Chapter Two (formerly Introduction-edited by Melinda)
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Joseph Goebbels
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In the words of J. Krishnamurti, being well-adjusted to a sick society is no measure of good health. Much of our present world civilization has sickness built right into its very systems of economics, religion, governance, and understanding of itself and the people in it. Progress and national expansion have been built upon the captured lands of native peoples, the monetization and overuse of Mother Earth’s resources, and the denial of full rights and dignity to the economically disadvantaged. Our world has been built upon the backs of a predominantly unconscious, overachieving, oppressed, and traumatized humanity. Do we remain in the conspiracy of silence and inaction around these global issues, or do we confront our complacency, our resistance to an evolving truth, and thus become part of a globally collaborative healing adventure?
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Are you tired of your 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? Are you tired of your past wounds controlling your perceptions and guiding you onto diseased and despairing paths of unconsciousness? If you have ever felt insignificant, unimportant, or worthless, then I want you to know that you can free yourself from those thoughts and feelings.
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When we want to change our lives, we usually start with a motivating assumption, an assumption offered by others, yet probably also informed by our intuition and our long-lost innocence: Though we are not experiencing it now, there must be a better or even a perfect state of being available to us. There must be a cause or reason that we are not experiencing this blissful state. Is it because of an error in our thought, behavior, upbringing, acculturation, or even a fundamental flaw in our being? Or is it a result of trauma? The answer may surprise you.
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The Conspiracy of Silence
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Governments have similar characteristics to the individuals within the society that they represent. They are the collective energy of many individuals’ intentions. Whether we’d like to admit it or not, governments, in general, are some of the shadiest organizations out there. The bigger and more powerful the country, the more likely it is to sit on a massive pile of shocking secrets and lies it has told its citizens. Such is the United States case, which perhaps has the most significant number of conspiracy theories drafted in its honor. The Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy’s assassination, the Iran Contra Affair, UFOs, and all of the other so-called conspiracy theories did not just grow out of nowhere. Due to the work of Congressional investigations and the Freedom of Information Act, our country has learned that many of our conspiracy theories do have a foundation in fact. Though most times, the facts are not as clear as we would like them to be, thus subject to interpretation and political leveraging.
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Our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, according to President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. As goes our government, so goes our citizens, so goes our government, etc. Our governments have been designed to represent the interests of their citizens, and if the citizens are prone to keeping dangerous secrets, so are the governments. Historically, America has shown itself to be the People Of The Lie. The white race has shown that it has immense talent and expertise in leveraging a falsehood into a profitable enterprise for itself. For example, the European immigrants committed genocide, stole America from its native inhabitants, and kidnapped and enslaved men and women of African descent, and much of America still found a way to justify its murderous excesses.
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Much of the American Christian Church morphed into a political ally for our capitalist economic system and government. Christian thinking proliferates the dubious assertion that we have little value unless we admit that we are sinners, believe only that their prophet Jesus can save us from our sins, and walk in lock step with the rest of their belief systems for our salvation. And when it comes to excesses and crimes against humanity, we have learned from our government, and our religions, that if the subject is changed fast enough, the dogma asserted without question, or facts spun in clever and deceptive ways they can avoid being held accountable and responsible for most errant attitudes and actions. We are a country that has learned to avoid the truth when necessary, scapegoat the innocent, and enrich and aggrandize the powerful, and the guilty among us.
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Carl Sagan has stated in his work The Demon Haunted World, that “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once we give a charlatan power over us, we rarely get it back.” Yes, the power of the lie keeps the people of the lie as active community members within our cultural and familial conspiracy of silence.
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Where and when are we to find our freedom, while the church and the government are trying to control us?
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Where and when are we to find our freedom, while our conditioning and our traumas are still trying to tether us to an unhealthy past and control us in the present?
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Why would we ever consider granting each other release from the binding arguments of our lies and misunderstandings?
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This book is a documentation of my understanding of the facts of our lives, clues about our shared human nature, and the discovery of our possibilities for transcending our human condition. Our sense of self or ego is as limited and mysterious to us in our unenlightened space as is our limited concept of God. The only “God” that most people ever become aware of are the lies and confusion spread by unevolved religions and their unaware adherents. We do not give real prayers, as we continue in earnest our culturally prescribed mutual control dramas.
