was the typical boy baby, healthy and happy, and full of potential.  Yet my grandmother, who was still bedridden at the time, in a most uncharacteristic manner, proclaimed:

“My, Carla, what a homely baby that you have!”

Carla, Sharon and I were all stunned, and surprised.  My grandmother loved babies, and always treasured each and every one, yet this response came from a place within her that we did not know or recognize.  Later, after her kidneys started functioning again, she regained her clarity, her mobility, and her normal sense of self.  She was to see Kodiak again two weeks later, and the second time stated:

“My, what a handsome baby boy Kodiak is.  Carla, you must be a very proud mother!”

This book, which is my only creative baby, may be greeted with this same initial negative response by those who will read it.  Those who have been made toxic through cultural conditioning, indifference or judgement will only be able to see that my story is quite HOMELY, and it will repel all but the most curious, courageous and loving of readers.  But, like my cousin Kodiak, this story is full of potential, and points to a healthy and happy state of being, once the “ugliness” is presented and acknowledged.  My search for Truth, with the subsequent delivery of my spiritual “baby” is nothing like anything that the reader has ever seen before.  It will be difficult to assess its value and relevance, until it has “an opportunity to grow on the reader”, and the toxicity that the story stirs up is filtered out.  The story will not have universal appeal, yet, to me, it is my only child, and as such it remains a “handsome baby boy”, full of life, love, and the potential for healing.

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 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 had nothing to say, or what I had to say had little or no value.

But, there has been other messages occasionally bubbling up within my consciousness that has indicated otherwise, and this work is the culmination of my attempt to honor all of those “whispers of the Spirit”, which have demanded that I deliver their 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, musician, or even the voice of the 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.  This work is the culmination of my own efforts in that direction.

In your own experience, if you have never dealt directly with a mentally ill family member, drug addict or alcoholic, or had a desire to search for a new understanding and/or direction for your own life, this story may carry little meaning and have no value for you.  When you watch the news, and witness all of the dysfunction of our world, if you are a disinterested, disconnected spectator, your emotions will not become engaged, nor will you be moved to action.  The intention to heal can carry almost anyone to their own unique “promised land” of recovery, but without that intention, all hope for healing is lost.  As I was finally to learn, intention is the very slingshot which launches our will into the human universe, and the universe ALWAYS returns back to us the energy that we have given, often times in the most unexpected of ways.  Learning to fine tune those intentions for healthier outcomes is akin to the preparation for prayer, a process that is a rather mysterious, yet a completely natural form of energy exchange between all manifestations of life.

It has been said by friends and family that I have created quite the unique life experience for myself, though it certainly was not newsworthy or extraordinary in any obvious ways.  I believe that the best part of the  story lies in my lessons learned from my life, rather than the details about my family and my personal history, yet much of my personal truth has been derived through my movement through family and history..  There also is a direct connection between what unfolded in my life while being a masculine energy dominated addict, alcoholic, and mentally ill human being, and the patriarchy that is unfolding in our world today. In some cases, I will allow the reader to draw their own conclusions about our culture’s dangerous trends, but in the following story it was unavoidable for me not to point out some of the more obvious threats to sanity and safety.

Life was never an easy journey for me, and had it not been for some deep need to understand my dysfunctional process, and try to find the underlying truth amid my personal chaos, I would have passed away long ago.  Some wounds are so deep, and primal, that just pasting new names onto aspects of the disease are not enough. Names are only a convenience for communication, and are never comprehensive and inclusive enough to completely reveal the true natures of what they were created for in our minds to represent in the first place.  Naming is the way that our consciousness weighs and measures new forms of life, ideas and experiences, in the attempt to insert the unknown and the mysterious into a present context for understanding.  Naming tends to attach a dynamic process to a fixed point in time and space, and thus lodges it in the past.

But, the act of creating stories and context, and just being conversational about the details of life does not dislodge the detritus from our field of consciousness. The Devil is in the details, figuratively speaking, and if our need is for change, we need to find a way to see under the vast matrix of details that only float on the surface on the mind .  We who still choose to name processes and create stories must also have personally explored and experienced the movements through consciousness, and found the way to the silence at the foundation of our being.  Otherwise, the process of naming, and the resulting stories that arise from naming, are just more intellectual knowledge and entertainment for a superficial mind, and will not pry open the healing doors to insight and wisdom.  The intellectual and the atheist, though possessing finely tuned minds, can never explore the mystery, and the depth, of the human soul, and comprehend that we all have a connection with Infinity.  The willing explorer of the new paths of consciousness or the mystic both have access to the limitless territory of the Spirit, and will soar to new heights and see the sights rarely seen by the rest of mankind.

I did not develop verbal abilities until relatively late in my childhood  My sister reports that she spoke for me until I developed the capacity, or  inclination, to speak.  Once I started talking (close to age 4) I proved that I had the capacity for speech, and A LOT OF IT.  My father wondered, at times, if I would ever shut up.  I  proved to be quite precocious, once I engaged my verbal skills.  I remember that I would start talking about things that were around me, giving new information that my parents had no knowledge about.  My parents thought that there was no way for me to know anything about what I was spouting off about, so I was mostly ignored.  But I can remember how good it felt to be talking, and sharing the excitement of the magic of words exploding in my mind!

I intuited quite early that built-in to the very fabric of words is an access to imagination and knowledge beyond the word, or sequence of words, spoken.  Looking back now, I can see also the incredible capacity of the human mind to represent the real world with words and internal imagery, as well as to create false realities while remaining utterly convinced of their “truth”, even in the face of non-supporting facts.  This book touches extensively upon the many false realities, that I, as an individual person, and as a collective, acculturated  human being was subjected to and unconsciously adapted to throughout the course of my life.

From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic and drug addict, and mentally ill human being, I lost all 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.  And while we contemplated our own end, we witnessed a world in the midst of its own collective march towards suicide.

Crippled Inside, by John Lennon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otwuTetDSUs

A spiritual awakening process beginning in 1987 was the start of my own exit from the chaotic mindset that characterized my life up to that point.  Since 1987,  I have chosen to live life more fully, with good health, happiness and with almost continuous sobriety.  My own living, dynamic story had to become forefront in my mind, and having examined my life to its deepest core, I could see what the source of my own spiritual disease and despair was.  And, I finally found a way to describe the foundational dynamics of both personal and collective consciousness that contributed to my disease, and to all of our suffering.

The following book is a mantle woven together by the words and stories that I have chosen to represent 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 parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and countless generations past.  I honor those who have sacrificed their lives to their 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.

This is not solely a self-help or pop psychology/spirituality book.  I will not be appealing to the ego, nor will I explicitly attempt to make anybody feel good about life, and their prospects for economic, social, or spiritual success.  I am not seeking money, respect or adoration from the reader.  I am not engaged in any people-pleasing need, or out of any passive-aggressive need to hurt the world, without letting the world know why I was angry or distressed with it in the first place.  All that I ask for is the suspension of judgement for a few hours. and the treatment of this manuscript like it is a meditation on life.  Tune into your heart, and attempt to listen to what has been written here, and see if compassion, insight, and wisdom can reveal itself, as I attempt to reveal my own life.  I had to walk through many miles of underbrush, stickers, thorny bushes, weeds, stinging nettles, and mud to get to my mountain top, so be prepared for an uneven journey to the place in the book where the greatest, most far-reaching views are finally presented.  Life is sometimes like the childhood game of Chutes and Ladders, so I will not be expounding solely from upon neither the spiritual mountaintops of peace and love for all beings, nor from the darkened valleys of suffering and death.

In this book, I address our personal and collective consciousness, the potential for both dysfunction and recovery, as well as our attempts at connection with humanity’s highest potential.  The subjects of toxic religion and toxic masculinity are addressed, which remain major forces for the propagation of ignorance and social disease, and the environmental destruction which we are now collectively witnessing and that we are being directly impacted by. Toxic masculinity leads directly to toxic religions, toxic society and toxic capitalism, factors which are soiling and eroding the very fabric of life woven through and upon our beautiful, sacred planet Earth.  Our world remains both addicted to and intoxicated by its masculine hubris, greed, insensitivity, and the continuing domination and subjugation of all feminine energy.  Callous, hate filled masculine energy runs rampant in our world, victimizing and destroying sacred life in all forms, while capitalists and other opportunists profit from our own destruction.

I am disturbed by what continues to unfold within our country, and what I have experienced in my own life, over the course of nearly sixty-three years. A recent book club meeting that was held at our house in November of 2016 exposed me to the author Sheila Hamilton, a local disc jockey for KINK.FM radio, and five time Emmy award-winning journalist.  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 committed 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, as David did not communicate to others his inner turmoil and chaos effectively.  I felt a need to give another voice for our shared disease, as I was a person who had walked through the gates of hell itself..

I will be recounting my own drama and internal struggles, with the hope that I bring to verbal light some of the inner workings of my own mind and life as it existed when I was mentally ill, as well as while I was upon the journey back to wholeness.  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.  We are one of the dark castes of our society, and, collectively, our spirits are stymied, and our voices have been quieted.

We live and operate in the background of our culture, and our message will not be spoken and cannot be acknowledged because of the Conspiracy of Silence predominating within our culture.  Our culture is broken, which leads to broken people, and families.  Yet, collectively, America has created a culture of denial, where we don’t look at our fundamental problems together, and confront them directly.  To the extent that the broken individual might indicate a brokenness of our culture, is the extent that the broken individual is marginalized and minimized by the entrenched power brokers of our civilization and their sycophants.  There are many economic, religious, and political leaders who have derived the greatest personal and economic benefits through the exploitation of the those who have no voice, and it is perceived as an existential threat for them to examine the damaged structure that gave rise to their own predominance.

John 1.1-From New Testament Of Christian Bible

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Yet, another layer of the Conspiracy of Silence exists around the Divine, Higher Power, God, or Truth.  Organized religions, intellectual savants and those parading as atheists, and political powers all too often obfuscate the truth that underlies all of our existence. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus

“What is truth?”,

Jesus, as the story goes, could only be silent in the face of the greatest power of the day.  The question “What is truth?” was intended as mockery, and that principle continues to this day. Speaking truth to power is not an easy or automatic proposition, no matter how “enlightened” one might appear to be.  Truth is more like a continuous rainfall upon rocky mountains.  It does not immediately displace all of the edges of eons of ignorance, but, over time, it finally erodes the roughest of terrains, and exposes the deeper layers of existence where a new level of experience is to be found.  Those who are not patient will be mortally wounded by thrusting themselves too aggressively against the sharp edges jutting from our human monuments to stupidity and ignorance that often act as controlling powers within civilization.

Those who touch the Infinite relate back to the world the ineffability of the experience, though they have been deeply impacted by that contact.  The universe of Spirit defies rationality, though it will eventually speak intelligently through the healed human mind.   First, the mind has to be properly prepared, and then it must be willing to communicate, no matter how mighty the struggle may be  to interpret or express its energy.  But if the mind is overburdened by education, knowledge, religious and cultural inculcation, the Infinite will be speaking through distorted measures of reality, creating illusion, deception, and delusion.  A look at Joseph Smith and his revelations, and the LDS movement that subsequently arose from this process,  is a great example of the corrupted marriage of spirituality and truth with hallucination and delusion.  This type of spiritual corruption only further confuses and alienates those seekers of a deeper truth that are still in possession of keen wits.

The simple truth behind Christianity is that we all have divine heritage, though we may be still struggling with our human experience.  Ignorant Christian philosophers,scholars, and ministers continue to interpret and promote the Word as having expression only through Jesus Christ.   In their minds humanity remains relegated to outcasts from the “Garden Of Eden” and we will all remain on the outside of the universality of our divine heritage and potential for eternity until Jesus is accepted as our personal savior.  There are many other errors in spiritual discernment that continue to be propagated, especially all of the nonsense that is promoted around the concept of Armageddon.  This is important, because these beliefs contribute mightily to the Common Knowledge Game of human perception, which is a socially and culturally inculcated system for assessing and judging against all others unlike the observers.   Most of the world does not hold the belief in Jesus as the Savior, though many of us have been victimized by them!  With our American judicial and political processes still impacted by, and in some cases dominated by, so-called “Christian ideals”, it is easy to see the potential for collective persecution of and discrimination against those not conforming to these ideals and dogmas.

And, much of our American religious landscape remains dominated by blind adherence to  Patriarchy, which manifests through toxic masculinity and toxic religion, with their qualities of misogyny, white supremacy and its outright hatred or indifference to others unlike themselves, greed and rampant selfishness, and self-destructiveness, and all of the planetary destructive evil that emanates from it.  When the writer quoted from in the Bible proclaimed that we “be fruitful and multiply”, that writer did not intend for our race to become a planet ravaging virus, through overpopulation, pollution, extinction of 1000’s of species, genocide, religious persecution, greed, and competition, yet our race has been fruitful, and multiplied our collective ignorance and evil exponentially.

It has been a great challenge and adventure living this life. It has also been a great fulfillment for me to have lived long enough and to have become articulate enough to be able to put into words my unique experience of life.  It may be time to PUNCH A NAZI, in whatever form it takes, but it is best to first master the Nazi within our own minds. The fundamental oppressive force in the human universe is not our wayward religious, political, economic, or social agendas or systems, however, as the fundamental problem is within the human mind itself. Jesus Christ would be crucified again (and, in fact, the Truth continues to be sacrificed daily), and Muhammad and the Buddha, were they alive today, would be ignored or attacked, in today’s diseased, divisive, dark money controlled political, social, and religious climate.

There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness;….and, to know, rather consists in opening out a way where the imprisoned splendor may escape, then in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.”

—-Robert Browning

How did I attempt to bring healing to my broken interior?  I first acknowledged that, of myself and my old ways, I was heading nowhere, and that I was doomed to repeat the same potentially fatal mistakes over and over again   I did have any childhood training in, nor did I spontaneously develop capacities for insight, positive change and growth.  I first needed to develop the emotional and spiritual fortitude to look at the entirety of my life, and then incorporate the experience for my greater good, which also impacts the whole of life in a more positive manner.  By developing the power of insight, I brought a new level of healing and awareness into this new, present moment of experience.  Some call this process “mindfulness:, though I just call it ‘taking personal inventory’, and improving my “conscious contact with my higher power” as I learned through practicing the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.  I have come to believe that there is a “power greater than myself” that lives within my internal reach that restores me to sanity, no matter how often I might fall.   Part of maintaining sanity is to allow for a continuous evolution of understanding and experience of what “God” or “Higher Power” is, apart from religious dogma, ignorance, politics, and superstition.

There was no minister, church, support group, therapist, Care Unit counselor, Indian guru, psychiatrist, mother, father,  sister, wife, friend, daughter, son, pet dog, or Jesus Christ figure that could dig into my unique version of the human soul, and remove the thorns/swords that had been thrust into my side since my birth.  My internal wounding and the resultant unsustainable suffering became the impetus to begin my inward journey, to face the absolute darkest areas of life itself, and then mine the treasure from my unique relationship with the dark force or shadow.  To not face myself would mean to continue living the second-hand/passed down story of dysfunction that I inherited from our culture and from my ancestors, from which we cannot ever completely heal, without first becoming aware of our internalized, unconscious subservience to those controlling agendas.

This is my story about my exploration of some of the more fundamental aspects of my consciousness, and, thus, of all human consciousness.  Virtually all of the interesting characters in history have struggled with, and have overcome, at least to some degree, a dark internal force, and it is their journey that becomes the stuff of great stories and legends.   I will try to give a context to this distress that I share with the rest of humanity.  For, the one is the many, and the many are the one.  The author and scholar Joseph Campbell refers to the “Hero’s Journey” that we all must take to find our true self, and the story about to follow is representative of my own version of it.

It was revealed to me that there are two fundamental cores to my personal dysfunction.  It is around these cores that the whole of my consciousness swirled around, as if drawn and disfigured by two distinct, though interconnected, black holes of negative influence.  The length of the story  reveals the level of my resistance to life, an extreme resistance that may have begun in my mothers’ womb, or, maybe, it extends all the way back to the beginning of human consciousness, but, the start date is unimportant.  What is important is the intention to bring healing to a darkened situation.  The story that follows is my testimony to the complexity and the rewards of this process.

Structurally, I have developed this project into three parts.  First, there is my personal history, with some references back to our shared reality, or collective consciousness. Second, there are my lessons learned about collective consciousness, with a lot of references back to my personal experiences.  And, finally, I have included a parable written about recovery from alcoholism.  Parts One and Two are inextricably intertwined, and the separation will be seen to be mainly for organizational convenience.  My life since my birth in 1955 is the obvious link between the three creative works.  There are the individual, cultural, and divine vibrations which constitute the rainbow of my being, and the colors of my rainbow stretch throughout the three phases of this work.

In Part One, I will give a thumbnail sketch of my mother’s, father’s and grandparents’ lives to provide a rudimentary foundation for my story.  My personal history will be extensively developed, including my childhood, my first love, where I will address issues around my first wife and her mental illness , my fall into addiction, suicidal ideation, and, ultimately, my immersion into an underworld experience, and my remarkable awakening that occurred after the exit from that world.   My history will presented like a winding, dotted line path, a path with many intersections with itself as it jockeys between the past and present.  I will defy the analytical mind’s need for the linearization of time and reality, and the offending elements of the story will be confusing to some, and irritating to others.  My real life was not lived in a straight line path, nor will my story be presented that way, either.  I will discuss prayer, and several spiritual and cosmic consciousness oriented events.  I will eventually bring my life experience up to the present moment, after documenting a relapse which occurred two years prior to my mother’s death.  I will refer to a life-altering friendship with a long-term friend, Marty Crouch, who died in 2017.  I will finish my life’s story with some of the greatest teachings that life has revealed to me.  This project has taken on epic proportions for me, and it will appear to be quite fragmented, and repetitive at times, qualities which parallel my real life experience.

In Part Two, the collective consciousness section, I will attempt to address the early death syndrome in the American male, and make a few references to the forces of addiction and oppression within our society, and the repression of our inner nature. Those dark forces are known by me as Toxic Masculinity and Toxic Religion. They are major spiritually disfiguring forces both within our American culture, and within myself. I will discuss at length the Common Knowledge Game, which refers to the process by which we all become imprisoned by the way that we form words, ideas, and judgements against self and other, while attempting to maintain society’s twisted notions of what normal social connections should look like.  I will attempt to address difficult human emotions, and problems with expressing them skillfully.  I will make a commentary on my rocky relationship with American Christianity, and why I am no longer directly associated with that broken philosophy.  I will make occasional comments on our wayward American President, Donald Trump, and the disease of the spirit that makes his presidency and those damaged souls who continue to support his madness possible.  I will not be addressing our cultures problems with physical fitness, or environmental, water and food supply toxicity, which are important issues, but are better left to the medical writers, and environmental and nutritional scientists.

In Part Three, I have included a parable that I wrote about alcoholism and the family.  It is not specifically based upon the details of my own life, but it does carry much of the same energy that I experienced while living as an alcoholic.  I wrote the parable in March of 2017 while undergoing a traumatic, empathic process around the brain cancer of a friend, while also attempting to heal from a fundamental oppressive force within myself and all of consciousness, which prevented me from fully speaking my truth.

Interspersed throughout the story are the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, brief quotes from the Christian bible (I am not a fundamentalist Christian, nor even a member of that body of thought) as well as several songs by musicians that have a relevant message.  There will also be a few poems, some of which were written by me.  I have included some memes, links to other websites, and a couple of comics, as well.

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

—-Jiddu Krishnamurti

American society has created the perfect conditions for our population to practice insanity and addictive behaviors, but it remains up to us as individuals to create our own conditions for recovery.  Self-awareness, personal inventory, making amends to all that we have harmed, working a strong spiritual program, mindfulness, meditation, eating healthier and exercising wisely, and hanging around like-minded people took me to the outskirts of my own “promised land”.  Life isn’t always pretty, but I remain personally responsible for my attitudes and behaviors, and I retain freedom of choice in most of my affairs. But, many have lost all such freedom of choice.   I have much compassion for those who still struggle with mental illness and alcoholism/drug addiction.  It is no mystery to me as to why those who still suffer choose death through suicide or continued dysfunction over a healing path.

Collective consciousness is comprised of all of the answers that our culture, our families, and all of our individual selves have dreamed up to some of the great questions of life.  The answers have become part of our philosophy, our history, our religion, the substance of our hopes and dreams, and the foundation for all of our nightmares.  My journey towards healing is documented below.  I will first briefly address the seed consciousness, where my own answers to the important questions of life gave rise to my interpretation of life, and of the universe.  My incomplete and inaccurate answers became the unstable foundation for my journey through collective consciousness, spurring me onto new paths of consciousness, in the eternal search for meaning, truth, beauty, healing, and, ultimately, God.  It is this very matrix of misunderstanding that we all must eventually embrace within ourselves, see it for what it really is, and isn’t, and then move through the illusions of self to the very foundation of our timeless soul, where peace and healing eternally resides.

Questions that I have pondered:

Why does suffering exist, and why does it visit me so often?

Who and what am I?

Is happiness, joy, and freedom possible in my life?

What am I really looking for, and will I ever find it?

What really is prayer?

Does religion have relevance anymore?

Can there be any truth. love, or justice to be found in the 21st century version of American Christianity?

What happened to the moral and ethical authority once touted as being endemic to Christianity?

Does religion hinder or help a modern-day seeker of God?

What is a “well lived life” and how do I achieve it?

What is good mental health, or what does it mean to be normal?

Who are my “people”, and where are they located?

Why do people cling to certain groups of people, and reject all others, and why do I feel rejected so often?

Why don’t people get along better with each other, and why have I become so isolated?

Will I ever fit in?  Will anyone ever notice me?

Why don’t I feel peace of mind?

What is death, and what does it mean to die to myself?

Why does our society and much of the world’s population continue to not experience peace of mind, with beauty, wonder, and the innate internal integrity of our (potentially) divine nature, and what might I do to attain these qualities?

Why is history defined predominantly by male energy, and why does my own life story spin so tightly around the male gender and its destructive byproducts?

Why do some men become spiritually and emotionally disfigured by their desire for sex?

Can men ever completely overcome objectifying women in their relationships with them?

Why do some men exercise excessive emotional control over their partners?

Why do I not feel satisfaction when I achieve the goals that I have set up for myself?

Why do I not feel joy when others achieve greatness, or accomplish great things for themselves?

Why do I sometimes feel threatened by others’ successes?

Why do I internally try to hold others back from success and positive social acknowledgement?

Why do I always seem to “self-destruct” right at the moment when I am about to achieve great success?

Will I ever completely understand myself, and others?

What is oppression, and what is my relationship to it?

What is repression, and why do I participate in it?

Why is expressing real human emotions such a double-edged sword, and why are my feelings so hard to identify sometimes?

Why are some people always so angry, indifferent, detached, or depressed, and can these people ever see me for who I am?

Why is anxiety the defining feeling of this age, and why is it so hard to heal from it?

Where is the love that I feel is missing from my life?

Why don’t I feel more love for myself or for others?

Why do I continue to experience poor self-esteem?

Why is our culture so focused on youth and physical appearance?

Why am I so self-conscious, and will I ever be accepted for who I am?

Why do I feel that I have to always be competitive, or “better than the others” just to fit in?

Why is competition and greed, as presently coupled with Capitalism, the predominant economic system in our world?

Why does shame and guilt control so much of my life’s experience?

Is it possible to speak or live a lie long enough that we no longer can accept or believe the truth?

Is a person’s silence because of an absence of opinion, or from a fear of speaking the truth?

Why can’t some people be more emotionally and spiritually present for others?

Why do people feel that they need to engage in mutual “control dramas”?

Why do people endlessly pursue entertainment and/or use drugs and alcohol to excess, and ignore their own personal transformation and healing?

Why is just more knowledge so much more important than intuition, wisdom and insight to most men and left brained dominated women?

Why is collaboration such a dirty word for a national political process?

Why do I have no desire to contribute to society in a more generous and meaningful way?

Will America Ever Fully Awaken?

My story attempts to address some of these questions, and my answers may have a more universal application than to just my limited life experience. To answer all of these questions would require a series of trite responses, or a 5000 page book, as there are no easy answers.   I will not make all-encompassing statements like “love heals all wounds”, or “love is the only power” as love is not what the vast majority of the human race believes it to  be in the first place.  Please forgive me in advance if my insights and realizations appear obvious and simple. This book is a presentation of my own unique perspective, and it will not conform to others’ expectations of what the “Truth” should look like.

My story will be told through more than one linear time line, with some overlap between the stories.  There will be no lurid tales of debauchery (well, maybe a reference or two), nor did I ever engage in 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. While a practicing addict/alcoholic, 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 participated in potentially murderous activity, and I also contemplated horrible behavior, but good fortune saved the day for me, and for the world.

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. 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 minds to the rest of the universe, and we receive back from collective consciousness, as if it were an eternally uttered prayer shared by all of humanity.

One of my problems with religion in general, their prophets, messengers, and associated religious texts, is that they take a scatter-gun approach to delivering their message.  Most of their “truths” are hard to digest, and they tend to speak AT the listener or student, rather than speaking TO the student or practitioner.  There are those blessed few who are attuned to the inner value or meaning of the truth being delivered, and the message speaks TO the listener.  It has been said that those are the ones who were either born with or somehow learned how to develop and practice spiritual discernment.  In the hearing of Love, or Truth,  hope for change is stimulated, and the internal motivation to make necessary changes in the course of one’s life begins.

There is one more step, however, with religious attainment, or attunement.  Only a few in recorded history have developed the capacity to have their religion, their God, their Buddha Mind, their Christ Consciousness speak THROUGH them.  In Christian mystical terms, this is the word made flesh, and dwelling among us.  Ministers and politicians ever so rarely qualify for this exalted state, as experts and practitioners of the law  have limited access to the spirit behind it.  Watch out for television preachers and evangelicals, as they are ministers of propaganda, and are money accumulating propagators of illusion, delusion, deception, and fear, while preying on the ignorant, and the innocent.

If this book finds that its readers feel like this work only speaks AT them, then the work has little lasting value.  If the reader feels that this work speaks TO them in some way, however, then a true connection has been made, and human energy has been exchanged, for the betterment of the reader and the writer.  This is a fundamental form of energy exchange, or prayer.  But if a reader somehow finds a truth within this work that resonates within their mind and heart, to the point of dislodging some repressed or oppressed divine energy, an enlightenment or liberation is attained that the whole human race has the potential to benefit from.  If healing, wholeness, or divinity subsequently speaks THROUGH the reader, then this becomes a form of universal prayer that genuinely has the chance to help in the healing of the planet.  To this point, nothing I have ever said or written has led anybody into the “promised land”, so I would be happy if this story somehow finds a way to speak TO a few readers.  We can then share in a prayer with the potential to bring healing, wholeness, and divinity to us and the consciousness that we presently share.  I will leave liberation and enlightenment to the spiritual savants, and to their students that insist on hanging onto their every word.

There is a unique path that each one of us must take, to find our greatest good.  Those who continue to follow other people’s routes, at the exclusion of the route that their own internal GPS system is generating, risk losing all, including their freedom and their unique life expression.  Trying to fit in with and adapt to insanity, and the continuing attempts to normalize it, is the foundation for mental illness, and for our present day corrupted economic, political, and religious systems.  The following story indicates my path towards wholeness and spiritual integrity, while moving away from my own personal insanity and our culture’s schizophrenia.

I Looked For My Soul (by William Blake)

I looked for my soul,

But my soul I could not see.

I looked for my God,

But my God eluded me.

I looked for a friend,

And then I found all three.

May we all become friends of the Spirit.

U2–Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki5keBCz8DQ

Chapter Two–The Family

He started college at the University of Portland, studying Psychology, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and other courses, from 1947-1952. He really wanted to understand the human mind at the deepest level, and his curious mind about other issues only left him in recent years. But he had to delay his search for the truth about the broken human mind, as his now hyper-busy life got in the way of him finishing his studies of the human condition.  Dad formed a great friendship and relationship with Father Delaney, who taught at the University of Portland, and in whose name the Delaney Institute was named. He struggled a bit with his school work, but he did stay at it over a course of five years, which did not result in a degree.

Note: I was to later pick up my father’s mantle, and I have made my own attempts to finish the job that he had started, which was understanding the human mind. And, like my father, I rebel against the spiritual and philosophical authorities of the day, sometimes sharing with the readers of my blog and Facebook readers my insights.

Dad still had a fire in his heart, and an incredible desire to succeed. He worked harder than anybody around him, the sign of a classic “overachiever”. He endlessly drove himself, and he was going to overcome his upbringing, and prove to the world that he had higher value than the poor self-esteem that his verbally and physically abusive father had inculcated him with. His perfectionism and zealousness for order and efficiency was utilized to its best advantage in his future employment with the US Postal Service. That same attitude tended to, at times, challenge others, especially those that he attempted to help, or manage, as both a general manager with the Postal Service, and as a friend and family member. A person with a passive/aggressive personality, like me, had the most difficulty with him. Those who were self-assured or had found their own voice, and engaged him directly, had the best relationship with him, and he really enjoyed engaging with others in stimulating, challenging discussions. Those who took the time to get to know Dad, also found a way to love him, in spite of his rough edges. But it was hard to get to know him because too many times he would lead with a derogatory remark, or insult, and bad first impressions rarely get changed.

He had several choices in his career, either as a policeman, fireman, or joining with the US Postal Service, of which he ultimately selected. He also began courting my Mother, Corinne Beatrice Henry, who happened to be quite a “looker”, and also quite a hard working young woman, as well. Mom worked at the original Fred Meyer store in downtown Portland, among many other jobs over the course of her own career. Mom’s parents were not impressed with my fathers’ parents for obvious reasons, and Dad had to overcome some real judgements to make inroads into that family. My Grandpa Henry made my father mow his yard before he would even let Dad take Mom out, as part of their desire to prove that Dad really wanted to move forward with her.

He was the type of guy that, had he ever met Jesus Christ in person, if he noted lettuce in the Christ’s teeth, he would tell him about it. He liked to state that “heaven was not ready for him, and that the devil did not want him either, as he would try to take hell over and run it the way it should be run”. Dad lived his life “outside of the lines” so to speak, and he delighted in challenging other people’s assumptions, sensibilities and understandings.

Dad was an accomplished card player, square dancer, stamp collector, avid fisherman, hiker, camper, traveler, scout troop leader, general outdoors man, adventurer, humorist, wise man, and golfer, but retired early in life from hunting. As a young man he hunted with his father, though he grew to be repulsed by the idea of killing innocent creatures. One time while hiking in the Arizona desert with his dog Misty, they were confronted by a rattlesnake, and he had to draw his pistol and shoot the creature. He regretted having killed it, which shows how his love for all life had taken over his soul. He had a challenged understanding of cats, though, and was quick to punish wayward cats that strayed unto his property to assault and kill birds and squirrels.

There are some who thought that my father was a horse’s ass, but that is the view one sometimes gets when in second place, having been passed by his race horse of a mind. A man like my father, who lived a full life, could have his own book written about him, and not scratch the surface of all the people that he impacted, positively or negatively, and all of the experiences that he had, all of the humor that he shared, and all of the wisdom that he developed.  My sister, my wife, and I wrote several pages of “Beryl-isms”, which are quotes directly from my father about life in general.  I have presented a few of his “top 50” statements, which he repeated many times over the last few years of his life.  In parenthesis, I have included a few of my replies to his common statements that I used to give back to dad as part of our “conversation”..

1). Don’t wait too long to retire. People think they need to work those extra years, they work that extra one or two years, thinking they need the money, and death takes over, and they never make it to retirement (well, Dad, I retired early, but we will have to wait and see if that has any beneficial effect on my longevity.  Right now, my main goal is to try to outlive you, oh immortal one!).

2). Oh those rich people, all of that money, and they still have to die anyway! (and the rest of us, we have to die too, darn it!)

3). Why do you need to know, are you writing a book? (well, as a matter of fact I am!)

4). I really took the system, didn’t I? (after being retired and on pension for 35 years, contributing $22,742 to your pension, and getting over one million dollars back, I would say that you did!)

5). Come back again when you can’t stay so long (well, I am working on that one!)

6). Don’t you have something better to be doing? (yes, but you are the priority of the moment, so try to enjoy it with me)

7). Sure am glad that I am retired, or is it retarded? (um, I won’t touch that one)

8). I might be here, but I am not all here (then where is the rest of you?)

9). You know, having a dog like Rocky adds 7 years to my life (yes, but your dog took 7 years off of mine!)

10). (to any waitress) Say, you sure are looking good this evening. Would you like to come home with me and serve me my favorite meal? (argh! So embarrassing!)

11). I am not trying to be pretty, and I never will win any beauty contests (I can’t argue with you on that one)

12). The doctor needed a urine, stool, and semen sample, so I just left him my underwear (oh, boy, what a bad joke!)

13). You couldn’t hit a beach ball with a banjo! You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn! (comments made to me both as a youth when pitching or batting on little league baseball teams, and while playing golf with him as a child and as an adult)

14). When I get to Heaven, I am going to have a talk with the “Old Man” about my wife dying before me.  Wives are supposed to outlive the husbands.  Either I should have died first or we should have died at the same time (Maybe mom finished her work before you did.  In what form would you have wanted a simultaneous death, like in a murder/suicide, or in a car wreck?)

15). Son will we all meet again in heaven? (are you sure that you really want to hang out with the same crowd for eternity?)

16). Heaven is not ready for me yet, and Hell is afraid that I will take it over, so that is why I am still here (maybe you are still here to provide a few more lessons for the living.  I know that I sure am getting a crash course!).

17).  I am in no hurry to die.  Nobody I know has ever come back from the dead and told me what a great time that they are having after death. (yes, and wayward religions continue to capitalize on that mortal fear, ignore the fact that heaven is here and now, and do not effectively teach us how to die to ourselves and our fears and suffering to experience heaven in advance of bodily death)

18). I provided care for you all of those years when you were young, now its your turn to take care of this old man (I should have read the contract more carefully before my birth!)

19).  You should always be best friends with your sister.  Never let anything get in the way of that friendship, because she will find a way to love you to your death, as you should love her as well (Well, Dad, you sure have shown commitment to both your brother and your sister, especially over the last twenty years.  Somehow you all endeared yourselves to each other.  Thank you for being a success in that aspect of family love, and overcoming the chaos created by your parent’s relationship.  I think that Pam and I are on a good course right now)

And on and on it could go. My dad was a great story teller, and fountainhead of wisdom, one-liners, humor, self and other deprecation, and sarcasm.

It was tough watching my father deteriorate, which began in earnest after his radiation treatment for prostate cancer in 2005. After mom died in 2009, Sharon and I had him over for dinner every evening. He was anxious, and suffered horribly from grief, and deteriorating cognitive health. I took him to the doctor’s office for treatment for depression, and the doctor ending up prescribing anti-depressants for me instead. He continued to threaten to kill himself, and I had to locate all of his guns, and empty them. In the process of emptying his rifle, I almost shot myself in the foot, sending a bullet through his bedroom floor.

Within three more years, late in 2012, Sharon insisted that Dad have his driving competency evaluated, as he appeared to no longer be capable of driving safely. When the doctor confirmed that Dad should no longer drive, my life as I knew it came to an end. The loss of his independence also became my own loss, as well. I became responsible for 100 percent of Dad’s life, health, nutrition, meals, baths, finances, home and lawn care, and spiritual support. Dad no longer managed his life, other than dressing himself, going to the bathroom (mostly), smoking his cigars, and eating the food placed in front of him

The last conversation that I had with my father was 6 hours before his death.

This is what we exchanged with each other:

Dad, you are still in bed, and its 2:30 in the afternoon, what’s up, it’s such a beautiful day outside.

You know son, I am always tired now, but I am about to get up.

Well, Dad, this might be the last sunny day in a long time, so why don’t you get up, and go out on the porch and have a cigar? I’ll put a chocolate bar on your table, and a drink for you.

I’ll get right up son. By the way, who is caring for me this evening?

Well, Dad, Madison is caring for you this evening.

Oh, poor Madison!

Dad, Madison benefits by being with you, as you do with her.

I will be with you beginning this Sunday morning, and I will be with you for the next three weeks as usual. You know we are planning one final trip to Hawaii with you, right?

Oh son, I am happy just staying at home. I have everything that I need here.

Well, OK dad. I am going to leave now, as I need to prepare for Marty’s funeral tomorrow.

When will I see you again, son?

Dad, it will be Sunday morning, OK?

OK, son, you know that I am dependent on you. Please take care of yourself.

Oh, dad, you know that I am dependent on you, too. You be careful too!

I love you, son.

I love you too, Dad.

I leave his room, not knowing this is to be our last exchange.

The next day, at 10:58am, as I stand in back of the hearse, as a pall bearer in Marty Crouch’s funeral, I prepare to receive Marty’s body to place into the hearse. I receive a call from Madison, which I cannot take, so I hand the phone to Sharon. Sharon is informed that my father is deceased. Sharon has to leave the service for our friend, and tend to my fathers’ body.

Oh, father, you really knew how to place your unique stamp on my life, didn’t you?

Through my relationship with my parents, I witnessed very early in life how women are oppressed, and how ignorant men try to dominate and control anyone or anything, including those that appear “unlike themselves and their own expectations”. It took many years before my mother was able to stand up to my sometimes loud- mouthed, judgmental, aggressive, harsh, and insensitive father. It took me 61 years to face down completely my own internalized image of what a man is, as well. To finally see how completely that negative ‘male’ internal structure permeates human consciousness in general, and in my own unconscious mind, in all of its diverse, obvious and subtle forms, finally transformed me. My own repressed nature found the ability to communicate its message to me, and rather remarkably it has revealed itself in the form of the “divine feminine” and I refer to that activity as my “second birth” as a human being.

My father died on September 15, 2017. Dad died in his own bedroom on a Friday evening, and had the look of awe and wonder in his eyes and face. He had found his promised land, where loneliness, depression, and dementia disappears, and where ‘bums’ are converted back into the saints and angels that they always were, but were rarely recognized by others as being so. It took nearly my entire life to release my own misunderstanding and judgement towards my father, and allow for him to express himself in the only way that he knew how to, while still providing a loving protection for him in his time of greatest need.

I know all too well the effects of getting the “bum’s rush”, which is the cultural response to my own social insecurities. I now try to celebrate the saint and angel that lives within me, and within all of humanity’s children, which continues to be released from within me as I release my past, looking for its own unique new expression in this strange new world. I thought that my life’s work was over when I became sober and had a series of spiritual healing experiences beginning in 1987, and continuing for six years afterward. Now I know that my real life’s work has only just begun.

We who knew and loved you in all phases of your lives miss you both, Mom and Dad. Now being an “orphan” with no children of my own has opened new vistas of understanding for me. The self that I fashioned as a response to my upbringing has no value now. I unconsciously chose a less colorful persona as a direct response to my fathers’ flamboyance, and now I release that choice, to open the door to a new, more conscious way of being in this world.  Who, or what, am I now? I am a mystery, even to myself. I need not be anxious, though the transition times from what  I thought I was to who I am predestined to become can create anxiety. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment. Living into the Truth of that which is now is the new story of my life. If there is only One Mind, it can only be experienced by a journey through the Unknown.

In retrospect, My father only appeared to cast a shadow over my life. It was up to me to find my own unique voice, in my search for my own truth, so that I could arise from my own self-imposed shadows, and be with him as a partner on love’s endless journey. Those who did not learn to love my father, missed out on one of my life’s most precious gifts, yet there are many other opportunities to bring light into our own lives. The healing journey that I had with my father could be considered miraculous by some, yet it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Yes, that healing will die with me, as I have no heirs. Yet, the love that we shared, as a family, will live forever in the mind and heart, of God.  Happy Father’s Life, Dad, I will love you until the final day.

Chapter Three

I would like to write a bit about my mother, Corinne Beatrice Henry Paullin.  She was one of the finest, most loving and reliable persons in my life.  I never doubted her love or caring for me, or for our family.  She loved her younger brother, Wayne, as much or more than any other sister.  She was treasured by her own grandparents, who were relatively prosperous, as well as by her parents, who were lower in income.  Mom’s grandpa was the first really old guy that I had ever met.  I remember visiting him and his “new” wife (a nurse who married him and took all of his money) in Salem, and Mom requesting that I go over and kiss the old man, who was seated upon some sort of chair with a potty built into it.  It is a kiss that I will never forget, the kiss  of foreboding death.  His funeral was to be the first that I attended, as well.

I took her for granted for all of my childhood, and into adulthood until the age of 31 for me.  She always wanted the best for me, she tried to be a motivator, she tried to help me right my ship whenever it listed too severely and I will forever be grateful to her.  We did not talk much over the years, even though we spent so much time together, especially from the year 1995 on, when Sharon and I moved into my parent’s neighborhood.  Beginning with Mom and Dad’s fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2000, and extending through 2009, Sharon, Pam, Aunt Susie, and I shared in most of the vacations that were taken, due to the need to be more present for our aging parents.

Suffice it to say, my mother was severely overshadowed by my father’s exuberance and outrageous nature, though she did not seem to mind most of the time.  My lack of elucidation on my mother’s story shows aspects of my own poor communication style, and aspects of Toxic Masculinity that directed me to not pay more conscious attention to her as a human being, and create better stories about her and her life.

Going through all of the photographs of my mother has caused me to think also about many aspects of my own life: what a great gift that life is, what a great debt of gratitude I owe my mother, and father, for what is the greatest opportunity in our known universe, which is to live on this planet. I am so fortunate to have been born into a family with a mother who always tried her hardest to do the best job she could do, whether it be raising children, working in any of her numerous jobs, enjoying friendships, or just living life to its fullest.

By hearing some of the talk of friends who have called since mom’s death, I have heard some wonderful, funny, and fascinating things about my mother that I never got to experience personally. She was, at times, an enigma to me, but I could always count on her to be there for me, no matter what was going on in my life. I tried to return the favor later in life, but I could never repay her for all the good she brought me.

I just enjoyed sitting with her, talking or quiet, and sharing time. My mother always seemed to need to be on the move, however, so those shared periods were short in time, though frequent in later years.  Every time we sat down, and the conversation started to turn “serious”, especially about death, dying, or emotionally laden issues, she would just pop up from the chair, and state:

“Macy’s is having a great sale today.  I gotta go now!”

And, with a smile, off she would go.

I still feel inadequate, and not up to the task, of fully representing the beauty and the humanity of the person I called mom, and that the rest of the world called Corinne. I do know that she loved life, and her friends and family, and always sought the best for all that she knew. She loved the outdoors, and that was reflected by many years of camping and travel trailering. She loved hiking, and logged thousands of miles hiking and Volkswalking through the years, through many states and countries. She loved to dance when younger, and enjoyed many years of square dancing, and many friendships that ensued from that activity. She also loved her golfing, and had many friendships that she enjoyed from that activity.

