In the continued interest of “finding my people”, I attend the INTA Conference in Portland In August of 1987 (International New Thought Alliance). The person that I was most interested in seeing was Jack Boland, the recovering alcoholic who had started a SUPER CHURCH in Minnesota, with well over 5000 members. He also had a following of many hundreds of thousands of recovering people worldwide, as his approach to spirituality, sobriety, and healing was pretty universal. The integration into this new community was a fascinating immersion into a group energy that I had never experienced before. I WAS SO HIGH THERE!!!
I got to see firsthand a group of well over 1000 people warmly embrace the musical group Alliance, which starred Jerry Florence. They had some hits in the 1980’s, and they were a group of gay men who all had HIV’/AIDS. Having recently left that “evil” Hinson Baptist Church where gays were bashed regularly, this was like a breath of life to a drowning man, even though I had no homosexual tendencies. The tenderness that I felt towards Jerry Florence and the group of men that constituted Alliance still lives in me today, and I still have tears today for the suffering of all people who have been judged as unworthy or just plain ignored.
Marsha (Masha) Feldman is a beautiful Jewish woman, of Russian descent, who sat directly across the aisle from me at the Jack Boland talk. For some reason she came over to ME after Jack’s talk, and began a friendship with me that was to last for over one year. She had lived quite the life, hanging out with many of the most beautiful people that Portland, Oregon had to offer. She had hung around rich men with their fancy cars, homes, and clothing. She had told me that she spent much time with weight lifting men, many of whom worshiped their own bodies. Some were bi-sexual, and she was a little concerned that she might have made contact with the AIDS virus. She was suffering from an unspecified auto-immune deficiency, and she would not tell me what it was. She was a princess of sorts, and expected to be treated that way. Why she latched onto me is anybody’s guess, but I am sure that there was an underlying spiritual reason for this connection.
Masha was troubled and had recently visited her rabbi for some support. Her rabbi had informed her, in the interests of her own personal happiness and sense of well-being, that she should give up on understanding “GOD”, and to instead pursue more ‘grounded’ approaches to her physical and emotional health and welfare. She certainly had the physical aspect mastered, as she worked out daily, and kept her physical energy and beautiful appearance at as high of a level as possible.
The International New Thought Alliance conference of 1987 was part of her higher involvement in the social activities of her community, both inside and outside the Jewish culture. We traveled all over Portland together, visiting various recovery and spiritual groups for the first time together. We delighted in discussing with each other all manners of healing and methodologies for achieving higher spiritual experience. Hey, it felt wonderful to have a new friend on my spiritual journey. As a direct result of this connection, we visited the YWCA of Portland, on 10th avenue. Every Sunday there was a tape group meeting hosted by Marie Schmidt, a student of Joel Goldsmith, the creator of the healing movement “The Infinite Way”. Since Masha was Jewish too, like Joel, she had an immediate connection, though it did not last long for her. I continued with the Infinite Way for several years afterward (and I still practice some of their principles today).
As I moved forward spiritually in that great summer of 1987, I was still quite new to the path of healing and transformation. I had left my old life behind, and I was open to the experience of spiritual connection, and mastery. I had developed quite a meditation practice, eschewing committed relationships with others in order to develop a deeper spiritual practice. I remained excited about the possibilities for my life, as I had finally made “conscious contact with the God of my understanding”. I had recently experienced dramatic, if not miraculous, healing of my body and my mind, and a new energy permeated my being. I felt like I was finally “swimming in the sea of meaning”, though I still had not “connected the dots”, or started consciously rebuilding the new self. But, I could have never anticipated the experience I was about to have, on this particular day, July 21, 1987.
“Master Teacher of the Light, Master Teacher of the Light” I repeated within myself several times during an evening meditation, which is a mantra that I had developed to aid my focus for my meditation practice. I was meditating several hours a day, and though my life was bearing fruit from previous connections with the Spirit, I remained driven to find deeper and deeper layers of meaning, and experience of my true nature and being. Well, this meditation was to become Truth’s “bell ringer” for me. Without warning, I was lifted from my body awareness, and I then had a sense that I now had a decision to make. It was like I was driving an automobile, and I realized that I could continue steering, and heading in my usual direction for life, or I could “let go of the controls” and experience something totally different and unique.