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In our native essence, we have a curious mind, a balanced masculine/feminine nature, and an amazing body as our vehicle for our consciousness. We naturally seek to understand ourselves 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. 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. The resulting perceptions spawned from our confusion are legion in number and resistant to change. It is no wonder why making a conscious choice is so difficult. One eventually has to ask: Why would I rather hold onto a fantasy than face myself?
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Adam and Eve are often depicted naked in the Garden of Eden, made decent only by a well-placed fig leaf. The fig leaf represents shame and denial, or our need to hide from our inner creator and all of our creations. Thus, the ceding of personal responsibility is consummated through scapegoating or sacrificing others. Our protective armor has evolved over hundreds of generations from a single fig leaf to become a Kevlar suit and military-style weapons for far too many human beings. As Goebbels suggests, the truth is the greatest enemy of our culturally institutionalized misunderstanding of Life, ourselves, and our relationships with all of mankind. This division between reality and fantasy draws its energy from the lies that we continue to tell ourselves and vigorously defend to each other. Our ignorance of higher possibilities began in the mythical Garden of Eden and is where, at least conceptually, the feeling of shame and the need to tell lies to cover up our sense of inadequacy becomes mankind’s first experience of dishonesty. And it continues unabated today.
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When we don’t have the facts that we need, we sometimes trust the version of the facts offered to us by others, or even ourselves, even if their source is the cunning “snake in the grass.” The lies start small, as indicated by the fig leaf. But as our defense mechanisms grow in sophistication over time, eventually, we clothe ourselves entirely with them. The flaming swords of the Cherubim guard the gates back into Eden, preventing us in our now “fallen” nature from ever reentering the Garden again. The reason is simple: We have abandoned our native intelligence, and now all that we see is a lie, projected out of ourselves. That lie will persist until we find a release from our temptations to believe solely in our self-defining and limiting judgments, grief, traumas, and wounds. As we return to our innocence, we lose our need to hide from ourselves and control others, we gain an enhanced perspective of the wholeness and unity of life, we lose many of our attachments to our old assessments of what was good and bad, and we no longer remain paralyzed by the fear of our own vulnerability and innate spiritual power.
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Lies are the primary activity of the relatively unevolved mind, a mind intoxicated by subservience to its hubris, secondhand life experience, and twisted self-centered understanding of what is good and what is bad. Lies serve as a creative avenue for maintaining a safe distance from threatening truths that we are not yet prepared to confront. Nobody wants to grow up to be the best liar in the world (former President Trump might be the exception). Yet, by living a lie and telling lies, we can convince ourselves that we do not need to adapt, adjust, understand, accommodate, and/or heal.
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Some who have been traumatized and victimized by the family or by the community may find little support in their search for justice and compassion. Thus, they are compelled to remain silent about the abuse, fearing reprisal, and spiritual assaults. This is a form of forced silence and is the breading ground for the creation of lies. We are all the beloved of God, of this Universe, and our Mother Earth and that is a poorly comprehended and applied fact within our collective consciousness. In truth, we should also be beloved by our fellow man, and we all have felt a lack of that love. Unnecessary pain and suffering come from a loveless culture, and it is the basis for many of the social ills within civilization.
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The parable of The Emperor’s New Clothes represents in narrative form how we are susceptible to the lies of the mind being spun together with the invisible golden threads of self-deceit. Our deception, both to ourselves and to others, creates for us a self-perceived “cloak of invisibility.” The lies that we tell ourselves to cover our innocence and vulnerability feel like they are spun from gold, and, at least initially, we take pride in our new version of ourselves. Because of our social nature, we want to look good to others, thus the parading around of our latest “clothing.” But life will always present us with “an innocent young boy” who sees through the deception and proclaims our nakedness before our adoring crowds. Oh, how the masses love this eternal parade of fools, which, in our deceived state, we remain active participants.
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The need to please others without first finding our real selves can lead to some incredibly challenging and embarrassing situations. It is enlightening to note how much of the ego’s energy is devoted to its recognition when there is a shortage of loving attention very early in life. The ego, both individual and collective, is created from a desperate call for love from a world that has not yet learned how to listen to and love itself.
