June 22, 1987: A New Story (revisited)

June 22, 1987: The Architecture of an Awakening

Friends often say I’ve built a life that’s uniquely my own, a bit off the beaten path. It’s not filled with headlines, big awards, or the kind of dramatic twists you see in movies. Instead, it’s a patchwork of personal changes and growth, layered together in its own messy, meaningful way. This is the story I feel compelled to unearth—a complex tapestry of experiences, hard-won lessons, and blinding revelations, all woven tightly around the fulcrum of a single year: 1987. But to truly grasp the seismic nature of that year, I must first act as an archaeologist of my own history, dusting off the artifacts of the era before the awakening. My aim is not to curate a polished, linear memoir that gleams with false perfection, but to offer a raw, fragmented reflection—a mirror that honors the jagged twists and turns of a life actually lived.

The Era Before Awakening

My childhood resembled a dusty bookshelf, bookended by fleeting moments of quiet joy and vast, stretching silences of profound loneliness. Before 1965, I existed in a state of suspended isolation, feeling perpetually out of sync with the rhythms of the world beyond my family’s front door. I was the “small boy,” intellectually advanced but emotionally challenged, thrust into social settings that felt less like communities and more like battlegrounds. The playgrounds I navigated seemed designed not for connection or play, but for Darwinian survival.

When my social circle finally expanded after 1965, it was populated by those the world had largely disregarded—the “outcasts,” the dreamers, the rebels, the misunderstood souls living on the periphery. Though few in number, these friends became my first teachers in the curriculum of loyalty and radical acceptance. They taught me that value is not always visible to the naked eye.

During these formative years, books became my sanctuary, specifically the boundless frontiers of science fiction. In the pages of other worlds, I found a solace that this world refused to offer—a temporary escape from the crushing alienation of Earth. Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land was particularly alchemic. The protagonist’s revelation that “Thou Art God” planted a quiet, subversive seed of hope within my chest. It suggested that perhaps life—and even I, in my brokenness—could hold a spark of the divine. This idea became a psychic anchor, however fleeting, as I navigated the treacherous waters of early life.

Adolescence marked a definitive turning point, though it was a turn toward the dark. By the age of fifteen, I had fallen into the suffocating grip of drug and alcohol abuse. These substances provided a deceptive salve, a chemical numbing agent against the discomfort of intense anxiety and the hollow ache of self-doubt. They promised relief but delivered only distance, pulling me further away from my aspirations. At one point, I harbored dreams of escaping Earth entirely—either literally as an astronaut or metaphorically through some alchemical or psychological breach of reality. I wanted to break the glass of this flawed world and step into something purer.

Despite the chaos roiling in my inner life, I maintained a façade of academic excellence, fueled by a desperate belief that science and intellect were the vehicles that would deliver me from my discontent. I crushed standardized tests, clinched a scholarship with the University of Portland and the US Air Force, and secured a coveted spot in the Air Force ROTC program. But the architecture of my life was built on sand. A broken love relationship—mirroring the turbulence within me—derailed everything. The collapse was total. I abandoned my dreams of reaching the stars and plummeted back to a hard, unforgiving reality.

The Descent

In the epoch of my life prior to 1987, I inhabited a highly dysfunctional reality. I was hopelessly addicted from the starting gate, possessed by a grim fatalism. I knew with chilling certainty that I would either die an active alcoholic and addict, or I would take my own life by age thirty if the disease had not yet claimed me. What I did not know—what I could not possibly conceive—was what might happen if I survived. I had no map for recovery, no reference point for a life lived without chemical crutches. I had made no preparations for living, only for dying. I lacked the adequate language to describe any hope for a sober existence, save for the simplest, vaguest terms.

Even as my life spiraled into the abyss, a part of me—perhaps that seed planted by Heinlein—searched earnestly for meaning, particularly through spirituality. My relationship with American Christianity was rocky, a landscape of jagged peaks and valleys. I had attended Sunday school as a child but found its teachings unsatisfying, brittle, and incomplete. Its core premise of humanity’s inherent sinfulness never resonated with my soul’s deeper, ancient longing for unity.

Every time I managed to cobble together a few weeks of sobriety—which happened perhaps four times during my entire sixteen-year addictive cycle—I revisited Christianity, hoping to find the “missing piece” I had overlooked during earlier forays. Yet each encounter left me spiritually malnourished, chewing on dry dogma when I craved living water. It wasn’t until 1987 that I began to discover a path that felt authentic—one that extended beyond the rigid walls of dogma and embraced a broader, more luminous perspective of divinity, love, and self-realization.