Mom tried hard, though, at everything that .she attempted. It was tough watching her in the later years, as she gradually lost so much to the ravages of her disease process. Losing her knees, losing her smile when her face was tore open from a fall, losing her balance frequently and falling, bruising herself horribly, yet she was a determined woman, and was not defined by those limitations, but instead by what she continued to accomplish in life. She played golf almost to the end.

Fix You, by Coldplay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4V3Mo61fJM

I will only make a brief reference to my sister Pam.  Before I learned how to talk, she thought that I was the best.  She is eighteen months older than I am, and seemed to enjoy playing with me until I learned how to talk, then her attachment to me lessened somewhat. One of my early memories with Pam is that I had a doll named Percy.  One day I picked up the phone, and started talking to Percy.  I swore that Percy talked back to me, while Pam stood next to me.  In retrospect, it may well have been the operator, or purely my imagination.  Also, the poor girl had to share a bedroom with me for my first two or three years, which I am sure did not go a long way to making her too happy with me.

We fought frequently through the childhood years, and more than twenty times we got into wrestling matches and knock-out, drag-out fights.  Our last memorable fight gathered attention from the neighbors when we were teenagers, when Pam was fourteen, and me twelve years old at the time.  There were lots of screaming, yelling, and cussing, with the occasional body slam and slap to the side of the head.  No one was ever injured, other than any onlookers’ sensibilities.  She and I were both considered very smart youngsters, yet we were both pretty messed up in the heads, for sure.

Chapter Four

I would now like to speak about my maternal grandparents, who were my second set of parents.   My first memory is of being at my grandparents’ home, and probably dates around the summer of 1957.  And, it was my Uncle Wayne talking to me that I remembered.  I was still in a diaper at the time (my mother said that I wore diapers until I was at least 2 years old).  Of course, I was not speaking then (yes, I was an extremely late developer), but I still remember having some vague thoughts, and I understood the verbal question given to me in this memory, though no words seemed to form in my mind, just “picture impressions” .  I actually remember my uncle asking me if I had messed up in my diaper, while I walked/staggered up a path to the porch of my grandparents’ home.

I spent many a weekend at my grandparents’ home over the years (and when I turned 15 I lived there for 3 straight months painting their home, and hanging out with local teenage girls).  My parents were very liberal in allowing me to spend as much time with my grandparents as they could tolerate.  The biggest issue in the early years was that my sister and I fought quite a bit, so Grandma would try to keep the peace where possible, and sometimes limit our time at their house accordingly, or just allow one of us at a time to stay.

Chapter Five

This is the part of the journey that I don’t feel too comfortable writing about, which is the foundational information about my childhood.  Putting to words the perceptions and experiences around being a youth, from the current perspective of a nearly 63 year old man, is difficult.  My intention is not to resort to “revisionist history” when it comes to presenting the memories and experiences of my childhood.   And, I will only resort to editorials where I perceive that it might enhance or develop the story in a way that could not be done so otherwise.

The intersection of family history and my birth in November of 1955  created some interesting, and, at times, amazing stories for me.  My Uncle Worth died in February of 1955, nine months in advance of my own birth. His photo is included here, along with his wonderful wife, Aunt Effie.  Aunt Effie also died before I had any awareness, when I was less than a year old. My grandparents , as well as my mother and her brother, my uncle Wayne,. all dearly loved their Uncle Worth and Aunt Effie.

My father took my sister and I fishing many places when we were young.  One of our trips was up on the Clackamas River when I was 5 years old. My sister and I just explored around while he fished.  I saw some fishing line with a hook on it, so I retrieved it, stuck it on the end of a stick, hung a piece of a worm on it, and placed it into the water.  Within seconds a huge trout grabbed the bait, and I caught my first fish, THE BIGGEST FISH I EVER CAUGHT, EVEN TO THIS DAY!  Of course dad bought me a fishing pole right after that, but I never quite developed the same enthusiasm for fishing that my father had.

As a child, it appears that I learned that my personal world could be an unsafe place, especially while I slept.  I remember most nights lying awake at least until midnight, fearing sleep and its dreams, until I fell asleep out of exhaustion, even if I was put to bed at 8:00pm.  I remember using that extra time to rehash my entire day, and everything that I said and did.  I would try to see where I could have behaved better, or differently, for a greater advantage.  I intuited that if I were a “better person” by day, my nightmares at night might not be so severe.  Yet, my day time behavior rarely improved, for I was fairly spontaneous, and I tended towards impulsive activity.

I have memories of waking up from sleep, and, with my older sister, walking over to the garage window, and crawling up onto my rocking horse to look out of the window, to see if our parents’ car was in the garage.  Of course, if the car was gone, we were both distressed by the parents’ absence, and, to this day, we both agree that this event did happen, and it happened several times.

Even after I started sleeping by myself, my mother allowed me into her bedroom at night after my typical nightly nightmare terror sessions, as long as dad had already left for work.  I remember how protected from my demons I felt, as I lay in bed with her.   I also know, now, that I unconsciously sought out women, MUCH MORE THAN MEN, to bond with, with the hopes that the relationship would bring a measure of safety and acknowledgement into my life, which seemed to be quite lacking in too many of my male to male connections.  Yes, this was to become an unconscious “center” , yet another locus of energy, in addition to other ‘energy’ centers (such as the fear of being ignored), around which all of my future perceptions were to be influenced by.

There were many moments in the earlier reaches of childhood when I really loved my life.  What I really remember well from my childhood memories are:

My love for my mother, my uncle Wayne, and my maternal grandparents (who provided for me a safe, loving home to stay with them at least one weekend a month for most of my childhood),

My conflicted love for my father,

My love for our pets

My love for exploring  the outdoors,

My love for playing with and studying animals,

My love for running through the forests on trails, or creating my own trails,

My love for building ground forts out of fallen branches,

My love for climbing trees and making tree forts,

My love for exploring islands on the Willamette River near our home, and ,

My love for playing with friends, which were especially hard for me to find, or to make while I was young.

Sometimes, I felt uncomfortable around people my age, especially the boys.  I did not always enjoy playing with the boys, who could be too aggressive.  In first through fourth grades, I usually hung out with the girls, and I played kick ball and other non-contact or reduced violence games with them.   I would become quite attached to one or two girls, and I was already trying to figure out how to incorporate a girl into my life quite prematurely.   I preferred girls to boys, becoming overly attached to girls when I was as young as 8 years old.  The girls, by and large, totally lost interest in me by 5th grade, so I had to stick with the guys for most of my childhood from that point forward.

I usually like my father, but i was often being angry with him.  Many times dad was my only friend, and I felt betrayed by him whenever I was over-enthusiastically punished for doing something wrong.    I was always guilty of doing something wrong, whether I admitted it or not.  If I did not admit it, I was lying, which could lead to yet another swat (As the Course in Miracles has stated, these were unrecognized calls for love).

The day after the Columbus Day storm of 1962, when tree branches and fallen trees were everywhere, including our large backyard, my dad was so controlling as to how I was supposed to pick up the branches that I got angry with him, abandoned him, and walked a mile to help Steve Roth (son of owner of Roth BMW) and his family clear the wreckage around their home.  I liked Steve’s mom, anyway, as she was always so friendly to me.  They were comparatively wealthy, and I remember being told by Steve’s mother that my father was not rich, like they were.  This was the first time that I became conscious that there existed people who were better off than we were.

I stole from my father’s wallet sometimes, so that I could go to the store and buy candy.  I did all sorts of things that I knew to be wrong, yet I took some delight in going against authority, and boy did I pay the price!  There were too many beatings with the belt.  Most of the behavior that I was accused of I actually committed, so in Dad’s mind I deserved what I got, though mercy sure would have been a nice charitable gesture, had he offered it to me, or my sister.  Looking back at my childhood, I was confused as to the best way to attract attention, and it may have been a subconscious desire to be recognized that motivated me to ’go against the grain’.

I was taken to Sunday school at a local church, when I was six years old.  I did not like it very much, and I did not nor could not believe that Jesus Christ “died for our sins”.  I knew that I was not a “sinner”, at least not the way that they were trying to explain it to me, and that the language of this church was very harsh and confusing.  When they tried to tell me that my only hope was to believe all of their vague, boring stories, I balked, and in my own unique passive/aggressive fashion, I just ignored what they tried to teach me.  These Sunday School experiences appeared to show me that the church was promoting a bunch of confusing stories with little relevance to my experience.  I tried bible study only two more times in our new Milwaukie neighborhood, but stopped when a girl that I was interested in at the time stopped attending.  Yes, women were the best reason for going to church.  For me, that would prove to be true at least two more times, at times beginning when I was twenty eight years old.

Jethro Tull–Wind Up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZXj20MjNek

My father loved dogs, and would always try to have a dog available for our friendship. He instilled into me a great love and appreciation for the canine species, which I still hold onto tightly.    I loved my first dog Nina, who died while running with me while riding my bicycle along a busy road while I was 7 years old, having been hit by a car (my fault for riding too far from home).  I, of course, was devastated, and my dad and mom knew better than making me wrong for her death, but I knew it was my fault anyway.  Our “replacement” dog was promptly run over by our next door neighbor when he got into his truck and backed over our sleeping dog.  Heidi was our third dog, and she was a beautiful Samoyed.  She became, without a doubt, the most wonderful creature that I had ever met up until that era of my life.  I began to recognize the miraculous power that the ‘love’ for another being has on me.  She became the ultimate canine companion for me, as well as for our entire family.

In the early 1960’s my father felt uncomfortable with how the black race had integrated into the local culture.  He would comment on co-workers who exhibited less conscientiousness than he did while at work, and he referred to at least one black person disparagingly.  He would also offer pretty judgmental comments against the black race in general, especially when the LA Watts riots of 1964 happened.  I could not share in his racism at the time, not knowing any black people, or really understanding what the basis for dad’s prejudice was.

My father had a fixation on people’s appearance.  He was SO JUDGEMENTAL of women who were overweight, and he was hard on my mother for any weight gains, almost from the beginning of my awareness of them as my parents.  I was confused by this as well.  I did not understand why Mom needed to be picked on for this.  To this day, I still retain some measure of extra self-consciousness around my own weight, and general appearance.  Whenever I stray too far from my “ideal” weight, I begin the process to reestablish an approximation of what is acceptable for me.  I remember that Mom and Dad engaged in “Punch and Judy” behavior, where they would trade insults/barbs with each other.  I never saw them hug once, and I was to learn later that neither had ever learned to hug, until I showed them what a hug was, and felt like, first in 1988.

I loved listening to music with my father and sister, and he played songs by Roger Miller, Burl Ives, and Johnny Cash quite frequently, so I grew up to love those performers.  My parents were members of the Oakey Doaks, a square dancing group of at least 18 married couples, many with young children.  This was the group that was to be the source of many of my mothers’ and fathers’ best friends during the period of time from 1958-1973. It was an activity that also took my parents away from our home, and we were left alone several times when they could not arrange baby sitting at the last minute.  I loved the people that they knew, and I formed many short term friendships with the children while attending out-of-town weekend events with that group.

I loved playing board games with my family, and roughhouse playing with my dad.  My sister and I would crawl all over dad while he was on the floor and wrestle with him.  Dad really did love his children, and he really spent a lot of his “free” time with us as children.  His problem was integrating the children into his busy agenda.  He would take us to several of the local creeks so that we could collect rocks for his landscaping projects.  Pam and I would earn 25 cents for each filled bucket that we would bring back filled with the smooth rocks of the creek bottom.

I became addicted to fictionalized history books, science fiction books and movies, and I loved the idea of becoming an astronaut, so that I could get off of this fucking rock, and explore the” real” universe. My father and I attended the movie, 2001-A Space Odyssey, by Stanley Kubrick, and I was convinced that space traveling was in my future, after watching that groundbreaking movie.  When I scored ultra high on my grade school achievement tests, and then virtually aced my PSAT’s and SAT’s in high school, my father finally started believing with me that I had a really good chance at achieving that goal.  He never had quite caught fire with my potential prior to that point in life.

I loved to climb trees, and the taller that the trees were, the more excited, and fulfilled, I would become.  I fell from trees two different times in my life.  The first time that I fell, it was from a tree that was leaning over a gravel road near our first home on Steamboat Way.  I was eight years old at the time, and when I fell, I landed flat on my back, after a fall of about twenty feet.  I got up from the ground, with all of the wind knocked out of me.  I feared for my life, because I could not draw my first breath.  In a state of panic, I ran for our house several hundred feet before my lungs were to refill again.  Another time, in our new neighborhood on Hampshire Lane, I climbed to the top of a big fir tree, and pretended I was on the mast of a great sailing ship.  A big wind did actually come up, and I lost my footing on the narrow top branches, and fell almost eighty feet to the ground.  When I awoke on the ground, I had a ten foot length of the top of the tree firmly in the grasp of my hands.  I was bruised all over my body, and sore beyond anything I had ever experienced before, but I had no broken bones.  The examining physician could not believe me when I told him I had tripped while running in the woods, which was the story I needed to tell to keep from getting banned from tree climbing.

I would like to steer a little different direction for a while, and talk about alcohol.   I remember loving beer perhaps a little too much.  When I was 5 years old, my father was watching TV with me, and was drinking a beer.  He left the room, and I grabbed the beer and drank the whole thing.  When dad returned, he wondered where the beer went.  Twenty minutes later I fell off of the couch because I had passed out, and then he knew.  For the rest of my childhood, dad had to be careful with me to keep me from drinking his beer, of which he usually had 6 or 7 cases stored in the basement.  By the time I was 13 years old, I probably had already stolen several cases of beer out of dad’s supply, but I never drank more than one at a time until later in my teens.   I never once saw Dad drunk, at least at home, so he really had it under control by the time I started paying attention.  My paternal grandfather’s alcoholism seemed to have had an Impact on the way dad drank as a young man. My father enjoyed drinking, and was quite the social person, as well. But, his memory of his father’s behavior probably served as a good deterrent to abusive drinking, though my father certainly drank heavily after work during his earliest work years.

One revealing memory is from a 4th grade science class, where the teacher placed a metal object on a burner, heated It up, and then placed it into water, where it was distorted by the uneven cooling.  We were to describe in written form what we witnessed, and I had no clue how to describe it.  I had to look at another person’s paper to see what they were seeing, because I did not have the language to communicate what I witnessed.  Well, this aspect of me also can be translated into how I experienced my upbringing while still being raised.  I did not have the language to communicate what was wrong, though I knew that I was witnessing something that was not right.  I asked to see what a fellow student had written, so that I could write my own version of what he observed.  What I did in this situation is a microcosm for the process that most of humanity engages itself with in the creation of our shared, or Collective Consciousness–if we don’t directly experience something, we rely on others’ interpretations, and, after awhile, mistake their assumptions and judgments for the “truth”.  My ability to bring personal experience and insight into language would continue to prove the greatest challenge to me in high school, and in the years to follow, all the way up to the present.

The childhood feelings of loneliness and abandonment, the frequent whippings with a belt by my father, coupled with whatever fundamental damage that may have been done to my soul through unintentional negligence on the part of my parents during my earliest years, may well have led to the creation (or revelation) of a dramatic story on the dream screen of my mind.  The following dream is still quite alive in my mind, and remains a major teaching for me as both a child and as an adult.

In 1964, at 9 years of age I had a most amazing, realistic dream.  This was during a period of time when I slept very little, as I usually got to sleep no earlier than midnight, no matter how early I went to bed.  I laid in bed and reviewed the day every night before sleep, and see where I could have done things better, or said something a little differently.   My dreams had finally evolved beyond the continuous nightmare phase that I was accustomed to, prior to age 8.

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.

Who was that boy who had that dream?  Is this dream message as valid today as it was, perhaps many years ago?  What kind of life is there to experience once the forces of darkness within one’s own soul have been overcome?  More will be revealed.  I have had many more experiences in adulthood, some of a very profound nature.  The pieces of the puzzle of my life are being integrated into a bigger picture.  As I make sense of my own experience, so I make sense of the whole of life.

Looking at my history, I have witnessed many dreams inspired by the Mystery

As mentioned previously, I was an isolated boy prior to 1965, and I never clicked well with people outside of my family.  I was small for my age, plus I had advanced placement early in school, which resulting in the insertion of a relatively immature boy into challenging peer situations.  I had a limited number of friends, and I seemed to draw the “outcasts”, be they the eggheads, wimps, crazies, or quiet ones, to my circle of friends.  One can see the kind of person that I was, by the people who were drawn to me.  I would become intensely loyal to whoever would commit to friendship with me, no matter what their limitations or faults were. Usually, it was the girls of my age group that I more readily befriended, until the age of nine years old, when we moved from West Linn to Milwaukie.  Boys were in limited supply in our first neighborhood, and many were prone to be antagonistic towards me.

When I moved to Milwaukie, Oregon in 1965, I met three boys almost immediately.  My next door neighbor was Craig Salter, a quiet, introspective, slight build of a boy, who loved technical  books and fantasy novels.  Tony Mecklem was a small build, private sort of young lad who lived down the road, in a fairly primitive home built by his father out of masonry blocks.  But the main friend was Randy Olson, of whom I will speak extensively about later.

Another aspect of “family shaming” was evident whenever my father came to sports events that I was involved with from 6th through 8th grade.  He never took the time or effort to teach me or coach me on sports, but he was overly critical of me and my level of play on athletic teams.  One of his famous public humiliations of me was when I was pitching on the mound one day, and dad yelled out “you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn!”   That is just an extension of the same “blanket party” behavior that he adhered to whenever he felt the need to garage my baby body.  I won’t go into the details of the discipline that was administered to me over the years of my childhood, but one little story is quite telling.  A machine gun toy was donated to the Oak Lodge Fire Department during their toy and joy drive one Christmas in 1969 (that was where my mother worked then, with me being 13 years old at the time).  The gun had some damage to it, which is probably the reason why it was donated.  My mother brought it home for me to mess with.  I tried to get it to work, but could not.  I began dismantling it, trying to understand how it worked so that I could attempt to repair it.  Ann Cook, a daughter of some friends of my parents, was over visiting me at the time.  Dad came downstairs and saw the gun parts spread all over the basement floor, accused me of destroying the gift, and then proceeded to remove his belt, and whip the hell out of me, right in front of Ann.  That one hurt a lot of different ways, for sure.  I was horribly shamed, but it did not feel too unusual, at the time.   Little did I know at that time that for me to disassemble and examine, and then to attempt to reassemble, my own life experience was to become my life’s greatest challenge, and then passion, at a much later point in time.

School was not a problem for me in the new neighborhood, as the quality of the North Clackamas School District, at least in the grades schools, was substantially lower than that of the West Linn area from which we had moved from, so I was already a bit ahead of my peers, at least in math and English.  And, if the truth be known, I was starting to really get a handle as to how to succeed in school, by watching others who were doing well.  A little secret that I carried is that many times, I could “access” certain information that I had never officially learned before, and use it to succeed scholastically.  What does this mean?  Well, in addition to a nearly photographic memory that I had when I was young, which I lost shortly after I started smoking pot, from time to time, especially during the stress of testing, information would just start appearing in my mind, and I would just fly through whatever academic challenge was presented to me.  It felt like I was cheating at times, and I did not understand it, or question it too much.  I was probably recalling information that I had already stored, albeit unconsciously, but when I re-read more of my story,  I have to wonder if consciousness can be much more shared than we normally experience, at levels both “above and below” verbal levels.  After examining my awakening to the “reality” created by words, I could see that embedded into each word that we are able to understand is the whole of human verbal experience.  Each word is a hologram of the wholeness of our verbal reality.  If we truly understand ONE word, in its wholeness, we can perceive other aspects of the whole, as well. I as to later see that this insight also applies to the human being, as well.  If I can truly see the one, I can see the All.   I am sure that this will open up or continue some discussion somewhere, if somebody ever reads this obscure document.

I started to become a bully to some girls around the age of 10 years old.  If they were not attractive to me, they were susceptible to gentle, and not so gentle, ribbing and ridicule.  I found a behavior where I could get support from other boys, but it was damaging behavior on my part, and was to bring shame to me when confronted at a later time by victims of my abhorrent communication style.  One time when I was 15 years old, and waiting for a bus in downtown Portland, a young woman walked up to me, asked my name, and then asked if I knew who she was.  I had no idea.  She then told me how I victimized her with my poor humor, and made her pee her pants once.  I told her that I was sorry, that was not who I was now, but I felt ashamed.  I met another of my victims when I was close to 40 years old in an Oak Grove Fred Meyers store, and I sought her out, introduced myself, and apologized for what I had wrought upon her.  She had long ago forgave and forgotten, but I had not.  It felt good seeing her living a successful life in adulthood, complete with a happy family.  Yes, I was part of the oppression of the feminine spirit, until I became conscious.

It is time to talk about some childhood friends.  Craig Salter was my next door neighbor in our new Milwaukie neighborhood.  He was of slight build, and he was a slow talker.   He may well have been a creative genius, but his “dreamy” state of existence was indicative of some fundamental issues going on inside of him.  I suspected from the beginning that his mother was mentally ill, as she was quite peculiar, and apparently quite a hypochondriac.  What concerned me was Craig’s similarity to his mother, as far as his mannerisms.  And I also suspected that Craig was bonkers too, but, hey, he was my neighbor, and as far as friends go, I could not be too choosy, eh?  I still wondered why I deserved to have such strange friends.  He was smarter than most people, yet he did not consistently apply his smarts to school, which was too restrictive for him.  On his own, before he was age 15, he had already designed a sophisticated internal combustion engine totally unlike what we use in today’s world.  He also designed and built his own models, FROM SCRATCH, of supersonic  jet airplanes, complete with spiral staircases made of pins and tiny pieces of paper glued in a spiral fashion.  He was also already designing transistor circuits by age 14, which just blew me away at the time.   HE WAS AMAZING!   I wanted his creativity so bad, as I felt that I had none.

My abilities appeared to be quite mechanical, which left me having the sense that I was just another boring automaton,  that I was just parroting/repeating others’ thoughts and behaviors.   I enjoyed building model airplanes and ships from the WWI and WWII eras, and building sailing ships from kits that were based on sailing ships of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.  I enjoyed building them, but then I would be so critical of my efforts, usually by comparing them to the “perfect” models that Craig could produce.  I would become so unhappy with my projects, and an unusual perfectionist phenomenon would occur where I would feel pleasure at destroying my great works because they did not measure up to some (presently) unattainable standard that I had set for myself.  This is huge, as it reflects something “fundamental” about an aspect of darkness of my human soul (see “He just wanted to watch the world burn”).

There were many nights when I slept outside and gazed into the night sky with either binoculars or one of many telescopes that I, or my friend Craig, owned over the years, searching for flying saucers, or other interesting otherworldly objects.  I needed to know that there were other options for life, life away from the trauma of this planet.  Craig and I became obsessed with building rocket ships and developing our own rocket fuel.  We were both quite impacted when between 7th and 8th grades, a friend of ours (Charley Davalos) died when his fuel cell exploded, sending shrapnel to cut his jugular vein.  Undeterred, I still became an avid rocketeer, building rocket ships and installing manufactured solid fuel booster cells into them, and then launching them thousands of feet into the sky.  Craig was stay in my life until 1987, though I only infrequently saw him after my first college years of 1973-1976.

Danny Beauvais was my neighbor from just down the street, who moved there during my seventh grade.   I did not hang around him much, because he was quite aggressive, and had a “hair trigger” when it came to his emotions.   He behavior frequently got him into trouble, His father was a paratrooper in the war, and had lost a testicle for his efforts during a mishap  He had a very attractive mother, who garnered more attention from other men than his father cared to experience.  I will just share one story about Danny, which involved a private conversation that my father had with Danny’s father.  In that conversation, Danny’s father noted that his marriage was failing, and that his wife was not faithful.  One day, in casual conversation, I noted that Danny’s mother had more interests than just his father, and Danny proceeded to get me into a body lock with his legs, and tried to squeeze me to death, until I took back what I said.   I kept asking him, in between painful grunts, why he wanted for me to take the truth back.  It did not matter to Danny, he just did not want to hear “the truth” from anybody, but himself.  I would not take back what I said either, and I paid a very painful price for that “stubbornness”, so what played out here is classic male communication around “painful truths”.  We did not associate with each other after that  He ended up in prison a few short years later for assault, and many other crimes during the intervening period of time.

I first met Randy Olson when I was in fifth grade, after he moved up to Oregon from California. He lived about 3/4 of a mile down Oatfield Road from us, and we rode the same bus to school together, for grades 5-8. He had many friends, with me becoming an important friend to him, but, by no means, not his only friend. He was an extremely gregarious fellow, with a great sense of humor. He grew up awkwardly, at least physically, with his legs being too long, and out of proportion with the rest of his body. He shot up so fast in 7th grade, and became so much taller than his peers, that he was given the nickname “Lurch”, with which he was named after an extremely tall character in the 60’s TV series called “The Addams Family”.  We all played pickup basketball, football, and baseball games every spring, summer, and fall together, as well as shared all of the normal sleep-overs, camping trips, bicycle rides, pool and ping-pong games and activities that others our age would engage in, through our freshman year in high school. Then, in his sophomore year, Randy got his first car, and that car opened up all sorts of new vistas for all of us.

Hell bound Train by Savoy Brown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJnhdBpoBKM

I first met Dan Dietz in 1969, when I saw him as a freshman in high school.  He came from Oak Grove grade school, and I came from Concord grade school, to join the freshman class.  We did not associate with each other, at least initially, and rarely acknowledged each other until the sophomore year.  An associate of his, Mark Anderson, was in my PE class, so that is where I first made contact with the “greaser” group that they all belonged to.  There was Bruce Chapman, Dan Dietz, Mark Anderson, Barry South, and the many drop-ins that associated with them throughout high school.  Bruce Chapman had a garage outside of his home, where he perpetually worked on his 1955 Chevy race car.  Bruce’s Garage took on an almost sacred connotation in all who knew him over the next few years, as it became THE GATHERING PLACE many weekend evenings.  Lots and lots of suds were consumed there, and soon I was to join them in their weekly celebrations of hops, marijuana, and fairly close friendship, it seemed.

Having been rejected by every girl I showed an interest in, and bullied a few times by the more mature freshman and sophomores, I finally figured out that my physical immaturity had finally caught up with me.  Being 13 years old, weighing 92 pounds,  being a freshman in high school, and not even having had puberty yet, made things really uncomfortable for me in the locker room, though at long last I got my first whisker somewhere between my freshman and sophomore year.  I gave up on the girls for a while, and continued trying to establish who might be my “core group”.

I tried out for the cross country team, because I was in great running shape from training throughout my eighth grade with Craig’s older Mark (who ended up designing the sophisticated software for the US Defense Department to use in the computers of their top secret spy planes).  Mark was 3 years older than Craig, but he was much more athletic and was incredibly involved in the community.  He was an inspiration to me, and I trained with him because he was so smart and motivated, and I wanted to hang with him.  I ended up running 3 miles a day for a whole year while in 8th grade, so I thought that this would be a good fit for me.  Craig and I attempted to run cross country, but I quickly became discouraged by the “faster” runners who were already on the team, so I dropped out.  I joined the chess club and the golf team my freshman and sophomore years, then dropped both of those options when I started using pot.

At this point, I had no idea who “my people” were, though I had still had 3 or 4 quite socially compromised fellow travelers who had been my friends since 5th grade. I was truly a “stranger in a strange land”, and the anxiety around this social adjustment was quite high.  Looking back, it is easy to see that I was in a vulnerable state of mind.

I had no desire to use drugs at the time, as I still was repulsed by the behavior of my sister, who, through her own drug use had become an outsider within our own home family structure. She still hung around, when she was not running with her other friends, or hanging onto her latest boyfriend. But her resistance to and fighting with my parents disrupted my own distorted sense of what a healthy family setting should look, and feel, like.

One late fall Friday night in 1970, my friends Tony M and Randy O found me at a football game, and said that I needed to try something with them. I went with them, and when we drove off of the campus, Randy brought out a couple of “joints” and told me what they were. Well, I wanted nothing to do with it at the time, but the peer pressure was high, so I went along with it. I did not get “high”, though they did, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves, though I could not understand how.

I tried the stuff three more times, because I became curious how a substance could change somebody so profoundly that they appeared to be enjoying themselves in public, which was an unknown concept to me. Then, the damage began. I actually became “high”, and nothing was ever to be the same again. For the first time in my life, it did not matter that I did not “fit in”, and my sense of social dis-ease left, and my own poor sense of self-esteem evaporated in a cloud of intoxicating smoke. Thus, the oppression of my human heart and soul became normalized in my own life, through the continued usage of the drug.

The drug brought an artificial sense of peace of mind, and kept me from being so hyperactive mentally (yes, I was quite the precocious person, with an almost photographic memory).  Over the course of the many years of use, I lost many of my basic abilities to feel my emotional heritage, and draw from my internal intellectual resources. Through the process of normalizing the oppressive qualities of this drug, I became almost immune to the distress going on around me, let along to remain consciously aware of the distress building up within my mind, and body.  But that is a story for later.

I started smoking pot before attending mathematics classes, and before doing my most difficult homework.  I was in the most advanced science and math classes already, and Rex Putnam High had even introduced a college level calculus class for our senior year because there were several people who had the same advanced capabilities as with me. Even calculus was too easy for me, so pot made boring homework more of a challenge to finish.   I enjoyed creating the extra level of difficulty for my work, and for my life, apparently.  Of course, the fun of using pot while trying to succeed in school ultimately backfired, when I hit college. It was disheartening to lose my nearly photographic memory to the damaging effects of pot, a memory capacity which had enabled me to slide through most of school without doing much homework.  Once I hit college, I can remember many, many hours of just staring at my homework, unable to comprehend what I was looking at, near the end of my academic road in 1976 at the University of Portland, but this is getting ahead of myself.

Note:  In recent years it has been established that the use of marijuana by human beings under the age of 25 are at risk for stunting their emotional growth and development. It has also been shown that discontinuing use does enable the repressed nervous/emotional systems to unfold in more natural ways that promote continued growth, into a delayed maturation, but it is a maturation nonetheless. My personal experience is that using pot as an intoxicant is one of our society’s newest ways to normalize oppression, and support the repression of our emotional natures.

In my search for another source of pot, Dan Dietz came into my awareness, and, thus, we were to begin a deep, though at times troubled, friendship.  Dan was a big young man, with little athletic inclination.  He found me some pot, and invited me to smoke it with him.  I then was introduced to the “gang”, and the rest is history.  We hit it off fabulously, and I found my mission in life, which apparently was to drink and use until I died.  I got drunk for the first time in my conscious life with Dan, at age 15. And I knew that I was an alcoholic from the very beginning.  After a couple weekends of drinking, I admitted to myself that I was an alcoholic already.  I got so “high” off of alcohol, it was like a narcotic.  And I always drank until I was drunk, as there was no middle ground here.

It was here that I had the realization that I would die from alcoholism, that there was nothing that I could do about it but hold on tight, and ride it out to its self-destructive conclusion.  My statement to myself was that I would either quit alcohol and drugs by age 30, or I would die, perhaps by the destructive effects of the disease itself, or by my own hand.  Yes, hopelessness came early, but there was still a lot of fun and experiences to be gained through its use while my ship of life sank over the next 16 years, and I did not go easy on it.  There were several nights my senior year in high school when my mother would have to hold a bucket under my head while I released extra beer from the stomach reservoir, which I would always overfill.  She investigated Alcoholics Anonymous for me, but I had no desire to connect with a bunch of boring old people, and I steered WAY CLEAR of anything approaching sobriety in high school, or in the two attempts for Bachelor’s Degrees at  the University of Portland that were to follow over the next 10 years.

Looking at my history, I have rocked with the Mystery

Chapter Six

In the last two years, there has been several articles posted in Psychology Today, and in other scientific, spiritual and healing newsletters, about the possibility of some forms of psychedelics being useful in the treatment of depression and other mood disorders.  I won’t necessarily be directly addressing those articles here, but modern research may be confirming what has already been witnessed by many users of these mind altering substances over the last fifty years.  Psychedelics, and their use, could take a whole volume, if I were to describe and define all of my experiences with them over the period 1972-1980.  I used LSD and mescaline during my high school years over twenty times, from early 1972 through the summer of 1973.  In college, I did not use them hardly at all, nor did I use them much after that, perhaps using them once or twice a year until 1980, when I ceased using them altogether.

Psychedelia comes under a different class of experience than alcohol, pot, amphetamines, or downers.  They were referred to as “mind expanding drugs” during the period of time when they were most popular, which began in the 1960’s and extending through the 1970’s period of time.  I found psychedelics to be extremely challenging to use, yet they brought into my awareness some amazing and logic-defying experiences.  I would even say that I even  had exotic, supra-normal type of personal events, on several occasions.

My first time that I used LSD, I was a sophomore in high school.  I had no desire to ever use the drug, as I was afraid of the potential effects on me.  But, Pam’s friend, Terry Potter, gave me a small pill that had been saturated with LSD liquid to give to Pam.  Pam, at this point of her life had no desire for the drug, so she gave it back to me and told me to return it to Terry.  Well, I kept it, and then decided to try an ever so small amount of it, in case I had a dangerous reaction to it.  I grabbed a razor blade, and scraped about one fourth off of the pill, and ingested it, and then took a bus to downtown Portland, to hang out at the city library.  Well, an amazing feeling overtook me about one hour later.  I became euphoric, and I had never felt so good in my life!  I felt peace, and love for everybody and everything, and being only fifteen years old and having never experienced such an energy before, I thought that I had found the “promised land”.  There were no visual or auditory hallucinations, because the dose was so low, and that was just fine with me.  It took longer than usual to sleep that night, as my mind remained on “high alert” well into the early morning hours.  There was no hangover, nor did I regret taking the risk using the drug.

Another time, when I went to attend a concert at Washington Park, a man sold me something called DMT, which he called the businessman’s LSD, because its effects only lasted 2-3 hours, versus the 10-13 hours LSD’s effects may cause.  This drug is similar to the drug Ecstacy as it is now being sold in the US.  I became euphoric on this drug, and I had a fascinating experience.  Every person that I would encounter for the next two hours, I felt an incredible kinship with.  I also felt as if I could understand them at some level way beyond my normal capacity.  It was as if I was able to feel all of their good thoughts, so to speak.  So, it was an experience of the elimination of fear for me when dealing with strangers, and giving me the sense of being connected with everybody at a level impossible to achieve while in normal states.  A more sedate and sane variation of this experience was to come to me more “naturally” fifteen years later, after recovery from drug addiction and alcoholism.

There is another LSD experience worth commenting upon.  Marc Anderson, Mike Kelsey and myself had taken LSD together in my senior year at Rex Putnam.  Mike had already dropped out of high school, and had his own “rat castle” so we enjoyed LSD’s effects at Mike’s place.  One amazing effect was that somehow Marc and I became entrained, so that we would “see” the same hallucinations at the same time.  Yes, I was taking the drug in high enough doses that hallucinations were now quite prominent.  One of the biggest prolonged laughs that we all had together was when Mike turned into the Devil himself, with red horns, a tail,  and a red face.  Of course, Mike could not see it, but Marc and I saw him transform Exactly at the same time, and we could not stop laughing for ten minutes!!

One final experience that seems to have significance is one time I had secured a variation of LSD called Orange Sunshine, while attending a summer concert at Delta Park in north Portland.  The pill itself was a small phosphorescent orange color, and boy did it pack a wallop!  Any kind of visual image or scene had the likelihood of changing into almost anything else, seemingly spontaneously.  When I say that the “walls were melting” at times, if I was in a room, the walls did melt with the most wonderful blending of color and sounds together.  My psychological set was eliminated as well (meaning all of my personality was no longer accessible, so I was witnessing and experiencing the moment without my normal ways of experiencing reality through my conditioning).  It was incredible, disorienting, wild, and transformative while under LSD’s influence.  I was to have a drug induced “awakening” where I realized that I was the one controlling my very reality, and through the focus of my will and my heart I could change what I was witnessing in  the world.  This took on rather bizarre manifestations, with colors swirling through new images, sometimes appearing as if some sort of internal kaleidoscope were projecting images out into my visual field, ALL UNDER MY CONTROL.

When I saw how I could also experience people in a thousand different ways, depending on the position of my internal “kaleidoscope”, I came to realize that I had a lot more say in how I experienced my fellow man than I ever realized.  I can understand why Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), Timothy Leary and so many other pioneers in the modern day exploration of human consciousness have used LSD.  LSD, under the right conditions, can reveal the awesome powers, and potential, of the unconditioned human mind.  It can be temporarily transformational, and potentially quite beautiful, and dangerous, as well.  I found that the older that I got, the less of a positive experience that I got, so I stopped using LSD in 1980.  It took two days to recover from my last experience, which I shared with Dan Dietz.  I feared that I might not return to “my normal”, the place where I am comfortable in my “psychological set”, and I never wanted to use it again.  But, the positive aspects of mind expansion without drugs did occur for me much later in adulthood, having similar sort of mind altering experiences, in a much more natural, permanent, and less disruptive way.

One more story about Dan Dietz, and then I will move on

Dan and I bought a bottle of booze, and we kept it in the trunk of his car, to “sip” from, in between beers at the tavern. I started out my birthday evening by playing several games of pool, gambling $5 a game with some “locals”. At that time of my life, I was a very good pool player, and I removed a few bucks from some very unhappy patrons. One unhappy patron followed me out to Dan’s car, where I was grabbing a swig off of a whisky bottle. He let me know that he did not like me having so much fun at his expense, and tried to fight with me. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but somehow the fight got “postponed”.

I walked back into the tavern, and enjoyed a couple more beers with Dan and John, and played some more pool. I was quite the “happy drunk”, though my behavior did not make the outraged individual I had already taken $20 from feel any better about me. The next time I walked out to Dan’s car, that unhappy man grabbed two of his friends, and they all tried to “teach me a lesson”. Dan looked out from the tavern door at his car, and saw that I was in trouble, and secured the bar manager. But it was too late, one guy pulled a knife, and the fight was on. There were a few lunges at me with the knife, and a couple of punches thrown (none quite hit me). There was a lot of loud voices, and some yelling and screaming. The manager called the police, but at that same moment, the guy with the knife took a final stab at me. According to the reports from Dan, I spun kicked the knife out of his hand (which was an act of pure, unadulterated luck on my part), and then I threatened to take his head off with the next kick. The sirens of the police cars about to arrive there scared the three attackers away, and it also scared Dan and John, who quickly threw me into the car, and we drove off up Beaverton Hillsdale Highway towards Wilson High School.

I got angry with Dan for not coming out to help me with the attackers, and he told me that calling the police was the best that he could do. He then not so politely, invited me to walk home from close to Wilson HIgh, to Milwaukie, about 7 miles or so. I was fortunate to make it home in one piece, and not be arrested for being drunk in public, or for drunken walking. I visited Dan the next day, and apologized to him. He was in really bad shape, and he was still pretty hung over. And he was the designated driver!

AIN’T IT FUN by Guns & Roses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX4A2osFQsg

I want to return back to my sophomore year, to fill in a couple of gaps in the story.  I will present two timelines of important people from my past.  First, I will refer to my best friend from the years 1973-1978, Sean Tucker.  Then I will bring back into focus my first wife, Donelle Mae Flick (Paullin).

I first met Sean Tucker in 1972, when he moved into our area from his mother’s home in Colorado.  His father was estranged from his mother.  His father was a manager with the Bureau Of Indian Affairs, and Sean had chosen to live with him.  He drove a perfect four door baby blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, which was his distinctive chariot for most of the time that I knew him as a youth.  Sean had long hair, and always wore it in a pony tail.  We met at the Owen Sabin Occupational Skills Center, where I was learning Electrical Construction, and he was learning Printing.   Sean was a handsome young man, and he really had an easy time with dating women.

We both liked to smoke pot and to drink.  But Sean’s favorite drink was wine, which I did not develop a real love for.  We used to visit the Henry Endre’s Winery along Clackamas River Drive, and purchase half gallons of Mead, Rhubard, or whatever the seasonal wine choice was.  The winery did not ask for age identification, so we took advantage of that laxity frequently.

Sean became my best, best friend.  We did so much together, and I looked forward to having adventures with him, all the way until he joined the Air Force in 1978.  We took long drives out into the country, we played pinball at all of the local bowling alleys and arcades, we partied with all of the other local party animals on weekends, and we shared many family events and meals at my parents’ home.  Sean did not include me in his family events, however.  I had many drinking and using friends, but Sean seemed to exist in another realm for me, where spirit joined with love and friendship and shared values and meaning.  We would listen to Alan Watts on Saturday night, and while “high” sometimes laugh and giggle together at Alan’s wisdom and insight, though we might catch an occasional AHA! from our listening efforts.

We talked a lot about what God might be, and how we might encounter it in our journeys.  Sean was not a church goer, nor was I, so we were not limited by structured understandings at that time.  We would play with meditation sometimes, after hearing that a more prolonged “high” could be experienced through meditation than could be obtained through the use of drugs and alcohol.  One time I was meditating in a full lotus position on the pool table in my parents’ home basement, and my mother saw me, and was surprised and shocked by what she witnessed.  I was embarrassed by her discomfort with me, and shortly after that, ceased all attempts at meditation.

Late in 1977, when Donelle was in the middle of another relapse into schizophrenia, Sean, Donelle, and I undertook a road trip through much of Oregon in my 1962 Buick Skylark.  We traveled through much of the Oregon Coast, into Crater Lake, where we illegally camped along the lake rim, and Eastern Oregon around the Bend area.  Sean and I had our normal complement of pot and alcohol, as well as a couple of doses of powerful psychedelics, and Donelle had her mental illness, and all of the sometimes bizarre manifestations of it.  Sean had known my wife almost since the beginning of my relationship with her, and he was always a kind, supportive presence for her.  But, Donelle’s symptoms were hard to understand, and we were both quite helpless and felt out of control in the face of her disease of the mind.

One evening, we all sat around the campfire, and Donelle continued her sometimes bizarre behavior.  She was hearing some sort of collection of voices, and she would talk to herself, and sometimes confuse what we were talking about with what was going on in the secrecy of her own mind.  Sean and I would cast uncomfortable facial expressions to each other, and try to engage in conversation with each other solely, especially in the moments when Donelle became overly detached and unresponsive.  In a moment of insight, I spoke of my helplessness in the face of managing Donelle’s disease and treatment, and the futility of all of my attempts at understanding her mental illness.