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Through our unwillingness to embrace this world with love, with its ever-evolving truth, we tend to maintain a caricature of our real selves. We build an almost impenetrable fortress around this misunderstanding (this idol, or self-creation, is called our “ego”), thus perpetuating a culturally conditioned war both against the present moment and all who appear unlike ourselves. Acts and attitudes of duplicity and folie a deux characterize much of the crazy-making attitudes and communication styles. The need to tell lies is a confirmation that we are practicing denial of our basic truth and are not yet courageous enough to face ourselves completely and honestly. When we don’t honor our truth, we share in our culture’s conspiracy of silence created to continue the perpetuation of those control dramas that prove we are anything but children of God.
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The cultural conspiracy of silence is spawned through our culture’s accommodations to our lying nature and the need to hide from those lies. It manifests itself in two primary ways. First, the conspiracy embodies all of the shameful ideas that we have thought and acted upon, sometimes culminating in intentional harm to self and others. We keep our secrets close to our chest and fear our day of reckoning, when others may see through our surface stories to the hidden truth behind our senseless fear, heartless indifference, or hatred of ourselves and others. A compelling part of this conspiracy is that others also share in this activity of keeping dangerous secrets, secrets that are attacked against us, the (potentially) innocent other, and the truth.
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How many family lies exist just to keep a failing marriage together?
How many lies exist just to protect the family from outside scrutiny because a member has a drinking or gambling problem?
How many lies exist just to keep one’s tenuous hold on a job?
How many lies exist just to cover up one’s own poor self-esteem?
How many lies exist just to convince everyone else how well we are doing, even if we are in the greatest pain or even dying inside?
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This lying mutually imprisons all of us
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I would rather be hiking on wilderness trails, biking through eastern Oregon, playing golf, reading, and socializing with friends, family, and the big wide wonderful world, than writing about lying and insanity. Having witnessed the insanity unfolding within our 45th Presidency, parts of our government, and our citizenry drove me to make commentary and offer alternatives to chaos and division. Pointing out the lies and the divisive attitudes of others is itself not divisive or judgemental, it is known as sanity. Pointing out the lies and insanity within myself is called insight.
FACTS MUST BE HONORED,
and not drowned out with more self-deception and lies. We must be willing to be critical of those we love, including ourselves, or we are just another brick in the wall of the conspiracy of silence. We have to see the dirt on our windows before we become inspired to clean them. It is people who call their dirty windows the “truth” that makes our world chaotic and dangerous.
I was quite the rambunctious child. Trouble was my best friend and companion, and he was a deadly partner for a child trying to avoid getting yet another painful whipping from my father’s belt. Like any hyperactive child, I rarely questioned in advance my decisions, and I acted impulsively to achieve my goals, which might be to get candy bars, give my sister a bad time, or steal the extra loose change from my father’s pockets to buy a little toy or trinket.
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I knew when I was misbehaving, and I also knew that if I wanted to avoid a good beating for my latest malfeasance, it was imperative to avoid suspicion, or, if under suspicion, manipulate my parent’s viewpoint away from suspecting me through lying or other forms of deception. I learned how to spin a good tale or two or to blame others for my own mistakes. The key was not to get caught red-handed, and then my stories for my self-defense could get some traction.
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Modern-day child psychologists might remark that my mischievous activities were unanswered calls for love, but the truth was that the calls were made to the wrong number, through the wrong medium and understanding.. My child mind believed that these little thefts, these little lies, these little assaults against my sister, were all justified, and my real objective remained to get my way, while minimizing extra parental oversight, painful discipline and behavior change. Eventually, as I aged, normal maturation and the acceptance of personal responsibility for my life and my choices made the need to lie and to manipulate others recede far from my awareness.
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When it is more important to promote erroneous points of view, rather than facing facts, accepting reality and making subsequent changes in perceptions, this creates personal chaos and is indicative of the magical thinking of children, or mental illness as adults. Q’Anon is a propaganda forum where intellectual, emotional, and spiritual maturity would not be welcome. Q’Anon has vilified an entire innocent group of American society and accused them of eating babies, among many other outrageous statements.. “Save our babies” was the rallying cry for these perverted souls.
