Introduction (Book #8: in collaboration with Melinda Copp)

HERE IS THE INTRODUCTION

“We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.”—Anais Nin

We are about to embark on a great adventure, and journey into the the center of our being, and even of consciousness itself.  And, we will be using the tools of word formation, and story development, to aid in our fantastic voyage of self discovery, and, ultimately, healing.  Consciously developed stories can become the defining containers for our infinite spirit, and keep us safe while we uncouple from old pathways of misunderstaning and personal disease, until we redevelop our capacities to live by the power of our timeless, limitless, present moment self.

One of the more powerful stories about my early life has to do with the unconscious parental care that I received as a baby.  My parents wrapped me in a blanket and put me in the car in the garage at night so they could get some sleep. My father was chasing the American Dream and worked two jobs at the time. And I was just another “damned crying baby.” This experience, although I didn’t know it at the time, left me feeling abandoned and lonely from the beginning. I always felt like I was competing for love. I never felt like I had anything to contribute. A toxicity pervaded my childhood home, the way it pervaded the culture at the time and continues to do so. My father overreacted to any situation that brought a sense of fear or threat into the home environment. I felt a need to internally, though unconsciously, balance whatever energy was being over expressed at any particular moment, which certainly added to my passive-aggressive component of self-expression. Though I loved my parents, I certainly did not want to grow up and be like them. And for most of my life, I wasn’t able to get over my upbringing.

Much of my early life was clouded by the traumatic influences that I experienced.  Trauma’s most damaging impact upon a human being is its capacity to attenuate, or even block, normal emotional expression and interchange with others. Literally, unexpressed energy becomes stored within the body and mind, creating black holes of negative influence on bodily function and our perceptions. Our unhealed emotional issues and traumas become entombed within our bodily tissues. When our personalities have been formed by the layering of our egos upon our wounds, the wounds become inseparable from us and then affect us in ways that aren’t always visible on the surface. And I know that so many of my problems have come about because I was made to understand that my cries weren’t important.

This was why I always felt alone in the world. It can be seen that we, as humans, keep layering ourselves and our ideas upon what somebody else is saying, rather than meeting the being where they are, and responding accordingly. For a long time, my sense of self revolved around internalizing what my mother and father expected from me, what I could or could not give back to them to attempt to please them, and my defense mechanisms for managing the fallout when I failed.

My belief and understanding is we all suffer under traumatic influences, be they caused by familial, cultural, or even by Mother Nature Herself.. Some people experience trauma within the family, in the school system, in a work setting,  or from the external environment. Society is too big and complicated not to have experienced some kind of trauma from how people have related to us and how we’ve had to relate to society. Virtually all men and women have experienced oppression, repression, and the resultant diseases of the spirit at some point in their lives, and we have been both the victims, and the conscious and unconscious perpetrators, of this behavior. Society is the greatest inflictor of trauma on the individual. And for the most part, the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions have failed in their understanding of humanity, and its basic, innermost needs of being valued and listened to. And that’s caused some unnecessary pain and suffering. We have all attempted to manage our symptoms in our own unique, yet all too often broken and dysfunctional ways.

I spent a lot of years chipping away at my life through self-destructive lifestyle choices. And when I look around at the world, I see a lot of other people doing the same thing. Suicidal behaviors exist on a spectrum. There are, of course, people who are acutely suicidal. But when I say suicide, I also mean not fully developing our potential, not connecting with our spirit of wholeness within, and chipping away at a life. I’m also talking about the person, who because they can’t quite measure up, they don’t talk, they overeat, they don’t exercise, they drink too much, they start using narcotics, and they create accidents for themselves with their reckless behavior. We don’t call that suicide while it’s happening. But then, when we look around us and see so many dying young, there’s really no other way to describe lifestyle choices that didn’t affirm their value as human beings.

I made a conscious decision to try to kill myself on January 28, 1986. I didn’t succeed, but I have spent considerable time since looking back on that day and the events that led me to that decision.