I released the “steering wheel” of my mind, and my conditioning, and there was an exhilarating inner “rush” whereby I was totally released from myself and my burdens, and my body! My essence traveled into a great unknown, neither “light or dark”, and it was like I passed through some sort of great matrix of information/being. I had entered into a dimension of experience where infinite interconnected structures of alive and intelligent energy were manifest. I did not recognize what I was witnessing, nor do I have the words to adequately represent this “web”. Later, I was to learn that this matrix was the very collective consciousness of mankind, with all of its intelligence, and its stupidity. I quickly flashed by what was, at this point in my life, that unrecognizable and unnameable energy, and began almost a half spiral downward, where I came to a place of complete “darkness”, or emptiness. I felt totally at home here. I felt as if I was in the womb of all creation. It felt like it held everything in the universe, yet there was nothing at all to witness here.
Almost immediately, a “laughing, happy voice” seemed to be speaking to me, or, more precisely, through me, in this “secret place of the most high”. Messages floated through, like “No teacher shall effect salvation, each must work it out for themselves”, and, “think no thoughts”, with “Follow new paths of consciousness”, And then, a mathematical formula for re-entry back into the great unknown was given to me. It was a differential equation that I could understand, and which stated (in layman’s terms) that with the total elimination of the movement of time based thought, the direct perception of reality was possible. The limit, as delta T goes to zero (T is thought as a function of time), divided by delta t (t is time itself), delta is the “change in”, or as lim dT/dt, as dt approaches zero, and T=f(t). The solution of this equation is the great unknown, INFINITY, or that which I sought. The difference between spiritual “being” and human “becoming” took on mathematical and spiritual significance for me on the deepest level.
The final messages, however, were the one most difficult to reconcile within my life, and the ones which sometimes were troubling. First, there is this component: “YOU CAN’T BE REAL”. When it was stated, it was stated through me, with a joyful, laughing voice, yet when I re-entered my normal way of being, it became an almost threatening statement, and one that continued to challenge myself, and my ego daily for quite some time. And yet, to see again, as God, or Truth, sees, I must be mastered by this truth. The ego is the sum total of all of my judgments, the sum total of my human experience, my acculturation, my conditioning, my “separation from God, Love, my fellow man, and Truth”. The ego looks out from itself, and sees everything, and everyone, as if they are separate from its self, while totally failing to see that “all that it ever sees, unto eternity, is itself”. There really does not exist the “you” that I have formed, my perception of “you” is an incomplete mental creation that only exists in my mind (and which may or may not be shared by others, and most certainly is NOT shared by you).
Once again, the human race tends to confuse the verbal description (or mental image) of the person with the actual experience of the person, who, regardless of appearances, is infinitely more complex, and worthy of love and acceptance, than the human mind can readily accept. Yes, my ego is the sum total of all of my time based thoughts about time based behaviors of myself, and others. If I want to see clearly, I must accept that my main mode of viewing the world was through the ego’s eyes of unreality. To die to this mode of living is to truly be reborn of the spirit. WOW!! That was too much to digest in that moment, in that year of 1987, and for quite a period to follow. But, this is a true path of humility, to finally see in its totality the shortcomings of the human mind, and to become willing to go beyond it.
Lastly, a most confusing revelation came, as well. I could see the field of energy that constituted my “body/mind awareness”. I saw embedded in it two almost complete thought forms, or identity forms, which I recognized as two distinct “entities”. Yes, I had two ‘extras’ attached to my field, and they were not there for my greater good, for sure. I came to regard these two unwelcome components to my life force as “tricksters”, though I noted that their presence seemed to allay the feelings of loneliness of my ego, perhaps only because they seemed vaguely familiar to me. I sensed that I was supposed to let go of these “illusions of self”, but I did not know what to do.
The two extra identity vortices in the ‘human energy field matrix’ that constituted my conscious sense of self did not really ever disappear, they just became unconscious again, for me. Little did I know that they were to become the most critical components to understand in my desire to form a better ongoing human/spiritual experience. I now understood the basis for the potential for the development of “multiple personalities disorder”. I saw how the whole human race suffered from this disorder, to varying degrees. Schizophrenia, oppression of others, repression of self and feelings, passive/aggressive behavior, people pleasing, prejudice, racism, misogyny and the like all shared a common foundation. I had no one to discuss this earth shattering spiritual event with, save one person, Masha.
It was all so fresh and new to me and I was not the best communicator around the experience, but Masha was an amazing listener, and such a good friend, that we struggled through the teachings together. We talked endlessly about our ‘spiritual experiences’, discussed the enlightened ‘masters’ of the day, traveled and explored through the Columbia Gorge together, attended recovery meetings, slept under the stars together, slept in her apartment together, yet we never made love, as I was not to be her “prince charming”, as she related to me fairly early on. I continued to see Masha as an extension of my ‘search for truth’ process where I remained celibate, so I was not too disturbed for that to continue (for most of my life, sex had not been all that satisfying for me). Yes, this was yet another rejection of me on a pretty basic level, but I was relatively unaffected by it. This rejection did not darken my life because of all of the other light that was being let in.