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Q’Anon is the latest in a long line of propaganda techniques to manipulate the minds and hearts of unconscious and susceptible individuals who don’t care, or don’t have the time, to research what the truth might be. Q’Anon and conspiracy theories, in general, play to the dark corners of the human mind, where unconscious hatred and ignorance reign supreme. People seize upon the propagandist’s and marionette’s specious or false reasoning, hatred, and fears because it appear to give support and legitimacy to their own. Alex Jones and his evil and infamous “Info Wars” show is a living example of the proliferation of lies and their presentation to the ignorant masses. This abhorrent mismanagement of reality led to the rise of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
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“I call the media ‘fake news’ to damage their reputations while elevating my agendas in the minds of those who don’t know or care what the truth is”—-Donald Trump (2016 – 60 Minutes interview).
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It is no wonder that Donald Trump supported Q’Anon and refused to repudiate any of their outrageous and insane statements. Together, they feast at the same outhouse and drink from the same sewer. Dark people and dark thoughts take pleasure when they can stick their middle finger up to the truth and feel some measure of mutual support while doing it.
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When we have so-called Christian religious adherents clinging to Q’Anon theories, we can grasp the threat against democracy and civilization that is bubbling up within the swamps of the unhealed and irrational minds of far too many Americans. These are the same “believers” that worship false idols and still have “Santa Claus Gods” or “voodoo dolls Gods” vs. the acquired understanding and intelligence that arises through spiritual maturity and understanding. They truly are atheists, having substituted hateful, spiteful, wishful thinking for the philosophies of their prophets. These Q’Anon believers are the foundation for the new American Taliban terrorist.
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When we have unconscious Americans walking in lockstep with Donald Trump and all of his fantasies and conspiracy theories, we see the disease of the human spirit rising up within our own country. When people would rather accept an outrageous lie, because it is being promoted by a cult leader, like Trump, or Hitler, reality and rationality become targets, and corruption and destruction reign supreme.
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Q’Anon conspiracy advocates are also calling out for love, yet they mistakenly believe that the rest of the world needs to crawl under their rock with them to feel loved. Q’Anon and some of the spiritual ghettos of Trumpville are a world dominated by the minds of manipulative, lying children that never grew up, trying to avoid being seen for who they really are, and trying to form Folie à deux with other lost and ignorant souls..They have invited into their minds a form of psychosis or shared delusional disorder, characterized by symptoms of a delusional belief, and sometimes hallucinations, which are transmitted from one individual to another. These demons of thought are transmitted from one individual to another through social media or by the mob mind phenomenon, among other possible methods..
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“Oh, and by the way, you are not going to like what comes after America . . .” — Leonard Cohen
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When it is more important to promote your point of view, rather than facing established facts and accepting reality, then know that you are a creator of chaos and insanity. The wayward Trump, Trump-supporting white Christian evangelicals, and Q’Anon supporters need more oversight, and the desire to change abhorrent beliefs and behaviors needs to be encouraged and supported..One can only wonder what embedded traumas or educational insufficiencies would convince a person to resist reality and to instead create hellish fantasy worlds to live in with other hypnotized, colluding, and conspiring individuals.
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IT IS TIME TO GROW UP, AND STOP LYING TO EACH OTHER, AND TO OURSELVES
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We all need to start learning how to love ourselves, and each other, and stop creating false narratives that breed division and conflict where there is none, and the need for shame, lying, and deceit will eventually be diminished.
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We started talking about the role of lying in our collective conspiracy of silence. Yet there are other aspects to it, such as the hesitancy to talk with others about our spiritual potential and our innate ability to connect with and manifest a more aware, intelligent state of being. Those who are avid in their church attendance may believe that merely belonging to a particular tribe, be it Judaic Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, they are already granted their necessary grace, as if through a magical dispensation. These people feel threatened by suggestions that their way may not be in resonance with “God’s will,” and they shut down all points of view in disagreement with their own. Others feel resistance to any truth not already codified within their own tradition and dogma. Many just turn their heads, and their words, away from the resistant person, or even the community, knowing that their own new or elevated understanding or true spiritual discernment makes them invisible to those who refuse to look anew at life from a shared love or more collaborative perspective.