From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic and drug addict and mentally ill human being, I lost most of my remaining freedom of choice. I understand now that, all those years I turned to substances, I was doing so as an escape from the wounds of trauma. (moved from 1st page)

There has been a marked increase in anxiety, depression, loneliness, substance abuse, and other forms of mental illness in our general population recently. We have a 60 percent obesity rate, 16 percent of people admit to drinking too much, and 40 percent say they’re lonely. Loneliness may not sound like a hazard, but it can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, anxiety, depression, a weakened immune system, cognitive decline, and even death. The body creates stress hormones from that loneliness, and stress hormones wear out our systems and lead to other health problems that cause premature death.

These personal experiences are part of the bigger picture cultural disease. Turbulent political times and toxic leadership are manifestations or symptoms of a national disease for the major blocks of people who feel that they have been neglected, ignored, or persecuted. Far too many people on either side of the divide have felt that way most of their lives, and continue to diagnose and treat themselves for their own stress, loneliness, and anxiety.   It is dangerous behavior to self-medicate, and much too easy to choose the immediately available remedies of drugs, alcohol, and/or awkward or self-destructive political and religious ideologies to treat symptoms of our national disease. I have personally witnessed both mental illness, religious fanaticism and rigid fundamentalism, drug addiction, and early death through many of my co-workers, friends, family members, and acquaintances, and, even through myself. And while I came to the realization that much of my problems resides within me, I share a consciousness with this world that is damaged.

How to Overcome Our Trauma

I didn’t always understand how past trauma was affecting my present. Earlier in life, I only felt like there was something wrong with me. As a child, I told my friends that “I want to get off of this fucking rock”.  Since then, I’ve gone a search for truth that involved connecting the dots from what is wrong with me to what is wrong with the people and society around me. 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.  I had to begin a search for my own personal truth. That means I had to start developing my own story. I had to start believing that my words had value. I had to start believing that even though other people weren’t listening to me, that I could start listening to myself and give what I’m hearing value no matter how painful or terrifying the messages that were bubbling up within me were.

I had to make peace with the demons in my life, see them not as demons and tricksters but as assistance. I had to reinterpret the darkness within my heart and soul and give that darkness an opportunity to speak to me, because that’s where my story begins. I wasn’t listening. I was pushing it down by denying its value. I was pushing it down by drinking and using. I was pushing it down by continuing to deny the value of the spoken word.

A large part of my healing process involved what I call my Miracle Experiment. A miracle experiment, most simply, is the intention and all subsequent effort to heal from traumatic wounding, and the consciousness, and world culture, that such wounding creates. It means dealing directly with all of the darkness of our past, seeing it in the light of insight, love, and compassion, and moving onto new paths of conscious evolution. It means eliminating the objectification of reality and instead perceiving the universe as an extension of our true nature. And ultimately, it’s about forgiving and letting go, and learning to love ourself, and others, more completely..

When I recently rewrote the section on my search for truth, a period of time following my 1986n suicide attempt, I was to reenter the consciousness, and the emotional experience, of those most troubling times.  I did not expect or anticipate this, and I reexperienced many of the dark emotions that characterized this most turbulent and disordered time in my life.  I finished the work, and felt sad, and disconnected.  I took my sports car for a long drive, which typically lifts my spirits, no matter what may be going on in my life.  This time, however, it did not work.  I drove for 65 minutes away from home, and I found no relief.  When I began to slow down, to turn around and come home, a dove flew over my car, and seemed to lead me for over twenty seconds to a place to park, and to turn around.  I then remembered what the deove symbolized in my mind, the reassurance that my guiding spirit HAD NOT ABANDONED ME, and was continuing to lead me to my own promised land.  Suddenly, a torrent of tears erupted from me, and a huge release of energy overwhelmed my being.  I then felt an amazing forgiveness, love, and compassion for the past version of myself, a form of self forgiveness that I had never experience before.  Can there be a greater gift to give oneself in this life?

