“Introduction
“I don’t blame the circumstances, I do not blame the place and time. When I had the choice between right and wrong, I could not quite make up my mind “—Peter Yarrow, from lyrics to Arkansas
Mythology, Religion, Liars, The Conspiracy Of Silence, And The Cloak Of Invisibility
“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
The fig leaf from the Garden Of Eden myth is used symbolically to cover our sense of shame for being our self.
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. Such is the United States case, which perhaps has the most significant number of conspiracy theories drafted in its honor. What about the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy’s assassination, the Iran Contra Affair, UFO’s, 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 so-called conspiracy theories actually 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.
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 its citizens, and if the citizens are prone to keeping dangerous secrets, so also shall the government. 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 and 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 own murderous excesses,.
Much of the American Christian Church morphed into a political ally for our capitalist economic system and government, and they are the primary agent for the proliferation of the lie that we have no value unless we adhere to their belief systems.. And when it comes to our excesses and crimes against humanity, we have learned that if we change the subject fast enough, or spin the facts in creative, though deceptive ways, we can avoid being held accountable and responsible for our own errant attitudes and actions in our world. We are a country that has learned to scapegoat the innocent, and enrich and aggrandize the guilty among us.
Where and when are we to find our freedom, while the church and the government are trying to control us?
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, while trying to control us in the present?
Why would we ever consider granting each other release from the binding arguments of our own lies and misunderstandings?
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 the transcendence of 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 less than aware adherents, or created through our reactions to our own history. We do not give real prayers, as we continue in earnest our culturally prescribed mutual control dramas.
In our native essence, we have a curious mind and a balanced masculine/feminine nature. We naturally seek to understand our self and our relationship with the whole, yet we become self-conscious, judgemental, and/or uncomfortable with those assessments. The loss of our connection with nature and our imbalanced and inaccurate perceptions of self and each other contributes 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 are resistant to change. It is no wonder why making a conscious choice is so difficult. One eventually has to ask:
Why is life, and the truth, so threatening? Why would I rather hold onto a fantasy, than face myself?
The fig leaf represents denial, or our need to hide from our inner creator and all of our creations. Thus, the ceding of personal responsibility is consummated through the scapegoating, or the sacrifice, of others. Our self 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 alludes to, the truth is the greatest enemy of our culturally institutionalized misunderstanding of Life, our self, and all of 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 to 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, mythologically, mankind’s first experience of dishonesty, which continues unabated to today.
When we don’t have the facts that we need, we sometimes trust the version of the facts offered to us by others, even if they are “snakes in the grass”. The lies start small, as indicated by the fig leaf. But as our defense mechanisms grow in sophistication over a period of 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 our self, until we find a release from our temptations to believe solely in our self-defining and limiting judgements, grief, traumas and wounds. As we return back to our innocence, we lose our need to hide from ourselves, control others, and no longer remain paralyzed by the fear of our own vulnerability and innate spiritual power.
Lies are the primary activity of the relatively unevolved mind, a mind typically intoxicated by subservience to its hubris, a second hand life experience, and twisted self-centered understanding of what is good, and what is bad. Lies serve us 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 (the former President Trump might be the exception). Yet, through the living of a lie, and the telling of lies, we can convince ourselves that we have no need to adapt, adjust, understand others, accommodate, and/or heal.
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. We are ALL the beloved of God, of this Universe, and of 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 that lack of love. Unnecessary pain and suffering comes through denial of this truth, and is the basis for all of the social ills within civilization.
Self deception takes on added importance, and danger, in the mirror of relationships
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 our self. 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 loves this eternal parade of fools, which, in our deceived state, we remain active participants.
The need to please others without first finding our real self can lead to some incredibly challenging, and embarrassing, situations. It is enlightening to note how much of the ego’s energy is devoted to it’s own recognition, when there was 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 to love itself.
Through our own unwillingness to embrace this world with love, with its ever evolving truth, we tend to maintain a caricature of our real self, and 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 our self completely and honestly. When we don’t honor our own 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.
Be conscious, oh Mankind, of those pain filled secrets that we must keep,
For by our suffering silence, we slowly die, while staying disempowered and asleep.
The so-called cultural conspiracy of silence is spawned through our culture’s accommodations to our lying nature, the need to hide from those lies, and 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 to other. We keep our secrets close to the 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 our self and others. A compelling part of this conspiracy is that others also share in this activity of keeping dangerous secrets, secrets that are attacks against our self, the (potentially) innocent other, and the truth. This mutually imprisons all of us. And this is a most important component of the common knowledge game, an activity that I will devote a lot of attention to in a future chapter.