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Who wants to spend their lives continuously confronting the unevolved? Thus, those not trained or equipped to qualify for the debate team just smile and walk away, keeping their words to themselves. We may remain silent because of our own perceived inadequacy in presenting a supporting and compelling argument for our point of view, fearing indifference and rejection from others. Those with personalized versions of our culture’s institutionalized hatred or judgments, such as white supremacists, misanthropic gun owners, and/or religious and political fundamentalists, are especially resistant to open communication. Such people may even feel that their freedom and way of life are threatened.
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Spiritual freedom has never been about guns, money, or religion. Good luck communicating and collaborating successfully with someone stuck in their own tribal and personal self-righteousness while stockpiling weapons of philosophical, religious, and/or mechanical natures.
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This is a critical part of the conspiracy of silence. We become invisible to each other, and less curious about others while becoming unwilling to communicate with each other, and therefore, we remain less curious about ourselves. We become invisible to ourselves when we sit on our voices and fail to listen to our essence as our inner voice cries out for justice, peace, healing, and change.
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There is a cultural conspiracy of silence, and that fact remains beyond question. Those who have been traumatized by their own or their family member’s mental illness often do not communicate their distress and thus suffer in silence. Many secrets are kept that are held close to the heart because the victimized, the broken, and the ill do not have the language nor the receptive audience to share their trauma and pain with. Some traumas are so painful and distressing that the victim is fearful that the revelation of their disease will bring harm to others or further harm to themselves. Major sectors our culture remain judgmental, uncaring, and indifferent to the plight of the suffering, closing their minds, hearts, and ears to those in need, so that they can continue relatively unbothered in their own selfish, self-serving worlds.
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I have been personally impacted at the deepest, most profound levels, and my own social anxiety, mental illness and addictions as a teenager and young adult were a cause of greatest concern for myself, my family, and my community. I have been victimized by mental illness, addiction, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and my path through life has made me a reluctant expert in these matters. Not only is remaining unconscious and victimized not a helpful option now, but it is also inappropriate and unhealthy for me to keep silent around these issues, as I tend to be as sick as my secrets. In my unhealthy past, my conditioned response would be to keep silent, as I had nothing of value to share with the world, and/or the world could give a shit about what I had to say anyway. Extrapolate that response to all of life, and we can perceive the isolating framework that imprisons much of the American psyche.
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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. 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. 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 an unconscious need to find safety within myself while balancing 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 to be like them. And for most of my life, I couldn’t get over my upbringing.
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Much of my early life was clouded by the traumatic influences that I experienced. I can never forget the dark feelings of abandonment as a four-year-old when I woke up from a nightmare and found no parents in our home, with the garage empty. I could not forget the pain of a belt whipping from my father from the ages of four through thirteen years of age. I could not forget the feelings of terror and confusion at being told that I was damned to an eternity in hell as a six and seven-year-old for not acting and speaking in a religiously acceptable manner. How can I forget the victimized, helpless feeling of being abused by school bullies, or my father publicly humiliating me at a baseball game when my errant pitches missed the mark? I can never forget the horror, as an eight-year-old boy, of watching my first dog get run over by a car. How about the confusion and distress I suffered as a seven-year-old when viewing my grandfather’s lifeless body? I remember the many years of tortured sleep and bed-wetting caused by nightmares. Perhaps the greatest trauma I experienced was the one I don’t remember when my parents placed the incessantly crying baby version of me into a car in our garage at night so that my work-a-holic father could get five hours of sleep. I do not wonder why I came to believe that my cries were not important, both as a child and then as an adult.
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Trauma is an umbrella term, and it covers an almost limitless variety of damaging responses within the mind and body of its victims to stressful events that humanity has utilized since the beginning of time. However, not everyone who has had a stressful event will have.
. traumatic wounding, all traumatic wounding has resulted from severely stressful events. Anyone who has been gaslit over a long period by a wayward parent or partner has been stressed and traumatized. Anyone who has been made wrong for the errant thoughts and actions of an unconscious abuser has been stressed and traumatized. Anyone who has been threatened with an eternity in hell for not believing a certain way has been stressed and traumatized. Anyone who has lived through a natural disaster has been stressed and traumatized.