The Miracle Experiment brings the understanding that every time that  I identify with a person, a process, or a place, I have created either a new path of consciousness, or I have reaffirmed some older, more familiar, potentially worn out path that I have already been traveling upon, such as, “I am a victim of traumatic abuse,” or, “I am a lonely, isolated person,”  or, “I am an electrician,” or, “I am an alcoholic,” or, “I am a son of Beryl and Corinne Paullin.” Whatever I associate myself with either continues my path in old directions, or creates the imperative to create new words, thoughts, and experiences around a new direction.

After I have identified my own internalized issues, and have become willing to heal from them, I could just as easily say, “I am no longer traveling old paths of consciousness.” Then through mindfulness and meditation, I can stop or at least dramatically reduce thinking time-based thoughts and rehashing and rehearsing painful old memories, to create a new life experience for myself. Because of the innate human capacity to heal and change, I can create my new timeless self in each moment. The miracle experiment has no guarantee of success from a cultural standpoint, as the institutionalized traumatizing behavior and control is highly resistant to change.  Yet, to the degree that the individual can uncouple from these toxic influences, and explore the roots of suffering, the miracle experiment can proceed. And it is the perfect solution for when life feels out of control.

Another important action for healing from trauma is examining it. In 2016, Sheila Hamilton, author of All the Things We Never Knew, came to our house and talked about her book with my book club group. It’s a powerful book about her husband’s suicide and how she’d never understood what was going on with him. And she lamented the fact that David couldn’t tell his story.

One of my dear friends, Marty, who was a member of the book club and has since deceased, encouraged me to tell my story. That was when I really started trying. And it wasn’t an easy or straightforward process. But there was a story bubbling up  that felt like 100 pounds of stuff in a 10-pound bag. It had to get out. My whole life I had believed that I had nothing to say.  One day I begged and beseeched my wife, Sharon, to please tell my story for me, as she had already written a great book, and had that capacity.  She compassionately, and authoritatively, reminded me that my story was my own to develop, and to tell, and it will die with me, unless I find the courage, and the willingness to share it.  I never believed that I had anything to offer.  That was the story I carried with me. But that turned out to be false.

I started revisiting my childhood experiences and piecing together the story of my life. And while I was writing and thinking and making sense of it, I was struck with a profound realization. I saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father. I felt an incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents. This can be particularly difficult for men. Men typically inflict their own wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not so subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in dominating, or being dominated, by others. Philosophies of oppression, and of the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. Women and children are usually victimized, and/or those with sensitive and/or non-confrontational natures. But if you’re tired of people taking advantage of you, and you’re tired of people trampling on your heart, and you’re tired of staying silent, then you have to examine your experiences and open yourself to these profound realizations.

For a long time I didn’t have a narrative. I didn’t have a story. I had nothing to say. I was the guy who sat back in groups and either smiled or spaced out because I didn’t think I had anything to say. And I feared that, even if I did, no one would listen anyway. We tend to minimize our own inner stories. We may not even believe that there’s anything there to tell. Or we may believe that whatever is there should be hidden because we are ashamed of it. But the truth is, our stories need to be told.

The Profound Power of Telling Your Story

When people commit suicide, sometimes even the people closest to them are surprised. They never knew the person had these thoughts and intentions inside them. That’s because, when a person is approaching that sort of darkness, they’ve already minimized their pain and suffering, and the willingness of others to be present for them in their time of greatest need.. They already believe that nobody wants to listen to them. They feel inadequate, and they don’t know that they have a story, let alone that it has value. We are lonely because we don’t think anybody cares enough to listen to what we have to say. And in most cases, we don’t know what we’d say even if someone were listening.