Second, the conspiracy indicates a hesitancy to talk with others around our spiritual potential, and our innate ability to connect with and manifest a more aware, intelligent, state of being. 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..They are threatened by talk that indicates 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 their resistance to any truth not already understood and applied. Many just turn their heads, and their words, away from the resistant person, knowing that their own new or elevated understanding, or true spiritual discernment, makes them invisible to those who refuse to look at life anew, from a shared love or more collaborative perspective.
Who wants to spend their lives continuously in confrontation with 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 at presenting a supporting and compelling argument for our own point of view, fearing the indifference and rejection from others.. Those with personalized versions of our culture’s institutionalized hatred or judgements, such as white supremacists, toxic forms of masculinity, misanthropic gun owners, and/or religious and political fundamentalism are especially resistant to open communication. Such people may even feel that their freedom and way of life are threatened.
The presidential election of 2020 showed that there were 72,000,000 voters who picked, perhaps, the most obvious and outrageous liar and deceiver to ever take political office. And, of the 79,000,000 voters who opted for the more evolved alternative, who knows what percentage of those voters voted against the liar only because they did not have a well defined point of view, and a vote for Biden aligned them with their own tribe, yet not with their own heart. It takes a person of the highest order of spiritual integrity to successfully confront such attitudes while maintaining compassion and equanimity, thus not being threatened or degraded by the contact.
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.
This is a critical part of the conspiracy of silence. We become invisible to each other, the less that we are curious about others while becoming unwilling to communicate with each other, and the less we remain curious about ourselves. We become invisible to our self when we sit on our voice, and fail to listen to our essence as our inner voice cries out for justice, peace, healing, and change.
As a culture, we also need to remember that our mentally ill population, which includes the addicts and the alcoholics, are society’s “canaries in the gold mine”. We are all susceptible to the damages incurred by spiritual asphyxiation, should we neglect to listen to the stories being told by our most vulnerable family members. The sensitive and the oppressed of our culture define the leading edge of the journey of our own shared human experience and are indicators of our collective spiritual condition.
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. There are many secrets that are kept, that are held close to the heart, for 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. And major sectors our culture remains judgmental, uncaring and indifferent to the plight of the suffering, and close their minds, hearts, and ears to those in need, so that they can continue relatively unbothered in their own selfish, self serving worlds.
I have been personally impacted at the deepest, most profound levels, and my own mental illness and addictions as a teenager and young adult were a cause of greatest concern for myself, my family, and my community, as well. 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, It is inappropriate and unhealthy for me to keep a silence 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..
We continue to feel forced to argue for our own limitations. Yet, to argue for those illusions is to ultimately prove their existence, for that which the mind focuses upon and identifies with, it attempts to develop a supportive narrative around. Concurrently, if we continue to argue for and defend the world’s present chaotic, limited state of awareness, those illusions become further entrenched within our matrix of understanding. In the seeing of our problems is the pathway to our release from them, and to our liberation, revealed. Let us walk with assurance and integrity upon these new paths, after fully understanding the errant paths that we are presently wandering upon.
The mythical story of Theseus and the Minotaur provides for us an allegorical sign that points in the direction towards our own healing potential.. .Theseus had to travel deep into the labyrinth (the human mind) to confront, and to defeat, the Minotaur (our lies, fears, traumas and deep woundedness that negatively impacts 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 had a “clew”, or, in our modern terminology, a clue, or way to finally escape the clutches of a mind under the influence of its darker side.
We had better have a very good clew/clue before engaging our hidden monsters within our deep interior labyrinthine minds
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 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. Jesus of Nazareth clearly stated that humanity is the prodigal son. We have strayed far from Eden, and feast in the pig pen of an unevolved human experience. Yet, the journey back to our true nature, or essence, though being a 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 need spin no more illusions of our self 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 “clew”. 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 our self and each other remains impossible, we remain separated from our true nature, and we continue being dominated by our demons from the past.. The conspiracy of silence still reigns supreme, and our religions, economic policies, politics, and, in general, our collective consciousness, continues to give more support to our fantasies, rather than to facts and reality. “Spin to win” is the propagandists slogan, and is a tool for oppression. By such processes throughout our history disputed or disproven “facts” are used to create theories that promote division, chaos, and disease within our world.
Be aware of those fig leafs, and automatic weapons. Watch out for those minotaurs. Listen for that innocent child who is trying to call BULLSHIT on the parade of fools.
Beware of those institutions of government, religion, and politics as they force feed the population lies and misstatements of the truth in order to maintain their own self-serving “order”.
Eventually, without collectively AND individually embracing our troubling issues and seeking healing from them, the chaos and division created through the lie, or Armageddon, will eventually overwhelm the culture, and threaten civilization with its very destruction. And, the most “religious” humans among us will suffer the same fate as the most profane, for we all are living the LIE. When the planet’s ecological balance is irreparably damaged through the actions of man, Armageddon will not separate the ” good from the bad”, it will only separate humanity from its ability to live, and to thrive.