The Climb to Larch Mountain

The year 1987 stands as the monolith in my timeline. After years of addiction and internal turmoil, I reached a fracture point that forced a confrontation with my own existence. Through a fragile newfound sobriety and rigorous self-discovery, I began to peel back the layers of my pain and societal conditioning like an onion.

On June 22, 1987, driven by an instinct I couldn’t name, I embarked on a pilgrimage to Larch Mountain. This sacred peak, steeped in the reverence of indigenous traditions and the ghosts of my ancestors, stands as a sentinel overlooking the Columbia River valley. It offers panoramic, cathedral-like views of the majestic volcanic peaks of the Pacific Northwest: Mt. Rainier, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, and Mt. Jefferson. I sought solace here, grappling with the echoing ghosts of my past and holding onto a fragile hope for healing my fractured mind and body. I had been sober for three months, but the deep wounds of addiction—severe neurological damage, mental distress, and a trembling spirit—lingered like smoke after a fire.

As I stood atop this natural observatory, encircled by the silent testimonies of these ancient mountains, a light breeze carried the aroma of pine to my senses. It felt like a cleansing rite. I bypassed the safety of the observation deck’s guardrail, seeking a secluded spot hidden from the prying eyes of the world, where I could commune directly with the spirit of the landscape.

First, I turned my attention outward, letting the profound, crushing beauty of my surroundings saturate my awareness. Then, I turned inward, attempting the Herculean task of stilling the ceaseless chatter of my mind. The voices—those relentless, critical narrators I had lived with for so long, describing my every action with mechanical detachment—began to falter in this sanctuary of nature.

Something extraordinary unfolded as I attempted to pray and meditate—an activity that had always been arduous for me. For the first time in my life, the boundaries dissolved. I felt as though I was physically melting into the natural world. The agonizing separation I had always felt—from life, from others, from God—began to vanish like mist in the morning sun. Suddenly, everything—myself, the granite beneath me, the rushing river below, the endless sky—was one continuous, unbroken field of existence. An ineffable warmth began to flow through my veins, richer and more intimate than anything I had ever known. It was an overwhelming presence that quelled the mental noise and filled the silence with unmistakable clarity.

Then came the voice. It was not the detached, schizophrenic commentary of my inner turmoil, but a steady, calm declaration rising from the bedrock of my consciousness.

“He is having an experience with God.“

These words were not spoken aloud, yet they resonated within the marrow of my bones as an undeniable truth. And with that utterance, the irritating, stubbornly persistent third-person perspective that had plagued me during my descent into chemical madness—the “voices” of chemically induced schizophrenia—vanished. I had begun to despair that the voices would never leave, even after sobriety. I had been plagued by Parkinson’s-like tremors that rolled over my body like tidal waves.

But in that moment, a veil lifted. The tremors ceased. The voices fell silent.

The Veil Lifts: A New Reality

“The world is new to every soul when Christ has entered in” — East Clerestory in Stanford University’s Memorial Church.

On that mountain, I underwent a spiritual event apparently reserved for a microscopic percentage of human beings. It was overwhelming in its totality. I was overpowered by a tidal wave of love and insight, an energy that “announced” itself as the same essence that Jesus of Nazareth embodied. In my shock and ignorance, I initially feared my insanity had completely taken over. I worried that my mind had finally snapped. Yet, paradoxically, I was being healed of tremendous neurological damage. I was granted a capacity to “see” spiritually that was truly phenomenal. This was nothing short of a miraculous biological and spiritual restoration.

It was so new, so apocalyptic in the truest sense of the word (an “unveiling”), that I briefly thought Jesus himself had “walked into” my consciousness, evicting the old Bruce and replacing me with something far transcending human experience.

This was a new reality that revealed nothing but connection, unity, and love. The mountains were not distant objects of scenery; they were extensions of my own body. The river below did not wind away from me; it flowed through me. For the first time, my mind was quiet. The tremors in my hands and body were gone.

Peace enveloped me fully.

This realization was not merely visual or intellectual; it was experiential, rooted in the ontological essence of being itself. The artificial boundaries of “self” and “other” dissolved. I saw with startling clarity that all of humanity was my family, each person a thread in the great tapestry of life that I was also woven into. Love, which had always felt conditional—tainted by expectations, hurt, transaction, or judgment—now radiated freely and unreservedly. This love extended even to those who had wronged me, those I thought I could never forgive. It was as if God had handed me a lens of boundless compassion and asked me to look through it.