One evening while sleeping on her futon with her, I happened to reach down, inadvertently, between the cushions supporting our bodies and the armrest, and my hand came down around some sort of big, rubbery object. In the dark, while Masha still slept, I pulled the object from the crevice, and almost fainted. Masha was a very petite blond woman, who had never born children. Yet I had found a mechanical friend of such dimensions that I was in amazement that this weapon was used to pleasure herself with. I replaced the tool where I had found it, and tried to keep sex off of my mind. I never told her I had met her “secret friend”.
We continued to hang out together, and spent lots of quality time with each other in platonic, yet blissfully loving, situations in various settings around our area. Two of our favorite areas to visit were in Mosier, near the Tom McCall overlook at the Columbia River, and Washington Park, near her apartment in southwest Portland. I continued to struggle to make sense of the three spiritual upheavals, or revelations, that happened over the period of May 24 through July 21, 1987, and attempted to understand other available teachings.
In retrospect, ever since I could remember I longed for a way “to get off of this rock”. My life prior to drug addiction was quite lonely at times, but, occasionally, it was also happy. Reading fictional books, especially science fiction, enabled me to take vacations from a world that never seemed to quite accept me. One of my favorite SF books was Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, which I read as a twelve year old boy. In this book, the main character, Michael Valentine Smith, is adopted by Martians after the death of all Earthlings except for baby Michael on a Mars mission. Michael learns from the Martians, who end up raising Michael, that all, ultimately, is God. When Michael proclaimed to Earth’s inhabitants after returning to his parent’s planet that “Thou Art God” I had my first ever feeling of God being present in life, in MY LIFE. I read that book over and over again, as it gave me so much hope, but the hope, with its concurrent “God chills” or horripilations, were ephemeral, and did not last long after each reading of the appropriate passages in the book. It was with this book that the seed was planted for the idea that the search for God may well be my ticket out of my loneliness and misery, and that the search must somehow end within myself..
I never completely accepted the outer world, as it was populated by men affected by what I now know as Toxic Masculinity or Patriarchy, with a lot of indifferent or unkind people, and many bullies of all ages. I was not equipped to successfully deal with many of those interpersonal challenges. OK, as far as I could tell back then, we were all “Godless people”, including the church goers. The thought of becoming an astronaut, and traveling through space far away from this planet, motivated me to excel in school, in both mathematics and science. I saw scholastic excellence as my ticket to get free from my “social dis-ease”, and my sense of disengagement from the resident aliens who also shared planet Earth with me.
In the era of my life from 1971 to 1987, roughly concurrent with the time that I was in relationship with my first wife, I led a highly dysfunctional life, becoming addicted to alcohol and drugs by age 15. As previously expounded upon, I was hopelessly addicted from the start, and I knew that I would either die an alcoholic/addict, or I would kill myself by age 30, if I had not recovered from my affliction.
With all that I have previously written about the time beginning with recovery from addiction and alcoholism , it might appear that I was totally conscious about what was going on, and the direction that I was headed from 1987 forward . Nothing could be further from the truth! All that I knew was that after I made “conscious contact with the God of my present understanding”, my old life just “disappeared”. This just did not appear out of nowhere, however, as the transformation was many, many years in the making. I was no longer tormented by my social insecurities, or my feeling of disconnection from God, my fellow-man, or from the plants and animals that grace this beautiful planet that we share. Somehow, I had “let go of the controls” of my old ego state of mind, and a new order started revealing itself, from moment to moment. At times I felt like a “guided missile”, never knowing the destination for my life, but trusting whatever it was that had launched my new life into existence would get me to the right place at the right time..
I still had memories of my former life, yet they no longer informed my day-to-day thoughts, my decisions, or my overall outlook on life and love. I did not know who the “new me” was. I had no language to describe it to myself, or to others. I had a series of spiritual upheavals which defied my rational mind, and I did not have the words to describe or contain the experience for many years to follow. It was as if a new person had landed in my consciousness, the “old me” had died, and now I was informed, moment to moment, by a powerful force of peace or silence, or Love itself. Before 1987, there were “many people with their disfiguring concepts” roaming around in my mind, but now the “committee of many” had permanently adjourned, and there was only one peaceful presence, a new ordering principle for my consciousness. A friend from a men’s group who I met in 1992 claimed that I was a “walk-in”, a term used to describe when the old ego departs a body, to be replaced by a new being.