I remembered that I had a form of LSD with me, which was a powerful mind expanding drug, also known for creating temporary symptoms resembling a form of mental illness.  It was then that I wanted to take the drug, and see if it would provide any insights into Donelle’s mindset, as well as how I might manage my relationship with Donelle.  Sean thought that I should give up on that thought, and stick to the pot and alcohol.  But I insisted, and I took the psychedelic.  I did not receive the desired illumination, but it showed that my deepest desire was to be of help to Donelle, as well as to try to understand the nature of mental illness, and how to bring a measure of healing to a most difficult life situation.

Sean went into the Air Force in 1978, and married a woman named Natty who owned a bar in the Philippines.  She was of Christian orientation, and Sean adopted the fundamentalist mentality through the course of his relationship with that woman.  A deep, spiritual brotherhood was to be gradually, over many years fade into nothing but memories, as his work, family, and Christian orientation took him far, far away from the possibility of a shared heart and friendship.  When I got married in 1979, my first choice for best man would have been Sean, had he been available.  I settled on Dan Dietz and Randy Olson, my other best friends, but these two just did not share quite the same spirit with me as Sean did during this era of my life.

I had one amazing experience around Sean, and it revolves around the time the rock group Heart was to come to town in 1984, to play an outdoor concert at Delta Park.  I had not heard from Sean for over four years at this point, as we  both had become quite busy in our respective lives.  Sean was stationed in Madrid, Spain at the time, and he did not ever write or telephone me, nor did I back to him.  I awoke one Saturday morning, in August of 1984, and I JUST KNEW THAT SEAN WAS ABOUT TO CALL ME.  No sooner than I had the thought, Sean called me, and told me that he was going on leave, and would be coming to Portland, during the same week that Heart was to play.  We were both quite excited about the prospects.

As I looked at my life’s history, at times I listened to the call from its Mystery.

It was hard to reestablish our connection when he arrived, however, as he seemed to have a lot of agendas that did not include me.  We did attend the Heart performance together, yet he got so drunk on Henry Endre’s wine that he became almost insane, and out of touch with me.  When it was time for Sean to fly back to Madrid, we promised each other that we would stay better in touch, but we both reneged over the years.

In 1986, after the Challenger disaster, and after my failed suicide attempt, I called Sean, who was still in Madrid.  I was still suicidal, and told him that I had a fatal brain tumor, and that I was going to die soon.  He offered for me to stay with him in Madrid for awhile.  The thought of a geographic change brought a little hope to me, so I secured my passport, and applied for my pension from the US Postal Service.  I was going to take that money, and use it for airfare and support to get me to Spain.  But, alas, by the time I received the money, my immersion into the Portland underworld was fully undertaken, and I could not extricate myself from my “search for Truth”.

They belonged to that nationally famous “super church” New Life Church, in Colorado Springs, the same one that was wracked with scandal when the minister, Ted Haggard was found to be using speed and paying to have sex with gay men.  I already had my suspicions about organized religion in the first place, even before all of the modern scandals around big churches and organized religion started erupting around our country.. Sharon and I had belonged to a local “super church” that had collapsed because of legal problems, and we knew firsthand that the marriage of congregation size and spirituality was a potentially fatal bond. Natty and Sean took us on a nice sightseeing tour for the afternoon, and talk of religion arose again.  This time,  Sharon and I rebuffed all attempts by the two of them to share our beliefs with them, for we intuited that they were enmeshed in this fundamentalist understanding, and that our experiences and beliefs would be considered blasphemy to them.  I sensed that the friendship was over, and I was very sad.  We only stayed the night, and in the morning, left for home.  I then realized that I may never see Sean again.

Here is the last message that I ever sent to Sean, which happened right after my father’s death

(from email of 10/02/2017)

Sean,
Thank you for your heart felt sentiments.  I have been my father’s primary caregiver since 2009, when my mother died.  My father suffered from dementia, and depression and loneliness, since then (my mother thought that he was developing Alzheimer’s two years prior to her death, but he never forgot Pam’s and my name, though he did forget my wife’s name the last week of his life).

I went to the doctor with my father in January, trying to qualify Dad for hospice, but, incredibly, his physical health was not poor enough to qualify, even though he was deteriorating.  My biggest concern in January was that my father was going to outlive me, and that my sister would put him in a nursing home, as she had not explored or developed the “caregiver mentality”.  Anyway, with several of my peers already having died from brain cancer or heart disease, or suicide, I have been dealing with what is most true and important to maintaining the highest quality of life for myself, and for those I share love and friendship with.

It all comes down to this, Sean.  Do you want to continue to be a dying voice from my past, or part of a living, loving presence in the Now?  That is a decision we both must make.  Phone messages and email messages cannot resurrect a dying relationship, only a truly shared journey together can.  This Requires sharing both space and time together, and a commitment to sharing truth, values, and Spirit.
I loved you and valued you as a friend when you were willing and  able to be present in my life. Almost 35 years have passed since that has happened.  I am in the home stretch of life, and gathering those together who are ready, willing, and able to truly share in these precious few moments we all have left.

Thanks for the time shared.  Memories cannot sustain me now. Presence, and the loving of others in the present moment gives me life, and renews my heart daily.  It is just too painful for me to pretend that we can continue being friends under these circumstances.  Either we have a lot to talk about, and find a new way to connect, and be real friends, or the grave site for our friendship for has already been dug, awaiting more time for the dirt to be thrown over our memories.
With love, and sorrow,
Bruce

Relationships sometimes end well before the body dies, or before the last time we say goodbye to each other.  I have experienced this sad fact several times over the course of my life.

Chapter Seven

I will now return to 1971, and I will try to develop my relationship with Donelle more fully.  Randy Olson found his first long-term girlfriend, a young woman by the name of Terri-Lynn Barr, a person that he met at the Portland Rose Festival of 1971. Terri had a friend named Sharon Denman, who befriended Tony Mecklem, and they both had their first “almost adult” relationships starting at about the same time. I felt a bit left out during this period of time, though I did finally get a couple of friendships going with some girls in the same approximate North Portland area that Terri and Sharon lived in.  It was quite an awkward time for me, however, as I was still physically immature, but growing fast.

Terri-Lynn had a step sister named Donelle, and one day Randy drove Donelle down to Portland, where I had my first chance to meet her. This was not a date (it was far from a date) but when I first laid eyes on Donelle, I was hooked. She was the most beautiful young woman I had ever met, gorgeous beyond all description, and she was incredibly intelligent, and sensitive, too. I had a sense that I had witnessed my future, when I first saw her. I did not see her again for several months, but she had left an indelible mark upon my soul, and I just could not forget her.

My life experience with Donelle ended up becoming some of the most compelling, heartbreaking, depressing experiences that I could never have envisioned for myself, or for her. She had a nervous breakdown late in her senior year, and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. She was briefly hospitalized, and was placed on some powerful, experimental medications to try to keep her independent. She was able to graduate from high school, but her spirit was crushed by her disease, and so was mine. I went from being a potential lifelong friend and partner, to a guilt ridden care giver, and care taker, boyfriend, and, eventually, husband to her. I left all of my boyhood dreams behind in the process, walking away from a full scholarship with the Air Force ROTC, so that I could be close to Donelle, and give her the support that she would require for the rest of her life.  I secured a lifetime guaranteed job with the US Postal Service the summer between my sophomore and junior years in 1975, with the intention of being able to provide short term economic support for Donelle, and myself.

I have not heard from Donelle for over 20 years now, since the death of her father, Don Flick, in 1996. She may be dead, or she may be institutionalized yet again, or she may still be living in a halfway house for the mentally ill attempting to make a transition back into the community. If she is still alive, she remains irreparably damaged psychologically, and that condition will not be changing, regardless of the medication administered by ‘professionals’ or the rest of the outer circumstances of her life (outside of some sort of “miraculous intervention”). Where she is now is a direct result of her relationship to our damaged male dominated culture, as well as (theoretically) some unknown genetic predisposition.

Donelle and I became sweethearts when I was still 16 years old, and she was 17.  I did not have a drivers’ license, or a car, but I knew if I wanted to keep this relationship going I had to do something.  My father had a Honda 50CC motorcycle that he was going to use for fishing (he never did), so I commandeered the bike, grabbed a helmet, and drove that silly little thing up I205 into Vancouver where she lived (or to Camas, if she was staying there with her father).   The transportation eventually improved a bit, but I always drove older cars, cars that were easy to repair or discard as required.  Whatever the cost, I was going to keep pursuing Donelle, that was for sure!

We both were virgins, and our first sexual encounter was anything but satisfying.  I began to wonder if this was all there was to sex, what was the point?  Donelle was very cold, and unresponsive, and I was later to learn that she was non-orgasmic because of the trauma of childhood sexual abuse.  Yes, childhood trauma is the gift that keeps on giving, the trauma created by predators that sexually abuse our babies.  Don’t ask me what should be done with those people.  Life has a way of punishing them, but it is always too late to save the victim.  Many of these victims are so traumatized that they never recover, so prevention is really our only hope here, at least for now.   Donelle was never to recover from this, and she could not even “touch herself” without having an incredible guilt and discomfort.  Sex was anything but fulfilling for either of us, and it was a harsh disappointment for me.

Donelle was not a pot smoker, but she did enjoy drinking a beer or two when it was offered.  She developed a taste for hashish, but I only had access to hash only four times over the course of the 1970’s.  Our relationship was never based around sharing drugs, but in 1982, when a cocaine dealer used our home to store his drugs, she found the occasional use of cocaine to be fun and exciting.  She was pretty accepting of me when it came to my own drug use, as she did not try to discourage me from using, but instead found a way to fit in while our friends and family used drugs together.  At this point, the damage that drugs were doing to me was overshadowed by the thrill and rush of their effects, and the socially connective activity around their procurement and use.

I was hesitant to marry Donelle, fearing that she would yet again destabilize, and collapse into psychosis yet again.  She had several “mini breakdowns” during the period from 1973-1979 that were controlled through new medications, or additions to her old regimens of drugs (she took up to 4 different pills at a time, several just for side-effect mitigation of other medications!).  After dropping out of college the first time, in 1976, I began to spend some real time with her again, just working the swing swift at the Post Office during that time period.  It was a relatively stress free period of time, though I was quite the party animal with Donelle’s younger brother Terry, whom I had become great friends with. Terry and I dealt some drugs together, and I used my connections to secure high quality pot.  One day, Terry got popped in school for drug sales, and his arrest made the local news.  I was scared, and took all of our stash back to Portland, and hid it in my parents’ new condominium.  As he was a minor, nothing permanent stuck to his record, but it changed how we used drugs together.

Eventually, Donelle improved enough that she applied for the Sus Chef training at PCC Sylvania campus, and was accepted into the training.  She did great for two years, nearing graduation, and we were married in September of 1979, after having lived together for 4 years.

This is a most challenging of stories for me to continue to tell. To continue to witness the way far too many men abuse their physical privilege, and take advantage of their positions of power and influence to hurt and control women sexually who have little or no access to legal or social support systems is a demoralizing proposition. And, members of my own male sex have also suffered under its toxic influence, as well. My heart goes out to all women and men, past and present, who have been abused by this darkened energy. I am going to attempt to present a story about some of that male energy which victimized and traumatized my first wife, and some of the lasting effects that it had upon her and upon me through my relationship to her and her resultant mental illness.

Phase 1:

She was never able to speak out against the abuse that she experienced throughout her life. Being born into a socially diseased family, where the mother’s narcissism and selfishness, and neglect of her young children, and the mother’s poor relationship choices that resulted from her own brokenness, led to the conditions of sexual abuse and assault against Donelle when she was but 6 years old. Her mother Marlene was a young bride, who married Donald Flick, in 1954. Don owned 2 sections of land in North Dakota, which he managed and leased out, as well as being a full time worker at the Camas Washington Crown Zellerbach paper mill. Don would work so much at the mill, that time at home was quite limited. Marlene would have parties at their home while he was away, and she would invite single men. There was always alcohol being served, and Marlene tended to promiscuity during that period of time. While she would be taking leave to the back bedroom with her latest “friend”, she would leave her young children vulnerable to whoever was left without a partner. Donelle, being about 6 years old during this difficult period of time, was selected and abused by Bud Barr, who was a child predator, heavy drinker, and all around bad attitude man. Bud would repeatedly abuse Donelle, and it was also later learned that he abused his other daughter from his previous marriage.

Hell is For Children, Pat Benatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxYsi5Y-xOQ

Marlene and Don’s marriage collapsed, and they were divorced. But Marlene married the abuser Bud, and they moved in together near Five Corners in Vancouver, Washington. Donelle lived with her mother the majority of the time, due to the conditions of the divorce decree. Donelle had to face the threat of sexual attack from this criminal for the next ten years of her life, though her brothers told me that Bud was not allowed to be alone with Donelle, after Marlene and Bud moved in with each other. Yet, the damage was already done, and the little girl knew trauma intimately.

(Note 1: there was a time when I was 24 years old that I wanted to hurt both Bud and Marlene very badly, for mistreating and abusing Donelle. Under the right set of conditions, I had the will, and the potential, to bring the greatest harm to Bud, but I never acted upon my disgust and hatred.  I broke my collarbone fighting with her oldest brother Keith once, when I made confrontational statements against Marlene, and Keith felt obliged to defend her. Keith later apologized, and told me I had every right to be upset, but not until I wrestled with both him AND his wife, who jumped me too).

Phase 2:

Donelle and I got married in September of 1979, and she was doing quite well at the time. Her mental illness was being well-managed by the latest anti-psychotic ‘miracle drugs’ by all appearances, and she was studying to be a Sous Chef at PCC Sylvania campus.. She was getting good reviews and grades there, and because she had stabilized so well, I finally felt comfortable enough to marry her, having delayed marriage since 1973 because of our tumultuous experiences around her variable mental health.

By April of 1980, she collapsed once again into another ‘nervous breakdown’ which included “hearing voices”, talking to herself, and generally experiencing the ravages of her paranoid schizophrenia. I moved out of our shared apartment on Harrison St. in Milwaukie, and moved across the street into another apartment, so that I could stay in close contact with her. I needed to stay in other quarters because she was so disruptive because of her horrible disease. She would not sleep at night many times, and she would hear screams from the basement of the Milwaukie Police department, where she claimed they were torturing civilians, and she would cry out in anguish because of what she was “hearing”..

Dan Dietz was my best friend up to that point in time, and he was also the co-best man at our wedding. Dan had known Donelle almost as long as I did, and he knew all too well her limitations while she was in her “breakdown mode”. Dan was quite the drinker and party animal still, and Donelle, even in her diseased state, still liked to go out and listen to live music, and drink liberally. I demanded that Dan stay away from Donelle while she was in her breakdown phase, but he instead took her out one night, and they both drank to extreme drunkenness together. When I came over to Donelle’s place the next morning, I noted that her panties were on the floor, and that she was partially dressed, and still woozy on the couch. She told me that she awoke to Dan raping her after she had passed out. When I confronted Dan about it, He said that he did not remember anything, but I went ahead and broke my hand on a door that he stood in. I told him to leave, and i never saw Dan alive again.

Phase 3:

I visited Donelle several times at Ft. Steilacoom mental hospital near Tacoma, Washington over the years that she was committed to that horrible place (1988-1992). Donelle would tell me stories about the male attendants raping the patients, and the necessity of locking her door at night to prevent both the patients, and attendants, from raping or assaulting her during the night. I have written before about my visits here, and I will not comment further in this piece. (end)

Note 2: In 1987, I visited Donelle at her apartment near Camas Washington. We had been divorced since 1984, but I still kept in touch with her on occasion, because of my concern for her. I had just gotten sober, and I wanted to make amends to her, as part of the program of working the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (total sobriety was to last for me for over 20 years, until I developed a pain killer addiction in 2007). This time, she was in the middle of a complete MPD (multiple personality disorder) type of nervous breakdown. She had candles lit throughout her apartment, and the setting was quite eerie. I sat down with her to talk, and I noted that she looked so young and innocent, and I was struck by the change in her appearance and countenance. As she spoke to me, I felt like I was witnessing a 6 or 7 year old girl, with the new persona that was now speaking through her. For some reason, I was inspired to give her feedback about her “six year old self” that I was witnessing. I told her that she was not responsible for the sexual abuse that she experienced from Bud (and perhaps one or two unnamed others during Marlene’s drunken soirees). I tried to be as forgiving and compassionate as my heart would allow to the naive, innocent child making its presentation before me. We both cried together, and my heart was broken, and I hurt like I had never before hurt as a human being. I can only imagine her own terror and fear around her own abuse at the hands of her elders. Later in this visit, another “personality” appeared. A calm, composed mature person then “incarnated” into Donelle. I asked who I was talking with. She told me that she was “God”, and proceeded to give me the wisest, most loving feedback that I had ever received as a human being up to that point in my life.

“You have reached the point of being able to accept my sacred beauty in your life.  You have made peace with your past, but the peace will not last forever.  You have much work to do, but your work will have love guiding it, and protecting you.”

As I was open to “God” at that point in my life, it was a miracle that “God” could use the vehicle of a damaged human being to talk with me.  That is how “God” works sometimes.

Looking at my history, I remained open to the revelations from the Mystery

Who can say with certainty what reality truly is? Those who cling too tightly to what they think that they know, can unintentionally exclude a “whisper from God” that might be experienced and revealed in the newness of each moment, no matter what or who the source may be.

Donelle’s reality was a most challenging one. I am distressed by the abuse that men over the course of her life heaped upon her. She was the most loving, kind person that I had every known, and she got bulldozed by our culture and community, and her diseased response to it. Nature, or nurture? Had Donelle been lovingly nurtured since birth through her adulthood, I would only hope that the disease would not have erupted. Traumatization of our most innocent cannot lead to happy outcomes.

Over the many years that i knew her, i tried to be the best support person that I could be, but I was damaged goods, as well, so I failed in my mission, too. She deserved better that what I could give her, because I suffered under my own limitations of selfishness, addiction, and sense of personal powerlessness. With mental illness, we all tend to fail together as a family, as a culture, and as a human race. Those who can bring forgiveness, insight, compassion, and a sense of the Spirit are the true blessings for the sick within our society. I am not so sure about the ones who distribute the medications, however. They may help in the short term, but they tend to deliver a mixed bag of goods, that is for sure. The great gift we can give is a non-judgmental listening ear, and to keep our hearts open to the stories that are told.

Many days, I am not a proud member of the human race. Sometimes, I am appalled and disgusted by my male peers, and most times I want nothing to do with oversexed and over aggressive men. Men are the serial killers, they are the rapists, they are the ones wielding assault rifles, they are the ones terrorizing innocent people.  There was a time when I would have lifted my fists against the aggressors, but a broken hand and broken collarbone proved to me that my structure could not support the war on Patriarchy and its ugly spawn, the damaged male ego and its addiction to its “penis power”. I continue to write about the vile, damaged parts of consciousness of the American male, much to the distress and consternation of some of my readers, past and present. I also know that there is a tender, loving, compassionate component to the male consciousness, and that is the part the I celebrate with all people seeking healing from our sometimes evil world, the world created by dark men and their twisted fantasies of domination and control.

I will no longer remain silent. I confront darkness wherever it lies, even if it is within my own soul. For men, the big problem is not that we get erections, it is that we unskillfully manage ourselves in self-destructive and other destructive manners. Too many men live in a dark world dominated by their own genitals, the fantasies entertained in the privacy of their dark minds, and their own unskilled relationship to their own sexuality.

I will not idly stand by while my peers abuse their family members, their female friends or acquaintances, or their world, because my heart will not allow it. Abuse in any form is unacceptable behavior, and the issues behind it must continue to be addressed by our awakening culture.  I have left several male friendships because of spousal abuse or significant other abuse, and abandoning these friendships were some of the most excruciating, difficult actions that I have undertaken in my life.  I have literally felt my heart tear from its moorings as I severed loving relationships with two men from my men’s group experience who either were active abusers or enablers.

I want to thank my present wife (of 25 years) Sharon White, who has provided constant compassionate support for both me, and for Donelle, while she was still present and active in my life up to 1996. Her understanding and love for me, and open heart response to my first wife, helped me immensely in my own healing.

Before I met Donelle, and before I was introduced to drugs and alcohol, I was to become an astronaut, but instead I was permanently grounded, and resigned myself to a life of mediocrity. I absorbed more than my share of alcohol and other chemicals to help me cope with my own dysfunction, while I watched my lover disintegrate, and then, occasionally, resurrect herself, from the effects of her disease through the latest medications introduced by the drug companies. Yes, we both had lifelong diseases to fight, and we both fought losing battles. She eventually became a homeless street person, and she would frequently show up in the 4th floor cafeteria at the Main Post Office on nights that I worked, and would sit at a table for hours, crying, and waiting for me to take a lunch break.  I would pass whatever money I had on to her.  She would recount her stories of horror of being out on the streets of Portland as a homeless person.  Eventually,  the State of Washington accepted responsibility for her care. I proceeded to begin my own search for the truth of my being, though I was working with very few clues about which direction to head in.

Chapter Eight

I will try to cover my employment  with the US Postal Service, as well as my attempts at “higher education”.  I worked as a floor clerk, a letter sorting machine operator, and finally as a maintenance mechanic/electronic technician for a total of ten years, beginning in 1975, when I took a summer job with the US Postal Service during my summer break between my sophomore and junior years.  This was the same office that my father worked out of, and it certainly was not my dream job.  I was supposed to quit work when fall term for my junior year began, but instead I continued full time swing shift work, while going to school full time during the day. Add to that time management challenge was trying to manage my alcoholism and drug addiction, and a mentally ill significant other, and it was pretty easy to see that this story was not to have a happy conclusion.

I ended up dropping out of college my senior year, with few credits left to secure to get a degree, and even fewer units of personal desire to do so. School had the potential to become all-consuming, and I probably needed sobriety to have any hope in the first place.  So the best decision for a practicing alcoholic/addict is to keep the job I already had, and give up on the degree for a while.  That was the second major life goal that I literally smoked and pissed away, after resigning from the ROTC my sophomore year.  .

I met some really interesting characters while working at the main office of the US Postal Service.  Some were incredibly damaged human beings.  Larry was a Vietnam veteran from the Marine Corps, and he would tell stories from the front lines of the war.  He was involved in the fragging of an American Lieutenant, and that story disgusts me to this day.  Paul and I spent a lot of time together after work, drinking and video gaming until all hours of the morning after work.  But he had a dark side as well, and I suspected him of being the arsonist who set fire to his disabled Uncle’s home, which resulted in his uncle’s death. But I met some good people, as well, including David Valdivia, who I still am in contact with, mainly with him being my late father’s and my insurance agent.  He left his postal career before the idea that he could do nothing else imprisoned him.

In Part Two, I will talk at length about the Common Knowledge Game (CKG), which is a form of mutually destructive prayer used in collective consciousness.  The CKG informs our understanding of our own lives, how we see others, and how to use it’s twisted knowledge of poor self-esteem and negative judgments of others to inform our decisions about actions we can take in our own lives. The following statements are some of the pre-conditions that set up the Common Knowledge Game.  Many of my co-workers were there because they felt that they could do no other work, that they did not either have the skills, qualification, competency, or motivation to try anything else, and everybody knew that truth not only about themselves, but also about all of their co-workers, which in turn, was what the co-workers understood about each other, as well.

Many also shared a common foe, chemical dependency.  Those two factors helped to define my relationship to the Post Office career, as well.  I really enjoyed my time working as a machine clerk, however, as the fast pace of the job, and the fact that it was a lifetime guaranteed job,  kept me from feeling too bad about my personal and employment decisions.  Even though I was “trapped”, I found a way to sing in my cage often enough to delay the inevitable crush of despair that was to follow in earnest later on in my career.

I was eventually promoted onto the maintenance team, where I started as a maintenance mechanic in 1980.  What I had hoped to become was an electronic technician trainee.  I did work on some older mechanical or electrical-mechanical mail sorting gear for a couple of years, which was quite boring.  Because I was the new low guy on the totem pole, I was last in line for all promotions, no matter how qualified, or unqualified, I was for any new or more favorable positions that opened up.

About one year before the start of the maintenance position, I again I applied at the University of Portland Engineering Department for readmission, but they were still unimpressed with me because of my meteoric fall from academic grace 3 years earlier.  I went from a being a scholarship student, with a strong B+ average in college, with advanced math placement, to a student who no longer showed up in class.  I apparently did not show the right initial interest, because I was told to attend a community college for a year, to prove that I was really interested in going to school.  So I attended Portland Community College, Sylvania Campus, for the 1979-1980 school year, to see if I still “had it in me”, getting straight A’s in the most difficult science and math courses offered.  I also took some philosophy and religion based courses, knowing that they would help me with the University of Portland readmission project that I was undertaking.  So now I get word that I am readmitted to U of P, at about the same time that my new maintenance position begins.  Will this new marriage work?

Since I was a new hire into the Maintenance Department, headed by John Zimpleman, I was relegated to performing the least favorable duties that the Main Post Office had to offer.  I was usually blowing dust off of equipment, tightening conveyor belts, replacing motors, resetting photocells, adjusting timing on the parcel sorting machine, or other sundry and mundane tasks that my precedents had dutifully performed prior to my “advancement” into their ranks. Right after I started, I was referred to the Employee Assistance Program, which was run internally to the US Postal Service.  My attendance had been fairly poor up to this point while I was a clerk, so this was a carryover from those days, too.  Larry and Mike tried to befriend me, and tried to get me to admit that drinking and/or drugging had something to do with the poor attendance, but I stood unaffected by their suggestions.  I had to go to 5 AA meeting to meet the requirements of the EAP, which I did, but I had a quart of beer stashed under my car seat for immediate consumption after each meeting, so the “message” fell on carbonated ears.

Well, after I worked for less than a month on graveyard shift I KNEW THAT I NEEDED TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.   So, once again I combined work and school, and this time I knew that I was going to succeed, since Donelle was no longer in the picture, at least at this point (she was to return in the latter part of 1981), and I thus would be able to retain my focus, and not collapse into the confusing quagmire that I fell into after from trying to maintain a marriage with a troubled person, work and go to school at the same time, like I attempted 3-6 years previously.

From 1981-1983 I attended the University of Portland while working graveyard shift at the US Postal Service.  I did not have time to drink alcohol excessively, except for on weekends.  For the first year, I had great grades, perfect attendance, and a lot of hope for myself until I hit the last semester of my junior year. During the same period, Donelle came back into my life, after I found her hitchhiking along a busy road near my parents’ home.  She had been released from Dammasch State Hospital, and placed in an apartment complex on Roethe Rd. near my parent’s old home near Rex Putnam High School.  She was on Social Security Disability, and was receiving outpatient care as needed for her mental illness.  I did not immediately resume my marriage with Donelle, however, and we were still legally separated since the original commitment to Dammasch.

Eventually, after several weeks of contact with Donelle, I was encouraged enough by her progress to want to resume our marriage.  On the night before I was to move back in with her, my friend Paul, from the letter sorting machine gig, and I went out and really tied one on.  While in a bar near his home in northeast Portland, we came upon two female co-workers from the LSM’s, Candy and Lorna.  Candy was six foot tall, attractive, but outweighed me by forty pounds.  Lorna was a redhead, of reasonable dimensions, but very plain looking.  Paul had partied with both of them in the past, so he knew them quite well.  I had no idea what was about to ensue, however.

In a near blackout state, I accompanied Paul, and the two women, over to Paul’s house, where we continued drinking, smoking pot, and playing some video games.  I was ready to go to sleep, when Paul took off into the kitchen with the two women.  When he returned, I asked him if I could sleep on his bean bag chair.  With a big grin he proclaimed

“Why hell yes, you can.  But first, you get to pick which woman you are sleeping with tonight!”

“Umm, Paul, I am not really prepared for this one.  Uh, uh, uh, Candy, would you like to stay and talk with me until I fall asleep?”

The truth be known is that I had no desire for either woman.  They were not appealing to me in the least, yet I selected Candy out of some sort of need to protect the woman’s feelings.   Candy was quite pleased to join with me in Paul’s living room, where the bean bag chair was located.  Lorna accompanied Paul into his bedroom, and they closed the door behind them.  I was still quite drunk, yet I felt a little self-conscious.  We could hear laughter and raucous activity coming from Paul’s room, and we figured out what must be going  on.  Somehow, without me remembering exactly how, my pants disappeared off of my body, as well as all of Candy’s clothes.

I awoke the next day, naked, and laying beside Candy, who was still asleep.  I got up, wrote a note apologizing to Candy, and stated that I had made a mistake, and to please accept my forgiveness for having sex with her while drunk (while sober, I NEVER WOULD HAVE CONSIDERED SUCH A PARTNER FOR LOVEMAKING). I felt diminished somehow, for having sex with her.  For the next two months, she chased after me at work, called me at home, and eventually gave up, when I never returned her calls, and continued to spurn her.  Some disparaging writing ended up on the walls of the bathroom stalls in the Post Office women’s bathrooms about me and my penis, which brought huge laughs to the janitorial core, and, eventually, to the maintenance core, who shared the same locker room.  The joke was that Candy might be better suited to maintaining the Postal Service’s equipment, where blowing the dust off of equipment was a nightly endeavor.  Ouch, emotionally, for both of us.  I felt quite embarrassed, and it took way too long to live that one down.  I also felt bad, because even though I did not technically cheat on my wife, I was feeling like I had.

My self-destruct cycle resumed, and I restarted my active party mode, with my attendance at work tanking.  My attitude at even being there was in the dumps, as well.  I moved Donelle into the apartment in Milwaukie, and I joined her there, much to the disappointment of my parents, who continued to warn me about the potential for another horrible outcome.  She, of course, had that breakdown, resulting in the rape by Dan Dietz alluded to earlier.

While living across the street from Donelle’s apartment on Harrison in Milwaukie, after her breakdown, my father came to live with me for about three months.  He had been kicked out of his house by my mother, after she found out about his ongoing affair with the company nurse.  I was not too impressed with my life and my family, having an insane wife, and my parents marriage in a state of collapse, and now  my own father spending time in my own apartment, when he wasn’t sleeping at his girlfriends’ home.  My new normal was anything but normal, yet I seemed to have few choices.  Dad eventually had to end his relationship with the nurse, and moved back to his own home.  I had warned him that I would not be too friendly with him if he left my mother, so it would be best if he could work things out with her.  Donelle was kicked out of her apartment across the street, for being too disruptive during her breakdown.  Her neighbors did not appreciate her talking loudly to herself at all hours of the day and night, as well as her bizarre behavior.  I took her in, but it was really difficult for me, as well.  Her middle of the night screams and crying and carrying on were too much for me, as well.  I was finally able to force her to go back to her psychiatrist, and get on the latest medications for schizophrenia, which helped her immensely.

We decided to move to Cedar Hills Apartments, the same apartment complex that Randy Olson was living in.  I quit going to school once again, this time leaving the Electronic Engineering/Computer Engineering degree on the garbage pile, with just one year to completion.  My addictions resumed in earnest, with my introduction to Gary Graham, a local cocaine dealer and serious party monster and new friend.  Donelle was becoming too burdensome, demanding to go out almost every night to “party” and listen to live rock and roll music, and she eventually collapsed into yet another “nervous breakdown” by early 1983, so I was between a “rock” and a hard place.  I finally attempted to “kick her out” of our apartment, which she initially agreed to go, to hang out with her new “rock and roll” friends.  I was already finished with enabling and supporting her mental illness, and I was extracting myself from years of guilt and shame around my relationship with her and her illness.

One day, when she came back to the apartment after a night of partying with her new friends, I insisted that she get all of her clothes, and leave my unit for good.  She balked, and a yelling match ensued.  I opened the door, and pushed her out of the door, after she started pushing at me.  She called the police, and we were both arrested for Class C felonious assault.  Randy picked me up within two hours of incarceration, but Donelle had no one to bail her out, so she sat in the jail overnight.  We both had to appear in court the next week, and the charges against both of us were dropped, but she was advised to not step foot into my apartment again without permission.

I met Cindy Dahl, a letter sorting machine clerk, in 1983.  I was invited out to Lung Fungs near 82nd avenue, and another letter sorting machine clerk introduced us one night.  This was during the period of time during the final nervous breakdown that I could tolerate of Donelle’s.  It is a funny thing, I had no intention of going to bed with Cindy, but that night, we hit it off so well that she came home with me that evening, and we had a wildly great time together.  We slept in the same bed, and bedroom, that I shared with my estranged wife, who was now going out on her own, and not coming back some evenings.  I never asked where she was, because I did not want to face one of my Toxic masculine internal stories that I told myself, that if my wife ever cheated on me, I would kill her.  Well, Donelle walked through the door that very next morning, while we were still in bed, and grabbed some clean panties out of the top drawer of her dresser, smiled, said hello, and left.  That old toxic need to punish a cheating wife just miraculously disappeared, when I saw that we both appeared happier by our final separation from each other.

My relationship with Cindy did not last long, however  She tried to get me to hook up with both her and her very attractive female roommate, but I was too insecure to even consider threesomes and the complex possibilities of interrelationship.   After getting an assignment to travel to Norman, Oklahoma for three weeks more of training, Cindy told me that she was getting her breasts enhanced during the period of time that I was gone.  She was warm to me before I left, but when I came back, she wanted nothing to do with me, and I did not even get a chance to look at, let alone feel, her new chest ornaments.

All I Can Do Is Cry, by Savoy Brown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2T3IyFShfs

I had learned a lot about computer and electronic engineering up to this point, and my new education placed me well ahead of most of my peers, and caused some concern among some co-workers who thought that I might try to parlay this education into a pogo stick to jump over their place on the seniority roster.  Shortly after joining ranks with the maintenance department, I was sent to Normal Oklahoma for training on troubleshooting and repairing some of their letter sorting equipment.  This was the first time that I had ever flown on an airplane, and it was my first great adventure by myself away from home.  I stayed in the University of Oklahoma’s student dormitory, which was shared with the USPS during the summer months for all students.  My roommate was Bill Y of New York City, who also was a maintenance mechanic/electrician from that area.  He happened to be a black man, and he is the first black person I ever had any relationship with, other than through basketball adventures throughout Portland that I used to engage in.  Bill was damaged goods, being a veteran of Vietnam, and still suffering from some very concerning aggressive tendencies and attitudes.  But, somehow, he held himself together.

One Saturday evening, six of us Post Office Maintenance Trainees drove a substantial distance from Norman to a bar in Oklahoma City.  There were five African-Americans, including my roommate Bill, and Jermaine, from New Jersey (who had a huge bag of weed that he just grabbed into and freely distributed to all who liked to partake) and me, the one pale faced party warrior.  I loved being with these guys, and I have never experienced more camaraderie and mutual respect than running with this group of men.  There was a bonding that I just did not understand, but I later learned one of the fundamental tenets of their group energy.

When we arrived, the parking lot was nearly full.  It was a huge club, with all sorts of action going on outside, and, I was to see, inside as well.  We found a decent parking spot, and all walked up to the door together.  Bill led the way, and the greeter held us all up, because of me.  They did not allow “white people” into their place.  Bill explained to the man that I was part of their team, and I was not a “white person”.  The door man told Bill that he would have to register me with the club, and so I was signed into the club, with the other five people with me signing the same paper, vouching for me.  I was told that I was not to dance with any of the black girls, and to keep with my group so as to keep the peace.  The place had several hundred black people partying and carrying on, and I got more than my share of searching, and many times, dirty looks.  Somehow I kept my cool, and paranoia would not have helped me that evening.  I settled in eventually, and enjoyed a couple of strong drinks.  Bill went outside, to share a joint with Jermaine, while the rest of us hung out to one side of the dance floor.

Suddenly, Bill came back in, with Jermaine in tow, and started waving his gun around in the air.  He started yelling very loudly, proclaiming

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt here!”

and authoritatively stated that someone had blocked our car in, and unless they moved their car immediately, someone was going to get hurt.  My other three friends surrounded me, and we all started walking to the door, with the express intention of leaving without anybody slowing us down.  A parting of the crowd, like Moses with the Red Sea, occurred, and we made it outside, awaiting the offending driver to move his vehicle.  Two tough looking dudes came outside, with a following entourage of onlookers, and moved the car, all the while with Bill still waving his firearm in  the air.

The offending car was moved, we all piled into the rental car, and Bill assumed the driver seat, laying the gun in his lap.  We tore out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell, and we all watched to make sure that we were not followed.  Bill later expressed one of his fundamental values, which was that we have to be willing to lay our lives on the line for our friends, and make whatever sacrifice that is necessary to protect each other from danger.  I began to really understand why I had never felt so safe and protected while with this group of men.  This was the civilian equivalent of a small military squad in a war zone, which, apparently, Bill still felt that he was in.  I have never felt this way with any other group of people in my life.  It was exhilarating, fun, bonding, challenging, hair raising, and enlightening to run with this group for three solid weeks.  I was someone I had never been before, respected, accepted, and honored as being a part of a family, where we were accountable for each others’ success and safety.  I was accepted into the field of human energy where I was unconditionally accepted as a brother, and a friend.

Well, I returned back to the everyday, boring world that I had left from after the training.  I still worked graveyard shift, and I continued to drink heavily every morning after work until around noon.   And my life entered full collapse mode with myself, and with my employer.  My employer was fed up with my poor attendance at work, and I had already lapsed into the severe depression and anxiety, and alcohol and pot were just not getting the job done.  It was suggested that I try the Physicians and Surgeons Hospital Care Unit for alcoholic recovery by our EAP (employee assistance program).  After weighing my options, which I really did not have any, I accepted alcoholic recovery as a good option, and checked into the unit in April of 1984.  The first two days, I basically spent in bed, while they detoxed me from any physical addiction symptoms through the use of the drug Librium.  That first day I was, basically, unconscious, by the request of the attending physician.

I spent thirty days in the unit.  I met many other people who were also attempting recovery.  My roommate was Tom Cravens, a man who had spent more than his share of time in trouble with the law, and with his drinking.  He became like a big brother to me while I was there.  Tom told me about his relationship with Steven Kessler and the 1968 Oregon State Prison riot.  That information seemed inconsequential at the time, but Kessler’s life wreckage would subsequently impact my life directly, in 1986-1987.  I befriended an ex-Hell’s Angel’s motorcycle gang member by the name of Scott.  Herm Gilliam (now deceased) of the 1977 Portland Trailblazer championship team was there.  So I was not alone in recovery, and it eventually became a unique, healing experience.  I almost came to regard the group therapy, talking sessions, and attempts at personal inventory to be like taking a vacation from life. My personal inventories were pretty weak, and appeared to be only people pleasing efforts, which was the best that I could do at the time.  My favorite past time was smoking cigarettes, and I was up to four packs a day of smoking Player menthol 100’s, probably the most toxic kind of cigarette on the market.

Claire was my personal counselor, and she also happened to be a Four Square Church minister, so I sure got a lot of Christian slanted recovery information, as well.  I was not too big on Christianity when I got in there. Claire was an attractive woman, and that alone helped to keep my attention focused on the good messages that she was trying to communicate to the groups, and to me as an individual.  I was not very fertile ground, with fairly shallow soil at the time. I had spent about a month in intensive study of Christianity in December of 1980, spurred by the course work of a University of Portland Theology class that I was required to attend. which somehow had kept me sober for close to a month, as well. But as has been already mentioned in another section, I met three drug worshiping rich brothers in January of 1981 whose access to the alternative “higher powers” of highest quality drugs captivated me, and that first adult Christian leaning quickly dissolved.

Yes-Changes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omhNnvX3Sx0

The last three days I was at the Care Unit, I started to feel the stress of impending release.  It was easy stay clean and sober in the hospital, but the thought of carrying a new attitude towards sobriety that had not yet really taken root into the real world was quite threatening.  We were set up with phone numbers of fellow graduates, and the internal counselors, just in case we were to need any support.  We had a family meeting the night before release, where the patients all had their family members attend, so they could get a little crash course in how to live with the recovering alcoholic.  My parents attended, and I learned something about my father that was pretty disturbing.  My father had internalized my struggle so much, that he thought that he needed to stop alcohol, that somehow I was in the Care Unit because of his drinking.  It took the therapist a long time to  explain to my father that the drinking problem was my own, and not his. My therapist noted to me later that she saw that my father showed characteristics of a man attempting to live his life through his son, which was why my addictions and alcoholism impacted him so severely.

I was discharged back to my home that I shared with Randy Olson, I was regularly attending Hinson Baptist Church at the encouragement of another Care Unit graduate.  I started attending AA meetings yet again at the Alano Club on Lovejoy, as a direct result of my attendance at the Care Unit.  Since I live only 500 yards from the Alano Club, I did not have too many excuses for not attending meetings, but I found a few, anyway.  Randy continued his beer drinking behavior undeterred by my sobriety, which suited me just fine.

Alas, I had to return back to work, which I loathed, but went ahead and gave it my best shot.  After repeatedly being denied an opportunity to take the same training that my peers in the electronic tech core were receiving, I applied directly to the training facility in Norman Oklahoma to challenge one of the preliminary courses in computer logic that the technicians were required to pass in order to move forward.  My local employer decided I needed some training in maintaining the manual letter sorting machine, so they sent me back to Norman in May of 1984, which is a significant date because I also had just one month of sobriety at this point, having just “graduated” from the Care Unit.

The national US Postal Service Training Center was located, adjacent to the University of Oklahoma campus, and we had full access to their campus and sports facilities, which was awesome.  I passed the regular training with flying colors, and on the last day was my test scheduled for the class challenge.  I breezed through the written portion of the test, on computer logic and electronic design, by scoring 70 out of 70 correct.  The practical portion of the exam I was quite concerned about, as it referred to equipment that I had no training or background on.  I only needed to answer one question out of the last 6 correctly to successfully challenge this course, and I could not do it.  It was right there that I decided that when I got home to Portland, I was going to get drunk.  I called my friend Craig, and requested that he meet me at the airport to pick me up.  I WAS BUYING!!  As Spirit would have it, my Care Unit counselor Claire Z got onto our airplane on our layover in Denver, and she rode the trip back to Portland on my plane.  I avoided her like she had the plague, and I never let her know that I was on the airplane.  The problem here is that I had already said YES to relapse, NO to sobriety, and  to talk with Claire would have helped me stay sober, which was not what I wanted.