I have a dear friend who is eighty years old and still can’t tell her story. She had several suicide attempts in her life. She raised two daughters and two sons, but they never understood what she was thinking or what drove her to that decision. And now, as adults, her children are struggling with some similar issues. Their mother’s story could save their lives, but she doesn’t have the words or the strength or the hope to put her healing journey into words. What got you out of your suicidal ideation? What got you out of your meaningless life experience so that you found a will to live and wanted to give back to the world? Today, my friend is living a wonderful life, but she didn’t have that for a long time. And if she could bring that to a story, then she could give that story to her children and share her healing, guiding wisdom with them.

This is what is said in AA meetings: we share our experience, strength, and hope with those that still suffer and with a hope that they can be encouraged by what we went through and then grab on to our story and then emulate it is their own unique way to make it their own.. When we have a story, then we can help lift up that person who is one step below us, then we have something to share that literally elevates them too. Because they’re looking for meaning too and they don’t know where to find it. But if they can be encouraged by somebody who has found it, that’s hope.

Some people, they want to tell their stories but they don’t have the language for it. They haven’t developed language of insight that gives them the capacity to speak what they’re feeling and what their life experience was, where they were hurt, what they felt during the hurt. And, yeah, this is difficult. Yet, intelligence is the capacity to use words to form new concepts.  And a more profound intelligence is the developed capacity to use the myriad of life experiences to create personal insight.

Even naming our trauma can be difficult. The process of naming is the way that our consciousness weighs and measures new forms of life, ideas, and experiences, it’s how we understand and interpret our stories.  Naming tends to attach a dynamic process to a fixed point in time and space, always with a past frame of reference, and thus permanently lodges it in the dead past. But naming our traumas isn’t enough; we have to find a way to see under the vast matrix of impressions of our past history that only float on the surface on the mind, yet continue to capture and hold our attention through their hypnotic appeal..

The awareness and the healing of childhood trauma places us squarely on new paths of consciousness, which leads us into sacred realms. For most people, healing requires perseverance and patience, to bring the us the fullest measure of healing.  And, until the final release from ego’s grasp, we must remain vigilant through insight and mindfulness, catching ourselves whenever we stray back upon the old paths.

I took several photographs of my baby and early childhood self, and grieved with these images of self my loss of innocence and healthy self-esteem during the early years. It was heartbreaking work, and the floodgates of tears opened up, threatening to drown me. Yet, this grief, like the unexpressed anger, are the most important contributors to the letting go of the old, familiar lonely path of feeling ignored and unloved by the world. Without such freeing insight, we continue on the older, more familiar paths of painful existence, where replication of errors of perception continue, suffering predominates, and the profane reigns supreme.

Why Telling Your Story Is So Hard

Having a life narrative allows us to shape and control the way we see the world and the pieces of ourselves that we share. But I’ve met so many people who don’t have a life narrative. They don’t have a story that embodies the wisdom that they’ve gained and the problems they’ve overcome.

I call this a conspiracy of silence. It’s not an intentional silence, but it’s a silence based on the fact that we don’t have words to talk about our personal pain. And this conspiracy of silence is taken advantage of by the people around us, as well as our political, religious, and economic leaders. The culture takes for granted that if we have nothing to say, that we’re doing okay. If we don’t know how to say our truth, then our silence is interpreted by others as a tacit agreement or as we have nothing to offer, when, in fact, we do.

Humans have both a loving, and a lying nature. But our tendency to lie overrules our tendency to love.  We tend to hide behind our lies, and often, in doing so, deceive ourselves first and foremost. We keep our secrets close to the chest and fear the day when everyone finds out. The conspiracy of silence embodies all of the shameful ideas that we have thought and acted upon.  A compelling part of this conspiracy is that others also share in this activity of keeping dangerous secrets, secrets that are attacks against ourselves and others, and the truth. This mutually imprisons all of us.