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Trauma’s most damaging impact upon a human being is its capacity to attenuate, or even block, normal emotional expression and interchange with others. 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 often felt alone in the world.
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My belief and understanding are that we all suffer under traumatic influences caused by family, culture, or even Mother Nature Herself. 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. Some people experience trauma at home, in the school system, in a work setting, or in the external environment. Society is the greatest inflictor of trauma on the individual. For the most part, the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions have failed in their understanding of humanity and its basic, innermost need to be valued and listened to. And that’s caused some unnecessary pain and suffering.
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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 sabotaging myself through self-destructive lifestyle choices. And when I look around 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 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 no other way to describe lifestyle choices that don’t affirm their value as human beings.
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I made a conscious decision to try to kill myself on January 28, 1986. Of course, I didn’t succeed, but I have since spent considerable time looking back on that day and the events that led me to that decision. From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic, drug addict, and mentally ill human being, I lost most of my 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, which manifested through anxiety, loneliness, and poor self-esteem..
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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 50 percent say they’re lonely. Loneliness increases the risk of premature death by over 30%, according to the US Surgeon General Murthy. Research shows that Americans who have become less engaged with houses of worship, community organizations, and even their own family members in recent decades have steadily reported an increase in loneliness. The epidemic is hitting young people ages 15-24 especially hard, with many reporting a 70% drop in time spent with friends, which was accelerated by the COVID pandemic. 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 loneliness, and stress hormones wear out our systems and lead to other health problems that cause premature death.
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These personal experiences are part of the bigger picture of 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 they continue to diagnose and treat themselves for their stress, loneliness, and anxiety. Self-medication is dangerous behavior, and it’s 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 mental illness, religious fanaticism, rigid fundamentalism, drug addiction, and early death through many of my co-workers, friends, family members, acquaintances, and even myself. While I realized that much of my problems reside within me, I share a consciousness with this world that is damaged.
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How to Overcome Our Trauma
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The mythical story of Theseus and the Minotaur provides us with an allegorical sign that points in the direction of our healing potential. The Minotaur, according to the mythology, is the creative byproduct of the mating of our divine and animal nature, which is a great metaphor for the fragmented/divided human being who has both exiled his biological self, and his divinely feminine nature, before becoming integrated into wholeness through transformation and healing. Theseus had to travel deep into the labyrinth (the human mind) to confront, and defeat, the Minotaur (the fearful parts of our animal and feminine natures, and our lies, fears, traumas, and deep wounds that negatively impact our life). Yet, Theseus would not have had success had he not left a trail of string to follow back out of the labyrinth after the Minotaur’s defeat. Theseus left himself this clue or way to finally escape the clutches of a mind under the influence of its darker side. If we can become aware of the mistakes in perception that led us to each dead-end in life, that is certainly a thread or a clue, we now have to exit the maze. Those with an abusive husband, once they connect with why they stay in a self-destructive relationship, have a clue for their eventual exit from the maze. Those with a serious drug or alcohol problem have been given many clues, they just have not yet successfully struggled through the maze of their mind to find and slay the real beast that keeps them seeking intoxication to the point of their detriment.
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J.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy is a fantastic Middle Earth variation on the same theme, with the heroes Samwise and Frodo taking the Ring back to its source in Mordor. We must confront the dark tricksters and defeat and silence them, or we will remain controlled by them. It is our responsibility to find our freedom, and blaming others for our creations is a failed, though socially acceptable, solution.
Consciousness itself is the Garden of Eden, Adam, Eve, the Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Apple, God, the labyrinth, the Minotaur, the Emperor’s New Clothes, and the innocent boy calling out our lies. And, we are that Consciousness. All of these myths, legends, and stories play out within our minds, and the minds of others, while residing within the collective mind of mankind, which we all have access to, to mine for its treasures, or to be victimized by its structures of control over each unconscious individual.. Jesus of Nazareth clearly stated that humanity is the prodigal son, or that very unconsciousness itself.. We have strayed far from Eden, and we have feasted in the pig pen of an unevolved human experience.