Looking at my history, I saw that I often resisted its healing Mystery

I had started living with Randy Olson beginning in early 1984, until late fall of 1984, after walking away from Donelle in the fall of 1983. Randy was always there to offer a helping hand, and always counseled me to look ahead.  He knew that I could find another direction for my life, and that it was important for me to enjoy the present moment as much as he did. Randy could never offer the sobriety direction, however, as he enjoyed his beer more than the next guy, and, I am sure, could not envision a life without the support of the spirits of the beer keg. Randy and I had roamed the Cities of Beaverton and Portland for many hundreds of nights, enjoying the music, the people, the temporary friendships of others, and the support of a multitude of friends that Randy had developed over the years, including his many girlfriends.

I wrote my first love poem in 1984, when I became lovers with a woman by the name of Diane (Di Di) McCloud.  I had first met Di Di while she was running with Gary, a cocaine dealer and friend to both me and Randy Olson.  Gary and I became friends, and Gary eventually stored his money and cocaine in a safe house, which happened to be the home that I lived in.  How unlucky was that for me!  I got the privilege of running with the same important people that Gary did, including prominent local rock and roll DJ’s, as well as the best local rock and roll bands.  And, during this time, I started to fantasize about someday hooking up with his sweetie, but I never had any intention of having an affair with her.  Somehow, she stayed with Gary for over two years.  Di Di was quite the free spirit, as well as a drug addict, so Gary’s appeal may have been enhanced by his constant supply of drugs.

Randy and I were living near downtown Portland at the time  We lived on the 22nd floor of the Panorama Tower, and it was at this home that Randy first brought Di Di, who had recently broken up with Gary, into our shared lives.  She hung out with Randy for a few days, then lost interest in him.  Somehow, we hooked up after that, early in the summer of 1984, and this most beautiful woman professed her love and willingness to stay connected with me shortly after that.  I was blown away, as she was the most attractive, sexy woman I had ever seen.  I was so inspired by my relationship with Di Di, that I wrote my first love poem in 1984.  She treasured the poem, and actually sought another copy of it shortly before her own death early in 1987.  She was to become the first person that I felt I had ever truly loved, but we had to let each other go after a short period of time.

“No thanks, this is where I take my leave!” I announced in a rather angry tone of voice.  I grabbed my overnight bag, and headed towards home, even though I was drunk, almost to the point of being in a blackout.  Somewhere along Highway 26, beyond the Elderberry Inn, I crashed my car into a guardrail, nearly going over a cliff in the process.  I could not get out of the drivers side door, it was so crashed in.  I quickly got the car back onto the road, in my attempt to get home before any more trouble befell me.  When I finally reached North Plains, I fell asleep at the wheel again, stepped on the accelerator, and rammed into the back of another car at freeway speeds.  We both pulled over, and I was able to bribe the owner of the car not to call the police, since I was DRUNK, by writing him a check for $471, which was every last penny that I had in my checking account.  My car was totaled, but somehow I was able to make it home, miraculously escaping death or a DUI citation.

Di DI called me a month later, wanting to talk, and wanting a copy of the love poem that I had given her two years before.  When we met, she told me that the poem was the most beautiful gift that anybody had ever given her, and that she was sorry that she did not find the spot in her life for me.  We both cried, and parted company on rather sad terms.  She eventually died one year later, when she was killed in a drunken driving related automobile wreck in Lake Oswego.

Ozzy Osbourne–I Will See You On The Other Side

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9yYJ6ZAYns

Di Di became a part of myself and my consciousness, and I had one profound dream with her in it, shortly after her death.  In the dream, I am confronted by a man exhibiting aggressive, unkind, abusive behavior.  In the dream, I am appalled, disgusted, and threatened by his manner.  I call out to a policeman, imploring him to arrest that man, and protect all of us from his violence.  Di Di then walks up to me in the dream, taking the policeman’s place, and states quite plainly that for love to reappear in my life, in all of its fullness, I must first “arrest” all of these negative qualities within myself, and rehabilitate my own passions, then love will reappear.  The dream ends, but the journey continues.

Though hibernating for oh so long

And hiding from the deep pain of winters’ chill

Love reawakens to sing its special song

So for how much longer can we be still?

With eyes that melt winters’ deepest snow

A tender touch that always seem to say

That all we will ever need to know

Will be learned along Love’s way

Two minds that were brought together

Two hearts that seek to share,

Two bodies that need no tether

Two become one, though still a pair

Heavenly nights and rapturous mornings,

Love promises through all of our years,

The sweet, stirring music of love sings

For two souls who now have the ears to hear.

True love can be the source of dreams

For two hearts continuing to awaken.

I pray that we are all each other seems

And share in Love’s next journey taken.

Written for Di Di, in 1984.

Alcindia represents an era with great overall darkness in my life.  I met Alcindia at “Bannisters”, a bar in Beaverton, after Randy and I moved into an apartment near 117th avenue late in the summer of 1984.  I danced with her one evening at the bar, then I brought her back home to the apartment that I shared with Randy.  She was a cute younger woman, who worked at the Aloha Intel Fab as a chip maker.  I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, other than I was a lonely man, and Alcindia might be a good short term friend.  We hooked up that first night, and there were no strings attached, at least not initially.

I continued to live with Randy, while still working the graveyard shift as a maintenance mechanic.  Randy had a live-in girlfriend at the time, by the name of Claudia.  Randy thought that she might have psychological issues, noticing that she might be manic/depressive, or something along those lines.  She had come from another relationship where she lived with three guys, at least one of who was bi-sexual, and, according to Randy, she may have had relations with all three men over a period of time.  I rarely talked with Claudia, not knowing exactly what to think of her, and my schedule kept me away from Randy and her the vast majority of the time.

Oh, those ephemeral loves, I wish we had never started,

Just vacant wayside stops in life, from which I soon departed.

Standing alone, though seemingly surrounded by others,

Desiring just one, wondering who would be my next lover.

Searching for that one, to share in a new life’s dream,

Disgusted by the many, who were not quite what they seemed.

Needing attention, and wanting to share love,

That’s what all of my dreams seemed to be made of.

My life has become quite empty with only darkness looming ahead

Without an inner change of heart, quite soon I will be dead.

Running on life’s mysterious road, one final journey to start,

With no maps to follow, save those presented by my empty heart.

(poem found on a napkin that I had written upon while in the Care Unit)

The week following Alcindia spending the night at our apartment, Claudia became “interested” in me and my life for some reason.  I did not think much of it initially.  One morning, I came home from work, showered and went to bed at about 8:30.  Randy had already left for work, so it was just sleepy me and Claudia.  I was just falling asleep when my bed bounced, and a naked Claudia appeared next to me in bed.  Not knowing what to think or what to do about it, nature somehow knew what to do, and did so three times, and left me wondering how the hell I was going to explain this one to Randy.

I did not tell Randy right away, feeling shame and remorse.  I continued to see Alcindia, who came over on my weekend and spent one more night with me at our apartment.  Since we were just “friends” there was no need to tell her about my indiscretions.  The next day I was visiting with her and and her friend Baby at their apartment, trying to get to know Alcindia better.  Out of the blue, she starts telling a story to Baby about another girlfriend’s boyfriend who slept with his best friends’ girlfriend while his best friend went to work.  As she told her story, she repeated back to Baby, and to me, some of the language that was used during my soiree with Claudia, even recalling that there were three sexual interludes.  I was to learn, at a much later time, that she had placed a voice activated recorder under my bed.  I had my suspicions, but never confronted her about her “story” to Baby.

As fate would have it, Alcindia also had sexual abuse issues in her background, which definitely impacted our 16 month relationship in various ways.  But, these issues did not lead her into the psychosis like it probably did with my ex-wife.   Unlike my sexually unresponsive first wife Donelle, Alcindia at least found a way to experience an orgasm, and she brought the fruitage of that exploration into our shared sexuality.  On a physical level, she was a small step up. On an emotional level, it remained an often times confusing, stimulating, sometimes happy, but mostly challenging relationship.

On a spiritual and emotional level, our relationship did nothing to enhance a shared vision of wholeness, instead, gradually becoming a source of pain and suffering for the two of us.  How a one night stand turned into a dark 16 month relationship is anybody’s guess, but my poor self-esteem, loneliness and need for female friendship sure played into it.  Baby, and her boyfriend, both were to become quite prominent in our shared story, but I will keep their story at a minimum.  Suffice it to say that Baby’s boyfriend, who belonged to a motorcycle gang in Hillsboro, had access to pure rock crank/speed, which, at that time, I had never experienced before.  This is a very significant event, and I became an immediate, ardent fan of the drug.  This “friendship” would later accompany me into my underworld experience.

Cedar Hills did have a recovery team on site for treatment of substance abuse issues, and they treated me with respect while I was there.  I was expelled after only three days because my health insurance had run out, and I did not want to pay close to $1000 a day out of my empty pockets,   Dr. Beavers prescribed me a high-powered antidepressant called Nortriptyline, which suddenly turned my whole understanding around. It was like a light went on in my mind, and for the first time in my life I was happy.  I happily stayed clean and sober for over six months, and found a renewed passion for life, my job at the US Postal Service, and even for the highly dysfunctional girlfriend that I had in Alcindia.

I began to work out in our local fitness center where we lived, and I started developing some serious leg muscles.  I also gained about thirty pounds, ballooning up to 208 pounds, from eating a half gallon of ice cream almost daily.  Food in general tasted almost too good, while taking this wonder medication.  But, I did not feel comfortable attending AA meetings, because my integrity misinformed me that taking this anti-depressant was somehow part of a relapse process, and that by being on medication that made me feel that good I could not honestly practice the program, and I felt some shame around that.  During this period of time, Alcindia’s mother moved in with us.  She suffered from severe depression, and psychosomatic ailments, and she became a disruptive, though friendly, presence in our apartment for the rest of our relationship.

Things went well until Alcindia and I took a week-long vacation around the July 4th holiday in Bend.  In the middle of the week, I happened to see a partially smoked marijuana joint spill out of Alcindia’s purse.  Rather than replacing it, I somehow justified in my mind that it would be better to smoke pot and get high than take anti-depressants.  This messed up reasoning caused me to experience extreme shame, guilt, and self-consciousness, to the point that I would not return to work after our  vacation.  I called in sick for several weeks afterward, and I never returned to my “lifetime guaranteed job” of working for the US Postal Service.  After ten years, I sacrificed that career so that I could smoke a joint.  It was a fast downhill slide into depression, alcohol and further drug abuse.

It remains no mystery to me as to why some people choose suicide over recovery.  I was starting to see the end of my own road, with the dead-end sign fast approaching my out-of-control- car of life.

PAIN (more post-Care Unit poetry, circa 1985)

Dark clouds looming on the horizon

Waiting,

Advancing

Hovering,

Thundering,

Misting,

Then breaking into torrential downpours

Eroding,

Stripping back,

Layer,

Upon Layer,

Upon Layer

Of consciousness.

Exposing

Long forgotten mental relics

Dangerous old memories

Self-destructive habits

And tendencies

Stinging,

Hurting,

Piercing to my core

Obscuring visions of glorious futures

With the suffering spawned from the

Darkest past

Washing away

Tenuously held possessions of

Sanity and hope

Uprooting new foundations of a life

Desperately

But futilely

Trying to reconstruct itself

Carrying a

Helpless,

Hopeless,

Powerless soul

Into a chemical valley

Amid a swirling depression

Ravaging,

Drowning,

Decaying

Pain,

Why?

Part II

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?

I moved back in with Randy in December, who still lived in Beaverton, but had relocated into a smaller apartment.  I continued to live with Randy in his Beaverton apartment until March of 1986.  On January 26th, 1986, after yet another night of fighting depression with the hops and yeast antidepressants, I woke up upon Randy’s living room couch at 8:45am, with him emerging from his bedroom, exclaiming to my clouded mind: “BRUCE, WAKE UP AND TURN ON THE TV!! THE CHALLENGER JUST EXPLODED!!!” After watching that horrific event over and over, I realized that my life was also over. I had made the decision to fulfill a 15 year pledge that I had made to myself when I was just 15 years old. I had known since then that I was a hopeless alcoholic and drug addict, and if I could not shake the disease by age 30 (and if the disease itself had not already killed me) I would take matters into my own hands. I just held on as best that I could for the intervening years, and tried to make the best out of a self-destructive life situation. I never told another soul of my self-imposed 15 year “pull date”, should I fail at sobering up.  I saw mirrored in the Challenger disaster the total destruction of all of my hopes and dreams, and I made the decision right then and there to end it all.

I then proceeded to file for retirement benefits from the US Postal Service, and I also filed for unemployment benefits, to help with temporary income needs.  I filed for bankruptcy, as I had no intention of meeting my financial obligations, which were immense  I had student loans, credit card debts, credit union loan debts, personal debts to my father, and other debts that totaled close to forty thousand dollars.   I was to be dead sometime in my thirtieth year, according to my fifteen year plan initiated when I was fifteen years old, so I wanted the slate to be clear by the time I was gone, and this seemed like the right process to engage in. (note: The bankruptcy became official on the exact day of my thirty first birthday, November 20, 1986, the final day of the expiration year that I had long ago accepted to be my own. .

Well, during my search for TRUTH, in which I traveled the darkest, most desperate roads that our city had to offer. I used up all of my retirement money (from working at the US Postal Service, where I had worked close to ten years) to support me as I wandered through the city’s dark side, basically living out of my 1976 Datsun 310.

I carried my suicide drugs under my car seat, so that when the pain got too real again, I could make my departure from my world of little or no meaning, no peace of mind, and extreme personal suffering. I had a 1977 Datsun 310 sedan that became my home for the next year, having eschewed all associations with family, and friends from my past, and this vehicle for my consciousness, and for my body, served me well. The year of 1986, through March of 1987, became the time container for my descent into the furthest reaches of hell and darkness that would finally lead me to the door to the truth that could bring life back to me..

I then began to undertake my own unique “search for truth”, which took me into Portland’s underworld community of drug manufacturing and distribution, homelessness, witnessing of crimes against self and other, associating with and befriending homeless teenage victims of sexual predators and child abuse, friendships with members of motorcycle gangs and their hit men, felons, murderers, and undercover federal agents, some of whom were still investigating the criminal tentacles remaining from the Stephen Kessler, Wayne Harsh era when in 1982 a prison guard was murdered during the famous prison escape from Rocky Butte Jail, and, subsequently, DEA records that were also compromised.

I ran with my new “friends”, and my only intention was to be the best person that I could be, while living out the final moments, days, or weeks of my life. My intention was to bring harm to no one, and to practice the 12 steps of AA, even while still avoiding recovery from drug addiction and alcoholism, which I had totally given up ever successfully completing.  My AA book, which I carried in my car wherever I went, would later come in handy, but not in the way Bill Wilson, the originator of AA, ever had in mind.

My first “realization” was that I needed to avoid sex. I committed to no new relationships with women, including no sexual encounters (pretty easy decision for me, as I was so beat up by my history of misadventures with women over the previous 14 years).

My second “realization” was that I could no longer smoke pot, because it made me feel paranoid, and wanting to keep isolated, and in my need to find ‘truth”, those characteristics were counterproductive. Pot also dulled my emotions, intellect, resourcefulness, and curiosity, and I needed those qualities of being to survive in my new world, with all of the new people that I was to associate with.  I made a commitment to hang with the type of people that, in the past, I never would have befriended.  The way I saw it, the people that I had judged against may well have had some of the answers that I was searching for.  In my mind, I was already a dead man walking, so past fear of society’s undesirables receded into the background, and I now considered myself a fellow traveler in darkness.

I met well over a hundred new acquaintances over the next year. I spent hundreds of hours in conversations with all manners and types of emotionally disfigured human beings, the same human beings, that while living my life of “white middle class privilege”, I never would have associated with. Yet in my “final journey through life”, these oppressed, maligned, and misrepresented human beings became my best, and only friends. I was to later realize that the same spiritual disease that afflicted my underworld friends also terrorized my privileged white middle class friends, only the privileged had better ways to mask their disease from themselves and others.

Methedrine, crank, speed, go-juice, or one of any number of other street names of the same street stimulant became my primary drug of choice, as it made me feel “social” and conversational with all others. I would not sleep for up to one week at a time, while running with my peer group. The Punjab tavern on Foster Road became my main hub or center for social contact with many of the social branches of the tree of death that I was now climbing. Many a night, and after hours’ parties, were spent with a revolving group of my new friends there, with a main core group of people that had mutual interests.

I don’t know how to tell the rest of this phase of the story, except for inserting a series of “vignettes”, where I am able to document and describe some of my major interactions with others. The following descriptions will, once again, appear fragmented and incomplete.

I will begin my story of the underworld with Ralph.  Ralph was from Scappoose, Oregon, or so he said. He was the center point for much underworld activity, and I quickly became his friend, and driver, through many underworld adventures. Through him I met drug chemists, motorcycle gang members, hit men, armed robbers, practicing felons in possession of firearms, prostitutes, homeless victims of child abuse, heroin addicts, and Steve (not his real name), who was an undercover federal agent, and who would figure strongly in my future release from personal HELL. Steve deserves a story devoted all to his self, as he saved my life when I stood at the final brink, early in March of 1987.

I learned to really love Ralph, who was an incredibly damaged soul, and his excessive drug use would sometimes cause concern for me. I noticed that paranoia was creeping into his mind, and we would joke about it, but he became my first living example of the damage that excess meth use causes. He was one of my “protectors” in the underworld, and would redirect others who were tempted to bring harm to me, because I did not fit in too well at times with Portland’s dark underbelly, being too healthy looking, too educated, and too well spoken. My appearance would quickly change, however, as I lost 70 pounds, receding to 136 pounds by November. My big vocabulary betrayed me on several occasions, and I was counseled to use smaller words wherever possible. One time I was “busted” for using the word “magnanimous” while sitting at the bar, and I was told that people that use “quarter words” where a “nickel word” is enough were not welcome there.

One quick little story about Ralph before I leave him for now. Once, I had all four tires of my car slashed while parked overnight for a party with Ralph and his minions. Ralph put the word out on the streets that this was unacceptable behavior, and whoever did the deed would answer to him personally, and to lay off of that car. I felt strangely safe, and protected, while with Ralph, even though there were continue threats against my safety and well-being. While jacking up my car for tire replacements, I had to use my AA book to help with extra elevation, which attracted some strange looks from those who already thought that I was a stranger in this strange land. Hey, I had finally found a constructive use for the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I actually felt a little pleased with myself. Ralph told me to “ditch that evil book”, and I kept it hidden from all sight from that point on, though to this day, I still own that very same book.

While hanging out with Sarah, we would occasionally visit incarcerated friends at the local jails. One day, she decided that we needed to visit Jake, who was being held in Clackamas County Jail until his transfer was completed to a federal penitentiary. I knew Jake on the outside, and he was always so kind and friendly towards me. I wanted so much to express my sorrow at his long term imprisonment. It was on the way there that I learned that our “friend” was a “hit man” for a regional motorcycle gang that distributed drugs, and one ”hit” went horribly wrong for him, apparently.

Sarah and I snorted some of the latest designer meth creations from our favorite local chemist just before arriving at the jail. It was just after that I had either a stroke, a prolonged seizure, or I was struck dumb, and speechless, for two full days, perhaps by the realization of the potential danger that I was in. When we met Jake at the reception area for the jail, all that would come out of my mouth were awkward grunts and squawks. Yes, the stress created by the meeting, coupled with the drug interactions, caused my loss of the ability to speak, thus contributing to the “conspiracy of silence” that my own drug use and addiction created.

Hal was a tall, lanky fellow, who wore black rim glasses.  He had always seemed to have a cigarette going, which was common with the crowd that I was now running with.  Hal was the alternate transportation for Ralph, when I was unavailable.  Hal lived in downtown Portland, near the Scientology office.  We became friends for awhile, and spent a lot of time processing information together about the insane people and situations that we were experiencing while hanging with Ralph and Sarah.  There was never a dull moment, that was for sure.

Hal was from a devout Catholic family background.  His family was economically disadvantaged (POOR), and Hal had to work even while in high school to help his mother make ends meet financially.  He had taken four years of college, obtaining a bachelors degree in forestry, and he was no dummy, that was for sure.  He had a strong work ethic, when he was employable, but now he was suffering from the after effects of some sort of emotional breakdown.  To support his income stream, he peddled speed at some of the local strip bars and taverns.  It was a high risk proposition, as he had to make exchanges with some really damaged people, as well as potential exposure to informants and snitches.

He tried to present a happy face, though, whenever I saw him.  I felt a strange, sad feeling though, whenever I saw him.  One time, while visiting him at his home, I saw a copy of his college degree from Oregon State University.  His photograph was next to it, and it was only from six years previously.  yet, he looked twenty five years older now. I was a little surprised that I could feel my own heartbreak around the loss of human potential for somebody else, yet not even feel it for myself.

From time to time, we would get involved in discussions about religion, philosophy, psychology, and society, in between snorting lines of our latest shipments.  He was the best person for animated discussions, which were accentuated by the stimulants that we liberally used together.  Hal loved to make extensive commentary about the Pope, or about the state of American Catholicism.  I would usually just listen to him after he got all “fired up” because I just did not share the same sense of oppression that he experienced because of his religion while he was growing up.  I certainly was oppressed, no doubt, but at this point I did not have a really good clue as to why I felt that way.

He would always end his religious take downs by stating, unequivocally, that heaven and hell are right here on earth, nobody has to die to get there.  Just look around, he would say, the evidence is obvious.

“I carry heaven and hell in my own mind, Bruce.  I don’t need the Church to tell me how to feel, behave, or believe, for they just add more layers of hell for me to sort through to find my own little piece of heaven”.

“Hal, I don’t really follow the Christian religion, or Catholicism too much.  I only know that I carry more than a nodding familiarity with Hell.  Since I do not experience anything resembling heaven on earth, I guess that is why the church people hope that it exists after we die, because we sure aren’t drinking from its fountains right now!”

“Bruce, there was a time when I occasionally knew peace of mind, and that is when I first knew that I did not need any God, any Jesus and his crucifix, or any Pope to lead me into my own greater good.  But after walking through this world for the piece of time that I have, I have somehow lost all hope that it will return anytime soon.  The damage in the world is becoming the damage in my own mind.  I despair that the world will ever change, and I doubt that any change is even possible for myself”

“Hal, wow, I actually might be your long lost brother from another mother.  I don’t have any answers.  I stopped using pot because I wanted to see if it was preventing me from accessing important parts of myself.  I use speed now, because it helps keep me engaged with the world in a more social way, yet I am no happier than I was before.  I stopped using anti-depressants last year, and now I am just riding this bucking bronco until I get tossed for the last time.  I am not planning on picking myself up again, when I hit the dirt the next time.”

Yes, our discussions never ended on a positive, life-affirming note, but how could they?  Hal was to get arrested, and charged with drug distribution, when another “friend” of ours, Cowboy Ron, snitched on Hal to save his own, sorry ass.

I won’t give Cowboy Ron the honor to even give him much comment.  No, I did not change Cowboy Ron’s name here.  I only hope that he sees himself here someday, if he survived his own private hell.  Cowboy Ron hurt a lot of people, including his wife and children, but that is another story, for another day.  Sometimes the predator becomes the prey, and maybe that was what he was really looking for, in the end.  People do bad things to hurt themselves, and other people sometimes just become collateral damage.  I did not enter the underworld to judge anyone, including Cowboy Ron.  I sometimes ran with the wolves, but this rabid dog challenged me in ways that made my flesh crawl.

I will now talk for a while about Robert.  Robert was a convicted armed robber, who was recently released from prison in May of 1986. One night, fate gathered us both together to sit at the bar in the Punjab tavern. The bar was a long, semi-circular arc, which seated up to 14 souls. The bar had two pool tables, and several tables and booths where people could be comfortably seated. And, there were several video games, which drew my attention at “after hours’ parties” where I was usually quite wired, and needing extra entertainment.

I was sitting at the bar yet again one evening, conversing with the owner Jack, who was to become another friend to me, when Robert slid in, and sat right next to me. He was dressed in a leather jacket, which was popular at that time, and fairly new jeans. He was about my age, 30 years old, and looked like he wanted to talk. Let us “tune in” to a conversation that we engaged in that evening:

Robert: Hey, I have a plan for this seat, is it OK for me to sit next to you for while?

Me: Why, of course! Where are you coming from, you appear to be already having a good time.

Robert: Well, tonight is the night for good times, for sure. I just needed to get out, and get some “fresh air” and hook up with some old friends. I have been out of the neighborhood for a long time, and I am hoping to find some old friends.

Me: Well, maybe a new friend might show up, say, right next to you this evening?!

Robert: That would sure be nice.

Me: My only requirements are that you are not a murderer, because if my life has to end tonight, I want it to be by my own hands (I said this half-jokingly)

Robert: Hmm, I was just released from prison, having spent ten years behind bars for a pretty famous robbery committed in 1975.

Me: Oh, really? You really made the news, eh? I think that your notoriety won’t get in the way.

Robert: Umm, I killed a man while committing the robbery.

Me: (gulping, I am feeling rather uncomfortable and stupid now, and my thoughts began racing). Robert, everybody deserves a second chance, let me buy you another beer, and let’s turn our attention to the present.

Robert: Sounds good!

We clink our glasses together, and each take a big drink. An ‘old friend’ of Robert’s comes up to the bar, and accompanies Robert into the restroom, leaving me at the bar. I ask the bartender for a shot of whiskey, which I quickly down, and then wash the bitter flavor away with a big drink of beer.

Robert returns to the bar, sans his “old friend”.

Me: Well, what is up for the rest of the evening?

Robert: (slurring his words noticeably, and his eyes had lost their luster) I think that I will just hang out here for as long as I can, then move on down the road a piece.

He then closes his eyes, and slumps down, face onto the bar. Then, he falls off of the chair, and tries to right himself on the floor.

Me:  Bartender, I think that my friend here just got sick, should we call an ambulance?

Jack: Heck no, Bruce, he is right where he wants to be. If you could, please help him over to a booth in the corner where he can try to get his shit back together.

Me: Jack, did he just shoot heroin, or something? Why would he do that to himself? I just don’t understand, because I want and need to talk to people now, and that would be so counterproductive.

Jack: Bruce, SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST WAITING FOR A BETTER DAY. Today is not the better day for Robert, and it may never arrive for him.

The Needle And The Damage Done, by Neil Young

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0t0EW6z8a0

Me: Wow, thanks for that, Jack, I did not really understand, but I think that I do now. Let me get him out of view before we all get into trouble.

The Conspiracy Of Silence claims yet another human being. The heroin completely shut him down to his humanity, and left me wondering what my own fate might be,.

This story goes on, through an almost endless array of struggling, spiritually darkened humanity. I will continue this story with many other human beings that I had the privilege, honor, and distress to meet and converse with. Each one of them helped me to find the next step on my own path to recovery, and to finally embracing the path to truth and love within my own heart.

I will now talk about Dorothy.  Dorothy was a young woman in her early 20’s, who had two young children.  I was invited over to her house one evening, and was privileged to have a fairly intense discussion with her about our life’s issues.  She was a heroin user, becoming dominated by the needs to use, and she was also “shadowed” by a former lover, Jakob, who was incarcerated in jail at the time of our connection.  While I was there, I noted her “scraping” used spoons, so that she could get together enough heroin residues  to give her a fix.  Her supply was out, and she was waiting for her next delivery, so things were getting a little “tense” for her  We spoke of what we thought the real powers of this world were, and it got a little interesting.

She did not believe in the power of “God” or “Jesus”, having long eschewed any connection with such concepts.  She lived for the moment, and knew all too well that “shit happened” regardless of how “good” or “bad” a person was.  She believed that her criminal boyfriend, Jakob, had extraordinary powers, and could “astrally project himself” out of prison at night.  As long as she had company (friends, or heroin), Jakob could not materialize into her home, and threaten her and dominate her, as he did when he was not imprisoned.

“There is only darkness, Bruce, and all of the people who attempt to use it.  Those who use to help others are considered “good people” yet, these same people will turn against others in a heartbeat, should the need arise.  Good people do not really exist, just fucked-up people who occasionally make helpful choices for themselves or, inadvertently, for others, usually while they are really just trying to selfishly take care of themselves”.

“Dorothy, I believe that we all have both energies, and it may only be that if we stumble upon the right understanding, we can act more from a not-so-dark, not so selfish position, and occasionally help ourselves and each other to have better lives”

“Well, how much time and energy do you put into having a better understanding of yourself, and being more helpful to others?”

“Good point, Dorothy.  But I actually try to look at the forces of darkness within myself, to see where I might also be negatively impacting myself and others through a lifetime of not fearlessly confronting those energies.  I have no idea what will be revealed, if anything, if I ever successfully overcome my own darkness.

I continue to search for the reasons to stay around here, and see if there is any real value to staying alive.  My old way of seeing life sure has not brought any lasting happiness or social responsibility to me.  If there is no Truth to stumble upon to keep me going, then I may as well allow the darkness that I already know to finish swallowing me up, and take me away from my own suffering”.

“Heroin is quite helpful for me, Bruce, have you considered trying it?  My supplier will be here shortly, and I can give you a little bit.”

“Dorothy, thanks for talking with me, and making the offer to share with me, but I have to return to some other business that I am attending to, so time for me to leave”.

My search for Truth would have ended that day, had I stuck around Dorothy’s home.  I was only minimally tempted to try heroin that day, as I felt quite disturbed by the darkness that I felt coming through Dorothy.  I never saw her again.

Now, I will speak to my relationship with Steve.  Steve belongs in a special story all to himself, but I will include him here because he had ultimate importance in my “search for truth”. I met Steve at the same time that I met Ralph. Steve was a very intelligent, well-dressed man, about 8 years older than me. He drove a nice 1982 Chevrolet, which somebody had tricked out (I did not think that he did it, however). Shortly after becoming a “peripheral person” in our rotating community of characters, his car became impounded by the police, and he could not get it released back into his care (or so he said). That is where I first became “suspicious” of Steve, because I sensed that he was looking for somebody who might have an “inside track” into our Portland Police Department, and its inner workings.

Steve and I shared a lot of time together over the 12 months that I wandered over the underworld landscape. I could always count on him to give me good insight into others, though he held the truths about himself close to his chest. He became a ‘big brother” to me, at times, and would not spare me criticism, if I appeared out-of-place, or out of touch. He would criticize Ralph’s excessive drug use, all the while using extremely small amounts of the same stuff, which he poured from a very tiny vile. He initially could not understand why I thought it necessary to be where I was, either, though he was the only person that I ever told that I was on a “search for truth”, while continuing to use speed, and alcohol. I did not understand, at the time, how he could “get by” with so little use of drugs.

From time to time, Steve would seem to “test” me, by exposing me to new situations and people who required some sort of help or intervention. Through Steve I met Georgette, a 15-year-old runaway girl, who was escaping a sexually abusive father by being homeless in the southeast Portland area. She was hanging out with another sexually abused homeless young man, named Greg, who was three years her senior, and already skilled in the art and science of locating abandoned or temporarily vacated homes, for their own temporary residences. Greg was always accompanied by five to ten other “friends”, who would be his assistants in illicitly securing property or goods for resale. Greg, I would learn, was also about to “peddle” Georgette, for added income.

Georgette was a tiny young woman, no more than five foot two inches, and ninety-five pounds. When I first met her, I noted her innocence, and my heart almost broke, and I felt helpless, though I wanted so much to protect her from her fate. She had developed “pink eye”, and I saw an opportunity to break her free from this group of itinerant thieves and junkies. I had her grab her meager belongings, and I placed her in my car, and we talked for hours. She was the younger sister, or daughter that I never had, and I wanted to keep her safe. I finally whisked her away from the gang, and drove her to Outside In, where she could get necessary medical help and counseling. I had recently received a retirement payout from my 10 years working at the Postal Service, and so I had some extra money, which I stuffed into her pocket. I told her, in no uncertain terms, that I never wanted to see her again with her “friends”, or there would be serious hell to pay. I never saw her again, though a tape recorded message of my conversation with her would mysteriously show up two months later.

I continued an incredible downward spiral into addiction, and Steve commented to me, in November, how I looked like I could be the “Aids Poster Boy” because I had become so slight of figure, and so unhealthy looking. I had started “hearing voices”, and I had become paranoid, as well. Yet, I did not let on to others that I had become so disfigured internally, though the signs were starting to appear. I “heard” that there was a major undercover operation active in Portland, and that dozens of criminal indictments were immanent. In reality, that was partially the truth, yet I should not have known that, let alone warn a few others of those “facts”.

Steve wanted to know how I knew of these indictments, and I would not tell him. I noted that people were tailing me almost all of the time now, and that some of my conversations were being recorded in my car. One day I tore my car apart, searching for the transmitter, or the recorder. I had two different people stop by, and try to interrupt me from the search, which only added to my own paranoia. I did not locate the transmitter, but I really began to fuck with any listeners’ mind, by talking dark shit, and renaming myself “the Wild Card”. I let my world know, in no uncertain terms, that I was no longer aligned with anyone, as I was on my way to my own death.

I will fast forward through three months more of Hell. My main core group had collapsed, with Ralph relocating himself to protect himself. I had lost touch with Steve, my last connection with sanity. I was running with a new group, and most were intravenous drug users. I met Doctor Dave, a short, friendly man, with a severely pockmarked face, a man who also recently was released from jail. He introduced me to intravenous drug use. He ever so carefully shot me up with speed, for my first time of ever using the needle, and most subsequent times, as well. I could not shoot up by myself, as I feared needles so much. But the incredible rush I received from intravenous drug use made me want to use this hastened path to Death frequently for the final two months of my drug abusing life.

I will share a story of Frank, and Steve’s providential return to my life.  Another house had been compromised near the intersection of Holgate and McLoughlin Blvd, and that became our new hangout. Our new leader, Frank, organized a big party, and we had over 70 people show up. This was in early March of 1987, and I was ready for my swan song. My mental health was irreparably damaged, and my “search for truth” had apparently only uncovered a hastened path to Death for me. Frank had just secured a fresh batch of speed, and heroin, which I had never used before, and he was mixing up his renowned “witches brew”, and invited me to join him. Sure, why not? I had nothing to lose, but a life that was already dead. I started to accompany Frank to an upstairs room, when I spotted Steve talking with a healthy looking 30 year old woman, one that i might have been attracted to, had i been healthy. I overheard her calling his name, and it was NOT Steve. “Steve” saw that I heard his real name, and he then knew that I knew.

Steve took me aside, and tried to explain. I instead stopped him, and told him that I had suspected him all along of being undercover. I also told him that his secret was safe with me. I told him my journey was about to end, that I was going upstairs with Frank, and if I survived that experience, I was going to return to my car, and grab the pills under my front seat, and finish business, once and for all. Yes, I was finished.

“Steve” grabbed my arm, excused himself from his ‘girlfriend’, and took me outside to his car. We then drove to my father’s house, and “Steve” then commanded to me “Bruce, I can no longer keep you protected and safe. Your search for truth has to end within this dangerous world. Now your real search for truth must begin, starting with your relationship with your father. I never want to see you again, but believe me, I am going to try to help you, any way I can. You deserve so much better of a life than you have given to yourself.”

We arrived at my father’s house, and he let me out. He and his partner drove my car to my dad’s house later that evening, and  I never saw him again. The pills had disappeared from under the driver’s seat, as well.  There was no way that I was going to go back to Dr. Beavers, as I was too ashamed to have anybody see me in the state that I was in.

Note: One year later, he called me, to check and see how I was doing. I was a year clean and sober, and, in tears, I gushed with my love and gratitude for “Steve”. He was the best friend that I never knew I had.

Note: Stephen Kessler was recently denied parole, and will spend the rest of his life in prison. He was regarded as the most dangerous criminal ever encountered, by several federal agents. Wayne Harsh was a friend of my neighbor while I grew up near Rex Putnam High School, and he eventually became a Clackamas County Sheriff prior to his own fall. We knew of each other, and he was well known for his connections with automobiles, and, in fact, supplied the getaway vehicle to Stephen Kessler during his prison escape.

I coincidentally was roommates with Tom Cravens in the Physicians and Surgeons Hospital Care Unit in 1984, when we both sought sobriety (Tom was successful, but I was not). Tom was one of six co-conspirators with Stephen Kessler during the 1968 prison riot, where a lot of the Oregon State Prison in Salem was burnt down,, and shame was brought to our Oregon Governor, Tom McCall. While growing up into the beast that he became, Stephen Kessler also shared the same school as my present wife, Sharon White, and, in fact, beat up a teacher while in the same classroom that he shared with my wife (end note)

Randy Olson was to return to my life, yet again.  I was still a mess, strung out from months of drug abuse, alcoholism, gambling, and I still only weighed a mere 135 pounds. My face was all broke out, and I had the most horrific shakes, and I “heard voices”. I had experienced convulsions several times.. I was still drinking, but I was no longer using drugs very much. I invited Randy Olson over on March 13 of 1987. He came over, and he, and his girlfriend and I proceeded to down an inordinate amount of my fathers’ booze and wine. My parents were still “snow birding” in Arizona, and would not be home until the end of the month, so I was still able to keep my dysfunctional momentum going. Well, after partying with Randy until about 10:00 PM, Randy had to go home, so I was left alone with my horrible problems.

HURT, Sung by Johnny Cash written by Nine Inch Nails

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5pc

It was then that I entered into a blackout, and picked up one of my father’s loaded guns, and drove, quite drunk, to Brock’s home in the Milwaukie area. This person was an associate of one of the drug chemists in the underworld culture that I had just emerged from. I have no idea why I went down there, but I awoke from my blackout when the gun in my lap discharged, shooting a hole in the front door of his apartment. He had two sleeping children on one room, and a sleeping wife in another room, and I was fortunate to have not brought harm to anyone.

He then brought a hypodermic needle out, and injected me with crank/speed (I still would not inject myself.) I immediately snapped out of my drunkenness, and proceeded to talk with this guy for 24 hours. I got one more injection, and then clarity finally hit me.

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Literally, a light went on in my mind, and I saw the utter insanity of the person I was with, and the insanity of my life. I stood up, laughed at the guy, called him, and myself, nuts, and walked out of the front door, got into my car, and drove back to my parents’ home. I was changed, though I just didn’t know how much at the time.  As I had only five dollars left to my name, I needed to make a decision.  Either I needed to buy more beer and cigarettes, or I needed to get some gasoline for my car, and go visit my grandparents in north Portland.  I kept the five dollars, and drove to family.  My grandparents were happy to see me, but were concerned for my appearance.  I claimed to have the flu, and grandmother nursed me back to some semblance of health over the next five days, while I detoxed and had withdrawals from cessation of cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs, all at the same time.

Alcoholics Anonymous Step Two:  We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

I returned home to my parents’ home after a week at the grandparents.  It is another funny thing, two days later, out of the blue, Craig Salter called me, for the first connection in three years (he was a childhood friend that both Randy and I had known since the 5th grade, and the same person that I chose to have my relapse with after my Care Unit experience), and asked me if I wanted to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with him. He was required to attend meetings due to the conditions of the court that had prosecuted him for a DUI. Of course, Craig was not an alcoholic; at least he thought that he wasn’t. I knew that he was, though. I, in fact, was the person that got him drunk the first time in High School, when Craig was 17 years old. I actually may have started him on his own horrific decline into his own alcoholism, just like Randy Olson had started me on my first drug, which was marijuana, and may have indirectly contributed to my own eventual decline.

Anyway, I went to that AA meeting, because the way I figured it, since God was such a big part of AA, and since I was searching for TRUTH, there must be a relationship between those two forces, and AA must have an angle on that. I proceeded to attend over 270 meetings in my first 90 days, since I had nothing else to do, having lost my job, and, basically, my life, to my disease. Craig eventually stopped going to meetings, after his court ordered attendance ended. I continued to attend them, feeling like I had finally found my spiritual home. I did fall into a temporary trap at the HInson Baptist Church, thinking that my personal TRUTH must somehow be hidden in the church system, and that I could unearth some more by attending church, and being baptized.

I then literally spent thousands of hours over the next several years in AA meetings, communication, investigation, reading, writing, meditation, associating with all types and manners of people, and, eventually, healing my relationship with my parents (especially my father). Yes, the prison guard with one of the primary keys to release me from my own spiritual imprisonment was my own unhealed relationship with my father. Overcoming lifetimes of oppression and control by others is no easy task. It also must be done clean and sober, for the true depth and healing of the experience to permanently take hold.

I also began the amends making process, as suggested in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Steps eight and nine are the following:

8).  Made a list of all people that we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9).  Made direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

I made out my list, and, as it turned out, it was quite long.  I began with Dan Dietz, whom I had not seen since 1980.  He was now living in Pacific City, in the beach home of his parents, George and Joan Dietz.  For a time, I was considered like a fourth son to Joanie, and when Dan and I parted ways, it impacted his mother, as well.

I never heard back from Dan.  In 1996, Dan died of a heart attack.  I was called to attend his funeral by “friends” that I had not heard from since I was twenty years old.  I felt like I had already finished business with Dan, so I justified my own absence from his funeral.  After all, I had not seen Dan in over sixteen years. As I was driving home from work at Blue Heron Paper Mill in Oregon City the day after Dan’s death, I felt his presence in my car.  All of a sudden, it felt like I was “dying” or leaving my body, and I could hear Dan laugh.  I almost swerved off I-205 at sixty miles per hour, but I regained my composure.  I was to later hear that Joanie (Dan’s mother) was heartbroken that I did not attend Dan’s funeral.  I have felt both justified, and ashamed, by my choice to be absent from his funeral.  Several times in several locations I saw his older brother Tom, who did not recognize me, but I recognized him, and I chose to pretend to not know him.  My social insecurities and shame still motivate me from time to time, for sure.

On the weekend prior to my baptism, I received my first ever “visitation of the spirit”, which will shortly be developed further.  It manifested in my experience, for lack of a better description, as having the feeling of being held in the loving arms of an “infinite motherly presence”, and I felt like I was being “reborn” as a person as a result. When I described my experience to the Minister, he requested that I attend a training to get my “beliefs” more in alignment with the structure that the American Baptist church accepts. Really? The minister misunderstood my experience, as it represented a direct connection with the God of my spiritual understanding, and not his.

During this period of time, I also needed to get tested for AIDS, since I had relations with “loose women and drug activity” during my darker days. I was looking for some support during this time, as the threat of a death by AIDS was quite real to many of us in those days. There was NO SUPPORT TO BE FOUND, at the Baptist Church, where all people with AIDS were regarded as outcasts from GOD, and undeserving of support or respect from the “good Christian folks”. This helped to cement my understanding that our religious institutions exist to support something other than just our “spiritual natures”, and their ignorance of such things causes the injection of some really unhealthy outlooks on life and love into the collective mindsets of their parishioners.