On the other side of the spectrum of our grand conspiracy of silence lies those who have finally embraced their healing potential. The conspiracy also indicates a hesitancy to talk with others around our spiritual potential, and our innate ability to connect with and manifest a more aware, intelligent, state of being. We may remain silent because of our own perceived inadequacy at presenting a supporting and compelling argument for our own point of view, fearing the indifference and rejection from others. Some shut down all points of view in disagreement with their own; others feel their resistance to any truth not already understood and applied. Many just turn their heads, and their words, away from the resistant person. It takes strength to successfully confront negativity while maintaining compassion and equanimity, thus not being threatened or degraded by the contact. This is a critical part of the conspiracy of silence. We become invisible to each other, the less curious we are about others, the less curious we are about ourselves. We become invisible to ourselves when we sit on our voice and fail to listen as our inner voice cries out for justice, peace, healing, and change.

The conspiracy of silence is all about preserving the established order and enhancing the status quo, and it is built right into the framework of our collective consciousness. Our collective common knowledge attempts to keep us in alignment and resonance with each other, no matter how out of phase with the truth that this knowledge may be.  The resultant toxic silence has become the manifestation of religious, cultural, and political conflicts intended to keep most members of society from talking about underlying issues related to trauma, wounding, oppression, misogyny, child abuse, patriarchy, and a whole spectrum of issues. The conspiracy continues whenever evolving people become too fearful to speak their truth and share their insights, for fear of being further attacked and marginalized.

To not express ourselves honestly and openly results in our own early demise, spiritually as well as physically. Some aspects of life just seem to elude our ability to effectively communicate around them, and never get incorporated into our personal stories, and thus add to the collective conspiracy of silence.  Also, other people’s stories and garbage gets back-filled into the holes and empty spaces within our own stories,  becoming embedded within us, and adding to our internal confusion and chaos. We must choose to no longer adhere to old, worn out patterns of behavior inculcated into us by our culture, our religions, our so-called teachers and teachings, and our misunderstandings of our parents,  and of our creator. We each must penetrate the conspiracy of silence, and bring the light of a loving heart and healing words to the hidden darkness. Our outdated sense of self will have to end, and we will have to find a new path of consciousness for this present moment healing event to have any hope of transforming the heart, body, and soul.  We need to follow new paths of consciousness, while dispelling the illusions created by our society and our individual fantasy thinking. The conspiracy of silence has to be exposed and disrupted, again and again if necessary, to stop the silencing of our true identities.

If we don’t speak up for what our needs are, then how are we ever going to make any progress with ourselves, within our families, and with this culture? Regardless of how difficult it may be, we, as human beings, are responsible for bringing our personal truth, and our stories, no matter how incomplete they may be, to the collective experience, including our family, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors, and our religious and political leaders.

My life’s lessons were not gained in a classroom or sitting at the feet of a guru. My experience, and resulting wisdom, comes from real life, through love relationships, friends, enemies, family, and my work career. In college, I extensively explored philosophy, theology, psychology, and electrical, electronic, and computer engineering.  During the course of my work career, I was a mail clerk, maintenance mechanic, electrician, computer engineer, and instrument and electronic technician. Life has trained me to be an electrician, a computer engineer, a psychologist, a philosopher, an archeologist, and a spiritual explorer.

I believe that we need to address difficult human emotions and problems with expressing them skillfully. I spent most of my career as a systems analyst, doing electronic and computer design engineering and electrician work, and in that profession I did a lot of troubleshooting and repairing of systems. I assisted in the building and subsequent technical support of the operation of multi-billion dollar chip fabrication plants in Oregon, and maintaining the pumping and delivery systems of the entire fresh water supply to the City of Portland, among many other less economically significant endeavors. I love functioning systems, and I am intensely curious as why some systems succeed, and some fail, even after successful periods of operation. My intention is always to bring repair, and balance, back to any system which is malfunctioning. And one of the first steps we always took when working on any system was to understand it. Before we can begin any process of repair, we have to understand the system. And so, that’s where the process of finding your story starts.