For those timeless moments, I touched eternity. I witnessed a life where suffering could not cling, where healing meant more than sobriety or restored health—it meant awakening. Recovery was no longer confined to the abstinence from drugs or alcohol; it was the radical act of learning to live devoid of hard boundaries, free from the mental constructs that separate us from the divine. It was about wholeheartedly loving the world, in all its jagged imperfections.

The Return to the Valley

Descending from that peak was a re-entry into the atmosphere of the mundane. I carried this transformation back to the structured chaos of human life like a fragile ember. Through small gestures—seeking forgiveness, expressing gratitude, reconnecting with community—I strived to embody the vision granted to me on Larch Mountain. I looked not only for “my people” but for ways to extend that peace outward, to offer it to others, even if only in fleeting moments.

True healing, I realized, is not about perfection or the permanent escape from pain. It is about presence. It is the discipline of remaining open to the profound truth that we are deeply interconnected to one another, to the Earth, and to the Source. Moments like the one I had atop Larch Mountain serve as reminders that within every chaotic mind, within every fractured soul, lies the dormant potential for transcendence.

As the days turned into weeks, months, and years, the realization solidified: I had been transformed, recreated in the image and likeness of God. Jesus was not the distant deity religion had painted, but an enlightened sibling, a prototype for what all human beings could become.

I realized I didn’t have to travel to the underworld again to find truth, or to desperately search for someone who might listen to me.

“WHERE ARE MY PEOPLE?” became the question of my day.

I hiked the short distance back down to my car and drove toward Portland, leaving the physical sanctuary of Larch Mountain but carrying its essence within me. I felt guided, pulled by an invisible thread, to go to NE 73rd and Glisan, where the US Postal Service’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) was based. I had unceremoniously called in sick after the Fourth of July holiday in 1985 after working there for nearly ten years. My employer had required that I be clean and sober, and I had failed miserably in two hospitalized recovery programs. I had departed in shame, a ghost of an employee.

I walked through the door and was greeted by Larry and Mike. Mike had visited me in the Care Unit three years prior, and Larry had been the director of the EAP for as long as I could remember. I called out to them by name, yet neither man immediately recognized me. The husk of the man they knew was gone. When I stated my name, they were stunned. I was happy—more precisely, ebullient—and Mike remarked that I was simply radiant. They wanted to know what was happening. I stated, with a matter-of-fact attitude, that I was having a spiritual experience. They both embraced me, acknowledging the miracle standing in their office.

Inspired by this reception, I went to the Main Post Office and checked in with the Personnel Department. Eleanor Workman, the head of the department, immediately recognized me and offered me an application to reapply for my “lost” position.

“No thank you, Eleanor,” I said gently. “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 likely get the job back since the Post Office knew they had fired me while I was still a practicing alcoholic. I told her that what would make me happiest was a meeting between me and the head of Plant Maintenance, John Zimpleman.

He was in. I went right up. I had a direct opportunity to make amends to him for my poor performance from 1980 to 1985. He greeted me warmly, listened to my story, and was quite impressed. Then, in a moment of vulnerability, he stated that he wished his son could discover what I had found, because John Jr. was rapidly descending to my former level. That day of amends went so well that I remained ecstatic about all future interpersonal possibilities.

One day that next week, while visiting the world-famous Powell’s City of Books on Burnside, I spotted my old psychiatrist, Dr. Dan Beavers, standing in the metaphysical section. I walked up to him. He did not recognize me. I extended my hand and re-introduced myself.

“Bruce, this can’t be you, can it?” he stammered. “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 replied. “I never used it, at least not in the way you intended. 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 hugged Dr. Dan and apologized for using him as a tool to manipulate my former employer. He insisted I didn’t need to make amends, that he was there to serve my needs, dysfunctional or otherwise. But it felt good to show him my healthier sense of self. I never saw Dr. Dan again. When I read his obituary in 2015, I felt great sorrow and wept for the man who had tried to help the ghost I used to be.

In the continued interest of “finding my people,” I attended the International New Thought Alliance (INTA) Conference in Portland in August of 1987. I was most interested in seeing Jack Boland, the recovering alcoholic who had started a “Super Church” in Minnesota with over 5,000 members. He had a following of hundreds of thousands of recovering people worldwide. His approach to spirituality, sobriety, and healing was universal. Integrating into this new community was a fascinating immersion into a group energy I had never experienced. I was high on life—truly, spiritually high.