When the lead minister claimed that of all of God’s creatures, only man has a soul, and that all of earth’s creatures have no basic spiritual essence, I was aghast.  A religion that makes such a claim for man by uplifting its own standing in God’s universe by reducing the spiritual standing of his animal brothers and sisters is self-centered and egotistical to the absolute extreme, and another supporting reason as to why our earth is under such attack right now.  As an individual searching for the “Truth Of Being” I thought it was best to steer clear of organized religion, where truth is not so much a sacred value, but instead more a marketable commodity that also is used to help keep people philosophically controlled, and united in one particular way of looking at life.  Historically, religion in general remains the primary avenue for the proliferation of ignorance among the people who don’t take the time to think for themselves.

I was enlightened by a new teacher, a recovering alcoholic by the name of Jack Boland, who had released to the world many series of tapes on recovery and spirituality. I was given one of his tape series of recovery by a co-worker at the Fred Meyer warehouse, John Johnson, of whom I will be eternally grateful to, on May18, 1987. I then listened to these tapes over and over, during the Memorial Day weekend, and something miraculous happened afterwards, probably as a result of my openness to the experience brought about by listening to these tapes, and practicing some simple steps.

AA Step 11:  Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God (the Divine) as we understand God (the Divine), seeking only knowledge of His (Divine) will for us, and the power to carry that out.

Beginning on May 24th, and extending through July 21st, 1987, I had a series of three spiritual “events” which, to this day, guide and direct the consciousness presently unfolding within me.  I will speak briefly of the event of May 24, 1987. It is a deeply personal event, and I only rarely speak of it because of my own need for privacy, as well as so few people presently in my life’s social circle have expressed any continued interest in, or sought my present understanding of, that aspect of myself. However, to not share it, in this time of greatest need for our world, would be an act of selfishness, and hiding, on my part, and I would dishonor the life that I now share with our Universe by keeping it too personal and secret.

On May 24, I drove towards Beaverton to visit with Randy Olson. Randy was a lifelong friend, fellow party monster, and rent sharing partner in 1986 when I contemplated, and then took the active steps towards committing suicide on January 28, 1986 and beyond. As I drove over the West Hills, a wonderful vision came to me, accompanied by a feeling that I had not had since I was twelve years old. It was the vision of a loving mother (actually, the Mona Lisa), holding a baby, and I felt the love of this wonderful UNIVERSE for the first time in my lifetime (later, I was taught to understand that this energy is the Divine Feminine, of which our patriarchal world continues to suppress daily, and has successfully done so, more or less, for at least the last 2000 years).  The wonderful feelings that accompanied that vision became known to me as divine horripilations.

There is the love we have for each other, for our friends, our pets, our children, our families, but this love that I felt flow into me, and through me, transported me into a heightened awareness, and awe. The beauty was too great to talk about, the feeling so overwhelming, so healing, so resurrecting. I had to stop my car on Canyon Blvd, exited the car, and I got down on my knees beside the road and prayed my thankfulness to a CREATIVE FORCE that finally had found me receptive, and open, to its presence.

I made it to Randy’s house, and I met with him for the first time since a particularly ugly alcoholic blackout event that occurred after the last time we drank together, in March. Randy could not believe his eyes, and he then stated:

“Bruce, what has happened to you? You look different, you look happy. You look at peace. You have changed!!!”

Yes, I had changed, or, more accurately, a Change was happening. I started talking to Randy about my experience, and Randy started to get tingling sensations up and down his spine. The hairs on his arms starting sticking up straight off of his arms! Randy exclaimed:

“Bruce, what is going on? When you talk, I start to tingle all over. What has happened?”

“Well, I think that I am having an experience with God, Randy.” I said.

Randy then said:

“Your God experience is not for me right now, but I sure am happy that you are having it, because you needed something different in your life really bad, and really quick!”

Oh, how right he was!

So, Randy was there at the beginning of so much of the important/ significant events in my life. And, he was there at their end, as well. I could not take Randy into my new found world of love and happiness, I could only share, ever so briefly, my personal experience of it. My future conversations with Randy became increasingly less productive, and I found that I was losing touch with Randy spiritually, emotionally, and, finally, physically.  We attended the Rex Putnam High School class of 1973 twenty year reunion together, bringing a former stripper girlfriend with him.  He also had Thanksgiving dinner with us that year, as well, over at my parent’s home.  He was still quite the party monster, and still smoked cigarettes, even though his father died at 57 years of age while engaged in the same behavior.

And yet, he lives within me. I am so grateful to have known Randy. I now know that I could not take him to the spiritual places that I was to visit. It would have been the least that I could do for Randy, if it were only possible. He only needed a little willingness to join with me, to experience some of the joys of being on the path of recovery, healing, and love.. Yet that willingness was something that none of us can give to another human being. I had pointed to the new direction, but he chose to look the other way.

His funeral was a shock to me, it was poorly attended (I only found out about it through chance, when Sharon happened to read the obituaries, and saw a listing for his funeral the day before). The most popular and friendly person that I had ever known died almost anonymously. He had, literally, thousands of friends and acquaintances through the years, but in the end, he was nearly forgotten. He died in isolation, but he deserved so much better than that.

You are still loved, my friend. I am grateful to have known you, and to have experienced the thousands of hours of life with you, the 48 years of life that we partially shared.

May you be at peace my dear friend, at the center of it all, from where you started, and to where you have finally returned. Save a place on your couch for me, will you please? I will know that I will be welcome in the Kingdom to come, if I see your apartment there.

Randy Olson, Jan 21, 1955 – June 3, 2013

I will now return back to my experience of having a divine vision.  The image of the Mona Lisa holding a baby is a fascinating, enlightening image.  It was reported some time back that Leonardo DaVinci had painted the Mona Lisa as a self-portrait of himself, in feminine form.  His message is subject to interpretation, but in today’s terms, he was honoring his feminine side, or nature.  He saw that the source of all creativity came from this mysterious, non-conscious center within himself where feelings of wonder, awe, mystery, and sensitivity to and compassion for others arises from.  His mission was to symbolically represent the divine within himself, through the most effective medium of the day, which was painting.  My own consciousness chose this as a healing image for myself, and I also saw how this feminine side carried all of the divine love and deep feelings of goodness that I had ever wanted for myself.  I was literally re-birthing myself, and this image of the mother holding the baby pictorially represented that new birth to perfection.

I still was not healed and whole, as my body was still wracked with pain, I was constantly shaking, and I still had that annoying chatter in my mind, something like a play by play announcer documenting my every move.  Yet, I still occasionally felt those “divine horripilations” that seemed to remind me that I had touched something extraordinary in nature.  I stayed obsessively involved with AA and NA, and I continued my prayers and meditations, and I started reading several great spiritual works by M.Scott Peck, such as The Road Less Traveled, and People of the Lie: Hope For Healing Human Evil.  He spoke to most of my issues, and problems that I had with Toxic Religion, and I felt like I had found a friend and another teacher of truth.  I still had some free time to explore around, and I would take overnight trips into the wilderness, to “get close to Nature, and to God”.  The feeling of love that I carried with me from the May 24th experience had started to fade by the middle of June, but I still felt blessed, and I was hopeful that continued recovery from my devastating mental illness and neurological trauma might heal.

“HE IS HAVING AN EXPERIENCE WITH GOD”

It was June 22, 1987, and I was hiking up to Larch Mountain, a beautiful peak that overlooks the Columbia River valley, and from its vantage point all of the major mountain peaks of the area can be readily observed. In the ancient times (I was to learn several years later) this area was considered sacred ground by the indigenous peoples, who came to this area from miles around to honor their Great Spirit, and to hold their sacred ceremonies and prayer rituals. I arrived at the top, and allowed myself to become as quiet as my mind would allow for.  I slowly did a 360 degree rotation, observing for the many miles around me, in all directions, the incredible beauty of the area, the mountain peaks of Rainier, Adams, St. Helens, Hood, Jefferson, and the great winding river called the Columbia River.  It felt as if I were on the top of a great observatory, and, today, I was the only person with this special view, and I was quite grateful just to be alive, and have this privilege.  I bypassed a guard rail, and I then climbed around the rocky peak so as to be hidden from the view from anyone.  With the additional privacy that I had created for myself, I then felt comfortable enough to begin to pray and meditate for just a little while.  I was pretty poor at this activity, as my mind refused to quiet itself.  But, at least I made myself available to Spirit, in the way that felt appropriate to me.

Pink Floyd-Brain Damage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnExahMPPFI

A light, warm breeze carried the fragrance of the nearby pine trees to me, drawing me away from the problems of my body, and of my mind.   I continued to be absorbed by the beauty of the area, and the majesty of the unobstructed views.  The mountain peaks began to feel closer to me, for some as yet unknown reason.  I felt as though I could reach out and touch each of them.  The river far below me felt close, very close, and the whole panorama seemed to be drawing nearer to me, and I began experiencing everything in a different way than I ever had before.  And, for the 2nd time in a month, I started feeling a little “different”.  A month ago I had experienced a “vision”, and, with its presence, all of my loneliness and depression had lifted. I attributed that temporary healing to the presence of the vision, and there had been a love that had flowed into me during its presence.  The “vision” had disappeared, but it had left its memory of a beautiful, unconditional love, and with it, traces of hope, and the expectations that something was to follow, of some as yet unknown nature.  Well, something was following now, and it was “closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet”.

AA Step 6:  Became entirely ready to have God (the Divine) remove all of our defects of character

A voice inside of my head then stated, with its typical matter of fact nature, “

HE IS HAVING AN EXPERIENCE WITH GOD”.

I was no longer separate from that which I was viewing.  Everything revealed itself as an extension of myself, of my own true nature.  For the first time in my existence, I could see that, as far as I can see, all that I will ever see, unto eternity, is my self.  Then, with a sense of all of my thoughts now being my own, I asked myself “how will I see myself today?”  I saw that all of humanity was my true family.  I saw that everybody was either my brother, or my sister, in this new, true nature that was revealed within me.  I looked within myself, and for the first time in my life, I only saw peace, as well.  The third person monologue had stopped!!  I held my hands out before me, and my hands, which usually shook so bad that I could not even write my signature clearly, or use a spoon to eat from a bowl without making a mess, were steady!  Peace had finally found me on a mountain peak, and I had finally found my true self.  And, I had finally found that life, that TRUTH, I had been seeking since I know not when.

And, I had finally found what real recovery is.  It is not just stopping drinking alcohol and using drugs.  It is the decrease, and, ultimately, the elimination of all patterns of thought that keep me from caring for this world, and for all of the life upon it.  I can’t be alive, and live life fully and holistically, without loving my fellow man, and all of the rest of the life upon our planet.  Think of the love that we have for our newborn baby, or our favorite pet, feel that love completely, with no reservations at all.  We spare none of our hearts or souls, do we?  Now think of that family member or acquaintance who is causing us so much distress, so much anger, even hatred.  Can we give the same love that we would for our baby to that person who we are distressed with?  If we can’t let go of those negative emotions, then that is an example of our separation from God, or Truth.  I don’t have to travel to the underworld again to find that truth, or to look for somebody who might listen to me.  “WHERE ARE MY PEOPLE?” became the question of the day, after I hiked the short distance back down to my car.

Carole King–One

(link to be created)

I then drove towards Portland,  from Larch Mountain, and was guided to go to NE 73rd and Glisan, where the US Postal Service’s EAP program was based.  I walked into the door, and I was greeted by both Larry and Mike (Mike visited me in the Care Unit 3 years before, and Larry was the director of the EAP since I could remember).  I called out to them by name, yet neither man immediately recognized me.   When I mentioned my name, they were both blown away.  I was happy, or, more precisely, ebullient, and Mike said that I was simply “radiant”.   They wanted to know what was going on with me, and I stated, with a matter of fact attitude, that I was having a “spiritual experience”, and they both gave me a huge hug and acknowledgement.  Inspired by this reception, I returned to the Main Post Office, and checked in with the Personnel Department, where Eleanor Workman was the head of the department.  She immediately recognized me, and then offered me an application to reapply for my “lost” position.

“No thank you, Eleanor, I just wanted to express my apologies for working for this company in such an unhappy manner for so many years”.

She stated that I could get the job back with little problem, since the Post Office knew that they fired me even though I was still a practicing alcoholic.  I then stated that what would make me the happiest is if she could schedule a meeting between me and the head of Plant Maintenance, John Zimpleman.  Well, he was “in”, so I went right up, and I had a direct opportunity to make amends to him for my poor performance from 1980-1985.  He greeted me warmly, listened to my story, was quite impressed, and then stated that he wished his son could discover what I just found, because John Jr.  was rapidly descending to my former level.  Wow, this day of amends went so well, I remained ecstatic about all future interpersonal possibilities.

One day that next week, while visiting our world famous Powell’s Book Store on Burnside in Portland, I saw my old psychiatrist, Dr. Dan Beavers.  He was standing in the metaphysical section of the book store.  I walked up to him, and he did not immediately recognize me.  I stuck my hand out to him, and re-introduced myself to him.

“Bruce, this can’t be you, can it?  Last time I saw you, I was wondering how much longer you could survive if the medication did not turn your life around.”

“Dan, the medication worked just fine.  I never used it, at least not in the way that you would have intended for me to use it.  I finally found a new way to live life without medication, drugs, or alcohol.  I now accept full personal responsibility for my thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and activities”.

“Bruce, that is the desired outcome for all of my patients.  Congratulations on your success!”

I gave Dr. Dan a hug, and apologized for using him like a tool in my effort to manipulate my former employer, the US Postal Service.  He said that I did not need to make amends to him, and that he was there for me to serve all of my needs, whether I considered them dysfunctional or otherwise.  But it still felt good to see Dr. Dan and show him my healthier sense of self.  I was to never see Dr. Dan again.  When I recently saw his obituary for his premature death in 2015,  I felt great sorrow, and cried.

In the continued interest of “finding my people”, I attend the INTA Conference in Portland In August of 1987 (International New Thought Alliance).  The person that I was most interested in seeing was Jack Boland, the recovering alcoholic who had started a SUPER CHURCH in Minnesota, with well over 5000 members.  He also had  a following of many hundreds of thousands of recovering people worldwide, as his approach to spirituality, sobriety,  and healing was pretty universal.  The integration into this new community was a fascinating immersion into a group energy that I had never experienced before.  I WAS SO HIGH THERE!!!

I got to see firsthand a group of well over 1000 people warmly embrace the musical group Alliance, which starred Jerry Florence.  They had some hits in the 1980’s, and they were a group of gay men who all had HIV’/AIDS.  Having recently left that “evil” Hinson Baptist Church where gays were bashed regularly, this was like a breath of life to a drowning man, even though I had no homosexual tendencies.  The tenderness that I felt towards Jerry Florence and the group of men that constituted Alliance still lives in me today, and I still have tears today for the suffering of all people who have been judged as unworthy or just plain ignored.

Marsha (Masha) Feldman is a beautiful Jewish woman, of Russian descent, who sat directly across the aisle from me at the Jack Boland talk.  For some reason she came over to ME after Jack’s talk, and began a friendship with me that was to last for over one year.  She had lived quite the life, hanging out with many of the most beautiful people that Portland, Oregon had to offer.  She had hung around rich men with their fancy cars, homes, and clothing. She had told me that she spent much time with weight lifting men, many of whom worshiped their own bodies.  Some were bi-sexual, and she was a little concerned that she might have made contact with the AIDS virus.  She was suffering from an unspecified auto-immune deficiency, and she would not tell me what it was.  She was a princess of sorts, and expected to be treated that way.  Why she latched onto me is anybody’s guess, but I am sure that there was an underlying spiritual reason for this connection.

Masha was troubled and had recently visited her rabbi for some support.  Her rabbi had informed her, in the interests of her own personal happiness and sense of well-being, that she should give up on understanding “GOD”, and to instead pursue more ‘grounded’ approaches to her physical and emotional health and welfare.  She certainly had the physical aspect mastered, as she worked out daily, and kept her physical energy and beautiful appearance at as high of a level as possible.

The International New Thought Alliance conference of 1987 was part of her higher involvement in the social activities of her community, both inside and outside the Jewish culture.  We traveled all over Portland together, visiting various recovery and spiritual groups for the first time together.   We delighted in discussing with each other all manners of healing and methodologies for achieving higher spiritual experience.  Hey, it felt wonderful to have a new friend on my spiritual journey.  As a direct result of this connection, we visited the YWCA of Portland, on 10th avenue.  Every Sunday there was a tape group meeting hosted by Marie Schmidt, a student of Joel Goldsmith, the creator of the healing movement “The Infinite Way”.  Since Masha was Jewish too, like Joel, she had an immediate connection, though it did not last long for her.  I continued with the Infinite Way for several years afterward (and I still practice some of their principles today).

As I moved forward spiritually in that great summer of 1987,  I was still quite new to the path of healing and transformation. I had left my old life behind, and I was open to the experience of spiritual connection, and mastery. I had developed quite a meditation practice, eschewing committed relationships with others in order to develop a deeper spiritual practice. I remained excited about the possibilities for my life, as I had finally made “conscious contact with the God of my understanding”. I had recently experienced dramatic, if not miraculous, healing of my body and my mind, and a new energy permeated my being. I felt like I was finally “swimming in the sea of meaning”, though I still had not “connected the dots”, or started consciously rebuilding the new self. But, I could have never anticipated the experience I was about to have, on this particular day, July 21, 1987.

“Master Teacher of the Light, Master Teacher of the Light” I repeated within myself several times during an evening meditation, which is a mantra that I had developed to aid my focus for my meditation practice. I was meditating several hours a day, and though my life was bearing fruit from previous connections with the Spirit, I remained driven to find deeper and deeper layers of meaning, and experience of my true nature and being. Well, this meditation was to become Truth’s “bell ringer” for me. Without warning, I was lifted from my body awareness, and I then had a sense that I now had a decision to make. It was like I was driving an automobile, and I realized that I could continue steering, and heading in my usual direction for life, or I could “let go of the controls” and experience something totally different and unique.

I released the “steering wheel” of my mind, and my conditioning, and there was an exhilarating inner “rush” whereby I was totally released from myself and my burdens, and my body! My essence traveled into a great unknown, neither “light or dark”, and it was like I passed through some sort of great matrix of information/being.  I had entered into a dimension of experience where infinite interconnected structures of alive and intelligent energy were manifest.  I did not recognize what I was witnessing, nor do I have the words to adequately represent this “web”.  Later, I was to learn that this matrix was the very collective consciousness of mankind, with all of its intelligence, and its stupidity.  I quickly flashed by what was, at this point in my life,  that unrecognizable and unnameable energy, and began almost a half spiral downward, where I came to a place of complete “darkness”, or emptiness. I felt totally at home here. I felt as if I was in the womb of all creation.  It felt like it held everything in the universe, yet there was nothing at all to witness here.

Almost immediately, a “laughing, happy voice” seemed to be speaking to me, or, more precisely, through me, in this “secret place of the most high”. Messages floated through, like “No teacher shall effect salvation, each must work it out for themselves”, and, “think no thoughts”, with “Follow new paths of consciousness”, And then, a mathematical formula for re-entry back into the great unknown was given to me. It was a differential equation that I could understand, and which stated (in layman’s terms) that with the total elimination of the movement of time based thought, the direct perception of reality was possible. The limit, as delta T goes to zero (T is thought as a function of time), divided by delta t (t is time itself), delta is the “change in”, or as lim dT/dt, as dt approaches zero, and T=f(t). The solution of this equation is the great unknown, INFINITY, or that which I sought.  The difference between spiritual “being” and human “becoming” took on mathematical and spiritual significance for me on the deepest level.

The final messages, however, were the one most difficult to reconcile within my life, and the ones which sometimes were troubling. First, there is this component: “YOU CAN’T BE REAL”. When it was stated, it was stated through me, with a joyful, laughing voice, yet when I re-entered my normal way of being, it became an almost threatening statement, and one that continued to challenge myself, and my ego daily for quite some time. And yet, to see again, as God, or Truth, sees, I must be mastered by this truth. The ego is the sum total of all of my judgments, the sum total of my human experience, my acculturation, my conditioning, my “separation from God, Love, my fellow man, and Truth”. The ego looks out from itself, and sees everything, and everyone, as if they are separate from its self, while totally failing to see that “all that it ever sees, unto eternity, is itself”. There really does not exist the “you” that I have formed, my perception of “you” is an incomplete mental creation that only exists in my mind (and which may or may not be shared by others, and most certainly is NOT shared by you).

Once again, the human race tends to confuse the verbal description (or mental image) of the person with the actual experience of the person, who, regardless of appearances, is infinitely more complex, and worthy of love and acceptance, than the human mind can readily accept. Yes, my ego is the sum total of all of my time based thoughts about time based behaviors of myself, and others. If I want to see clearly, I must accept that my main mode of viewing the world was through the ego’s eyes of unreality. To die to this mode of living is to truly be reborn of the spirit. WOW!! That was too much to digest in that moment, in that year of 1987, and for quite a period to follow.  But, this is a true path of humility, to finally see in its totality the shortcomings of the human mind, and to become willing to go beyond it.

AA Step 7:  Humbly Asked Him (or, of our insight, or higher power) To Remove Our Shortcomings.

Lastly, a most confusing revelation came, as well. I could see the field of energy that constituted my “body/mind awareness”. I saw embedded in it two almost complete thought forms, or identity forms, which I recognized as two distinct “entities”. Yes, I had two ‘extras’ attached to my field, and they were not there for my greater good, for sure. I came to regard these two unwelcome components to my life force as “tricksters”, though I noted that their presence seemed to allay the feelings of loneliness of my ego, perhaps only because they seemed vaguely familiar to me. I sensed that I was supposed to let go of these “illusions of self”, but I did not know what to do.

The two extra identity vortices in the ‘human energy field matrix’ that constituted my conscious sense of self did not really ever disappear, they just became unconscious again, for me. Little did I know that they were to become the most critical components to understand in my desire to form a better ongoing human/spiritual experience.  I now understood the basis for the potential for the development of “multiple personalities disorder”.  I saw how the whole human race suffered from this disorder, to varying degrees. Schizophrenia, oppression of others, repression of self and feelings, passive/aggressive behavior, people pleasing, prejudice, racism, misogyny and the like all shared a common foundation.  I had no one to discuss this earth shattering spiritual event with, save one person, Masha.

It was all so fresh and new to me and I was not the best communicator around the experience, but Masha was an amazing listener, and such a good friend, that we struggled through the teachings together.  We talked endlessly about our ‘spiritual experiences’,  discussed the enlightened ‘masters’ of the day, traveled and explored through the Columbia Gorge together, attended recovery meetings, slept under the stars together, slept in her apartment together, yet we never made love, as I was not to be her “prince charming”, as she related to me fairly early on.  I continued to see Masha as an extension of my ‘search for truth’ process where I remained celibate, so I was not too disturbed for that to continue (for most of my life, sex had not been all that satisfying for me).   Yes, this was yet another rejection of me on a pretty basic level, but I was relatively unaffected by it.  This rejection did not darken my life because of all of the other light that was being let in.

One evening while sleeping on her futon with her, I happened to reach down, inadvertently, between the cushions supporting our bodies and the armrest, and my hand came down around some sort of big, rubbery object.  In the dark, while Masha still slept, I pulled the object from the crevice, and almost fainted.  Masha was a very petite blond woman, who had never born children.  Yet I had found a mechanical friend of such dimensions that I was in amazement that this weapon was used to pleasure herself with.  I replaced the tool where I had found it, and tried to keep sex off of my mind.  I never told her I had met her “secret friend”.

We continued to hang out together, and spent lots of quality time with each other in platonic, yet blissfully loving, situations in various settings around our area.  Two of our favorite areas to visit were in Mosier, near the Tom McCall overlook at the Columbia River, and Washington Park, near her apartment in southwest Portland.  I continued to struggle to make sense of the three spiritual upheavals, or revelations, that happened over the period of May 24 through July 21, 1987, and attempted to understand other available teachings.

In retrospect, ever since I could remember I longed for a way “to get off of this rock”.  My life prior to drug addiction was quite lonely at times, but, occasionally, it was also happy. Reading fictional books, especially science fiction, enabled me to take vacations from a world that never seemed to quite accept me.   One of my favorite SF books was Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, which I read as a twelve year old boy.  In this book, the main character, Michael Valentine Smith, is adopted by Martians after the death of all Earthlings except for baby Michael on a Mars mission.  Michael learns from the Martians, who end up raising Michael, that all, ultimately,  is God.  When Michael proclaimed to Earth’s inhabitants after returning to his parent’s planet that “Thou Art God” I had my first ever feeling of God being present in life, in MY LIFE.  I read that book over and over again, as it gave me so much hope, but the hope, with its concurrent “God chills” or horripilations, were ephemeral, and did not last long after each reading of the appropriate passages in the book.  It was with this book that the seed was planted for the idea that the search for God may well be my ticket out of my loneliness and misery, and that the search must somehow end within myself..

I never completely accepted the outer world,  as it was populated by men affected by what I now know as Toxic Masculinity or Patriarchy, with a lot of indifferent or unkind people, and many bullies of all ages. I was not equipped to successfully deal with many of those interpersonal challenges. OK, as far as I could tell back then, we were all “Godless people”, including the church goers.  The thought of becoming an astronaut, and traveling through space far away from this planet, motivated me to excel in school, in both mathematics and science.  I saw scholastic excellence as my ticket to get free from my “social dis-ease”, and my sense of disengagement from the resident aliens who also shared planet Earth with me.

In the era of my  life from 1971 to 1987, roughly concurrent with the time that I was in relationship with my first wife, I led a highly dysfunctional life, becoming addicted to alcohol and drugs by age 15.  As previously expounded upon, I was hopelessly addicted from the start, and I knew that I would either die an alcoholic/addict, or I would kill myself by age 30, if I had not recovered from my affliction.

With all that I have previously written about the time beginning with recovery from addiction and alcoholism , it might appear that I was totally conscious about what was going on, and the direction that I was headed from 1987 forward .  Nothing could be further from the truth!  All that I knew was that after I made “conscious contact with the God of my present understanding”, my old life just “disappeared”.  This just did not appear out of nowhere, however, as the transformation was many, many years in the making.  I was no longer tormented by my social insecurities, or my feeling of disconnection from God, my fellow-man, or from the plants and animals that grace this beautiful planet that we share.  Somehow, I had “let go of the controls” of my old ego state of mind, and a new order started revealing itself, from moment to moment.  At times I felt like a “guided missile”, never knowing the destination for my life, but trusting whatever it was that had launched my new life into existence would get me to the right place at the right time..

I still had memories of my former life, yet they no longer informed my day-to-day thoughts, my decisions, or my overall outlook on life and love.   I did not know who the “new me” was.  I had no language to describe it to myself, or to others.  I had a series of spiritual upheavals which defied my rational mind, and I did not have the words to describe or contain the experience for many years to follow.  It was as if a new person had landed in my consciousness, the “old me” had died, and now I was informed, moment to moment, by a powerful force of peace or silence, or Love itself.  Before 1987, there were “many people with their disfiguring concepts” roaming around in my mind, but now the “committee of many” had permanently adjourned, and there was only one peaceful presence, a new ordering principle for my consciousness.  A friend from a men’s group who I met in 1992 claimed that I was a “walk-in”, a term used to describe when the old ego departs a body, to be replaced by a new being.

I have read about and heard from a few parents that their young children were so close to God, that when they first learned to talk, they would tell their parents about talking directly with God, or hearing God talk to them (or Jesus, or whatever their cultural background would predispose them to refer to).  I did not have that experience as a youth, and, in fact, I was so far from that experience that I could not fathom the possibility of such a “miracle”.  I was the boy who had horrible nightmares nightly from the very earliest of ages, and I would be cast out of our home to the garage at night when I was a baby, because I cried almost non-stop, and my crying kept my father from sleeping.  Yes, I was wrapped in a warm blanket, and kept in the car in the garage, so there is the beginning of my sad, “Godless” life experience.  There was nothing “heavenly” about my birth or early childhood, and, in fact, I was on the opposite end of the peace spectrum from those other lucky, divinely blessed children.  Attachment theory advocates would have a field day with this aspect of my story, for sure!

This new being, this upgraded Bruce 2.0, which appeared in the summer of 1987, was like those miracle babies and children that I had always envied, and doubted.  During most of the time after June of 1987, I spent over six hours a day in prayer and meditation, and probably as a result experienced blessed states on an almost continuous basis.  I now “heard and felt” God, and I was taught on the inner spiritual plane about aspects of life, and consciousness, that I had no way to learn or know about otherwise.  This was not a “Christian” God, or a “Jewish” God, or the Buddha Mind, or “Christ Consciousness”, but those names certainly pointed to the new reality that I had somehow accessed, and been dramatically changed by.  As hard as it is for me to write about this now, or, understandably, for the reader to believe this story, I was taught by the “Master Teacher”, whoever, or whatever, that might be.  And, I was given a new blank slate to write my new self upon, a new possibility for living, and being, in this world.  The world that I once wanted to depart from so badly, was now  paradise on Earth, and I knew that Heaven was not a concept for the future, but a living reality only for the present moment.  But, I could not carry the “old me” into that world, I had to leave ALL of my verbal and non-verbal memory possessions behind, so to speak, to stay in tune with the new Spiritual music.

I did not have the capacity to communicate with others what I was experiencing, for many years after 1987.  I would refer to my “rebirth”, and talk of the “old me” with those who were interested, especially in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.  The people who met me after my rebirth could not believe that I was ever addicted or dysfunctional in self-destructive or other-destructive ways, and I learned to not wave that recovery flag at every new person I met, so that they could have an honest chance of knowing me for who I now was, rather than who I might have been long ago.  It was my movement through all of these new relationships which helped to define for me the “new me”, who I was now, how I now related to and appreciated others, and how I now loved unconditionally most everyone that I met.  Yes, all of humanity became my brother or sister in this new reality, and my lifelong sense of dreadful separation from others had been lifted. I then set out to find “my people” and find out where I might fit into the new world order that was revealing itself within my mind and heart.  In my naiveté, I assumed that most others naturally came by this understanding, and that I was finally catching up, spiritually, with the “normal folks”, the folks that never were so unhappy as to consider alcoholism, drug addiction, and/or suicide for themselves.

Of course, my family still saw me in terms of the past, for the most part, as my history created great scars on the psyche of fellow family members, as well as the friends and acquaintances of my years prior to recovery.  But, they could appreciate that the “new me” no longer required their extra concern or care, as I was now an independent, upright, fairly conscious human being.  I made healthy choices in my relationships, and I chose a new, fulfilling career to replace all of the career wreckage from my past.  I was but a boy again, though, while still learning the ropes, meeting new friends, discovering new possibilities for myself and others, and, occasionally, still sipping from the inner healing springs of the Miracle that can quench the spiritual thirst of all who seek it out.

What I have noted from my understanding and experience of others who have had dramatic spiritual experiences, is that the state of being poor communicators around the event. This is quite common, for several years that follow such an upheaval, unless they have a strong religious background, which they then try to re-assimilate into their own unique opening.  For those who do not have a well established religious background, or who might need other language or images to convey their experience, the search through historical literature to see what others have written about their own cosmic events have been found to be helpful.  There is an attempt to try to use a language that others might understand, but, unless they too have had spiritual lightning strike them, the search for an equally enlightened/awakened peer group is liable to be fairly unsuccessful, at least initially.

Anyway, the story bends back to my relationship with Masha for a moment.  In October, In one of our recovery and spirituality group explorations together, we met Laurie Hartmann at support group for ACOA, which is Adult Children Of Alcoholics.  Masha pointed out that the young woman had similar physical characteristics to her own, and that maybe I should reach out to her, and test her for her friendliness.  I called Laurie several times after the meeting, to no avail.  I was about to give up on her, when on Halloween, she changed her mind, and we set out on a date together.  Well, it went better than it should have, and within six months I was engaged to be married to her.  Laurie was one step above what I could handle, and I created another great learning experience around love, and, rejection.  Masha receded into the background of my life for good, as a result of that relationship.  I missed her terribly.

U2-I Still Have Not Found What I Am Looking For

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3-5YC_oHjE

Looking back, everything worked out just fine, I think.  Pursuing beautiful women never brought happiness to me before, and there was no reason to suspect this would have had a more favorable outcome anyway.  She was 10 years older than I was, which did help open me up to the possibility of dating older women (hello Sharon, my beautiful wife and love of my life, and, yes, an older woman!).  Prior to this, it seemed only younger woman had even the remotest of interest in me.  I always considered myself too immature for older women, anyway.

I made a sincere effort to establish the “perfect” relationship with Laurie.  Alas, my efforts were not to come to a long term fruition.  We did enjoy each others’ company for several months, but I had to experience some real trauma and drama both early on in our relationship, and at the end of it.  In the interests of practicing safe sex, Laurie insisted that I get an AIDS test, due to my past choices for drug use and sexual activity.  At that time, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence, so it was pretty normal to have reservations about both the disease, and getting tested for it.

I went to the public health clinic, and submitted my blood sample for the test.  It was handled in an anonymous fashion. so as to protect the individual who is tested, and keep their results secret.  My health department contact was a friendly gay man, who tried his best to help me find peace around the whole process.  Yet, in the three weeks it took to get my results back, I developed death terrors, and experienced anxiety unlike anything I had experienced before.  It was so much easier for me when I held the gun to my own head, figuratively speaking, than when the potential for a fatal illness took over that role, and potentially removed my freedom of choice in how I should have to die.

My test came back OK, of course, so I was able to continue on my new path of life with Laurie, and share in the joy of a more liberated sexual expression.  Yet, there was something amiss within Laurie.  She was in the midst of a spiritual crisis, where she no longer believed in the power of her “God” to deliver her to her own promised land of fully expressed human potential.  She was depressed, and she needed anti-depressants to sustain her.  She made poor choices around maintaining her independence,  and the direction that she was heading was to become a dependent bride, and, ultimately, a mother to several children.

My own heart could not support a person of deteriorating mental health, with the intention of becoming a home-bound mother.  My spirit kept yelling at me that I needed either a strong, spiritually healing woman, or nobody at all.  Coupled with this was the fact that I perceived that she still had sexual curiosity towards new men, as evidenced by her continued perusal of Willamette Week’s singles section.  What ended the relationship was one evening her mother called me late, asking when she might expect Laurie to return home, since she saw Laurie leaving with me earlier in a new car.  I had to tell Mrs. Hartmann that I was not with Laurie that evening.  Both Mrs. Hartmann and I starting crying together when we realized that Laurie was secretly out with another man, “exploring her options”.  The next day I met with her to end the relationship.

In 1987, I met Marie Schmidt, a practitioner of the Infinite Way, which is a movement involved with “spiritual healing” created by Joel Goldsmith (died 1964).  She was a woman about 87 years old, who taught every Sunday at the old YWCA on 10th Avenue in downtown Portland.  I had seen a simple advertisement for her tape group, while attending the International New Thought Alliance conference in Portland.  The tape group was a combination mediation group, and a forum for listening to the taped teachings of Joel Goldsmith, a spiritual healer and mystic who first began his healing practice shortly after the Great Depression began.

I was captured by this group, which had mostly older people who attended.  I believe that I was the youngest person there, for the period from 1987-1991, while I remain involved with her group.  Initially, I kept my distance from most of the people, not really being sure what the whole business was about.  I eventually drew Joan Madsen and Marcus Jones into the group, who I knew from the International New Thought Alliance convention of 1987, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous, and the Living Enrichment Center.

“More perfect than you are, you could never be”,

with

“all that is human, is illusion”.

Well, OK, but how can I possibly apply that spiritual salve?

As I thanked her for her time, I then noticed I was totally at peace, and I was “healed” of all of my emotional disturbances around the ending of my engagement to Laurie.  It was as if the winds of Spirit had blown away everything from my mind, except peace and joy.

As I look at my life’s history, I am dumbfounded by its Mystery.

I later tried to have her heal my mentally sick ex-wife, Donelle,  with no success.  So there were limits to her ability, though she always stated that God  heals, not herself . I can almost now hear Marie’s voice, telling me, in regards to all of us:

“More Perfect than you are, you could never be.”

How that manifests in all of our lives remains an unraveled mystery, to be experienced by us each day that we have the privilege to wake up.  She would tell me that we are all blessed by each other’s continued walk through life.    Love goes before us, to make all of  “the crooked places straight”. We are Loved, and, in fact are Love Itself.    The body goes where it must, but also, so does our Hearts.  Go in Peace and Love, and always be willing to bring healing to any situation, for that is our mission, and who we are always to be.

My nighttime world was populated with many interesting and challenging dreams during this period of my life.  In one dream, it was like the sky opened up, and “heaven” started singing a most beautiful song.  The song spoke of Boston, Massachusetts.  Then, I am flying in the dream, minus an airplane, and starting to go over what might be the Atlantic Ocean.  The message comes to me that I will be leaving Randy Olson behind for this phase of my life.  Well, OK, where did that come from, and what does it mean?  I also had a dream where I saw a ring with seven jewels on it, but it was missing its major stone, though the ring had a setting just waiting for the jewel to be inserted.  The missing jewel was much, much bigger than the seven stones.  What could this dream possibly mean?  More will be revealed later.

I will flash forward to July4, 1989 when I met my present wife Sharon.  On July 4, 1989, while attending a Course In Miracles discussion group in the basement of the Unity Church in southeast Portland, I first met Sharon and her daughter Hayley.  Right off the bat I was struck by how real, deep, personal and what a genuine human being that she was.  Her daughter exhibited unusual behavior, and I could tell that Sharon also has dealt with troubling mental health issues with family members.

I eventually joined in relationship with Sharon, after being reintroduced to her at a Living Enrichment Center gathering around the Twelve Steps of Recovery, a several week presentation by Mary Boggs, the minister of LEC.  We both scheduled our attendance at a Course In Miracles weekend retreat that LEC was sponsoring over the weekend of August 4, 1989.  When the retreat was cancelled, I offered to Sharon that we create a retreat of our own.  I chose Cultus Lake, a mountain lake in Central Oregon.  We proceeded to hit it off so good together that weekend, that we knew we were right for each for now, and for a long, long time to come.

I moved in permanently with Sharon later that year, and her daughter Hayley lived with us until July of 1990, when she struck out on her own, to find her own truth and healing.  I was having some difficulty communicating with Hayley.  Sharon and her daughter had some unique mutual control dynamics that were not healthy or satisfying to witness, or to participate with.  Hayley had a lot of growing up to do, and I became disturbed by her need for chaos, and her lack of respect for my need for peace and honest, loving expression in communication.  One weekend in July of 1990, I went to my grandpa Henry to stay with him, while grandma Henry was out of town.  I spent literally the whole weekend in prayer and meditation around my troubles with Hayley.  Then a most unusual thing happened.  I “heard” that my issues around Hayley had been resolved, and that she was not to be an issue any further.  I went back to our apartment that Sunday evening, and upon my entry, I was informed that Hayley had decided to move out, and live with Martha Cannon, a former patient of Sharon’s.

THE VOICE OF AWAKENING

Though the slowly shifting sands of time,

Create ever taller hills for this lost soul to climb,

It must be in my selfish, hateful world of no reason or rhyme,

I must begin the search for Truth, to find the Love that is sublime.

“Oh seeker of Truth, God’s high mount you would climb,

“Though you now stumble through the valley’s shifting sands of time.

“Stop confusing your mind with worn out rhyme and reason,

“For they are forever charged by Truth with treason!”

“Oh mental marathoner , only on Life’s treadmill you now stand,

“Just re-using the same words and thoughts keeps you life’s ‘also ran’

“You’ll forever chase in vain Love’s all-knowing voice,

“So be still, for with your run’s end, is the Cause to rejoice!”

“Oh marionette’s dancing image of the screen of the world’s mind,

“With all of those conditioned beliefs in control, what freedom could you find?

“Release yourself from all of those memories’ materialistic strings

“To prepare for the inner Wisdom that only my Intelligence brings!

“Oh shadow boxer of evil, when will you ever tire?

“Tis only champion of a dream world to which you aspire!

“Cease giving energy to your illusions with those mental pugilist blows,

“To reveal the peaceful mind of the One who now knows!”

“So please wake up to Love’s voice sweet somnambulator,

“And realize the eternal truth that “I” within “you” is greater,

“Than any mental image you could ever form or learn,

“And then your World will reflect the One for whom you now yearn!

And then the real “punch line” to the search for Truth:

“To be in realization of Truth, is to find God’s high mount another illusion to climb,

“Continuously being recreated by fearful, desirous minds caught on the merry-go-round of time”

“The dark, restless mind remains forever bereft of Love’s Rhyme and Truth’s Reason,

“And only chases after mirages, until it sees all of its movements are guilty of treason!

In the spring of 1992, while Sharon and I were living in Rock Creek, I had a most amazing dream, and it is the miracle of love, and trust and innocence that enables me to share it (only Sharon has ever heard it , and she had no choice-she woke me up from it).  In this dream, I was in my grandfather’s home, sleeping in the bedroom that i always slept in as a child.  A “fierce, fiery cluster, or orb, of pure light and love” hovered over me, and though it did not have human form, I knew it to be my grandfather.  I was being drawn into his love light, and I knew that, for me to continue, this energy would destroy my body because my body was too weak to support this “fire of love” that came to me.  I did not care, for I had finally found what I was looking for, and I began to rise up, and attempt to join with it, knowing my “body” would be destroyed in the process.

Now, in real time, in the physical world, my body was shaking and almost convulsing, and, to Sharon, my “crying and distress” showed that I was having a nightmare.  In her concern, she woke me up, and I had never felt so disappointed to have to wake up, as it ripped me away from this most remarkable inner experience. It is also remarkable how absolutely parallel this inner experience in the dream was to my own grandfather’s experience on the operating table, when he was “ripped back into this world” against his will.

But the dream carried many fruits with it into the world that our bodies inhabit  (Also, the prayer of gratitude-Grandfather, Great Spirit, Thank You, appeared in my mind and heart back then, as well).  I knew that if I wanted to entertain, or to even host, the higher vibrations of love, my body (both physical body and the body of thought constituting myself), must become much stronger, and more open to the powerful energies of Love’s universe.  I came to realize that I must improve my physical conditioning and my dietary choices, and continue to be engaged with like minded individuals and groups of people, where energy can be exchanged.