I do not care to read the post apocalyptic narrative that will be created by the ignorant, or the wise, survivors. We can choose to work together to defeat the cultural Minotaur. We can work together to take the dark ring back to Mordor. We can work together to repair the gates to Eden to make paradise accessible once again,
We are free to make new choices, and thus travel new paths of consciousness.
We can dramatically improve our perceptual aim, and finally hit love’s bullseye with consistency.
Freedom is only for those brave enough to seek it, while breaking free of our culture’s historical shackles.
We can break free from the narratives created by the religious and politicized people of the LIE. We must find a way to bring Love’s eternal order out of the chaos of the normal human experience. By improving our perceptual aim, we will hit Love’s bullseye more consistently.
We can save the world . . . from our unhealed self.
We can stop hiding from ourselves. . . and from each other.
Prepare to take the journey to meet our real Maker!
To stop the world of a lie this time around
Are we are we are we ourselves?
We lead a double life
No one would know so check it out
Stepping out, here I go
Are we ourselves and do we really know?
Most spirit returns and now maybe we’ve learned
To stop this whirl of a lie
To this earth we are bound
I ask you
Are we are we are we ourselves?
Are we ourselves, and do we really know?
Introduction: To Reimagine Our Journey Through Consciousness
It is what it is, but it is not what it seems—Paul Hewson
We all love a great story Those who have developed real insight into the story, and who can both translate the essence of an experience and convey the emotion of all of the participating characters through words, become the raconteurs of our culture. These honored story tellers may become famous and beloved novelists, musicians and rock stars, ministers, writers of religious stories and texts, comedians, and playwrights. The story may be about a personal or historical event, and it may be real, or fiction, but as long as it entertains, and perhaps even edifies, it will keep our attention. As all of the best story tellers know, it can be important not to let the full truth get in the way of telling the best story, especially if they are trying to keep our attention.
We all create stories around our individual lives, and around all of our relationships with each other, and with the world. We also listen intently to the stories told to us by our parents, our teachers, our religions, our history, and our society about who we are, who others once were or now are, and who we might aspire to become. In the positive, we look to historical and familial stories to bring a measure of context to our individual experience. In the negative, many of our stories, both individually and those created by society for us, are steeped in illusion, ignorance, half-truths and outright falsehoods. Far too many stories are just illusory dramas about our attempts to control others, and, sadly, our failed attempts at control over our own lives and our emotional experiences around all of these intersections, and collisions, with each other But these stories have an amazing hypnotic appeal, especially to those who have not undertaken the process of insight and healing. At some point in our lives, each of us must begin a “search for truth”, lest the entirety of our life experience be lived and experienced without true integrity and the potential for healing and completeness, thus denying ourselves the best alignment with reality.
Some aspects of life just seem to elude our ability to effectively communicate around them, and never get incorporated into our personal stories, and thus add to the collective conspiracy of silence. Also, other people’s stories and garbage gets back-filled into the holes and empty spaces within our own stories, becoming embedded within us, and adding to our internal confusion and chaos. Under these conditions those who do not have a clue/clew will not escape from the Labyrinth without tremendous pain and suffering. ,
Life was never an easy journey for me, and had it not been for some deep need to understand my dysfunctional process, and try to find the underlying truth amid my personal chaos, I would have long ago passed away, silenced by the disease. Some wounds are so deep, and primal, that just pasting new names onto aspects of the disease and creating new stories are not enough. But it is each of our responsibilities as conscious, or semi-conscious, human beings to bring our personal truth, and our stories, no matter how incomplete they may be, to the collective experience, including our family, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors, and our religious and political leaders..
Names and stories are only a convenience for communication, and are never comprehensive and inclusive enough to completely reveal the true natures of what they were created for in our minds to represent in the first place. The process of naming is the way that our consciousness weighs and measures new forms of life, ideas and experiences, in the attempt to insert the unknown and the mysterious into a present context for understanding, which becomes the latest iteration of our “story”. Naming tends to attach a dynamic process to a fixed point in time and space, always with a past frame of reference, and thus permanently lodges it in the past, where only the whispers of the ghosts of our history still exist..
The act of creating stories and context, and just being conversational about the details of life does not dislodge the detritus from our field of consciousness. The Devil is in the details, figuratively speaking, and if our need is for change, we need to find a way to see under the vast matrix of details that only float on the surface on the mind . We who still choose to name processes and create stories must also have personally explored and experienced the movements through consciousness, and found the way to the Silence at the foundation of our being. Otherwise, the process of naming, and the resulting stories that arise from naming, are just more intellectual knowledge and entertainment for a superficial mind, and will not pry open the healing doors to insight and wisdom.