I witnessed a group of over 1,000 people warmly embrace the musical group Alliance, starring Jerry Florence. They were a group of gay men who all had HIV/AIDS. Having recently left the “evil” Hinson Baptist Church where gays were bashed regularly from the pulpit, this acceptance was like oxygen to a drowning man, even though I had no homosexual tendencies myself. The tenderness I felt toward Jerry Florence and the men of Alliance lives in me today. I still weep for the suffering of all people who have been judged as unworthy or simply ignored.

With my exit from Portland’s underworld community in 1987 and my departure from drug-induced insanity, a new world waited to reveal itself. But it did not simply reach out, grab me by the hand, and lead me down the path to recovery. It would be a mistake to assume I was totally conscious of the direction I was heading. It is only in retrospect, looking through the rearview mirror of time, that a rational narrative can be developed.

As I moved forward spiritually in the spring and summer of 1987, I was a novice on the path of transformation. I had left my old life behind and was completely open to the experience of spiritual mastery. Beginning in April, I developed a rigorous meditation practice, eschewing committed relationships to deepen my focus. I remained excited about the possibilities for my life. As of May 24th, I had finally made conscious contact with a mysterious, love-infused Higher Power that was revealed through a vision. That profound experience brought a minor, though temporary, healing of my body and mind, and for about one week, its love energy permeated my being, though it did not heal me of the tremors or the extra internal voices. I felt like I was swimming in a sea of new meaning, though I had not yet spiritually connected the dots or consciously started rebuilding my new self.

All I knew was that after I made continuous conscious contact with this unique power on June 22nd, my old life began to evaporate. I had the ability to describe the world I had left behind, but I had no language to describe the new world I was entering. I had never felt like an accepted part of the outside world, so finding my new people and my new language were vital endeavors.

This desire for loving integration into the wholeness of life had arisen several years before, when I yearned for peace during the troubled final years of my first marriage and my wife’s disabling disease. While addicted and supporting a profoundly mentally ill person, I could not fulfill the conditions for peace.

The transformation was years in the making, but when it appeared, I was no longer tormented by social insecurities or disconnection. Somehow, I had released the controls of my old, wounded ego. A new order revealed itself moment to moment. At times, I felt like a guided missile, never knowing the destination but trusting that whatever had launched this new life would guide me to the right place at the right time.

I still had memories of my former life, yet they no longer informed my daily thoughts, decisions, or outlook. I did not know who the “New Me” was, though I always had a smile and felt continuous joy. I experienced a series of spiritual upheavals that defied my rational mind, and I lacked the words to contain the experience for many years. It was as if a new pilot had landed in my consciousness; the old me had died, and now I was informed by a powerful force of peace, silence, and Love itself.

Before 1987, my mind was a crowded room filled with fragments of other people’s ideas about me and my own unique miscreations. Yet, by June of 1987, that committee had permanently adjourned. There was only one peaceful presence, a new ordering principle for my consciousness.

Not only did I lack the language for this new story, but the small story I did begin to tell did not necessarily meet with a friendly reception. When I shared my experience, I was often met with silent stares, quick subject changes, suggestions to attend church dogma classes, or general disinterest. A friend from a men’s group claimed I was a “walk-in”—a term describing a soul that takes over a body after the original ego departs.

My family still viewed me through the lens of the past. My history had created great scars on their psyches. But they could appreciate that the new me no longer required their worry. I was now an independent, upright, fairly conscious human being. I made healthy choices in relationships and chose a fulfilling career to replace the wreckage of my past. I was a boy again, learning the ropes, meeting friends, discovering possibilities, and sipping from the inner healing springs of a Miracle.

This new being, this “Bruce 2.0” who appeared in the summer of 1987, was like the miracle children I had outwardly envied, but inwardly doubted, those special kids who supposedly heard God talking to them. From June 1987 until I met my wife Sharon in August 1989, I spent over six hours a day in prayer and meditation. I experienced blessed states almost continuously. I felt the deep silence of God, being taught on the inner spiritual plane about aspects of life and consciousness I had no other way to know. This was not a Christian God, or a Jewish God, or the Buddha Mind, but those names pointed to the new reality I had accessed.

His Master’s Voice: The Challenge of Communication

We all have access to the inner wisdom of a master spiritual teacher, yet “the master” lies mostly ignored in the recesses of our hearts. I was given a blank slate to write my new self upon, a new possibility for being in this world, aided by this connection to my own wisdom. The world I once wanted to flee was now paradise on Earth. Heaven was not a future concept but a living reality for the present moment. But I could not carry the old me into that world. I had to leave all my verbal and non-verbal baggage behind to stay in tune with the new Spiritual music.