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Yet, the journey back to our true nature or essence, though being the most difficult endeavor, is the most rewarding experience that life has to offer. If we commit to traveling upon new paths of consciousness, eventually Eden will reappear within our interior vision, and we won’t need to spin any more illusions of ourselves in vain attempts to capture the attention of others.
We can all return to our essence, to our original “Garden of Eden” state, but we had better have a clue. 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 we continue being dominated by our demons from the past.
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We are about to embark on a great adventure and journey into 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 they keep us safe while we uncouple from old pathways of misunderstanding and personal disease, until we redevelop our capacities to live by the power of our timeless, limitless, present moment self, with a new understanding of who, or what, we are in truth.
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Like almost everyone else on this planet, I have been subjected to the family and cultural forces of oppression and repression and crazy-making communication and behavior. Over the years, I have also become deeply disturbed by the developments within our shared world, within my consciousness, and the points of connection between self and others, through language, religion, and philosophy, that have created oppression, repression, and personal and social disease. Within myself, I have seen how a lifetime of oppression and repression has brought about self-destructive addictive cycles and suicidal ideation. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity, lived, moved, and became enshrined within my own heart and soul.
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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, “I want to get off of this fucking rock.” Since then, I’ve gone on 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, and what we can do, both individually and collectively, to seek and find healing from the wounding.
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A spiritual awakening process beginning in 1987 was the start of my exit from the chaotic mindset that characterized my life up to that point. I had to begin a search for my truth. Insight into myself gained through developing my own honest personal narrative was a huge, necessary step to take. That meant 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, I could start listening to myself and give what I was hearing value no matter how painful or terrifying the messages that were bubbling up within me.
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I had to make peace with the demons in my life, by not just seeing them as demons and tricksters, but as assistance. I had to reinterpret the darkness within my heart and soul and allow that darkness 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. And I was suffering because of it.
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My present life has become a Miracle Experiment in which I attempt to penetrate both individuals and our cultural conspiracy of silence. 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 and sustains. It is about developing the awareness that allows for us to live in harmony with ourselves, and with each other. It is about no longer ignoring, silencing, or neglecting important parts of ourselves that we felt forced to undertake while being victimized by traumatic influences. It is about bringing our disowned parts back together in a spiritual holism, where we can view life through a new lens of awareness no longer fragmented by unhealthy, self-protective choices made while being wounded. It is about bringing our biological, emotional, and spiritual selves into a harmonious unity of being.
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The deleterious effects of trauma are now recognized by many medical researchers and healers as blocks to good bodily health, while our psychiatric and mental health professionals recognize the nearly inescapable labyrinth that unhealed trauma creates within the minds of victimized people. The Miracle Experiment 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 the ensuing dualities, and instead perceiving the universe as an extension of our true nature through the avenues of our awareness. And ultimately, it’s about forgiving and letting go and learning to love ourselves and others more completely.
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The Miracle Experiment brings the understanding that every time 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 it creates new words, thoughts, and experiences around a new direction. By identifying my own internalized issues and being willing to heal from them, I could instead say, “I am no longer traveling old paths of consciousness.” Once I’m aware of the paths that no longer suit me, 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.
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The Profound Power of Telling Your Story
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The latest studies and understanding of trauma is that over ninety-five percent of its victims still are mute, and cannot speak of its debilitating experience. 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. 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 to others. And, the suicidally inclined person shares a common perception with nearly half of the United States population, which suffers under the immense weight of loneliness. Most Americans have not either sufficiently developed a personal narrative or have not created or joined a social network where their message could be recognized for its 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.
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For a long time, I did not have a very comprehensive life story or personal narrative. I usually had little to say in social or employment situations that others considered relevant. Personal shame and a sense of social inadequacy also helped to keep a gag in my mouth. Extrapolate those self-perceptions from the rest of our culture, and it is easier to understand the foundation behind our culture’s conspiracy of silence. These factors must be addressed successfully if we are to overcome our resistance to revealing ourselves to others and get our stories released to the world, where the energy of healing and compassion from others may finally be experienced.
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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 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.