This new life also provided me with some of the language that I needed to communicate better with others what I had experienced on the inner plane. It also started to provide me with the language needed to describe the foundational consciousness which predisposed me, and our world to dysfunctional and self-destructive behavior, but I was not to get the full message until much later in life.  I was sent back into the world after this second birth so that I could gain insight into the matrix of collective human misunderstanding that was the foundation for our collective consciousness as a human race.  I had no inclination to attempt to describe the “light” as the mystics and poets experienced it, for I saw the futility of that path of “via positiva” for me.  My path was more towards “via transformativa” and “via negativa”, which is the path that is witnessed AFTER insight into the debris field of human consciousness is apperceived, and then healed and cleared.  What is left, after the garbage is cleared?  I won’t waste my words on that one, I am not a poet, and I don’t need to draw a big audience for those who are the seeker moths of our world who blindly follow the latest human “light”.  The “light” is best experienced non-verbally, for then there are no conflicts created between “the word” versus “the truth of the moment”.  The word will forever remain a shadow, cast by the light built into the divine heart of mankind, as it tries to define the “undefinable”.

I had many teachers on the “outer plane” who continued to point the way to a higher, more spiritually integrated life, while I measured their messages against what was bubbling up within my own mind and heart.  Finally, words started forming within my mind that were the verbal bridges from my internal “non-verbal” state of being to attempt to reach the outside world with its matrix of verbal intelligence.  Just sitting around smiling at people was not getting the job of connection and communication accomplished, but at that time, I carried a constant smile on my face, because I was always flooded with joy.  I was no longer a sheep looking for a shepherd, I became a more conscious wanderer on life’s path, looking for fellow travelers and collaborators to give to and receive companionship from while we collectively reached for our greater good.  I had no desire to fly solo, but instead to fly with a new flock, populated by those who were flying the same direction that I was guided to fly.

One of our backpacking trips was to become quite a memorable experience for both Sharon and I.  I awoke one morning during the summer of 1992, and finished preparing to leave on a weekend hiking and camping trip with Sharon, up to the Mt. Adams Wilderness Area.  My senses were somehow heightened, and I felt as though I could see and hear better than I was accustomed to.  Food tasted better, the air carried many more scents, and my entire body felt alive with vitality, and sensation, well beyond what I was accustomed to experiencing in my day to day life.  I had to work that day, so I ignored my “extra sensory perception” for most of the work day, and I remained excited about joining with my beloved partner on a hike to Lookinglass Lake, which would end up becoming around a 10 mile hike, in one direction.

We finally lay down for the evening in our tent, and though I was still quite profoundly experiencing this event, I was able to fall asleep beside my beloved.  Shortly afterward, I awoke to a great light enveloping our tent, and I arose to go outside to see what was happening.  In the sky appeared a Great Light, and the entire surrounding area was bathed in a light that totally eliminated all shadows, even though it was near midnight!  I awoke Sharon, who rose to witness the light.  To this day, I have no clue if the light is associated with my “heightened mystic awareness”, or if it was just a coincidence that a UFO would awaken us to bathe us in its radiance.  After we returned home, I told my mother about the light, and she reported that the week before, a mysterious light in the Mt Adams wilderness area was also reported, so who knows what was happening there?

Looking back at my life’s history, I remain immersed in the light of its Mystery.

In 1992, I was still in communication with my ex-wife, Donelle.  At this point, she was in the mental hospital at Fort Steilacoom, Washington.  She was committed yet again in 1990, and was languishing in there when I visited her.  This was the 3rd time I had visited her there.  She always had a shopping list for me to fill, invariably with some types of makeup.  She still liked to make herself look as pretty as possible, but the effects of the medication over the years on her had taken a horrible toll.  She was twice her normal weight, and she could not keep her food down consistently.

The most beautiful woman I had ever met was no longer that, and I was quite saddened, once again, to have to connect with her while she was so diseased.  The medication was quite the “double edged sword”, and had been for all of her adult life.    I don’t know what drug cocktails they were giving her this time, but they had the same conflicted end results.  (I now have little respect for the drug industry, or for a system that prescribes these drugs to people, rather than treating people in a more holistic manner).

This particular weekend, my wife Sharon was running in the annual Hood to Coast relay race.  At this point in my life, I was not a runner, having hung up my running shoes in high school, and also having retired from recreational basketball in 1985 due to back problems. My only responsibility was to drive to Seaside to pick Sharon up at the end of her adventure, after my visit with Donelle.  I was quite down after my visit, and the drive to Seaside from Ft. Steilacoom was very dark, and subdued.

Over the many years from 1971, through the present moment,  I have found that I am sensitive to crowd energy (a palpable form of collective consciousness), and I can “feel” the collective energy of several types of groups of people, and actually draw from it, and add to it if I am receptive to what is going on.  And, unfocused groups put off such diffuse energy that there is nothing special to tune in to, and I find little to attract me to such energy.

Since there were over 12,000 runners and many more support people at the event, it is no wonder that a field was created in and around Seaside, the destination of the great world famous event.  I became so impressed with the energy of the experience that I committed to running with Sharon, and I began to run with her several months later, so that the next year I could join her Hood To Coast team, the Sole Mates.

It was the summer of 1993, and I had scheduled a 5-day retreat with Eileen Bowden and 20 other followers of the Infinite Way, a mystical healing path originated by Joel Goldsmith (died in 1964).  The retreat took place in Federal Way, Washington, at the Pacific Palisades retreat center overlooking the Puget Sound.  I spent the four days in silent contemplation and meditation, with several group talks given by Eileen over the course of the time period.

Awakening Part 4

(written in 1992-1993 time period)

Perfection lies, behind all eyes,

We, who would look within ourselves, will find,

The Sublime Surprise, of which all Life does comprise,

The Divine Self of all Mankind.

We, who have made our choice, with one free voice,

Call to our Eternal Source Supreme,

We will no longer roam, we are coming Home,

We are awakening from the “human” dream!

With courage draught, from fear made naught,

We move from temporal shadow to Eternal Light,

The Kingdom sought becomes the Vision caught,

Whosoever overcomes, now sees with unhindered sight!

The Love All-Knowing, the Truth now showing,

With Divinity, We walk hand in hand.

In us its growing, through us its flowing,

Embracing all between space and land.

With Hearts entwined, One Soul Divine,

To this world, We are a blessing immense.

Though we pass this way for but a day,

With Divine experience, who would dare dispense?

The experience was somewhat perplexing to Sharon, as she wondered why I was having this profound experience, and why it continued on for so long.  She had many questions, but the perfect peace that I was experiencing was not ebbing, at least initially.  I had to return to work, as I worked for a living as an electrician.  At work, the energy continued to flow in its own unique way, but well into the work week I started to question the value of “enlightenment” when I still had to continue to work.  My co-workers were so out of touch with these things that I considered important, special, or sacred, and I could not quite get a handle on how this spiritual experience would have any value in the workplace.  I dared not speak about it, or show any type of behavior that would distinguish me from anybody else, and the dominating attitude for me was to “just blend in” as best I could.

One story really stands out from my electrician apprenticeship program that I attended from 1988-1992.  Gary Johnson was another apprentice in my class, and he, at times, appeared a little distracted and dull.  I knew that there was more to him than that, though I never really positively acknowledged him outwordly.  One day we were scheduled to take a very important test, one which would determine if we would successfully continue in the program, and eventually finish with our electrical license.    For some reason I felt an intense desire to pray for Gary.  This was not a typical activity for me, praying for somebody that I did not know well.  After the test, Gary came over to me, and asked me why I prayed for him.  Nobody, I mean NOBODY, could have known that I was praying for Gary, including him.

“Gary, why do you ask such a challenging question?  How could you possibly know of such a thing happening?”

“Bruce, it is none of your business how I know.  Thanks for thinking of me, though.”

“Gary, some things just happen that neither of us have any control over, I think.”

Once again, as I look at my history, I am in awe and wonder of  life’s Mystery.

Are we all connected?  Like I stated earlier, my spirituality was not an obvious garment that I wore, because of my need for privacy and secrecy, and to not be revelatory of myself in the workplace.  I really stopped the focused, conscious prayers for co-workers after that, both for not being comfortable with the mystery of what just transpired, and also not receiving the inner impulse to do so for other co-workers..

What was that ‘prayer’, and why was it so unsettling to me?  Unknown to me at the time, I had actually divested myself from my religious or scientific and/or secular backgrounds, and shared in the actuality of a greater potential for personal and collective unfoldment.  Yet, at that stage of my unfoldment, I was not the proper vehicle to carry prayer, and its energies to all of mankind.

AA Step Eleven:  Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God (or new way to see life), praying only for knowledge of his (our higher power) will for us, and the power to carry it out.

I would like to take a small diversion here, and talk about prayer, non-verbal and verbal communication.  “Prayer” is a word that points to something so simple, normal, and natural, yet the word points to a much greater potential for shared reality than most people understand, or realize. And no, prayer is not a beseeching or a begging from some sort of Santa Claus God for something that we don’t already have, though there are 10,000 books already written about prayer indicating as much. There is so much cynicism and skepticism about prayer from non-Christians and atheists, and that negativity exists for good reasons.

https://outabouter.com/2018/02/15/at-current-rates-of-use-world-could-run-out-of-thoughts-and-prayers-by-as-early-as-2019/

There is a band of frequencies in the spectrum of universal life force where humanity resides. Our minds already arise from this base, or fundamental ground, of being or existence. We naturally can access all of these frequencies, yet we must discern which ones to attach our life force energy to, and which ones to avoid. We all have access to these frequencies together, as a human race, thus the incredible potential for overlap of experiences, and the sharing of healing, insight, love, spiritual power, and understanding at the most fundamental of levels.

One of the levels of awareness has become known as the human mystical state.   “God Consciousness’, “Christ consciousness’, or the “Buddha Mind”, are names given to this sublime state of being, along with  several other monikers, depending on the culture and the point of history where this is being defined and described.  This energy field is the same energy that Jesus accessed, and that Saint Paul on his road to Damascus experienced.   It is a non-verbal state, though the human race certainly spends a lot of time trying to bring that experience back into the verbal world of incomplete concepts. Our attempts at communicating with others are well-meaning but often times inane and insane attempts at measuring the immeasurable.  Our culture is perceived to be immeasurably enhanced ,  and the awakening elements of the human race give great tribute to those who continue their attempts to bring this energy to mankind through their music, poetry , art, science, teachings, story telling.and other verbal contrivances.

The energy exists above and beyond the word, and its limitations, yet needs a verbal bridge back to the mind of the human, who has become lost to its influence while under the sway of the day to day hypnosis that living in the world of words supplies.  The Garden of Eden is eternally lost to the person who lives in the past, while being defined by the verbal constructs around his history and experience.  The Unknown, where “God” resides, becomes a source of fear for those who are addicted to their personal and/or collective stories, with their verbal structures of ignorance, isolation, hubris, and self-centered behavior.  Those who finally touch the Unknown, are changed, yet lack the power to bring that change to others, though they can now send out their “waves of positive influence” or prayers, if you will.  They only can point to where the Truth lies, which is the real power of the word.  The word itself is not holy, or spiritual, but the state of being pointed to is where the real power remains.  All of the religious works ever presented to the human race are but pointers to the truth, with no innate capacity to impart the truth on their own.

Prayer that starts on the verbal level and only stays there will have the characteristics of an affirmation, or part of the goal seeking mechanism of the human mind.  Prayer that reaches the great Unknown, where the verbal machinations finally cease, will be blessed by that “carrier wave” of spiritual energy, thus have the potential for greatest power, healing, and connectivity. The eternal struggle of man is to find their own unique way to quiet, or liberate, the mind, without damaging the mind in the process.  The quiet mind is how to open the internal window to infinite spirit, which will blow into the inner window in its own unique time and manner.  Who, or what, gets blessed by that blowing wind of spirit is primarily out of our conscious  control, but, oh, how some people claim to “have the power”, and sell people on their own self-righteousness.

Answered prayer appears to be a “miraculous intervention”, and proof that certain individuals or groups have a special, or developed, connection with their God, Lord, or Higher Power.  My “prayers” have never resulted in any miraculous healing of others.  But, I have somehow connected with people on a mysterious non-verbal level, whereby I can sense what is going on with another, or that another can feel my “positive intention” for them.  Apparently, I have the carrier wave connection, and some data is transferred, yet shamanic powers, or healing of the bodies of others or similar events have not occurred through my efforts.  The only body that has ever been healed through my “prayers’  is my own.

When Jesus stated that we should be “praying without ceasing”, the truth is that we are continuously praying, anyway, whether we are conscious of that fact, or not.  Our minds are continuously generating thoughts, which are spawned by our overall attitudes towards our self and towards others, and towards “the big picture”.   These thoughts either go out to “make the crooked places straight”, and co-create some new or reaffirm some existing order, or they create new layers of chaos and confusion in the collective and personal life experience.  Later, in Part Two, when we look at the Common Knowledge Game, we can finally comprehend one of the more insidious aspects of prayer that has taken over much of our collective experience of humanity.

Mind, by James Allen (As A Man Thinketh, 1902)

Mind

The Master Power that molds and makes,

And Man is Mind.

Evermore he takes the tools of thought

And shaping what he wills,

Creates a thousand joys, a thousand ills.

He thinks in secret, but it comes to pass

Environment is but his looking glass.

I will end my monologue on prayer for awhile, and get back to my story’s timeline.

I had already cut way back on meditation with the beginning of my running career in 1993, and when the spiritual “energy” finally ebbed, I despaired a bit, and I felt a little awkward pursuing any deeper connection.  I had started questioning the value of a process that I was failing to integrate into the rest of my life.  There was nobody to blame but myself, but ever so gradually, my “over commitment” to my spiritual unfoldment began to ebb, as well.  But my love for my partner, Sharon, and for all of our shared friendships and family did not ebb, but continued to increase and enhance the quality of my life.

July 30, 1994, Sharon and I had a “commitment ceremony” in our backyard.  We had over 75 people attend, including most of our immediate family, and many, many friends.  I had solidified in my own mind and heart the absolute value of my relationship with Sharon.  She came to represent to me integrity, honesty in communication, speaking from the heart, empowered divine feminine energy, compassion, service to others, and the celebration of our shared humanity at the highest level, of any person that I have ever met, even up to this very day.  I have made many mistakes in my life, but I celebrate every moment of every day my relationship with Sharon.  She is truly made in the image of the highest power in our universe.

Life Is Better With You, by Michael Franti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XEOVl875d0

The years 1995-2005 were dominated by employment for both Sharon and I.  Sharon, who is a nurse, became a manager for Legacy, and eventually became a hospice nurse for Providence.  I continued on my career as an electrician, occasionally accepting management roles.  This  also was the period that I focused on improving my running ability, as well as increasing my participation in our family environment.  Gradually, our huge circle of friends diminished during this period of time, and death started creeping into our awareness as important family members and friends starting passing away.  Losing my grandmother in 1995, and Victor Thomas in 1996 were two troubling losses.

I discontinued participation in my men’s group experience of over four years after internal bickering and a lack of mutual commitment to our long term relationships ebbed.  In my desire to bring healing to the group energy, I gifted each member of the men’s group with a thirty page manuscript on spirituality, healing, and forgiveness for a Christmas gift in 1994.  I spent over forty hours writing the manuscript, and struggled mightily with the preparation and presentation of it to the group.  Not one person read it or gave me feedback on it, until several years later when Gary Nieuwhof finally read it, and gave me positive feedback.

This heartbreaking experience with a group of supposedly spiritually evolved men has had a lot of staying power with me.  One of the reasons that I have been so reluctant to share my story with the world is a result of the indifference to my truth that this men’s group expressed to me through their behavior towards me.  I guess that the world can’t reject me at a deeper level than my own friends did, yet receiving more rejection has never been a life goal for me.  My 1995 response to this rejection was disgust, and to destroy my copy of the only writings that I had ever made.  I have made sure to make several copies of this work, however, in case my past sense of self briefly resurrects itself to wreak havoc on my creative works.

I walked away from my two best male friends, Michael Harris and Gary Nieuwhof in 1998 .  It was devastating for me, but it was done in the interests of maintaining spiritual integrity in the face of secrecy, deception, and girlfriend abuse by Michael, and Gary’s need to support Michael’s agenda instead of mine.

As a couple’s group, we met once a month for many years, then at the recommendation of the Hussey’s, we cut the frequency down to four times a year, beginning in 2009.  The group figures prominently in encouraging the awakening of my own hesitant/repressed voice, though Marty, as well as the group, had to be in the throws of its own death before that would occur.  The group ended August of 2017, one month prior to Marty’s Death With Dignity process.  I will make extensive commentary on this process later in the work.

I had  begun to neglect my inner spiritual world for quite some time prior to this, due to the demands of my work, my family, and my training regimen for competitive athletics.  As an interesting aside I noted at the time that the more competitive that I became as a runner, and the more races that I excelled in, the less that other male runners were interested in maintaining friendships, including my fellow running team members.  It made me long for the early days of my running career, from 1993-1996, when I ran on friendly Hood To Coast teams with our friends from LEC.  Competitive ability did not matter to any of us.  What mattered most was that we loved and appreciated each other, and that we maintained social connections throughout the year.

Before discussing the two year relapse, I would like to refer to an event in April of 2007, when we had two cottonwood trees fall across the center of our home.  They caused extensive damage, but to document those details is not the intent of this paragraph.  Our wonderful spirit dog Iris, a white German Shepherd that had become part of our family in 2001 as an eight month old puppy, endeared herself to me in a way that will forever hold a special place in my heart.  She was our constant companion for many years.  She was a perfect trail dog, and led both Sharon and I on many wilderness hikes, offering her joy of exploring, and her willingness to protect us from unknown dangers.  While the tree removal service tended to the fallen trees above our home, Iris and I entered into the home, and walked through the living room towards the hallway into the bedrooms.  Suddenly, Iris, who was walking behind me,  started feverishly barking, and I turned back to her, to see what her problem was.  I took a couple of paces back to her, and right then, a six foot long, two hundred pound piece of the tree fell through the roof, and landed EXACTLY on the spot where I had been standing when Iris barked.  It landed with such a thunder that the house shook, and then I trembled, as well.

The tree service man later said, in forty years working  his trade, he had never before lost a load.  Iris had saved my life.  She was to die at the all too young age of seven, in December of that year, waking Sharon and I to a heart piercing death shriek and howl.  We got up and held her to close to us, as her life force left her.  Sharon and I felt like we had lost a precious child.  A most amazing side story to this is that ONE YEAR TO THE DAY, AND TO THE MINUTE (3:45 am), after Iris’s death, my father’s dog Rocky woke up, and started howling for two minutes.  Dad reported that Rocky had NEVER done that before, and he never did it again, until the day he died, June 23, 2016.

Looking at my life’s history, my heart still gets broken by the Mystery.

It is said that relapse is part of recovery.  My opinion aligns with that, but this is the most painful part of recovery, for it means the loss of personal pride as well as the respect and stature in the recovery community that goes with living the life of a successfully recovering individual.  For over one month I lost the respect of my wife, which was devastating.  It took far too long to get her trust back, and I was so disappointed in myself for letting both her, and myself, down.  My self-image was once again in transition.  Add to my pain-killer addiction woes the fact that I had to retire from road running and racing because of my brittle tibia bones, with racing having been one of the major parts of my self’s definition for many years, and I, once again, became a person searching for a new way of being, and seeing myself.  I certainly could not find any lasting relief in my ego association with a career as an electrician, as I had long since started the process of psychologically separating myself from it.  The period that I worked for the City Of Portland in the Water Bureau corresponded to the period when I became 100 percent responsible for caring for my father, and the duel burden of employment for a dysfunctional employer and care-giving was just too much for me, forcing me into early retirement from work.  I was not to finish my work career strong and proudly, but instead, with a prolonged dying gasp.

Yes, the relapse meant redefining myself YET AGAIN, and, I have since learned, I am one of a fairly small percentage of people who actually have made it back from relapse after decades of sobriety, as well as from the opiate addiction.  I am not proud of that fact, and, I no longer feel 100 percent secure in the knowledge that I am protected from my own worst intentions by my “higher power”.  For many, many years, I was never tempted to drink or use, as the urge was lifted from me by Grace itself, and was never an issue up to the point of relapse.  It was disheartening to have to start over, yet start over again I did.  But this time, my experience was not to be accompanied by Conscious Grace, like  I experienced during the period of time from 1987-1992, and I felt like I was living through the “dark night of the soul” several times, interspersed with moments, days, or sometimes weeks of “transcendent energy” sprinkled in, all the way through the year 2017.  Yes, the ever-present smile and experience of continuous joy of living that characterized my life from 1987-1993 just did not reappear.

The years 2009 to the present have, at times, rivaled the most troubling of periods in my life.  My job with the City of Portland Water Bureau, which began in November of 2006, and ended in May of 2013, was the most troubling work environment that I had ever experienced as a working adult.  The dysfunction of two of the employees, coupled with the incompetence of the management team created a toxic, hostile work environment, and I have never worked under such troubling conditions.  There is a direct correlation between my relapse, and my employment with this diseased organization.

One of the electricians by the name of Ron Bailey, had mental illness, ultimately diagnosed as a bipolar condition.  I suspected that he was also using home made drugs, converting over the counter Sudafed into methamphetamine (he talked too much about the problems of purchasing it over the counter), as well as drinking alcohol to extremes on his weekends..  His supercilious approach to co-workers, general toxic attitudes generated through his following of Toxic Religion and Toxic Masculinity, and his overall confrontational behavior made all of our lives miserable at times.  I cast myself in the role of peacemaker, but that became a huge albatross around my neck.  I tried to create and maintain communication with R.B., all the while remaining friends with the boss, Marc Crowder.  I had met M.C. while he worked at the Blue Heron paper mill ten years before, where I was a contract electrician, and he was an employee of the mill.  M.C. was the primary reason that I was hired in the first place, and I felt that I owed him at least a little extra respect and friendship for vouching for me.

One telling story is the period of time near my mother’s death, in August of 2009.  I had made a commitment to install an air conditioning system in a shop for the workers up at the Bull Run dam on a Monday morning.  The prior Sunday evening, my mother had taken extremely ill, and I feared for her life.  Sharon and I visited with her, and I brought her foods that might better agree with her nauseous feelings.  I told my mother that I feared that she might die, and I wanted to take her to the hospital.  She refused to go, stating that she was scheduled to go in the next morning anyway, and that she could make it one more night.  Well, she couldn’t make it, and collapsed on the floor next to her bed sometime in the middle of the night.  My father was totally incompetent as to how to handle it, yelling at mom to get up, and she could not.  Sharon finally called the ambulance the next morning, after driving up first thing.  Sharon stayed to assist, and I was counseled to go to work, and meet up with Mom in the hospital when I got off from work.

By the time I arrived at the hospital, mom was fading fast, and the doctors were running out of ideas as to how to save her.  I was able to hold her hand, and talk with her briefly, but I knew things were grim.  They “needed” to take her for yet one more test, so I gave her a kiss, and she did not want to let go of my hand.  I never talked to her again, she was placed in a medically induced coma, from which she never awoke.  We turned off her life support machines three days later, after all hope was dashed for recovery.  I felt guilt and grief of such immense proportions that I was almost buried by it.  I felt like I had betrayed my mother, and I was inconsolable.  The family physician counseled me that I needed anti-depressants, in addition to the opiate addiction recovery medicine that I was already taking since February of that year.  i was quite messed up, and sadness was my companion for quite awhile.  I never could quite forgive myself for choosing to go to work that Monday, rather than being by my mother’s side at the hospital, nor could I entirely let go of my resentment for having to continue to work for the Water Bureau, which I grew to despise.

By October of 2010, our office dynamics had not changed, and, if anything, they had deteriorated…  Management was trying its best to get R.B. removed from his job, but they had made many mistakes, and R.B. was more secure in his position than ever.  I still was trying to be the peaceful go-between for the management team and R.B., as well as for other impacted co-workers.  We were all confused as to how to deal with our toxic work environment and hostile culture.  One Friday morning, near October 10, 2010, I offered to R.B. to meet him at a local Starbucks on our way to our jobs.  My job was out at the Bull Run dam system, which was a 50 minute drive. R.B.’s job was more local.  I bought R.B. a mocha, and we sat and talked for 20 minutes, which is our normal break allowance.  I asked about the therapy he was receiving, and about his sobriety, and his broken marriage.  After 20 minutes, I got really uncomfortable, and left the Starbucks, and we walked out to our work vans.  Out of nowhere, our boss M.C. walks up, and accuses both of us of “stealing from the company”, for taking a 45 minute break.  This asshole had come in on his Friday day off from work to try to stalk R.B. and bust R.B. for whatever he could, and I got caught in his nets.

We were both given letters of warning, and because of the incompetence of our union representatives, my grievance against M.C. was never filed in time.  I accused M.C. of being a “fucking liar” right to his face, in front of the union rep, and higher management.  I had never been more betrayed in my life.  I turned my “light off” from that point forward, never giving any more than the bare minimum to keep my job, until I was forced into retirement in 2013.  My employer then engaged in the most shameful exhibition of intimidation and coercion in early 2013, forcing me to accept an early retirement.  I was given extra benefits, and forced to sign hush agreements, but I was tempted to file a lawsuit against the Water Bureau anyway.  After consulting with a lawyer, and balancing the benefits of potentially winning $500, 000 or more, and one or two more years of extreme emotional toll, or just walking away and enjoying the benefits that I had already negotiated, I kept the sure thing, and found some peace of mind. Thus ended the most difficult chapter in my life story of challenging relationships with men, and with employers

I am at the age in life where many family members and long-term friends have already passed away, and I have not drawn many new people into my sphere of influence, at least partly due to my commitment to Dad’s care the last seven years, and partly because I did not have children, and I did not create the friendships within the greater community that naturally arise through raising children, and then grandchildren.  I have found that men my age have a markedly reduced interest in making new friendships, instead clinging steadfastly to the friends from their more youthful times.  With the last 10 years of my work career, ending in 2016, being characterized by high stress positions with low co-worker support,  I was not successful in creating friendships with those fellow travelers in the electrical industry for various reasons, including the main relationship toxicity factor, which is intense competition (if I was a drinker, I certainly would have had many more acquaintances).  The electrical industry is populated by more than its share of men who celebrate their own versions of Toxic Masculinity, and finding friendship in that desert of spirituality was quite hard for me at this stage of my life.  I have never felt comfortable around white supremacy and racism, obsessions with guns, misogyny, homophobia, or exchanges of mutual disrespect parading as workplace repartee.

I have even been on jobs where co-workers were threatening to throw “blanket parties” where there is a group beating of a boss, to drive home their twisted point of view.  Some people who I worked  with, and for, actually are now in jail for murder, rape, torture, spousal abuse, and child molestation, so I have much more than an intellectual relationship with Toxic Masculinity, especially in the workplace.  Several jobs that I have been on, men have threatened their wives with harm, or actually have brought harm to them, and I suspect one of them of killing his own ex-wife, who died mysteriously.  Women are referred to as “bitches” or “cunts”, sometimes by leaders on various job sites, and the demeaning attitudes are repulsive and disgusting to me.   One job on the campus of Portland Community College, the General Foreman allowed a gun dealer to actually bring and sell weapons in the job trailer while we were at work, which is just plain stupid, felonious male behavior.  I have had to confront several gun crazy men over my years on the job, and I have taken much heat because of it.  I have also confronted gay bashing men and self-righteous religious fundamentalists, and, at times, I had grown weary of sweeping the mental streets clean of the garbage that they indiscriminately spread around in heaps

I have little patience or tolerance for people who continue to persecute, control, or cajole each other, which certain segments of  our population’s male energy continue to participate in.  All of this points to a possibility that I may have continued undesirable qualities when it comes to male friendship, or there may be an inadequately examined part of myself that prevents the radiation of the energy of attraction for new friendships. I do know that the telephone remains one of the heaviest objects in the known universe for me, my self talk tells me that I have nothing to say, and few people take the time to call and talk with me, either, save one of my last friends remaining,  Jim Hussey.  This may be just characteristic of the age of the people I now tend to or attempt to associate with, too. If a person does not like to discuss spiritual or emotional issues, play golf, hike, like to go out to dinner,  play games, or like to take spontaneous trips, they won’t resonate too well with me. I don’t intend to me a kill joy around drinkers, but if there is drunkenness around me, I stick out like a sore thumb.  It goes without too much further elucidation that males are typically poor social organizers or initiators, and often make themselves dependent on the female partner when in a committed relationship. Often, I depend on Sharon to organize outings with friends.

I would like to share an interesting dream that I had in May, to put a close to this era, ending in December 2016, before I address the most significant year of my life, the year 2017.  Our dear friend June Thomas, who now lives in Tucson, Arizona was visiting her sick brother Dale in Medford, Oregon, for a week in May of 2016.  On a Friday evening in May, I awoke from a strange, disturbing dream.  In the dream, I had fallen in an unfamiliar bathroom, and had become trapped between the toilet and the wall.  When Sharon awoke, I told her about the unusual dream.  It was so real to me that I was a little shaken up.  Later that morning, June called Sharon, as she frequently does in the morning.  June related to Sharon that she was still at Dale’s house, and that his health was not good.  In the middle of the night, Dale had gone to the bathroom, fallen, and became trapped between the toilet and the wall!!!

As I look at my life’s history, I am both confused and amazed by its Mystery

I have always loved June.  I have known June since 1990, when she was married to Victor (Victor died in 1998).  For some reason we had established a mysterious connection that led to this dream.  I have had many such dreams, and they can be very frustrating for me, because they mostly offer information that I cannot constructively use.  Just being a witness is all that life requires of us sometimes, apparently.  I have asked of my “inner dream maker” to offer me opportunities to use this capacity to be more helpful to my fellow man.  Two dreams will be documented in 2017 that might indicate that I am starting to develop that capacity.

Marty and Me

Over the years, I have become deeply disturbed by the developments within our shared world, within my individual consciousness, and the points of connection between self and other, through language, religion, and philosophy, that have created oppression, repression, and personal and social disease.  Starting within myself, I have seen how a lifetime of oppression, and repression, had brought about a series of near fatal illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual.  I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity, lived, moved, and had its being enshrined within my own heart and soul.  I also saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions had failed to honor and provide for my most basic, innermost needs of being valued for my basic essence, and to have my voice listened to often enough by those who have that capacity of the Heart.

Virtually all men have experienced oppression, repression, and personal and social disease at some point in their lives, and we have been both the victims, and the conscious and unconscious perpetrators, of this broken behavior. We have all attempted to manage our symptoms in our own unique, yet all too often broken and dysfunctional ways.  I have wanted to help myself, my father and several of my male friends, to develop greater insight into these issues over the years, but I did not find an interest consistently expressed in exploring these issues with me.  But Marty Crouch did begin to show great interest in my Facebook posts beginning late in 2016, and this opened the door to a different level of sharing between the two of us.  Concurrently, by this point in time, most other men had either ceased responding to my Facebook posts, or had stopped following me or actually unfriended me.

Over the years of the couple’s group, and then the book club that we also shared together, Marty and I were quite friendly with each other, yet rarely spoke at great  length or depth, or showed extraordinary interest in developing a deeper friendship apart from our wives.  I noted how his wife organized and dominated his life over the years that I had known him, and how she would all too often speak for him, or even verbally run over him in group meetings.  It was common knowledge that when his wife was present, Marty would not consistently reveal himself and his own story, and he would instead defer to Eddy through his silence.  My own experience of Eddy was that she was usually quite willing to listen to what I had to say initially, then she would often fill the empty space with herself, rather than wait for me and whatever message I might be trying to deliver, and all further communication would end between us.

AA Step 12:  Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we attempted to carry Its message, and practice Its principles in all of our affairs.

This brings me to January 11th of 2017, when I had my first ‘seizure’.  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.  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.  The next month, I had yet another seizure, this time much milder, and in a public setting, while playing cards at Jim Hussey’s home.

I did not talk about the seizures, or the black mass, initially, because I thought that I might be losing my mind. I later began talking about it with my wife, and some 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, talking with others, nothing seemed to have any impact on the dark mass.  I knew that some sort of spiritual death was coming my way, and I felt little need to discuss it with a doctor, though I did tell my family physician that I feared that my own death might precede my father’s, when I took my ill father to see her about January 4th of 2017..

On March 5, 2017 our friend Marty also suffered a 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, and Sharon and I visited him two days prior to its surgical removal.  Mr. M and I talked about our seizures, and I was struck by the similarity of his seizures with my own.  I told Mr. M 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 hoped that Mr M’s 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, since this was perceived as a spiritual crisis, while she offered her own love and care. She monitored my blood pressure, and when she noted when my breathing became shallow, to offer me a paper bag to breathe into, lest I sink into 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 my trip through the underworld..

The present time, I actually felt like my consciousness was trying to escape, and it took all of my resources just to hold it together.  I characterized this present event to Sharon White as “losing my mind”, while having an almost neurotoxic component to it.  I did not want anything to do with another neurological exam, having been through that horror 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 other.  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. Well, I listened to Jack Boland, a nationally renowned speaker and master of the recovery process.  I owned a tape where he referred to me personally, said he knew me, probably better than I knew myself. He then stated that he wished pain, not peace of mind, to all who had not yet fulfilled their interior spiritual obligation to cleanse their hearts, as this is the great precursor to any lasting spiritual progress . Those who understand this statement UNDERSTAND.  And here I thought that I had already performed that process!  How wrong I was.

After yet another nearly sleepless night, I got up and sat in the family room, and awaited for Sharon to join me .  My life’s message was bubbling up within me, and I felt a compulsion to share it with my world.  Yet I also knew that there were few, if any, people presently in my life who had the time, or even the interest, in listening to what Spirit was trying to “pour through me”.  As I lay out on the couch, feeling my own emotional/spiritual death about to overtake me, I cried out in despair to Sharon, to please share my message, since I didn’t believe that I had the capacity to deliver it in a way that others could hear, 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.  She then stated unequivocally that my message was my own, and must be spoken through me, or not at all.  Even my tears, and begging, would not change her mind.  I was in such pain and agony, that I knew that I could not go on with my life in any kind of healthy way  as it was presently being expressed to the world.

I had the experience of a lifetime of people experiencing me as less of a human being than I am, starting with my own diseased father, followed by a steady progression of angry, sometimes hateful, judgmental male and female power figures (with a few notable exceptions), and I did not know how to act or feel differently.   My voice had been silenced by myself and others, even in many settings where spiritually aware, conscious people gathered to celebrate ‘connection’.

This loving act on her 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 “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, 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 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.  And, the dark mass in my body of energy disappeared, coincidentally at about the same time that Marty’s tumor was 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.  Some nights, I may only sleep 3 or 4 hours, and so I get out of bed to write until Sharon awakes at 5 am.

The Cure — Lovesong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXCKLJGLENs

I continue to feel that A New Story Needs To Be Told by our teachers and leaders.  The fatal flaw with all philosophies touting the coming of a new age of peace and enlightenment is that they fail to embrace a fundamental flaw in human character and reasoning.  And  this  flaw is typically arises in the male dominated mind, with a few exceptions.  Those who continue to promote the “light”, without first addressing the required walk through the personal and collective “darkness”, are offering up shallow containers for those who need to drink deeply from the waters of the Spirit.  We are left thirsty, and confused, as to why we do not reach the “promised land” as offered by others who are supposedly “in the know”.

When Jesus of Nazareth stated that “the poor will always be among us”, he was talking about all of us, and the consciousness that we must carry as human beings.  He knew that we must be conscious of the “poor” within us, and continuously attempt to heal and balance that energy with the divine foundation within us.  He knew that men repressed their feeling nature, dominated the women in their lives, and tried to oppress others who attempted to express their feeling natures, as well.   He was referring to a basic defect in character, or nature, which permeates the intellect of men, and the way men communicate within themselves, and with their external worlds.

Men use their philosophies to justify greed and selfishness, and to give themselves permission not to feel for others less fortunate than themselves.  Male energy, and all patriarchal cultures are out of balance, having repressed so much of our basic, human (feminine) nature that we can no longer access our innermost divine/human nature, where all love and healing bubbles up from.

Built right into the very fabric of life, is death itself.  Our own cells within our bodies are constantly dying off, and being replaced by others so that we can continue to live, and even evolve (or regress as the situation may dictate).  So also should all of our old thoughts die off, to be replaced by newer, more vibrant creations, if we are to continue to live, and grow, and even evolve.  Those who do not do the work to shed the old ways, the old thoughts, the incomplete and inaccurate ways of seeing life, and being in life, will remain the “poor among us”, and more susceptible to the ravages of disease and deterioration of the mind and body.

Women, especially those who have carried the life of “another” in their wombs, know at their deepest level the experience of physical creation, the bringing forth real life into our shared world.  It is not just the fertilization of the egg that brings life, it is also the carrying and internal nurturing of the developing fetus for almost nine months, then delivering the viable, complete life form to the world.  Women know, at the deepest level, that their babies have ultimate value, regardless of what the “egg fertilizer” might say or do to try to imply otherwise.  It is then that the parents begin to practice whatever the socially or culturally acceptable norms for raising the child are, coupled with their own ‘insight’, from the baby’s birth through its young adulthood.

I refuse to raise my “New Born Child” according to the established norms of our diseased times.  I will use all of my human resources to communicate, as best I can, the unfolding new reality bubbling up within my heart and soul.  But, this new reality exists side by side with my typical human response to life, no matter how much I attempt to walk the path of spirituality, healing, and wholeness.  Yes, the statement that the “poor will always be among us” even refers to me.  The personal me, the collective me, and the divine me all walk together as  one being, and now it is my day to day responsibility to stay in balance, and to try to bring myself back into balance whenever I lost its experience.

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” as I defined it earlier following my experience with Gary Johnson of my electrical apprenticeship program.

Somehow, Marty’s structure of consciousness, his ego mind, part of his sense of self had been transmitted to me, and I “felt his presence” within my own sensitive, susceptible consciousness through my love, compassion,  and concern for the man.  This is how I was able to sense the dark, golf ball sized mass in my own brain. It was not my cancer, it was Marty’s.  And I was also finally able to articulate the forces of oppression and repression within both of us for the first time.  I never had the capacity to communicate around the two “black holes” or tricksters, revealed by the teaching from the Master on July 21, 1987, that were embedded within my own field of consciousness before this time.  Somehow, through the mapping of Marty onto my peace of mind, a bridge of words was created to describe the vast matrix whose complete description had eluded me for all of these years.  The light of my own awareness, shown through Marty’s matrix of consciousness, created the shadows, or words, that could represent that which had remained mostly unnamed up to this point in time.

We attended Matthew Fox’s Cosmic Christ Workshop in Tacoma, April 2017.  After Friday evening’s seminar about mysticism with the Master Spiritual Teacher, Matthew Fox, we returned to our hotel room, to rest up for the next morning’s follow-up workshop on the Cosmic Christ. I had quite the deep, peaceful sleep, which lasted six hours for me. Prior to awakening, I had a most interesting, powerful dream. What was/is fascinating about this dream is how absolutely awake I was, while having the dream.

In the dream, I opened a door, and walked into a room that was well lit.  The room seemed neither familiar, or unfamiliar to me.  Inside of the room there was a man standing, who was also neither familiar or unfamiliar to me, as well. He greeted me, holding a cup out to me in his hand. He gently offered it to me, and for a moment I considered what it’s contents might be. I then knew that if I drank from it, I would become “intoxicated”, but of a different nature that was still consistent with the path of “sobriety” I currently walked upon. I then noticed a table, where an opened map laid open upon it. The man walked with me to the table, still holding the cup.

I looked at the map, and it was a topographic style map, similar to what I might use for traveling and/or hiking with. There were two distinct areas to it. The path or road, on the right side of the map, had only one dark, solid line drawn from the bottom to the top of the map. But, the section on the left side of the map had several dotted lines that only remotely “paralleled” the route on the right side of the map. I had no judgement about each of the path styles, yet I remained curious about the several dotted line paths, which intersected each other, while also “snaking” their unique individual routes up the map. I noted also that the “dotted line” paths also did not ever cross the path of the solid, dark line, though all of the paths had no distinct starting, or end point.

At the Cosmic Christ workshop Saturday morning, Matthew asked if anyone had a dream that they wanted to share in the big group. Not being a “realized person”, I felt uncomfortable sharing the dream. But when it came time for a break, I took a book to Matthew for signing, and shared my dream with him. He refused to tell me what it might mean, but he had a smile on his face, and told me to let it tell me it’s meaning.

On our drive home, Sharon White took controls of the car, and I started telling her the dream again. It was then that the horripilations began in earnest, and the full meaning came through me. A complete mystical understanding, and teaching, was built into that dream, and it was then I realized that I had indeed drunk from the cup of the Spirit. Yes, I became quite “intoxicated” with Spirit, and I knew then that we had truly been blessed again by the Master Teacher.

This dream was a complete spiritual teaching, and for that, Great Spirit, I thank you, and my gratitude to you will be expressed through the life that you live through me, for now and all time to come. Yes, mysticism, the heart of all vibrant, evolving religions, also can be a personal reality. It is not, however, for those clinging to structured understandings of life.

We met with Eddy and Marty at Marco’s restaurant one day on the week following the workshop. Marty’s recovery from the surgery to remove the brain cancer was going well.  I continued to carry a sense of the Transcendence, it was as if a higher vibration of being was carrying me, and my powers of insight, awareness, understanding, love, and compassion were at their peak.  At our lunch the group was to discuss options for hiking in the future, among other activities for sharing friendship activity.  Sensing his own death may be close, Marty wanted to engage in activity that he had delayed over the years.  He wanted to  prepare to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, so our discussion revolved around that activity.

Yet, we also came to discuss the Cosmic Christ workshop.  I wanted to speak from the energy that was uplifting me, and the amazing dream that I had, but Eddy made sure to dominate the discussion.  Even when I tried to share some of the teachings, Eddy grabbed her phone, and started Googling information, the very information that was being delivered from me.  It was typical of Eddy, and it was offensive.  I understood at a very deep level what Marty experienced with this woman, and my heart opened at a much deeper level for Marty.

On a late April couple’s group meeting at Marty and Eddy’s home, I was able to talk about my experience of “transcendent energy” for the first time with Marty, with Jim also present for the discussion.  Eddy had disappeared into the back bedroom with Jo for awhile, so we were able to talk at length about a subject that Eddy would have balked at, or run over with her own knowledge or Google obtained information.  Marty was genuinely interested in what I had to say, as well as what I had to say about the potential for spiritual healing.  His own father had a spiritual experience prior to his death, and Marty wanted to have a taste of the divine experience, if possible, in the lead up to his own death.  I promised Marty a copy of a meditation that I had prepared, based on the spiritual experience I had on July 21, 1987.  I text messaged to Marty the following day, after a remarkable dream.

Text message to Marty

I hope that the guided meditation will be of some benefit to you.