I have read about and heard from a few parents that their young children were so close to God, that when they first learned to talk, they would tell their parents about talking directly with God, or hearing God talk to them (or Jesus, or whatever their cultural background would predispose them to refer to). I did not have that experience as a youth, and, in fact, I was so far from that experience that I could not fathom the possibility of such a “miracle”. I was the boy who had horrible nightmares nightly from the very earliest of ages, and I would be cast out of our home to the garage at night when I was a baby, because I cried almost non-stop, and my crying kept my father from sleeping. Yes, I was wrapped in a warm blanket, and kept in the car in the garage, so there is the beginning of my sad, “Godless” life experience. There was nothing “heavenly” about my birth or early childhood, and, in fact, I was on the opposite end of the peace spectrum from those other lucky, divinely blessed children. Attachment theory advocates would have a field day with this aspect of my story, for sure!
This new being, this upgraded Bruce 2.0, which appeared in the summer of 1987, was like those miracle babies and children that I had always envied, and doubted. During most of the time after June of 1987, I spent over six hours a day in prayer and meditation, and probably as a result experienced blessed states on an almost continuous basis. I now “heard and felt” God, and I was taught on the inner spiritual plane about aspects of life, and consciousness, that I had no way to learn or know about otherwise. This was not a “Christian” God, or a “Jewish” God, or the Buddha Mind, or “Christ Consciousness”, but those names certainly pointed to the new reality that I had somehow accessed, and been dramatically changed by. As hard as it is for me to write about this now, or, understandably, for the reader to believe this story, I was taught by the “Master Teacher”, whoever, or whatever, that might be. And, I was given a new blank slate to write my new self upon, a new possibility for living, and being, in this world. The world that I once wanted to depart from so badly, was now paradise on Earth, and I knew that Heaven was not a concept for the future, but a living reality only for the present moment. But, I could not carry the “old me” into that world, I had to leave ALL of my verbal and non-verbal memory possessions behind, so to speak, to stay in tune with the new Spiritual music.
I did not have the capacity to communicate with others what I was experiencing, for many years after 1987. I would refer to my “rebirth”, and talk of the “old me” with those who were interested, especially in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. The people who met me after my rebirth could not believe that I was ever addicted or dysfunctional in self-destructive or other-destructive ways, and I learned to not wave that recovery flag at every new person I met, so that they could have an honest chance of knowing me for who I now was, rather than who I might have been long ago. It was my movement through all of these new relationships which helped to define for me the “new me”, who I was now, how I now related to and appreciated others, and how I now loved unconditionally most everyone that I met. Yes, all of humanity became my brother or sister in this new reality, and my lifelong sense of dreadful separation from others had been lifted. I then set out to find “my people” and find out where I might fit into the new world order that was revealing itself within my mind and heart. In my naiveté, I assumed that most others naturally came by this understanding, and that I was finally catching up, spiritually, with the “normal folks”, the folks that never were so unhappy as to consider alcoholism, drug addiction, and/or suicide for themselves.
Of course, my family still saw me in terms of the past, for the most part, as my history created great scars on the psyche of fellow family members, as well as the friends and acquaintances of my years prior to recovery. But, they could appreciate that the “new me” no longer required their extra concern or care, as I was now an independent, upright, fairly conscious human being. I made healthy choices in my relationships, and I chose a new, fulfilling career to replace all of the career wreckage from my past. I was but a boy again, though, while still learning the ropes, meeting new friends, discovering new possibilities for myself and others, and, occasionally, still sipping from the inner healing springs of the Miracle that can quench the spiritual thirst of all who seek it out.
What I have noted from my understanding and experience of others who have had dramatic spiritual experiences, is that the state of being poor communicators around the event. This is quite common, for several years that follow such an upheaval, unless they have a strong religious background, which they then try to re-assimilate into their own unique opening. For those who do not have a well established religious background, or who might need other language or images to convey their experience, the search through historical literature to see what others have written about their own cosmic events have been found to be helpful. There is an attempt to try to use a language that others might understand, but, unless they too have had spiritual lightning strike them, the search for an equally enlightened/awakened peer group is liable to be fairly unsuccessful, at least initially.
Anyway, the story bends back to my relationship with Masha for a moment. In October, In one of our recovery and spirituality group explorations together, we met Laurie Hartmann at support group for ACOA, which is Adult Children Of Alcoholics. Masha pointed out that the young woman had similar physical characteristics to her own, and that maybe I should reach out to her, and test her for her friendliness. I called Laurie several times after the meeting, to no avail. I was about to give up on her, when on Halloween, she changed her mind, and we set out on a date together. Well, it went better than it should have, and within six months I was engaged to be married to her. Laurie was one step above what I could handle, and I created another great learning experience around love, and, rejection. Masha receded into the background of my life for good, as a result of that relationship. I missed her terribly.
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