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This is what is said in AA meetings: we share our experience, strength, and hope with those who still suffer with a hope that they can be encouraged by what we went through, grab on to our story, and then emulate it in their unique way to make it their own. When we have a story, we can help lift up that person who is one step below us, and then we have something to share that literally elevates them too. Because they’re looking for meaning, and they don’t know where to find it. But if they can be encouraged by somebody who has found it, that’s hope.
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Some people want to tell their stories but they don’t have the language for it. They haven’t developed the language of insight that gives them the capacity to speak what they’re feeling, what their life experience was, where they were hurt, and what they felt during the hurt. And, yeah, this is difficult. But we are intelligent, and achieving an even higher intelligence means developing the capacity to use the myriad of life experiences to create personal insight.
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I have looked at my traumatic wounding at the deepest level, experienced a total disillusionment with the lie of a life that comes with accommodating and normalizing trauma, and then reawakened to new possibilities for living. One method I took to facilitate healing was taking several photographs of my baby and early childhood self, trying to place myself emotionally back into those eras, and grieving my loss of innocence and healthy self-esteem during those early years. It was heartbreaking work, and the floodgates of tears opened up, threatening to drown me. Yet grief and unexpressed anger can help us let go of the old, familiar, lonely path of feeling ignored and unloved by the world. Without such freeing insight, we continue on the familiar paths of painful existence, where replication of errors of perception continues, suffering predominates, and the profane reigns supreme. As a general rule of healing, if we can see the problem completely, without self-deception, then that insight generates new pathways for the healing traveler to walk upon.
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In 2016, Sheila Hamilton, multiple Emmy-winning television reporter and 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 never understood what was going on with him. And she lamented the fact that David couldn’t tell his story.
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My wife has always encouraged me to speak up, and, with her, I always did. But I tended to sit on my voice in other settings. One of my dear friends, Marty, who was a member of the book club and has since deceased, also encouraged me to tell my story. That was when I started trying. And it wasn’t an easy 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. 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 tell, and it would die with me unless I found 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.
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I started revisiting my childhood experiences and piecing together the story of my life. I also started piecing together the story of my father’s life, which I knew from his narratives about his family and his sister’s memories. 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 incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his diseased parents. This can be particularly difficult for men. Men typically inflict their 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 the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. Women and children are usually victimized, as are 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.
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When I was writing about my search for truth, a time following my 1986 suicide attempt, I reentered the consciousness and the emotional experience of those most troubling times. I did not expect or anticipate this, and when I finished the work, I 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 over an hour away from home, and I found no relief. When I began to slow down and look for a place 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 turn around. In my mind, the dove symbolized 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 amazing forgiveness, love, and compassion for the past version of myself, a form of self-forgiveness that I had never experienced before. Can there be a greater gift to give oneself in this life?
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Your Life, Your Miracle Experiment
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My life’s lessons were not gained in a classroom or sitting at the feet of a guru. My experience and resulting wisdom come 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 trained to be a mail clerk, maintenance mechanic, electrician, computer engineer, and instrument and electronic technician. Life has trained me to be a psychologist, a philosopher, an anthropologist, an archeologist, and a spiritual explorer. Yet all of these descriptors point to the effects of one profound human quality—-curiosity! If we are truly curious about our life, we may find a supreme intelligence aligning with our own, giving us all of the support necessary for a happy, creative, healthy life.
In a world where healing and personal growth are paramount, I am excited to present this groundbreaking new book that offers transformative insights and tools for healing from trauma while finding enlightenment. 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. I hope that it accurately points in the direction of where our healing might be found. This book will be a failure if I have not encouraged another human beings to escape their repressive cycles and their oppression to finally speak their truth.
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It is time for all of humanity to also become experts in our own unique life experiences and understand the impacts of malicious and unskilled behavior upon all of us. It is time for humanity to just say no to being agents for the proliferation of traumatic wounding.
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Trauma and its wounding results in extreme contraction of our spirit. By being willing to face ourselves, and our grief, traumas, and suffering we can develop resilience that enhances our capacity to move more freely through our lives. To successfully address our traumas and dramas, we undertake the journey of self-discovery and empowerment, while learning practical tools and techniques that can facilitate healing and growth.