This book may not be for the healthy, wealthy, and wise among us.  It is designed, however, for those seeking to create their own unique bridge to our healing potential. If you want more out of life than what you’re currently experiencing, if the conspiracy of silence is holding you back, or if you are a concerned witness to another’s dysfunction, then I have written this book for you. My hope is that it accurately points in the direction towards where our healing might be found. This book will be a failure if I have not encouraged another human being to escape their own repressive cycles and their own feeling of oppression by their family or by their culture evolve, and to finally speak their truth.

A Better Life, Starting With Your Story

Not everybody had the perfect family, and even those who claim to have still had to grow up in a damaged culture and make accommodations to that damage. Putting food on the table and basic survival are hard enough, but we all have to do it within the existing toxicity. And so we judge each other. We naturally seek to understand our self and our relationship with the whole, yet we become self-conscious, judgmental, and/or uncomfortable with those assessments. The loss of our connection with nature and our imbalanced and inaccurate perceptions of self and each other contribute to our sense of isolation, loneliness, and vulnerability. But we can take responsibility and make changes in the way we think and view the world. If we do not make ourselves aware of the reasons behind the choices that we make in life, we remain unconscious human beings, with little true freedom.

We are as sick as our secrets is an aphorism used extensively in recovery groups. And the truth is that our world does not heal until we do. It is our responsibility to find our freedom and stop blaming others. Otherwise, we will remain trapped in our labyrinth of self deception and spiritual corruption until the end. Without the healing of our wounds,  loving acceptance of ourselves and each other remains impossible, we remain separated from our true nature, and our pasts continue to dominate us. When we don’t tell our stories, the conspiracy of silence still reigns supreme, and our religions, economic policies, politics, and, in general, our collective consciousness, continues to give more support to our fantasies, rather than to facts and reality.

Many of us don’t believe that we have the seed for greatness within us. Many of us believe that somebody else is our greatness. We look outside ourselves, thinking that our greater good will come to us from Jesus Christ savior or from that perfect woman or that perfect man or that perfect job. We think that somebody else will do the work for us. We’re always looking outside of ourselves. But this is an inside job too. Yes, the good can come from the outside; but if we’re not doing the work to bring it out from our inside, then it throws life out of balance and creates dependencies. Your story of healing brings more balance to your self, and to all of your relationships.

If you can see beyond the limited vision of the self, and get to the deeper reality hidden within the soul, the potential for an inspired and higher powered human experience lies buried there under the detritus of a traumatized history. By going on a search for truth, the entirety of our life experience can be lived and experienced with true integrity, the potential for healing and completeness, and the best alignment with reality. It’s the difference between continuing the struggle and newer, more diverse and healthier possibilities for life.

Since 1987, I have chosen to live life more fully, with enhanced personal awareness, good health, and honest expression of all feelings. I experience joy and happiness the majority of the time, and I have maintained almost continuous sobriety. No one knows what our final destination in life will be, but living your story becomes an experiment in consciousness. If we are not experiencing miracles of any nature in our day to day life, it only indicates that we are too firmly entrenched in the ruts created by our past. Insight is the greatest benefit of finding your story, insight into self and insight into the people around you. Now I have peace of mind on a continuous basis. It isn’t fleeting, but a constant presence in my life that never existed before.

Make peace with your story, develop your own timeline, develop your own personal story, and be the hero of your own journey. Do whatever it takes. Find and cherish your own story no matter how difficult it is initially because as you heal and grow, that story starts to take on significance until it becomes part of the grand story.  It should no longer be “his story”, or “her story”, but instead, the unitine “our story”.

Are you tired of your own suffering, or the needless suffering of others?

Are you tired of being the silent stick figure in the dreams of others who would control and manipulate you like a mindless puppet, and turn you into unholy versions of yourself?

Are you tired of your past wounds controlling your perceptions, and guiding you onto diseased and despairing paths of unconsciousness?

What is your story? Where is your storyi hidden?  We need to hear it. So let’s start looking.