Meditation Experiment–As a direct result of the  “transcendent experience” of July 21, 1987, I developed a “thought experiment” for my dying friend, Marty. This is a both a teaching, and an interior journey, and it might be useful for one or two individuals who read this paper in accessing the One Real Teacher, which lies deep within all of us.

This is my own unique verbal bridge, from the deepest part of myself (which is non-verbal in nature) to my conscious mind, and will not work for most others, who must make their own personal ‘direct connection’.

This is only a template, to be filled in by one’s unique journey towards Truth. It only points in a direction, and this ‘meditation’ is definitely not for everybody.

THE MEDITATION

After quieting the body by sitting down comfortably, let us breathe consciously, and deeply, for a few breaths. Usually, the following of our breathing will quiet the mind a bit, which is important if this “experiment” is to bring any results.

Let’s now ask of our self if we are ready to listen for the truth of the moment. Are we willing to travel to a new place in consciousness, and conscious awareness, that perhaps we have never travelled to before?

Ask our self if we can “let go of all thought controls” that keep us in the past, that keep us in judgement of self, or other, that keep us from experiencing a deeper appreciation for what this moment might be able to bring to us?

Now visualize for a moment that we are driving a car, heading to a direction that we feel quite familiar with. Before arriving at the usual destination, ask our self what would happen if we just “LET GO OF THE CONTROLS”, even if it is for just one moment?

Is it possible?

Keep trying, until we can see our self actually letting go of the steering wheel. As we let go of the steering wheel, imagine, now, that the car “disappears” that was around us, and find that we are now being carried into some new, as yet, unexplored realm of experience.

If it is still familiar territory in our interior visual field, we will need to restart the thought experiment, or just give up altogether on this particular thought experiment, and find a different path to the interior dimensions.

If we have “LET GO OF THE CONTROLS”, we are now finding that we are being “guided” by a “teacher” or a “messenger”, who has not revealed who or what it is, what kind of form it might take, or why it might, or might not, exist for us in this new moment.

Yet we know that there is no need for fear, even though we are now being “guided” into a complete mystery, and “unknowable” experience.

There is a sense of exhilaration, because we are no longer secured to our “body of knowledge” anymore, which may also feel like we are having an “out of body” event.

We are free, yet we do not yet know what we are being liberated from. Stay in this “unknowing state”, while still being “guided by our inner teacher”.

We now pass by an amazing, infinite array of interconnected, interlocking “membranes”, which are neither “light” nor “dark”.

We seem to “float through, and then underneath” this web of “who knows what?” – then  we reach a place of absolute still, and calm. {Much more will be revealed later, when we have developed the interior fortitude to face our individual and collective demons}

If we are really “there”, we find a silence, which is so quiet, and peaceful, that it may “startle” us initially, yet we quickly settle into it, and appreciate its essence and nature.

A “voice” may appear within our now quiet minds, and may begin to speak “through us” rather than “to us”. We will become the mouthpiece for a teaching, or a message, that we have never heard before, yet we are willing messengers for this new moment.

We begin to recognize an incredibly happy, joyful, laughing voice, and we know we are right where we are supposed to be, in a state that is so natural, and normal.

We might wonder why it was so “unknown” in our past, but we save all questions for later, so as not to miss the rest of the experience.

“Follow the new paths of consciousness” we hear, and speak within our hearts and minds simultaneously, directly and powerfully to ‘our self’.

“No teacher can give to us our salvation, we must work it out for our self”.

“Think no thoughts, especially time based thoughts (memories) about the “you”, as any “YOU”, cannot ever be real here”.

“To return to the “UNKNOWN”, we must eliminate all time based thoughts about our self, and “THE OTHER”.

We now know that this moment, outside of time, has all of the information that we will ever need, and does not need our input to reveal itself and its real, eternal nature.

As the “teaching” ends, we are shown those forces which have attached themselves to our energy fields, which provide “companionship” yet they provide no lasting spiritual value, and will inhibit our future growth and development.

FURTHER FRUITS FROM THE TREE OF LIFE

Be easy on our self, as it will not be immediately obvious what the nature and purpose of these inner/interpersonal forces are.

They served a purpose, yet they will have to leave. But, first, we have meet them directly, to get to know them better, while further dealing directly with our “conscious” world, and the life we live in it.

Welcome to our Real individual, and collective, self. There is no room here for “you and me”, “us and them”, there is only room for the ONE.

This will trouble us greatly when we return to our ‘normal’ consciousness from this experiment. This is normal, and we will learn from the tension created by this dynamic.

Eventually we learn that we dream through the “collective” mind of mankind, and the “collective” also dreams through us. Yet there is also One Other Option, which has eluded most of Mankind.

As we travel back to this place, over and over, over many years, if necessary, we find what we have always been looking for.

We also find what has been holding back the rest of mankind for all of time. Many of the very structures of thought that have been ‘worshiped’ or unconsciously accepted are seen to be the source of the Shadow within mankind’s heart and soul.

This journey is not for those who want to continue to just worship the past, and all of its dead thoughts, and heroes.

This thought experiment is a technique for shaking the mind free, even if just for a moment, from its lifetimes of its ‘knowns’ or certainties.

Truth does not come into a mind that has already been crystallized into a structure that does not permit curiosity, and insight.

If we are sincerely seeking Truth, prepare for a real shock.  If our minds have not been shocked, we have not yet met our goal.

“YOU WILL FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR”, just don’t give up looking before the Real miracle appears, OK?

Otherwise, we will only find a continuation of our past, as it extends into an all too familiar future.

The gap between self and other is the source for all judgement, hatred, and illusion. That gap is the “YOU”, which is only a mental creation, and “YOU” can never be real, in any absolute sense. As I look out from the place where I stand in life, as far as I will ever see, until eternity, is my self.

How will I see my self today?  “I will find what I am looking for”.

“God” laughs WITH us, when we finally recognize the insanity of our perceptions, and allow love and healing to fill in the space between “YOU” and me.

If we seek truth, beauty, and wonder with all of our heart, we will find what we are looking for.

“The Devil” laughs AT us, when we don’t, and we all suffer accordingly.

A happy, spiritually healthy life involves tuning into what I really want to find, for in the tuning, there is a turning.  Then, all that we will ever see, unto eternity, is our real Self.

As the wise ones advise:  To change my world, I first change myself.

I anticipate that the process will take a bit of time to work so that it is apparent to you.  Daily, or hourly, practice might be appropriate, unless your spirit tells you otherwise.   We are all blessed by our sharing last evening, so thanks to you and Eddy for providing a wonderful setting for all of us.

Now Marty, to bring you up to the present, I awoke this morning at 2:45 am, and I had a profound “sense of the presence”, whatever that means.  I could almost feel all of us gathered together again, and I asked for the “blessing” for all of us.  I have no concrete proof if such an internal process actually reaches anybody outside of my “field”, but I then entered a dream state, and something profound occurred.

I dreamed that we were all together in some sort of  noisy “industrial plant”, and there was an electrical system that needed reconditioning.  As I awoke, I was “told” that your security lock needed to be removed from the “electrical panel” that I was working on  (me, with you and Sharon witnessing).

Symbolically to me, it is obvious what my subconscious was communicating with me.

Letting go of the controls, trusting in “the process” and turning over our “work” to “others”, even if for a moment, is difficult while being overwhelmed with the daily “noise of the mind” and the activities of our lives, and threats to our health and well-being.  But, even if we succeed in “getting the work done”, whatever that means, and how it might express itself, we have to suspend our fear and lack of trust in the process, as we still have to turn over the “operation” to others (trust in a higher power within our isolated self and its limiting ideas, all the while knowing that power resides within our heart and soul).

Marty, you have a resistance to your own healing.  You must remove the self-protective mechanisms and controls that you, and perhaps your wife, have layered over your consciousness for many years, or, perhaps, for your entire life.  These controls lock you out of your own greater good.  The very state of consciousness that made the melanoma possible, and helped support its presence and growth, is still embedded within your mind and heart.  Infusions and medications, though potentially helpful, alone will not get the job done.  If the supporting structure embedded within your ego is not dramatically altered, or transformed, then the conditions for the continuation of the growth and spread of the cancer have not been sufficiently altered either.

My “higher power” has ultimate confidence in you, and sees the absolute present beauty of who you are, how you are “innocent” and  Not Responsible for this melanoma wounding, and it has also seen the wonderful potential for your future life.  Once again, there are no guarantees, but I see this for you.

I plan on living into this dream with you, for a long time to come, Marty.

Thanks again for a wonderful evening,

Blessings to you!

Marty was able to maintain good health for only a few more weeks.  I gave to him a copy of a meditation that I had created, but it had little positive impact for Marty.  My intention was to help him release his understanding of who he was, and for him to have an experience of his divine nature at the deepest, most healing levels.  Marty was a man of highest intellect, character, moral and ethical integrity, yet he had not ever experienced the release of his great creation, his ego, into the great Unknown, though he certainly desired to reach that place in consciousness.

Marty, Sharon, and I went hiking to Dog Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge, on the Washington side, about three weeks later.  Marty had just started on a new targeted drug therapy, with the hopes that the drug would keep the metastatic cancer at bay.  We took our time hiking this great, challenging hike, and Marty persevered, and made it through the hike with great spirits.  He was so encouraged by his performance that it was only natural for all of us to begin the preparation for a great Pacific Crest Trail hike, to fulfill one of Marty’s dreams.

We all succeeded with this hike, as well.  I was the only person to sustain any injuries, which happened to be a blister on a toe.

Two days later, he began losing all use of his left leg and arm, and then became wheelchair bound.  He was experiencing a reaction to the new medication, Keytruda, which caused unexpected inflammation of his brain, and damage to his nervous system. The potential metastases to his brain had already caused concern to Marty and Eddy, with the fear that it would impinge on his sense of self, and on his competent, highly intelligent, insightful, loving mind.  Yet at this stage, Marty remained fully present.

Dying, death, and transformation continued to be a subject of interest to Marty, but now it took on a special urgency.  Because of the complications of the medicine, Marty lost much of his treasured independence.  He lost the desire to scan Facebook for any insight into his friends or the concerns of the day, as all of his energy became devoted to just getting through the day with as much peace of mind, and with as little chaos, as is possible under the absolutely overwhelming conditions of his declining life.  We all gave up on the idea of hiking, lest he somehow regain his physical function again.  He was prescribed anti-inflammatory medicine to help reduce the brain swelling which had caused his disability, and he continued on anti-seizure medicine, just in case.

Marty communicated to me his sense of being inarticulate, in relation to the new experiences of his deteriorating state brought about by metastatic melanoma, and the encroachment upon his critical brain centers which had already begun. A life transitioning from being

highly engaged with the culture and the world, and immensely supportive of his wife while doing so,

physically healthy and active,

spiritually, intellectually and technologically stimulating and expressive,

at times exciting and challenging,

occasionally joyous, and,

regularly immersed in family and social interaction,

to one that is

physically inactive, and almost home bound,

threatened with the loss of intellectual competence,

challenging in anxiety producing ways, and

humiliating, depressing, and emotionally painful, and

without normal joy and hope for the future, and

devoid of physical intimacy with the wife,

immersed in family connections, but now not under the old rules, and

a myriad of other less than happy adjectives,

And, then attempting to describe the changing experience, while still in the middle of it, is a most difficult proposition.”

A story came to my mind after our morning’s meditation, of which I sent to Marty in text message form, and I include parts of it here as a small record of our journey together.

“Marty, all of your descriptors are perfect, and they will change, as you change. While in meditation, the following images came to my mind:

Life can be like a lifelong adventure hike (perhaps the Pacific Crest Trail of everyday life?). On one side of the trail we are witnessing the unbroken beauty of nature and of our own wholeness and connection to it, and the joy of unfettered movement of an innocent mind and healthy body while walking through the magic and mystery of the unknown. Yet, on the other side of the trail, a wicked forest fire has erupted, obscuring our view, threatening our safety and freedom, and taking us out of the beauty and wonder of the new moment. Its flames are now, more than gently, lapping at our back side, burning away at our past, burning away at our clothing, at all of our hidings and holdings, and at all the knowledge and memories that we cling to, and hold so dear.. When you search for names to characterize this process, I understand at the deepest level why it is hard giving it a new name, or calling it “good” or perfect while still being so painfully “burned” by one aspect of it.

Losing independence in life and in decision making is a most difficult proposition.

Losing the ability to get out of bed and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night by oneself can be demoralizing.

Losing the ability to plan for the day to day exigencies of life can make one feel less than empowered.

Losing the sense of intimacy with one’s partner, who is now more or less the primary caregiver, and not the lover, feels a bit like love has abandoned us for now.

Losing strength and mobility, and being dependent on another for all movement around the house, and now, around all of life, feels like life is almost stripping us of our dignity.

Losing control of one’s bladder and bowels, and wearing supplemental underwear, and the insertion of pads onto our beds to trap our incontinence, can feel like adding insult to injury.

Losing the use of the left arm and leg, and then not having others respect one’s sense of loss, feels like the world has become insensitive to all suffering individuals.

Losing the desire to keep living on dying’s terms, while all of the other losses kept accumulating and accelerating, can make the thought and actions related to Death With Dignity an attractive option.

Yet, your journey, with this measure of suffering becoming folded into it, is part of humanity’s unbroken wholeness, of which we all remain a most treasured, though challenged, part of. Can you begin to trust that Love itself is always guiding, and coming out in its many new, challenging forms? Love is soon to become your new and only garment, and any holding back will only increase your pain.

Marty, our hike on the path continues, and the “forest fire” always burns (it burns for all of us). Hope and expectancy tells us to keep walking, because the “view ahead is always changing”. But, what was our past continues to burn away in uncertain and many times anxiety producing ways. Around one of those next bends in the trail, there is only the unknown, bringing whatever is to come. And, also around that same bend, the “fire” will have burned away all that is unlike your true nature, revealing who you were “in the beginning, before the World was”. Giving it a name is the challenge unique to all of us. The articulate ones write great books, and attract lots of attention to their words. You don’t need that.

There are already many fine works available for the curious to read on the subject of death and dying, but your life is now your greatest teacher. Now that we finally have realized that facts and knowledge alone are not enough support to make all of life’s decisions with, we can willingly enter through the doorways to a new spiritual awakening, populated by creativity, intuition, and insight, where transcending many of the troubling aspects of the ego, and finally accepting the inevitable deaths of our bodies, becomes more likely.

Transformation, and death, can be so closely related that many people have profound spiritual experiences on the final stretch of their life’s path. Yes, I had a “death” 31 years ago, and people who knew me before the change, and then afterward (and who were not my direct family members) witnessed them. I was accused of being a “walk-in” by a friend from the 90’s (one of those “new age friends” I met in one of our men’s group from LEC), and I too was at a loss of words to articulately describe the death and dying process that I went through, let alone this subsequent “resurrection” that I am currently living through.

Thank you for reaching out to me in your time of greatest need. I am honored that you regard me as “the best thing you have done recently” when you got me to become involved in the OHSU Men’s Cancer Survivor’s Writing Class with you. To have a published author and Dr. in Philosophy, a highly intelligent and sensitive facilitator and several others over the past few years giving mutually positive, life affirming feedback on all of our creative writings, rather than the mixed bag that many have grown accustomed to receiving in our normal life experiences, is a revelation of sorts. Thank you for honoring and respecting the words that we all write, and the words that we directly speak to each other. Thank you for involving me in a process where I can listen with my heart and mind at the deepest level to those creative urges and surges that we all share in. Thank you for allowing me into a process where I can give you extra love and attention, and draw you away from the trials and tribulation around the home long enough to give you a sense of release, and relief.

You and me, we are both on the same path, though I experience it differently right now than you do. I “die daily to all that was myself”, through a process of personal inventory, mindfulness, and insight, though small parts of the old me pops up and reminds me that I am still human, and part of this glorious mess that we call humanity. Yet, right now, what seems to be different between us is that I have, more or less, a fairly secure sense of continuity between the past and the present, and I still experience the “illusion of control”. Of course, your fine engineering mind rebels at all thought of loss of control, even while personally witnessing the dramatic effects of that powerfully humbling experience.

It is really messed up to finally find ones place in life, one’s most healthy relationships with new and old friends and family, where healing and acceptance FINALLY reside, TO FEEL LIKE WE HAVE FINALLY BEEN INVITED TO LIFE’S PARTY, AND THAT WE TRULY BELONG, and then have a disease process creating conditions that feels like a rug is being yanked out from under us, the very rug that sustains our connections, and our future. It can feel, at times, like life itself is rejecting us, while our body continues the profound ejection process of our life force.

I parked myself on the outside of humanity for much of my early life, because I never saw or felt the welcome mat set out for me, by my early experiences of family, or many of my early relationships. And I was not skilled enough to create a welcome mat for myself among the diverse groups of people that I met through school and work in my “pre-30 year old” life. Most relationships with males were troubled, and too many men seemed to be dominated by the aspect of the Common Knowledge Game that included judging all others unlike ourselves as bad, ignorant, stupid, ugly, and undeserving of further positive regard, unless there was some obvious economic or personal power gain to be made from the relationship. I gravitated towards girls as friends, as a child, and then women as a maturing human, as they did not play the “put down” game so profoundly as my male peers and authority figures did (at least the women I met and befriended did not). I clung like a drowning swimmer to an inner tube to any male friendship where I was accepted, more or less, for who I was, without having to accomplish superhuman feats of accomplishment to just “fit in”.

Toxic Masculinity is the cause of so much suffering in the world, and the cause of some of our own suffering, and, at times, I am still repulsed by the baseness, cruelty, and ignorance of many males. The spawn of Toxic Masculinity is Toxic Religion and Toxic Capitalism, and thus the whole world suffers with us. I will try not to get too political, but the election of the POTU$ was a gut/sucker punch to us. We have been victimized by this type of male energy, as well as most women and children (though many do not understand the “following the herd” and the sexual dynamics behind it), and, when I was younger and more unconscious, I probably victimized others with my “masculinity” as well.

My past unwillingness to talk or write much stems from being shut down for much of my life, by others who did not want to listen, or did not have the time to care, and my unconscious involvement with the Common Knowledge Game, where I let the opinions of others, or my perceptions of the opinions of others (another deadly creative twist of the illusory mind) drive my own unique expression nearly into the grave. Your story of your relationship with your father resonated with parts of my own past, and self-esteem issues certainly arose through our fathers’ own lack of insight, and limited ability to be emotionally present in supportive, meaningful ways.

Thanks you for caring, and for listening with your heart. And know that I give to you all that I am, and all that I have, as well. I hear you, Marty, and I know that there is much challenge ahead for you. Yet, “ahead” will not be done in isolation, or away from your family, and your friends. The miracle for both of us is how our hearts merged at this most troubling of times. This is one of the “great unknowns to be experienced” around each bend of our life’s path. You will experience many more “great unknowns”, as the release process continues.

I will walk with you, in freedom, to whatever extent we can,

I walk with you, in pain, while we must,

I will walk with you into the unknown, where we will eventually recognize nothing but Spirit, as we release ourselves from our bondage to our deteriorating minds and bodies,

I no longer will burden you with thought experiments for personal transcendence.

I will no longer advocate for prayer or meditation for you, nor will I withhold from you any potential benefit derived through my own relationship to those processes,.

I will walk with you into death, each in our own time, and in our own way,

I will integrate part of my individual destiny with your own, and, ultimately, join with Destiny itself.

I am grateful to have you as a friend. I am also grateful to share with you in the good intentions and prayers of our spiritually inclined/religious friends and family.” We all mean well, perhaps with some of us needing more targeted training in supporting you in the way that has the deepest meaning and significance for you.

It is quite appropriate that my wife, Sharon White, chose for her lone published book the title

“Whose Death Is It, Anyway?”

It is all of ours

I began to accompany Marty to his Men’s Cancer Survivor Support Group creative writing group, through OHSU, in late June.  Marty had wanted for me to join it several years earlier, but I never felt that I had anything to write about, and I could not justify going there because of it.  But now that Marty needed friendship and support, I felt honored to join with him, and to share some writing time with him and his writer’s support group.

Marty communicated to me, during our weekly drives to the Men’s Cancer Support Creative Writing Group at Oregon Health Sciences University, that he and Eddy were having insurmountable issues with their relationship.  They no longer were intimate, and had not been for quite some time, and Marty struggled to feel love or affection for his wife anymore.  He wanted a divorce, yet was powerless to do anything about it, since he has been so severely weakened by his malignant melanoma, and its effects on his mind and body.  He believed that Eddy is insane, and I find it hard to disagree with him, based on my own observations.  He and his son and daughter-in-law wanted him to be relocated to a neutral care facility, where he can receive high quality care, and not be exposed to his distressed and neurotic/psychotic wife.  Eddy insisted that if Marty is moved, she will move into wherever he is relocated to, and sleep next to him on the ground, if necessary.  Marty felt trapped, and also felt that the cancer treatment that he was now receiving will have no positive outcomes, so he needed to plan for his own assisted suicide through the Death with Dignity process.

Near the end of August, Marty related to me how it would be better to die quickly, so that more money would be available for Eddy after his death.  I was shocked and surprised by his lack of self-worth, and I called him on that.  I told him that even if he needed to be relocated to a professional care facility, or to a hospice house like the Hopewell House, the money spent would be minimal, compared to the substantial amount that he had accumulated through sales of homes and properties.  HE WAS WORTH EVERY PENNY THAT HE SPENT ON HIMSELF.  Marty just could not accept that.  He had already spent $840 on his end of life drugs, and he felt that the amount spent on the medication would also continue to be a financial burden upon Eddy.  He also stated that to continue to live would be to only add to Eddy’s nightmare of her own distress and insanity.  He stated that he had to die, so that Eddy could live.  Now, I was distressed, and I felt like I was a helpless witness to a self-imposed crucifixion process

Eddy considered herself a minister, and a teacher, and a leader, for those on “the spiritual path”, and had this understanding of herself for close to thirty years. She was quite the planner, and was also studious, and read everything readily available to support her knowledge, or need for knowledge, in areas revolving around her main concerns in life, or in her teaching arenas. She had quite the rigid understanding of the facts, and, in fact, her “facts” became her idols, of which she trusted, at the exclusion of any teaching, or learning, that those around her might try to impart to her, either unintentionally, or through a need to help her to see more clearly. She had little or no sense of humor, and was devoid of all capacity to embrace the “unknown” or the present moment, as it fruitlessly tried to present itself to her every moment of her existence.

She could be a “control freak”, and her quest for knowledge had the unconscious intention to keep her in control, and to establish herself as a teacher, so as to keep her own fears of insufficiency and inadequacy at bay in group settings. Every group discussion had her taking the lead role, where she would endlessly parade herself, and all of her supposed self-knowledge, in front of her adoring masses, or, at least she had hoped that they were adoring. She wanted so much to be like her mentor, Mary Boggs, of LEC, until Mary betrayed her in  the 1990’s.

Her self-righteousness was continuously displayed, as she went from one topic to another, always showing to the world how perfect her relationship was to any issue revolving around medical issues, social responsibility, or ecological awareness. Perfectionism and unintentional self-worship were characteristics that defined her, and were immediately recognizable by me and others, who were not also participating in the parade of self.

She truly was the type of person, had the Christ been before her, and teaching from the Truth, she would have grabbed her phone, and Googled information to prove that her own head knowledge trumped what was being presented in the moment by Truth itself. She had, in a term that I coined just for her, “spiritual dementia”. She thought that every moment needed to be covered by her (mis)understanding of what was really there. Discussions with her were difficult, and she rejected most feedback, and many would defer to her, rather than confronting her about her quirks, and her need to always be right.

I sat through literally, a hundred or more groups with this woman, first when she was a single woman, and then after she married Marty. She would actually attempt to speak for her own husband, even while he was attending the shared group experiences, including our couples’ group meetings. Many nights most of the other members of the group would just sit back, and let her take control of all group communication. I cannot tell you how many times at least two members of this group, including me, would tire, and fall asleep, and end group times early together. Others would sit back, and offer up an occasional barbed remark (typical passive/aggressive communication style for me), without adding much to the flow of the group energy.

I had made a decision to love her long ago, unconditionally and with a “tenderness” of heart and Spirit, which meant sitting on my truth more often than I cared to experience. Yes, she still had the potential of the beauty of the Rose, yet her “thorns” were scratching at her world, and the limited world that she shared with me. It is hard to fully appreciate the others essence while constantly treating oneself from wounds incurred through direct relationship with the others wayward thorns. It is not just my personal view of her that was causing pain to me, it was her inability, or unwillingness, to stop resisting life, and become open to new possibilities for meeting with Life, on terms that were mutually favorable. I did not come into this world to “bow down before her excellence”, though that was the implied need expressed through her outward behavior.

Why did I not ever confront her about her behavior, and share with her my perceptions of her? Why would I withhold myself, and my truth, from a situation that should have demanded my participation in it? Why would I withhold my own assessments of what is real, and true, and right, in the face of this assault upon my own sensibilities? Why would I devalue myself, and my own truth, so much that I would carry the perception that “I have nothing to say”, or that “nobody would ever listen to me because I do not have a college degree, or I am not a therapist or respected spiritual advisor”? Why do I sometimes unconsciously believe that nobody would ever listen to what I have to say, anyway?

When her husband began his dying process, I became actively involved in her life, and their shared life, on a level that I never anticipated I would. A defining story came near the end of her husband’s life, when I was providing care for him up to two times per week. She rattled on endlessly about how to best care for her husband, even though I was already an established help mate, and quite successfully navigating the unknowns, and the difficulties, with his care. Her husband became quite unhappy with her care for him, and he considered her incompetent, and uncaring, and he informed me that he wanted a divorce from her, as she was so “insane”, and there presently was little or no love being shared between them. Yet he was helpless, and powerless to do anything about it, as his fading life force had removed all options for change for him.

Yet, she would not stop her irritating teaching mode of existence, forcing me to finally confront her.

“Eddy, please stop trying to teach me about stuff that I don’t need to know, or don’t want to learn? Can’t you trust that your husband and I are successfully navigating these difficult times together, and that we can manage without your endless control?”

“Oh, Bruce, you are just going to have to treat this like it is an AA meeting. I have to give you this teaching, as I have no choice. Just continue to listen until I am complete, and then take what you like from it, and leave the rest.”

“Actually, I don’t want or need any of your teaching, or your lessons. You teach fear, and distrust of me, as well as the Unknown, and i have grown weary of your intellectually dominating behavior, as has your husband. Please get into your car, and leave for a while, so that we can all breathe a little easier.”

It only took me 23 years to speak my truth to this knowledge dominatrix. My love for her husband, and my attention to his needs and greater good, took precedence over my own feelings of inadequacy in confronting his wife about her alienating, crazy making communication style. Her spiritual dementia needed to be challenged, lest I lapse into deeper degrees of anxiousness, powerlessness, and unreality. Confronting a difficult reality takes more energy than most of us care to bring to the table, yet, not doing so diminishes our own standing in Truth, Life, and Love, and that was my experience up to that point.

What did this emotionally and spiritually disfigured woman represent to me on the inner plane of my consciousness, where the human collective archetypes reside? She was the Dark Queen, and Trickster, and a number of other “lesser gods”. She represented the unyielding rational brain, devoid of Spirit’s soft, embracing touch. She had no room for anything unlike herself in her kingdom, and the stick figures in her dream of world domination could never be filled out with their true essence, because she had no time for that. Her Trickster mind misrepresented trust and openness to the Unknown as something to fear, and cover up its Nakedness with second-hand, worn out rags of other people’s intellects and misunderstandings. She truly was like the King in the parable of the “Emperors’ New Clothes”, parading her misunderstandings of life around for all to see and worship, all the while fearing that an innocent boy would call her out.

In the absolute, All that we ever see, unto eternity, is our own self. As I look upon the world, and all of my relationships with the people, the land, the animals, and inner and outer space, I see an evolving landscape that demands collaboration and involvement by ALL PEOPLES, and representation for those beings who do not have a voice in such matters. This is a landscape that demands that I make my own unique impression upon it. I must first confront the demons within my own mind and heart before I strike out against the “outer world”, lest I project unhealed images and intentions upon the unsuspecting population.

I had very poor training since birth in how to successfully navigate group energy, up to, and including, the whole of society that we all participate in. As a boy, when family discussions turned into arguments, many times I found myself either raising my voice against the angry voice of my father, or retreating into submission and fear at the threat of being attacked for being contrary to the flow. And, I internalized that I was probably wrong anyway, and would be punished if I stepped out and asserted myself too much. I learned that I could undertake less obvious means of rebelling against authority, sometimes through indirect, or obvious, self, or other, destructive behavior.

Passive/aggressive tendencies have haunted me most of my entire life, and becoming “self-aware” has gone a long way to keep me from employing those unskilled coping mechanisms unconsciously, though I am still occasionally haunted by their presence. Having undertaken the inner work of insight, and maintaining mindfulness, and identified those sources of suffering within myself, does not instantaneously remove all of the darkness within. But is also does not remove from me the responsibility to call out those who are the external agents of oppression and repression, no matter how much I might love them or want to protect them, or even to protect myself from the ramifications of asserting what is right, true, or proper in any situation.

So I spoke out, and Eddy actually listened to me for once.  She still felt obligated to give me the latest details on Marty’s care, even though I did not need them.  I continued to help with small tasks around their home, once or twice a week. I continued to attend, and participate with him in, the men’s cancer survivor writing group at OHSU, until two weeks before his assisted suicide.  Of course, my survival from melanoma went much better than his, as mine has not yet metastasized, and hopefully will not in the future.

I came to deeply miss the only man who responded to my philosophically challenging Facebook posts.  My heart aches for the married couple Sharon White and I have shared so many outdoor adventures and community memories with over the last 25 years.  Somehow the disease in Eddy and Marty’s shared life, and individual lives, and our own inability to transcend their emotional and spiritual impacts, led to another form of death, and the end to our friendship.

Love goes before all of us “to make the crooked places straight”, but while chaos’s clouds obscure the view, it is hard to see the path. Being open to each moment as it unfolds in its own unique way, and being present with self through insight clears the fog, and keeps the door open to love’s unfolding mystery.  But, It remains a mystery to me, how to plan for and successfully navigate the rivers of life that carry us into death. Reading more books, and gathering more information, is not going to get the job done for me. I try to remain open to the mystery, though it still troubles my heart. I may never heal of that, but miracles are still possible.

Death really sucks for those with much life left to live, period. I am not fooled by the promises of a “reward in the afterlife” offered by some. That reward is only a painkiller to be ingested by the magical thinkers who struggle mightily with the concept of death itself. The thought of an after-life vacation in “heaven” is more addictive than opiates, and drives national and international irrationality and insanity.  It is our eternal struggle.

“And, in the end, even death shall be conquered”.

I am not “in the end”, obviously. “Fear of death” can be conquered without it being masked by even more illusions of thought. That is the path of today’s spiritual warrior. I guess that I somehow signed up for the course. The only study materials are supplied through a committed involvement with life, on Life’s terms, and not on my ego’s terms.  I am no longer allowed to just audit the course, now that I am in the final stretches of my own life. I just hope that my “final stretch” is an engaged, joy dominated experience. I do have some control over that

Marty chose to exercise his right to the Death With Dignity process on September 10, 2017, without ever informing me of his decision.  The evening previous to that, Sharon White, Anne LaBorde, and myself had been planning to attend the Michael Franti and Spearhead concert, which we had tickets for two months previous to this last minute scheduled event. Sharon and I look forward to Franti’s concerts every year, as he is the musical advocate for all that we embrace with our hearts and soul. Sharing this common theme of celebrating and honoring the dignity of all people, and living and loving life together as one infinite family in God’s Kingdom (No religion necessary, thank you!), is what continues to give me reason to wake up every day.

We were to transition from attending the party that was scheduled to celebrate our friends Marty and Eddy’s marriage and life, to attending the high spiritual/social energy Michael Franti concert at Edgefield Manor.  I was going to present Michael Franti’s hit song “Life Is Better With You” to Marty and Eddy, and to the community of people who were scheduled to attend this celebration.  Upon arrival at their home, Sharon was secretly informed that Marty was using his “death with dignity” option the next day, Sunday. A party celebrating life and their marriage took an unexpected turn for me, and my world started spinning. The song “Life is Better With You”, should have been worded “Life was Better With You”.I felt like a rug was pulled out from under me. I refused to deliver the song, and sat under their dining room table for a while, watching others give their creative gifts to the couple, such as song playing, acting, poetry recitation, etc. The party had become surreal for me, and the whole event felt “out of phase” with reality.

My friend for 20 years, fellow book club member and creative writing partner with the men’s cancer survivors’ writing group, and our hiking partner was to leave our planet somewhere between 6 and 7 Sunday evening. His mission was to enter the Mystery, and the Unknown. Nobody was to know that Marty was dying the next day. We were all supposed to participate in some sort of celebration of their marriage, and their shared life. I was unsure whether to cry, vomit, or run away.   I saw that he had regained full used of his left arm and hand, and I was stunned and surprised and even hurt by his decision to proceed with his Death with Dignity option.  His main fear, however, was that future metastatic lesions in his brain would take away his sense of self, and rob him of control over his future dying process, so it was time to die now, while he still had freedom of choice in such matters.

I first sat next to Marty for a couple of minutes, then I gave him “my message”. He apparently did not know that I knew about his decision to abort his mission today. He was relaxed and quiet, and he listened well to me, and to those who talked with him. I was previously told that I was to be included in his final “death with dignity” process, but due to unknown reasons he shelved my support at the last minute.I still am a bit confused, and my heart is hurting. Crazy making communication around his “assisted suicide” is understandable, but that still does not protect me from its emotional and spiritual fallout. My stomach almost lost its contents, but not my heart.  I just KNEW that he was healing, yet my knowledge had no power or authority to sway Marty’s decision making around his own life and death process.

We attended the Michael Franti concert that evening, after making an early exit from Marty’s “celebration of life”.  I cried almost the whole way through Franti’s song, “Life is Better With You”, when Michael played it that evening.  Life was better with Marty in it, now we all must deal with life without Marty.  How absolutely devastating of an experience it must have been for Eddy, and for his son Chad.

Marty took nearly twenty hours to die, using the medication prescribed to him by his doctor, ultimately dying on September 11, 2017 (yes, 911).  We were not included in any preparation, planning, execution, or support for Marty or for his process of dying.  Sharon, a hospice nurse, and expert on Death and Dying, was almost totally shunned by Eddy during the last three months of Marty’s process, resulting in creating almost insurmountable rifts in the 30 year friendship.  The only reason that I was present was due to a direct request, I mean DEMAND, from Marty to Eddy that she accept me into their household during this most difficult of times.  If it had been up to her, she would have excluded me completely, as well.

So I really was dealing with a lot of difficult issues.  I would not have considered myself to be the most appropriate person to be dealing with what this year was presenting to me, yet I found a way to remain engaged with all of the following situations:

1). the care for, and eventual death of my father, on the day of Marty’s funeral, and the difficulties in the management of his estate,

2). the challenges in supporting the protracted dying process, and the eventual death of my good friend Marty in the week prior to my fathers’ death

3). dealing with the insanity of the wife of my now deceased friend, and her ongoing spiritual dementia,

4). a crippling foot problem characterized by the highest possible pain intensity,

5). cancelling a lifetime “friendship” with a high school best friend on the week after my father’s death, as he had become physically, spiritually, and emotionally unavailable through the past 40 years, and

6) TREASON (Trump Related Extreme Anxiety Striking Our Nation)

7). My geriatric aunt, my dying cousin, and my dysfunctional grandson.

I would first like to discuss number seven above, by just recounting a “day in the life, on August 7, 2017.  I awoke around 4:00 am, a time of day considered “too early to wake up” by most people. After our morning meditation and dialogue, Sharon White and I then drove towards my aunt Susie’s home, around 7:00 am, so that I could walk Sharyn’s companion dog Ruby. Sharyn was aunt Susie primary caregiver, until taken down by disease last week. My Sharon now has to make sure Susie takes her medication, drinks some water (she is chronically dehydrated, as she hates water, or drinking, for her own peculiar reasons). Sharyn was the one daughter that could tolerate my aunt, and she also happened to have taken the role as her caregiver for over one year (this has been a mixed blessing, as she has immense emotional and physical problems, but at least we were relieved of our sometimes daily commitment to her care while also caring for my disabled father).

The rest of aunt Susie’s family have plausible reasons as to why they have no time, or desire, to attend to her needs. Then again, so do we, but someone must step up, and so we do once again. But, Sharyn took ill last week, and has now been hospitalized for 11 days. She is now diagnosed with terminal cancer, which has enveloped her entire midsection, including the pancreas and liver.At the Webster and Jennings Road intersection, on our way to Susie’s, I notice a person in a fetal position lying alongside of Webster. I stop our vehicle, and Sharon gets out and check’s for signs of life. We find that the person is of Native American heritage, and is also quite alive, though recovering from some sort of drug experience (undoubtedly opiate related). A neighbor comes over, photographs the young man, and states that the house he was asleep in front of is a drug house (big surprise?). Sharon talks with him, and sees that he is OK. We take our leave, and head to Susie’s.I walk Ruby at 7:30, as I have for the past 10 days (sometimes coming back two or more times a day). Ruby is a beautiful 13 year old canine companion to the now dying Sharyn.

Sharon finds that she is now Susie’s primary caregiver once again until OPI (Oregon Project Independence) gets another available caregiver on site. Sharon also has become an integral part of the communication network incorporating Sharyn’s brother and her sons and rest of the family, at least those few left with any care and interest in this collapsing household.There is time to go work out at our athletic club, then we visit Sharyn in the hospital. We spend close to two hours discussing her gut wrenching and heart breaking diagnosis and prognosis. There are tears and anguish expressed, and somehow I remain engaged and attentive to all that is unfolding before me, no matter how distressing the energy becomes.

I receive a phone call from Mr. and Mrs. Crouch, and we attempt to troubleshoot a computer issue. I was to install a new thermostat for their home today, but they cancelled because of his family coming in from Texas. I will still be with Marty most of Friday, as per usual lately, to be present in friendship and love while he fights terminal metastatic melanoma. The cancer dominates him, impacting him, and his wife, on all levels.We leave from the hospital, and head over to my father’s home, to confirm his care and condition. He is another poor water drinker, though he responds well to encouragement, at least in that moment. Hot days lay him low, and even with air conditioning, he has lower energy than normal. Madison, now his primary caregiver when Pam and I are not scheduled, will see to his evening’s needs.

We prepare for a dinner with our number one grandson, Jasper. He is not on a winning streak, and at 20 years of age, he has a poor relationship with telling the truth, and taking personal responsibility. His deception just paid him some dark dividends, when his other grandfather opens up his grandson’s letter from California, (where grandson had lived the last eight years, prior to coming up to Portland in February, after some “unknown issue”), and finds that he was prosecuted for shoplifting and carrying a concealed weapon the past year. The mother intentionally withheld that information, because her MS is getting worse, and she needs for him to stay local to provide future care/assistance to his mother. She feared telling the truth would have both sets of grandparents turn on her son, and not trust him (huh? She thinks the way to gain trust is by withholding information, which explains well why our grandson is such a polished liar and manipulator, he learned quite well the tools of the dark trade while living with his mom).

We have dinner, and discuss integrity, honesty, character, and telling one’s truth. I see that this young man, who has just been kicked out of his other grandpa’s house due to dishonesty and lack of success in finding full time work, is about to embark on a life’s journey with a most difficult search for truth. He may not make it. I drive him to the train station this afternoon, where he is heading back to California, to take up with the same friends that he got into trouble with in the first place.  He remains uncomfortable with his “white” family, and believes that the “brown crowd” is where he now needs to be hanging out.

There will be another hospital visit today, and the shocked family will be there.I never anticipated retirement life would be quite like this. Whatever happened to more than one vacation a year? We had more vacations when we both worked full time!Sharon and I are truly on a journey into the unknown.I hope and pray that our grandson will not be seen in a fetal position sleeping along some California by- way. His “truth” will guide him into great, pain wracked lessons, if the past is any indicator of the future.

Now, for challenges one through six.  Facing a two-fold challenge, with one coming from being fully present for a married couple we have known and loved for a generation and the other for the continued care of my disabled father. A terminal diagnosis for the husband, coupled with the wife’s obsessive compulsive nature to prove her own worth, and to also protect and honor her partner, in the face of their collapsing lives, kept me “engaged with the unknown”, as my good friend lost parts of his wonderful life, and mind, on the way to a Death with Dignity.  Being “fully present” as a life witness, while being a loving friend, in the face of his deterioration and potential death, and with his partner’s fear, anxiety, neurosis, and potentially, own emotionally self-destructive attitudes and behaviors, placed me in a position for “accelerated understanding and spiritual growth”, and generated unexpected anxiety for myself..

I used to say “growth is highly overrated” in a humorous manner when I feigned aversion to situations known to create opportunities for personal evolution. I looked for real humor in the face of the adversity, and I kept coming up short. I missed the healthy version of my friend, while I learned to embrace the deteriorating version. I  experienced some shock in the face of his accelerated change and his wife’s emotional collapse.   It is said that “when the student is ready, the teacher appears”.  Apparently, the teacher was Death Itself, appearing as Marty, and as my friendship with him and his wife.

Eulogy for my friend, Marty (Eddy did not even want my eulogy).

I never knew what I was getting involved with when I offered to you all of my heart in friendship this year, having withheld so much of myself over the years. 2017 was the year when I finally learned how closely two male human beings could connect, and ultimately become “one” on a journey of exploration and discovery on the way to your own death this past Monday, at 1:24PM.

You are/were an important missing piece in my own journey of self discovery. I tried to bring you along on the journey into the Unknown, deep into the Mystery of Life. You introduced me to Death in a way that has changed me forever. We walked together while we still could, while you still had hope for your Miracle. Another definition for Miracle now lives in my heart, and Soul. When our human knowledge parading as Truth is unveiled for the lie that it really is, insight, intuition, and Love are finally enshrined in our Heart.

Through your death, I have been Destroyed, and I am now Renewed.

Rest in Peace, Marty.

I have included, below, one of Marty’s Last Creative Writing Stories below, from the OHSU Men’s Cancer Survivor’s Writing Group, August 25, 2017. I finally joined him in this group in July, after avoiding the commitment with him for 3 years. He called my acceptance of joining the group one of the best things that he did for the two of us.

He apparently died to me after the September 1st Writing Group meeting, obsessing with preparing his car’s GPS and OnStar system for his wife Eddy the whole drive home after the writing group. He was, basically, unresponsive to me on the day before his death.