Those who touch the Infinite struggle to relate the ineffability of the experience. The universe of Spirit defies rationality, though it will eventually speak intelligently through the healed human mind. First, the mind must be prepared, then willing to communicate, no matter the struggle. If the mind is overburdened by education, religious inculcation, or rigid knowledge, the Infinite will speak through distorted measures of reality, creating illusion and delusion.

I have noted that those who have dramatic spiritual experiences often become poor communicators initially. This lack of articulateness is common for years following such an upheaval. Those with strong religious backgrounds try to use that system’s language to interpret their unique opening. Those without such a background search historical literature to see what others have written. They attempt to use language others might understand, but unless the listener has also been struck by spiritual lightning, the search for an enlightened peer group is often unsuccessful. Some give up on communicating. Others, their minds irreparably damaged by the voltage of the experience, behave in ways that look like insanity.

I did not have the capacity to communicate what I was experiencing for many years after 1987. I would refer to my rebirth and talk of the old me with those interested, especially in Alcoholics Anonymous. People who met me after my rebirth could not believe I was ever addicted or dysfunctional. I learned not to wave the recovery flag at every new person, giving them a chance to know me for who I was, not who I had been.

My movement through these new relationships helped define the new me. I learned how I now related to others and how I loved unconditionally. All of humanity became my sibling in this new reality. My lifelong sense of dreadful separation was lifted. I set out to find my people and see where I fit into the new world order revealing itself within my heart. In my naiveté, I assumed most others came by this understanding naturally, and that I was finally catching up with the “normal folks”—the ones who never considered suicide or addiction.

Integration and The Butterfly

Eventually, I became active in the outdoors again through hiking and backpacking. I resumed cycling with Cycle Oregon. I learned tennis and excelled in road and trail racing as a masters-level runner. I competed on championship-level teams in the Hood To Coast and Rainier To Pacific races. I was able to have a “redo” of my life, experiencing success and failure based on my own decisions, gleaning wisdom from life rather than hating myself for its teachings. The new life was fertile ground for learning.

This life also provided the language I needed to communicate what I had experienced on the inner plane. It began to provide the language to describe the foundational consciousness that predisposes our world to dysfunctional behavior. I was not to get the full message until much later, but having allowed myself to return to the world, I gained insight into the matrix of collective human misunderstanding.

I had no inclination to describe the “light” as mystics and poets do. That path of via positiva was futile for me. My path was via transformativa and via negativa—the path witnessed AFTER insight into the debris field of human consciousness is perceived, healed, and cleared.

What is left after the garbage is cleared? It is similar to the metamorphosis that brings the butterfly from the caterpillar. If the butterfly could talk, I assume it would speak of its new freedom and flight, rather than its past life sliding over the dirt. Yet, the butterfly arose from a world of ground dwellers. That is where its past stories were created.

Imagine that butterfly going back to tell his caterpillar friends about the potential for a new life. What might the “ground dwellers” say?

“Get lost, you were never one of us anyway.”

“It must be nice for you to fly, but it’s not for me right now.”

“Have you heard about the tasty leaves that parsley plant has?”

These are responses from those who find change threatening, unnecessary, or impossible. But spiritual freedom means letting go of limitations. New life is available to all. I won’t devote too many words to that. I am not a poet, and I don’t need to draw a large audience of “seeker moths” blindly following the latest human light. The light is best experienced personally and non-verbally. The word will forever remain a shadow cast by the light, trying to define the undefinable. Yet, if the heart is in the right place, the words will resonate with the energies pointing to healing.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Can You Hear Me Now?

When I attempt to tell my story, I have learned to turn the volume up, especially in areas where I need to hear myself the most. Just because I listen to myself does not guarantee that others, conditioned to ignore me, will pay attention. Sometimes, a bird sings in the forest even when no other birds listen. The real miracle is not that others listen to us; it is that we are finally singing, and listening to ourselves.

Can you hear me now?

Can I hear me now?

It has been a great adventure living this life. It has been a fulfillment to live long enough to become articulate enough to put my unique experience into words. I attempt to bring into the verbal universe my extended journey into the mystery of human consciousness, its infinite possibilities, and its corruption.

Finding my unique story, and the supportive silence underneath it, is the journey of my salvation—the hero’s journey toward healing and integrity.

What is “reality” and who am I?

Watch out, for more stories are always forming around those questions!

I am what I am, but I am not what I seem.

We all need a bigger story.

We all need more heart and healing.

We all need each other to make our stories complete.

All that I see, and will ever see, unto eternity, is myself.

How will I see myself today?