Here is Marty’s final creative effort, a story of release from societal expectations, rigid attitudes,  structure, repression, and the lifelong oppression of the human spirit into the infinite freedom of Spirit:

We visited the Riverview Cemetery last week, Doyle and I. Truth be told, I dragged Doyle there with me. I’m a green burial plot owner, and I wanted to see my plot and its surroundings in the morning sun from the East.

Although the hour was early, a couple of parties were already at the site, evidently an early graveside service and a couple visiting a recently- interred loved one with their dog. I was also looking for a sign of completion – a sign that Eddy and I had completed the arrangements for a “final rest” in a good way.

I looked up the hillside and remarked to Doyle, “Look, a coyote loping through the midst of the people and their pets with such obvious self-confidence. You can always recognize a coyote – even if you don’t think you have ever seen one before. They are never frightened – just there, immune to danger and above the fray.”

Yes, I recognized my sign, the age-old sign of the trickster, the shape-shifting presence of the coyote. May he safely inhabit this place forever. (end of story)

Marty, you are now safe.

About ten days later, we were to meet our Arizona friends, June Thomas, and MIchael Barron, at Cannon Beach.  We arrived at the coast on a partly sunny Monday afternoon. We were quickly greeted by June and her ten year love interest, Michael (are you two ever getting married?). After checking into our hotel rooms, and getting geared up for a walk, we headed out to the beach, to walk northward up the coast, past Haystack Rock. We engaged in our normal conversations, catching up on June and Michael’s activities, as well as giving them a brief download on what has been happening in our own lives.

As the walk progressed, we separated a bit into two groups, the guys and the girls, though we did not create a huge distance between the two groups in our walk. We continued to enjoy the scenery, the clearing blue skies above us, the seagulls swooping and gliding, the watching of and engaging with the other tourists and their dogs, while being continuously soothed by the constant breaking of the waves upon the sandy shore. Small talk continued between both groups, until I had to remove my shoes, due to extreme pain in my right foot.

The pain in my foot was accompanied by another unidentified discomfort, deep within my heart, which continued to trouble me. I looked at Michael, and I began to relate the experience of my friend’s very recent death, and how the notice of my own father’s death coincidentally occurred at the moment that I was helping to place my friend’s body into the hearse. I wanted to talk about the disturbing appearance of insanity in the marriage of my deceased friend, and it’s impact on my friend’s final days, and its impact upon my own being.

Michael looked up at the nearby mountains, and tried to ignore what I had to say, while attempting to redirect my attention away from myself, and the view away from the ocean. Suddenly, a strangely uncomfortable, unidentified feeling came over me, and I also felt like my heart was starting to beat harder. The skin on my face, and on the front of my body started to tingle, and I felt light headed. I attempted to breath deeper and slower, thinking that I had somehow lost my breathing cycle rhythm, yet a deepening, sickening feeling continued to creep through my mind, and through my body.

I sped up my pace, so that I could join up with my wife, who was ahead of us with June. I started to shudder a bit, and shake as if I was cold (there was a breeze, though it was sixty five degrees, and not extraordinarily chilly). My condition continued to deteriorate, yet all that I felt comfortable with sharing with the group was about my sore foot, which was aching horribly. This foot would eventually need surgery, and I had delayed such surgery for quite a while, but it was not the only source for the pain that I was presently experiencing. Yet, in this group, it was the only pain that I could safely talk about.

We neared our hotel room, and the anxiety reaction that I was experiencing (yes, I finally named it ANXIETY) was threatening to overwhelm me. It was dinner time, so we walked over to the Mo’s restaurant that was connected to our hotel, and ordered dinner. Sharon was very light, and happy, and introduced a “spinner” to the dinner table, to try to keep lightness going, and bring humor and delight to our group. Yet I had lost my sense of delight, and humor, and my appetite, and I knew that I could not even eat dinner, even though I had already ordered a meal with the rest of the group. June commented that I looked like I had turned a gray color, and that I looked ill, and ill I was. I had to leave the table immediately.

I went back to our hotel room, took off my clothes, and lay down in our bed. The world felt like it was spinning around me, and my heart beat so loudly that it sounded like a drum was being bashed in my ears. I continued to try controlled breathing patterns, thinking that this was an anxiety reaction, but I really felt extremely ill, and I felt like a visit to the hospital may be in order. I became so concerned that I got my tablet and went to a medical portal to ask a doctor some questions about what was happening, and ask if I should be hospitalized. I was not sure if I was having an adverse neurological response to something toxic, preparing for a stroke or seizure, having the beginning of a migraine headache, or if I was losing my mind.

The response from the doctor brought some temporary relief to me, when he stated that I was having a stress induced anxiety reaction. OK, that sounded like something I might be able to manage, so I prepared myself to go back to dinner, and finish the evening with our friends. I felt much better, and looked forward to eating, as my appetite had returned from the dead, as well.

Everyone had already finished their meal, so I shared dessert with everybody. I felt good for awhile, as we finished our evening together, and headed back to our individual units. But something was still active in my mind, and I began to again feel nauseous, with my heart beating wildly again, and, now, my body started shuddering like I was frozen. Sharon crawled into bed and held me close, I was shaking so violently, and her warmth, and presence, brought some comfort to me. Yet my foot ached like I had never experienced pain before, and I was definitely anxious about that pain, as well as something a bit more undefined, up to that point.

After two hours of holding me, Sharon had fallen asleep, yet I was so wired by my anxiety that I could not sleep, so I left the bed to lay on the couch, and listen to some meditation music. I felt like I might still be “losing my mind”, whatever that meant, or that I was having some sort of nervous breakdown. While meditating on what was happening to me, I came to realize that I really needed to communicate around the absolute insanity of the family activity revolving around the life and death of my dear friend, and, to a lesser extent, that of my father, as well. Michael had shut me down at the moment that I needed to talk most, thinking that by redirecting me away from talking about death, he was doing me a favor. Instead, by not communicating with him and the group what was troubling me, the anxiety reaction launched me off of the pad into outer space, and brought upon me a sickness, and a pain, that I had never experienced before in my life. Oh, that blessed pain and suffering, for it would lead me further down the path to my own ‘liberation’.

Eddy Crouch wanted to have a meeting with me, so on October 12th one week later, and three days after my foot surgery.  She drove to our home, and Eddy, Sharon and I were present for a meeting in our garage.  For one and one half straight hours, she talked at us, never once looking at Sharon.  I was only able to interject for about three minutes when I interrupted her near the end of her excruciating monologue.  My heart goes out to the grieving woman, yet, at the end, I feel like I was not heard, yet again.  My need was to process my experience of Marty, and the anger and confusion that was generated around his disease the last several weeks of his life.  Marty had wanted a divorce, and he also wanted a release from his death terrors.  And he really wanted a release from his malignant melanoma, and all of the distress it was causing him and his family.  He sought spiritual liberation, and felt trapped by Eddy’s incessant presence, and he felt oppressed by both Eddy and his disease. He loved her once, but right now he had no love for her.  And he wondered if he could get an erection and make love to Eddy, if that could bring back some physical intimacy, which was totally lost between them.   But Eddy would not let me talk through these issues with her.  Instead, Eddy chose her normal path of running over other people and their feelings and needs, just as Marty had communicated to me was her norm.  Then she left, because, as usual, she had other important meetings scheduled that she needed to attend, meetings that were more important than my need to be heard. She also totally ignored Sharon, in the most offensive display of indifference that I have witnessed in many, many years.

I was left with the feeling that I never wanted to talk with her again, at least until she had many,  many months, or years, of recovery from her grief.  Marty had left me with his distress over his wife’s insanity, and I could see that I now shared his perception.  Eddy just cannot be reached by me, and I understood that at the deepest level of my heart.  I rebuffed all future attempts by her to bring a therapist into the couple’s group, or to attend a New Years retreat at the Oregon Coast with her.  She tried to schedule a conference call between her therapist, Sharon,, and herself, but it never came to pass, when Sharon questioned Eddy about what she meant by creating a “respectful atmosphere” for the therapy session.  It all seemed bizarre, and controlling, on Eddy’s part, and this woman’s safety needs remain extreme beyond most people’s comprehension.

When I hit October 30th of the year, the following refrain became a mantra for me:

May all sentient beings remain free from suffering.

This is not an automatic proposition, however, no matter how my strong my intentions may be. The sense of loss at temporarily losing my ability to walk, to run, to bike, to participate in group activities, to get up off of the couch without worrying about permanently damaging what little healing that I have accrued since my surgery last week, has created a new sense of identity, which is, at times when I lapse into unconsciousness, uncomfortable to me right now. After a good lecture from my surgeon yesterday, I realize that I need to take physical healing much more seriously.

Humility has been my companion as of late, and I have been dying to my 25 year accumulated pride in aerobic fitness. I once was a champion in road races ranging from 3.1 miles all the way up to 31 miles (5K to 50K), having run nearly 100 races over the course of my running career, with many top finishes in my age group, as well as all age groups. Also, Sharon and I raced in many Hood to Coast relay races, and I also participated in the 2002 H2C on a Masters’ team, the Time Bandits (this was an over 40 years of age team, and I was 46 years old at the time) that finished 10th out of 1080 teams. Those days are over, and I have “died” to the thought of ever racing again.

As an added memory bonus to all of those running days in the sun, plus several serious sun burns as a kid, are bouts of recurring skin cancer, of both malignant melanoma, and basil cell carcinoma, varieties. So far, I have only lost parts of my upper arm, and (next month) a small part of my left nostril to skin cancer. I certainly would like to “die” to further cancer outbreaks, without losing my body in the process.

Watching the parade of death, through the witnessing of the deaths of lifelong friends, either through the deaths of their bodies, or through mutual neglect and uncaring behavior, watching my father die, even before his body died, watching my friend Marty die, spiritually as well as physically, while witnessing his acceptance of the end through the Death with Dignity process, with heartbreak and gut-wrench watching our two dogs die in our home, one week apart, and now also watching my own body age, while my mind remains young and still adaptive to change, while engaging with the inevitability of death, in all of its sometimes most traumatic of forms, is a humbling, sobering proposition.

I will walk again, without pain. I will hike again in Nature with Sharon, with no pain. I will run again, with no pain. I will bike again, with no pain. I am in pain right now, but it is temporary.  But, I am living, and I am loving life, though life is redefining my relationship to it right now. My mind remains young, but the body tempts me to think “older” thoughts, thoughts of resignation and defeat, which I have never considered to such degree since the earlier, immature days of alcoholism, drug dependence, and the suicidal thoughts of the 1970’s and 1980’s.

I am my body, yet consciousness itself tells me that I am more than my body. I am dependent upon my body to live, move, and have my being in this world. I love my body, I love this world, I love my life in this world, I love my wife Sharon White, I love what is left of my family, and the few friends that I have left, in this world. Yet, the world, at times, now appears to be pulling away from me. I cling to it at times, yet I also let it go, as well, for conscious, and sometimes unconscious, reasons.

I love life in my body. I also know that there still is life without this body. What I don’t know is if I, or anyone else for that matter, will recognize my life, without my body still being present. The life that I have created, and that life has created for me, leaves me meditating upon what I need to do to keep engaged with this world, while my “vehicle for consciousness” changes, deteriorates, and finally dies.

I am not seeking any answers for the questions of “eternity”. I am living into those answers. I am also living into the answers to the questions about what to do with the my experiences around short term and medium term “death” that living a life on life’s terms means. Aging, with its potential for disease, sickness, and deterioration are not for the weak at heart. But, they are part of the process for spiritual growth, and enlightenment. Death is an integral part of those processes.

Today I choose the death that continues me on the process of spiritual growth and enlightenment. Today I am dead to the idea that I can take a walk without crutches, and without fear of causing more damage to my body. Today I am dead to the idea that my pain and suffering has significance and meaning to others, especially those who have no interest in my process. Today I am dead to the idea that I know what tomorrow may bring to my body, or to my life. Today I am dead to the idea that I can even make plans for tomorrow, make plans for vacations, make plans to help around the house, and around our yard.

Today I am dead to the idea that I need to know in advance what tomorrow may bring back to me.

Today I remain engaged with the present moment, where the past, and the future, are dead. Today I remain engaged with the part of death that keeps me alive, growing spiritually, and staying open to the mystery of the eternal unfolding of a human life experience.

Today, I am still recovering from surgery, and I am physically disabled, though still spiritually whole. Tomorrow is only a theory, best left for those who choose to die to this moment.

I choose not to die to this eternal moment. I also have to return back to this moment, each time I frequently forget my choice to remain free and happy.

Truckin’, by the Grateful Dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pafY6sZt0FE

Before I close out this most eventful year in my life, I would like to talk about a Christmas dinner gathering that we had, on December 23 of 2017.  We went out to dinner with Hayley, Christopher (Hayley’s love), Aunt Susie, Sharon and myself.  We returned home, to watch the movie “The Haunting”, a movie from 1963, which my sister Pam had recently reminded me that I had watched with Gary and Cindy and herself as a seven year old boy.  The strange part of all of this is when I mentioned to the group that I had watched this movie with Gary and Cindy Mill just as I was starting the move to watch with the group, I received a call EXACTLY at that moment from Gary.  I had not talked with Gary since Dad’s funeral, on September 27th, and Gary and I have not been in connection for many, many years until dad’s death.

Here is our text message exchange from that experience:

Bruce:  I received a call from you (well, from your phone) the moment I spoke of watching movies with Pam, Cindy and you at your parent’s home in north Portland.  The movie that we just started watching was The Haunting, a movie from 1963 that we watched with you.  Pretty strange, huh?

Gary:  Happy Holidays to you.  Everything fine here.  Sorry about the call…when I was talking to a friend, I somehow accidentally dialed you and hung up.  It must have been the universe!  Have a safe trip (we were leaving for Arizona the following day to stay with June for 13 days).

As I search through my history, I always see evidence of the Mystery!

2018

I  have intimate knowledge of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and I now consider myself a personal expert in these matters, albeit a reluctant one. It is inappropriate to keep these issues “secret”, as I tend to be as sick as the secrets that I attempt to keep. Remaining unconscious and victimized by these conditions is not a helpful option for me now, or anytime.

The following have been found to be helpful for me:

1). Seeking “professional help” from therapists or physicians/surgeons as required,

2). exercise (such as yoga, Pilates, and cardio work, with emphasis on proper breathing techniques),

3). immersion in Nature (walks through forests, deserts, or local parks),

4). meditation (listening to relaxing music is useful, if the mind is overly restless),

5). getting plenty of rest/sleep (not automatic or easy when in anxious states. Use of melatonin and non-caffeinated relaxation tea prior to bed is helpful),

6). honest and open communication with friends and family (hanging around people with positive, loving attitudes and behaviors is important),

7). insight (and taking my inventory, to use the parlance of 12 step groups) and prayer (focused intention/thought energy for personal and collective change, for those so inclined),

8). service to others who are less fortunate, and

9). medication (if necessary) can be helpful.

10). avoiding obvious anxiety producing behaviors, like excess coffee consumption, eating sugar or processed foods, or overbooking my day to day life,

11). continue to allow feelings to naturally arise, with no judgement.

12). continue without shame and guilt any unfinished emotional business, such as grieving for the loss of loved ones.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a name given to one powerful variation of related symptoms, and therapy and techniques developed for its healing may be appropriate, as well (a form of acupressure called the “tapping” technique is quite helpful).

Writing into a personal journal or blog can be helpful. Posting to Facebook, with the hope or expectation that somebody who cares might read a posting and give meaningful feedback, is unrealistic, and can potentially be dangerous, depending on the state of mind of the writer at the time of posting. It is best to have friends and connections who respond directly, preferably in person, where our humanity shines the brightest and has the most healing potential. Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, or whatever other media vehicle that one may employ for communication in isolation just cannot get the job done, PERIOD. Just passing time without helping myself would never have allowed for sufficient healing either.

As I move toward healing, compassion towards myself and others is one of the intended outcomes. The absence of this only perpetuates the anxiety cycle.

And, to those whose hearts are hurt by the Trump phenomenon, crucifixion feels almost real, even today. Toxic Masculinity, Religion, and Capitalism, as epitomized by Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, white supremacy and the evil attached to it, and now its linkage back to American Christianity through its illusory link with Trump, has sown the seeds of its own destruction. But, it may take a generation or more for that to happen I am afraid. With Bannon professing apocalyptic visions of our future, I hope that we collectively refute this evil notion, and all of the ignorant, dangerous people who support it, before Trump and Bannon lead us into their preconceived Armageddon..

This truly has been a most fundamental dialogue, discussion, argument, investigation into the very nature of consciousness, and how we name objects and subjects, and understand reality itself. Those whose backgrounds are quite superstitious and irrational are now trying to dominate the collective understanding of reality, by destroying it and offering alternative illusory postures that have great hypnotic appeal, with ALMOST NO RELATIONSHIP TO GOD, TRUTH, OR LOVE, WHATSOEVER.

Writing is an interesting proposition. I usually feel like a lone voice in the wilderness calling out to inattentive people, and then I get some amazing responses, occasionally, that let me know that people still love me (though not my words sometimes). The point is to keep speaking out against the oppressive forces of the day. The chances of changing anybody’s mind on the Trump’s American Alternative Christianity team is almost zero, so it is about reigning them in, publicly repudiating them, and making sure that the rest of humanity understands the dark, evil intentions of this mindset, and administration.

In the words of the Course In Miracles, my writing, or all of our writing for that matter, may be just another “call for Love”. Only insane people seek love where it cannot be found, so I may be fine tuning my sanity search by writing, and reaffirming in my own  needs for more satisfactory relationships. I am far more likely to find my dirty laundry hanging here, than to find a community who wants to read or understand my personal truth, however.  Writing is a perfect mirror for me to see myself, and, in the seeing, I am changed.  We have only words and thoughts to share here, I can’t give you a wink, smile or a hug through this medium.. You will never feel the warmth of my heart, or the peace of my soul, by reading my words.  But, that won’t stop me from trying!

Real live people experienced directly with all of my senses, and my open heart and balanced mind, are the only requirements for more successful human connections, NOT TECHNOLOGY. Five years of care-giving and support for my handicapped father has contributed to my sense of isolation, and now I am moving away from that posture, now that more support has been coming available to help. I have begun to be reintroduced to the real world, of which i have missed greatly (my time-based mind tells me that I was not missed, but I am going to ignore those “dead” aspects of myself, and reinterpret myself in terms of the present moment of experience, where all real value is created and apperceived)..

I do visit Robert Beatty’s Buddhist meditation center, and The Center For Spiritual Living in Lake Oswego, from time to time, but I have not made a commitment to either community at this point. I have found that my continuing involvement with a book club has kept my spirits up, though.  I remain open to new possibilities for engagement with my world, either through service work or social engagement, or through involvement with spiritual healing communities.  I may even pursue new knowledge and a way to express it through shamanism and energy work, specifically through Dr. Alberto Villoldo’s approach, but we shall see what the future brings.

I do feel the inner nudges from my Spirit, and, from time to time, I get to re-experience the “presence of the Transcendence”.  These times are much fewer and farther between in recent years, though I am hopeful that I will once again experience a greater measure of Spirit, and it’s almost intoxicating influence, once again, as I tune up my “vehicle of consciousness” or body for its final drive down the roadway of life for the inevitable end to this oft-times, miraculous “road trip”.  I do find that times spent hiking in the wilderness, with Mother Nature and Her Creations, and listening to live music with communities of like-minded people, still tend to really bring out my Spirit.  My group meditations can still be quite powerful, yet private, individual meditations do not carry the same connective power now as they did 20-30 years ago, and this continues to remain an area of focus for improvement.  Perhaps I will find the way back to six hours of prayer and meditation a day, but I do not know which direction my Spirit will redirect me at this point of my life.

I now work on the recovery from sugar addiction, and a lifetime of questionable dietary choices.  I understand that the fundamental addiction that I have carried for most of my life may be to sugar itself, and the damage that it is reported to cause over the years may have finally caught up with me.  I recently attended a workshop with Dr. Alberto Villoldo over the April 4th weekend of 2018.  He is the famous cultural anthropologist, author, and, now, shaman, where he redirected my spiritual intentions towards cleansing my body, including my liver and brain, of all toxins.  He helped bring to my attention that poor dietary choices predispose me to making poor choices in other aspects of my life, and can negate the greatest of desires for continued spiritual growth and prosperity.

As of April 1 of this year, I have followed Dr. Villoldo’s dietary regimen to the tee, and I note the change in my energy, and I am beginning to really have hope that I will again freely access the inner well of infinite meaning, love, healing, and prosperity that came so easily and naturally to me in the past.  It probably does not hurt my cause that I have also lost ten pounds in the five weeks that I have been involved with these dietary lifestyle changes.

I characterize the present phase of my life, the life that I am now leading as a retired person and no longer care-giving to dying friends and family members, as the “purification before ordination” stage of life.  That terminology I am borrowing from Joel Goldsmith, and his Infinite Way teachings.  The new self that I developed over the years from 1987-2017 will also have to die, of course, to make way for the final upgrade to Bruce 3.0.  The “fires of the Spirit” as yet have not burned all that is unlike Spirit away from my field of consciousness, so until that happens, the purification process that is dependent on the letting go of my “ego” and its dependence on suffering and attachment to illusions will continue in earnest.  I will be heading into the phase of my life called “spiritual manhood in Christ Consciousness”, or in secular terms, self-actualization,  should I live long enough, and remain dedicated to the cause of bringing forth the best of myself that my Spirit can support.

I can think of no greater intention to have for my life, for the time that I have left to spend here on planet Earth’s plane of existence.  Everybody, if you have not already, please find your wings soon, for I am not flying Home alone on this one!  I do understand that Enlightenment, as it is now understood within my own being, requires full integration into the field of human energy and its infinite possibilities.  Nobody who wants to remain spiritually healthy stays isolated in a monastery, practices a form of religious fundamentalism, or remains secluded from the rest of humanity, for the entirety of their lives.  It is healthy to admit, and acknowledge, that there is no walk into the “promised land” without companionship with ALL of life, and not just a few select special relationships.  My life has become a dance of sorts between two internal poles, the one representing isolation and solitude, and the other being full immersion into and unification with the All of life, including our sacred Mother nature.

My aunt Susie, Sharon and I visited Mom and Dad’s grave site April 21, 2018 for the first time since dad’s death. (His last two dogs, Rocky and Peaches are buried with them, too). One of Dad’s favorite expressions about people who get ignored, rejected or neglected was that “he got the bum’s rush”. His dementia in the last years of his life made him feel, most times, like he was getting the short end of life’s stick, either through his own deteriorating mental and social capacities, through family and friends forgetting about him or ‘running short of time’ to visit with him, or their preceding him in death. Sharon, Pam, and I (and Aunt Susie, and Uncle Ed prior to his own death 4 years ago) tried to bring love and connection to his grieving spirit for the last eight years of his life, after Mother’s death in 2009.

With the recent deaths of her first daughter Sharyn, who she had adopted out at birth as well as older brothers, John Edward(2012), and Beryl(2017),  Sharon (primarily) and I are now doing what we can to keep Aunt Susie from feeling neglected..  Her daughter Cindy has ignored her mother for over ten years, leaving her care to Sharon, and, to a much lesser degree, myself.  Our cousins through Uncle Ed have little or no inclination to be of service, either, instead holding on to judgements against their aunt, even though their own father John Edward loved her and looked out for her much of his adult life.  It is so much easier to sit in judgement of another, rather than engage in the struggle to maintain spiritual integrity in all of one’s relationships. My family is no different from any other family in their choices for engagement, or for rejection of the most challenging of members.

It is heart breaking to see how cruel the ramifications of family brokenness are to the most vulnerable among us. And, my aunt Susie is a broken human being, with a rousing welcome back to the human race for all of us who just realized that fact for ourselves. It was through my own brokenness, and my desire to heal myself of it, that I found another way of seeing life, to bring healing to myself and my relationship to my father, so that he could have my unconditional love and compassionate care prior to his own death. The sacrifices that I had to make in my personal life seem trivial now, compared to the knowledge that I was able to be present in the spirit of love and healing to a man who truly needed it, and benefited greatly from it. I know that I was the greatest beneficiary from my healing with my father, though.

Healing and forgiveness is not for everybody, apparently. It sure works miracles for those who employ love’s techniques with earnest, however. A hug has great power, yet so does a rejection.  If we hear “Love’s call”, we must answer it. To not do so, is to deny ourselves, and we all suffer accordingly.  Sharon and I choose not to suffer today.  May all sentient beings be freed from their suffering.

U2–There Is A Light

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG88leSvR4A

CONCLUSION

All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter

by J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king

Even if you are now lost and wandering upon the surface of your own “Dark Side Of The Moon”, there still is hope. To be insane in an insane world, to be a stranger in a strange land, is the true new normal for many people presently wandering upon the face of this chaotic planet. How we deal with the insanity determines whether we remain imprisoned, or find our freedom. Blaming others for ones’ present station in life is self-defeating. Yet, that is the first response of an immature mind, a mind not ready and willing to make the necessary adjustments in course to create a new life experience.

Mental illness, drug addiction and alcoholism, and their most oppressive spawn, suicide, have been scourges upon the fabric of human consciousness for time immemorial. Suicidal ideation begins with the loss of personal meaning and choices for life, with their companions of depression, alienation, isolation and loneliness. Suicide is the ultimate act of oppression against self, which has already been oppressed and repressed since birth. Suicide is a cruel act of violence against self, family, friends, and the supporting community. Suicide is the only solution for desperate souls who have reached the end of their options.

Our society continues to churn out potential suicide victims at a catastrophic rate, and that rate will only increase, as the diseases of addiction and mental illness within our culture continues to increase. I have known, and buried, far too many friends and family members who were waiting for a better day, and life, while abusing drugs and alcohol, or collapsing into mental illness. My own “wait for a better day” has born great fruits for me, but the fruit was not passively acquired, nor was it acquired through waiting for the outer conditions of my life to improve. I first had to confront my own suffering, and the sources within my mind, memory, and heart that would push me towards self-annihilation. Suffering need not be a death sentence, for those who choose to awaken.

Life can be an extremely humbling experience. Those blessed few who stop resisting life and develop the capacity to accept “defeat” are the ones most susceptible to healing. It is when we are defeated, that we become the most open to life affirming change and growth. Then we can accept personal responsibility for the rest of our lives, knowing that the willingness, and capacity, for changes in our attitudes and behaviors can now become our “higher power”.

This meandering story has presented a small portion of my own journey towards healing. As each individual is unique, please do not use my experience to minimize, or maximize, your own. We must eventually find our own direction for life, and not only learn how to think for ourselves, but also to learn how to think and feel with others. We can truly be one with others in a non-controlling, NON-JUDGMENTAL manner, and be with each other with compassion and in communion. When our goal has finally been spotted, or, has spotted us, we each can make our own, unique path towards it. The trail that each one of us blazes is as important as any path made by any prophet who has ever lived, or will live. It is only our ego, or the egos of the hero worshipers of other faiths that would say otherwise.

To make dramatic changes in my life, the desire had to come from a place deep within myself. I did not change because my wife and family, my friends, my minister at church, my employer, my political leaders, or my “people pleasing” attitudes cajoled or advised me to change. I had to begin to value myself differently, and to become conscious that my behavior was causing irreparable harm to myself, to other human beings, to our animal brothers and sisters, and/or to the sustainability for life on this planet. I understood that my behavior was insane, and that I had a death wish for myself, and/or for others. I sought for a higher power or energy to overcome my insanity. Bringing healing to a situation is about what we are not doing well, and where we can improve, right now, in this moment, to help unfold divine intention. Positive change follows the hearts’ intentions, if the heart is pure. If it is a desire from the Heart, never stop seeking that which seems unattainable, for it is the Heart itself seeking for its own highest expression.

Insanity can be healed, if it is recognized that at its source, insanity arises from our habituated thoughts and feelings. Insight changes attitudes, insight changes behaviors, and insight changes lives. To change my world, I first changed myself, through insight, meditation, making amends to all people that I may have harmed through my insanity, and through carrying the message of recovery and healing to all who are interested in not only hearing my story, but bringing healing to their own lives, as well.

Though I lost out on my childhood dreams and goals of becoming a space traveler, to “get off this fucking rock”, I was able to live into a new dream. This “fucking rock” transitioned from a living hell, to becoming more of a peaceful paradise, where I became a more conscious traveler through the infinite regions of inner space, or Consciousness itself. My spiritual launching pad only awaited for me to “let go of the controls” to be catapulted into the unknown, mysterious, transformative and healing potential of the infinite. My “spirit rocket” now lifts off daily, without the extra encumbrance of religious and cultural conditioning, misunderstanding, judgement, and all of the superstition which impedes spiritual progress. Love and acceptance of myself and all others, INCLUDING ALL ANIMAL LIFE, now unfolds within me as my primary, life affirming propellant.

I die daily, to all that is not like my true nature. I do not need pills or philosophical ideas to separate me from life’s goodness. I now see the good that is really good, and all of the illusions of self that others, and the past versions of me, offer up to the world as our daily “prayer offerings’ for its conditional acceptance, or its rejection.

Always question prevailing attitudes and philosophies of the people in power, be they politicians, employers, pop psychology or spirituality gurus, or religious figures. Healthy skepticism is warranted whenever a person or organization tries to exert pressure on individuals to conform to certain beliefs or traditions. Never sit idly by while witnessing injustice or unfair and hurtful judgement and action meted out by the people in power against innocent people. By your silence, you are supporting the ignorant and the evil doers. They will use your silence to claim that you were in full support of their abhorrent behavior.

Taking dominion over the world, and then destroying its wildlife, forests, rivers, oceans, and lands was never part of God’s will. It was always part of a worn out patriarchal attitude that still pollutes human awareness to this day. The greed and self-serving interests of our Christian ancestors has been glorified, and exalted, over and above the preservation of our planet, and the cultivation of harmony between the diverse interests of people on this planet. Our politicians and corporate leaders use our Capitalistic economic system to rape and pillage the Earth, and its peoples, and all of its life.. The “mark of the beast” is seen daily in the attitudes of those who promote the destruction of our environment, and who incite hatred and enmity between people.

To remain healthy, we must be willing to “punch a Nazi”, figuratively speaking, but not just those projections out of our own wounded past. We instead will be dealing directly with issues that need to be addressed through insight into self, communication with others and/or outright confrontation with the offensive and antagonistic elements within our society still operating under the influence of the chaos and the swamp of collective consciousness that we all arose from.

Never let someone speak for us, we are responsible for bringing our full voice into the world, and having it heard. Never take for granted our right to freedom of speech and its expression, both at home and in the marketplace. Find the way to express yourself without sacrificing your integrity, and stand up tall and strong in the face of any ignorant, unfair or unwarranted criticism. You will “cast your pearls before swine”. Our hard-earned deepest truths have little value to those who are considered hypnotized, which are many of the “civilized” and “normalized” citizens within this diseased culture of ours. If they cannot see how your wisdom will increase the size of their bank accounts, increase their prestige and popularity, get them more or better sex, or just generally appeal to their ego, it will have little value, except “laughing value”. “A prophet is never respected in their own hometown”.

I am concerned about the “unaware ignorance” that is so prevalent within many sections of our society, including elements within the American Christian church. Using a church to get to the truth and beauty of Life is like using an old Volkswagen Beetle to drive around the world, with a worn out, outdated map. Though Christianity brings a form of comfort with its historical and cultural familiarity to all, it is a clumsy vehicle for consciousness, with much too philosophically restrictive, time dependent dogma that even postpones “heaven” into a fantasy future after death, with no guarantee that anybody will ever spiritually ascend, no matter how much we try to match “what Jesus would do”, or what the other “prophets” would advise us to do.

Mysticism is at the core of all true religions. Each of us is a mystic, should we shed the oppressive and repressive energies of familial, cultural and religious conditioning. Each one of us should become the leader of our own internal movement towards truth, beauty, love, intelligence, awe, wonder, grace, and miracles. What is the difference between the “mind of God” and the “mind of man”? Ah, the answer is there, for you to discover for yourself. You should never just accept my answers, without your own deepest inquiries into your own personal truth.

It is revealing to note how the experience of “enlightenment” allows for the love for all people, and respect for all love based philosophies, yet promotes no dogma, religion or philosophy, as such, for its own support. The prerequisites are a desire for change, self-honesty, insight, mindfulness, meditation, and the developed ability to see beyond the controlling mirages of cultural and religious conditioning. Yet, religions, and their followers, tend to strongly move in tight circles around their own adherents and practices, and often exclude others from their spiritual “inner circles”. And those who point to the benefits of non-religious, spiritual enlightenment are regarded suspiciously, and, in some cases, as manifestations of Satan, or are seen as Infidels, by those who claim to be “religious”.

It is healthy to acknowledge that we all need each other. I can’t do this life alone, nor would I ever want that for myself. We are here to help and support each other, and to love each other. Each moment can either be a new beginning, or just the continuation of a painful past where all of human suffering arises from. It is our choice as to how we will experience this moment. I must be willing to travel new paths of consciousness, and never to become too attached to any particular memory, or teacher and their teachings, as it is up to me to work out my own “salvation”. When I let go of the controls, including my own internalized forms of institutionalized thoughts, when I let go of time based thoughts and expectations, when I respect the truth that many times the presence and wisdom of the Great Unknown, rather than just more information and knowledge, is what I am best fed with, that is when I am truly trusting the life force which has always supported me, whether I have recognized its presence or not.

While incarnated into human form, with our poorly illuminated human minds, we can only witness the projections of our minds. All that we will ever see, unto whatever eternity that we can possibly conceive of, is our self, so the most important question for each day is “how will I see myself today?” The answer to that question determines whether I can see through the eyes of the truth of this moment, or just the limited eyes of the past. Each person that I meet either is one of the infinite manifestations of God, deserving ultimate respect and love, or they become just another dead illusion of my aging, conditioned mind. The insight gained through mindful self-examination can erase the blocks to Love’s awareness, and imbue life with a new meaning. Yet, even with Love being cultivated, anger will arise, and it is the mark of a mature, healed person as to how they can skillfully express their most difficult emotions.

Healthy anger at people, situations, politicians, religious figures, and abusive family members is not only acceptable behavior, it is required for honoring the truth of the moment, and to retain spiritual integrity. Do not follow those well-meaning souls who claim that all anger is hatred, for that is simply not true. Anger becomes dangerous when it does not naturally arise from the moment, but instead from a tribal instinct, memory, religious and/or cultural conditioning. Oppression and repression are birthed through habituated incomplete and prematurely aborted responses to environmental threats. Institutionalized anger, or hatred, arises from cultural hypnosis, memory, inadequate education, and emotional immaturity, and can be stoked by politicians and religious leaders with ignorant and evil agendas, and it is dangerous, being the source or racism, war, hatred, alienation, and cultural insanity.

Be ever vigilant with the internalized image of anything, or anyone. Note how the desire for the image, rather than the truth that underlies it, will attempt to take precedence, and will distort one’s view of the world. The image plays to a small part of fragmented being, whereas the truth plays through the wholeness of the all beings. Lust, greed, selfishness, hatred, and judgement of all others unlike oneself all play to the structure of internalized individualized images. Seeing each other through wholeness and love and thus disempowering the fragmenting images, which is another way of saying “giving forgiveness” allows for right action and healing in the otherwise chaotic and broken world created within the mind of individual self.

The ultimate truth is that “you can’t be real”. For in God’s eyes, there is only one self, one love, one existence, with an infinitude of manifestations. There is no room for “you and me” in ultimate truth, though we must continue to make room for that “illusion” in the relative truth of this world, through practicing forgiveness and letting go, until the final ascension into “enlightenment” or complete spiritual understanding. Finding the true connecting link is the journey into wholeness that our human race must undertake, if it is to survive. When we see our brother and sister as our own self, then we are home. This connecting link is not to be found through our digital devices, or through our “best thinking” or philosophies. It will unfold when we learn how to no longer think time based thoughts, but, instead, eternity based thoughts. That is the only place where Unity will ever be experienced. To see eternity, is to first witness the self without fear and judgement, and then see through the illusions of self to the Heart of Truth.

MOUNTAINS IN THE DESERT

While in realization of Truth, God’s High Mount is found to be just another illusion to climb

The idea infects like a virus to control the innocent, and all fearful, desirous minds.

The non-illuminated, restless mind remains forever devoid of Love’s Rhyme and Truth’s Reason

With is fruitless chasing of desert mirages, until it looks within, and sees the movements that are guilty of treason.

The quickest way to prepare for the new world order (which was once the old world order, by the way) is to get outside of the house, the computer, the movie theater, the Facebook pages, etc. and start getting acquainted with the great outdoors. Once we are free from the encumbrances of our daily lives, we may be more receptive to the call of our spirit. We are not connected to God through our technology. In fact, most of our media related technology has separated us from the quiet state of being that allows God’s will to be readily accepted into consciousness. Gaia is a living being, and is the true “son-daughter of God”. And yes, we are children of that sacred child. God’s face is seen clearly, once the detritus of human misunderstanding is moved aside long enough so that Reality may emerge, once again.

Technology is only a tool, though it has become another new world religion, a way of life for far too many people. Our country, and our world, shows the collective effects of falling far short of meeting or even acknowledging the existence of our spiritual needs, or attempting to meet our spiritual needs through illusory processes. Most of our media devices have continued the promotion and distribution of cultural hypnosis, and most people continue to be separated from a greater good through that process. The world exists in a state of hypnosis, and it is easy to see that truth when the mind finally takes itself off of the grid of shared cultural and religious misunderstanding. We can pull our eyes off of the phone display for a moment, and engage the person next to us in conversation. We will all benefit from the exchange. We do not benefit in any spiritual or social way by remaining glued to our phones.

Someday the rest of the world will wake up, and realize that all of our technology is only a symbol for the true power that we all have access to, if we only were to fully explore the full range of our consciousness. My closed mind and heart was eternally grounded, and would have NEVER freed itself from darkness’ grasp, until I accepted personal responsibility for the brokenness, and self-destructive and other-destructive life that I had co-created for myself and with others, see the damage that those illusions caused, and became willing to have a different, more spiritually oriented type of life experience.

Freedom may not be for everybody now, but it certainly is for me, now, and for all of eternity. I am grateful for my wife Sharon White, who shares in the new/old insight. May all sentient beings be freed from their suffering. But first, all sentient beings must become conscious enough to be aware of the options available to free themselves from their suffering. Pay attention to the man behind the curtain! Get to know him at the deepest level. And then, don’t give up finding truth, beauty, and love until the real Miracle appears in your own life, OK?

Like my father asked, when I was nearly four years old, and finally learned how to talk,

“Will that boy ever run out of things to talk about?” and

“Bruce, would you please shut up!”

Once I started talking I proved that I had the capacity for speech, and A LOT OF IT. Both of my parents wondered, at times, if I would ever shut up. Once a person touches Consciousness, Infinity is the limit to our potential.

But, the long-term oppressive effects of the Conspiracy of Silence that plagues most men will continue to limit our potential to experience happiness and longevity, and love for our life.

I am humbled and amazed by both the miracle eternally embedded in SACRED SILENCE, as well as its bridge to human consciousness through the Word. May the Word take a form unique to each of us in all of lives, and lift all of us together into a unity of love, thought, and action. May the Word spontaneously arise from our SACRED SILENCE, and not from the chaos of our troubled past.

As I contemplate the entirety of my life, I see a simple truth arising from the complexities of the details. Silence born of ignorance and oppression brings suffering and disease. Silence born of healing brings joy and love into the world. This same Silence brings forth the capacity to listen with the heart for the deepest meaning embedded within All of Life, in All of Its infinitude of forms, and return the dignity back to each sacred manifestation of life.

Is anybody really listening to each other?

Those who have learned how to really listen, hear the “voice for God”. And, we finally get to live in the creation that Love provides for us all, when we accept Love’s vision as our own.

And, no, Father, in whatever form Father may take, I will never “shut up”.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

As I look at my life’s history, I hear and witness Love and its healing Mystery.

I have penetrated the Conspiracy of Silence.

My world can never be the same

How about yours?

You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd by Roger Miller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skFWsc_-i14

Blessed Longing,

by Goethe

(Translated by John O’Donohue)

Tell no one else, only the wise

For the crowd will sneer at one

I wish to praise what is fully alive,

What longs to flame toward death.

When the calm enfolds the love-nights

That created you, where you have created

A feeling from the Unknown steals over you

While the tranquil candle burns.

You remain no longer caught

In the penumbral gloom

You are stirred and new, you desire

To soar to higher creativity.

No distance makes you ambivalent.

You come on wings, enchanted

In such hunger for light, you

Become the butterfly burnt to nothing.

So long as you have not lived this:

To die is to become new,

You remain a gloomy guest

On the dark earth.

LOVE’S REUNION (poem by Bruce Paullin)

I stumbled over the frozen wilderness for oh, so long!

With a hole in my heart that life could just not fill

Until I stopped to rest, and heard a gentle voice singing a long forgotten song

That promised of my release from this winter world of painful chill

Her lyrics spoke of the return of Life to freedom

And the release of shivering minds from darkness’ frozen, fearful hands

She drew me closer without any further verbal tethers

And prepared me for the walk back to Love’s now awakening lands

Her warming presence melted the icy hardness that I used to know

Inspiring within me the courage, to myself and my world, to say

That, to all of my past memories’ barren trees of lifeless knowledge, I now refuse to go

I will now accept only the lessons learned along Love’s Infinite Way

Yes, she met me while I was with the dark companion

But it was to her pleasure to take me home to share her loving lights

And give me the shelter of Love’s never setting summer sun

She changed my cold mourning into happier, heavenly nights!

By freely offering of herself and all of her sacred charms

She moves me through life’s clamorous valleys unto its silent peaks

I can now retire from a life of fruitless wanderings

To live in the Source of Peace of which mankind forever seeks

Her life is resplendent with Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty

For these are the robes with which she clothes her being

The gift of Love now unwraps before my inviting eyes

To reveal her ecstatic vision, which is now all seeing

My search for Truth and Love Sublime has finally ended

For, I now fill my empty cup from her joyous running streams

I have reunited with my eternally fulfilling lover

And, her healing waters dissolve all of my painful dreams

I only seek to remain within her all-embracing arms

While through all life she extends her ever unfolding surprise

My first waking breath each morning brings the certainty

That, from my bed, joined as one, we again shall arise

My broken heart and shattered life is finally mending

And, wedded to her life, I now call her my faithful bride

Life no longer has a fearful road ahead to travel

For, One with God, on Love’s lighted path, I now gratefully stride

Choose wisely, oh mankind, the secrets that we keep,

for by our choices, we all may awaken, or just stay asleep.

Alcoholic Anonymous Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

These are my life’s greatest lessons