“Once I had asked God for one or two extra inches in height, but instead, he made me as tall as the sky, so high that I could not measure myself.”
—Malala Yousafzaia
It is important to get our mind around the fact that our mind cannot get around the immensity of our infinite potential as human beings. The intellectual and the atheist, though possessing finely tuned minds, can never explore the mystery, and the depth, of the human soul, and comprehend that we all have a connection with Infinity. The willing explorer of the new paths of consciousness or the mystic both have access to the limitless territory of the Spirit, and will soar to new heights and see the sights rarely seen by the rest of mankind. “
I did not develop verbal abilities until relatively late in my childhood My sister reports that she spoke for me until I developed the capacity, or inclination, to speak. Once I started talking (close to age 4) I proved that I had the capacity for speech, and A LOT OF IT. My father wondered, at times, if I would ever shut up. I proved to be quite precocious, once I engaged my verbal skills. I remember that I would start talking about things that were around me, giving new information that my parents had no knowledge about. My parents thought that there was no way for me to know anything about what I was spouting off about, so I was mostly ignored. But I can remember how good it felt to be talking, and sharing the excitement of the magic of words exploding in my mind!
I intuited quite early that built-in to the very fabric of words is an access to imagination and knowledge beyond the word, or sequence of words, spoken. Looking back now, I can see also the incredible capacity of the human mind to represent the real world with words and internal imagery, as well as to create false realities while remaining utterly convinced of their “truth”, even in the face of non-supporting facts. I can remember as a young boy around four years of age having a doll named Percy, who spoke with me at times, and even spoke to me once over the telephone. Percy was to me what “God” was to other innocent children, a reassuring voice that would speak to me, and remind me that I had value. I almost had my sister convinced of it, as well, and she was almost six years old at the time. So, illusions can become contagious, if not recognized, and reigned in early.
So, what is truth?
Sometimes, we must remain open to a mystery that far transcends the simple explanations offered by our past and our culture. I have extensively explored many of our culture’s, and my own, misleading, false, and self-destructive stories and realities. I have also made conscious contact with many amazing, life-affirming truths. I am both an individual person and a collective, acculturated human being, and these two aspects of myself are now constantly adapting to all stories which carry meaning and the potential for healing
In some of the early times of my life, prior to my addictive cycles, I carried with me a sense of isolation, depression, and a strong feeling of anxiety around the unknown. From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic and drug addict, and mentally ill human being, I lost most of my remaining freedom of choice. I belonged to the death wish core group of millions of Americans, who lived lives of desperation, addiction, suicidal ideation, and mental illness. We all sought an early death, either by our own hands, through our addictions, or by the poor health and relationship decisions that we continued to make. Many of us could see the insanity of those still claiming for themselves good mental health, while the choices of all of those supposedly healthy people of the world continued to bring the promise of the destruction to our planet Earth. While we contemplated our own end, we witnessed a world in the midst of its own collective march towards suicide.
The story of Armageddon, as both an individual and as a collective event, becomes very real to those trapped by their own illusions of powerlessness, helplessness, and despair. We are the loosely knit tribe most susceptible to the oppression by others, and the repression of our selves. We are the prime candidates for political and religious propaganda. We may seek a new tribe that gives us a sense of safety and purpose, even if our own anticipated benefits come at the expense of other innocent people or groups. We have become limited caricatures of ourselves, as we continue to play to stereotypes that those in power have thrust upon us. We do not have the emotional and spiritual intelligence to discern what is true, and what is false, about our selves. The stories that continue to be told to us keep us connected with an extremely limited view of “our people”, all the while keeping us disconnected from our own true natures, and more realistic stories of ourselves.
Chapter 1: Defender Dan And 1960’s America
The corrupt American male and his historical Patriarchal oppression, united with 2nd Amendment zealots created the conditions for both individual and mass murders.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung
Guns, gold, greed, gonads, and girls. . . . how much is enough, American male?
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, America’s economy was booming, and our country also grew into its role as world policeman, which followed its involvement in World War II. As a country, it was pleasant to think of ourselves as the defenders of freedom and liberty, and the liberator of the damned, especially after its world saving performance of WWII.
The Defender Dan story serves as an allegory for my understanding of the American male experience of the brain and its function, and the “Baby Boomer” generation in general, of which I am a qualified member. I have inserted a picture of Defender Dan, a toy machine gun which was produced and marketed in the 1960’s, and which continues to carry immense symbolic value for me.
Defender Dan was a plastic and metal representation for a powerful tool of war, and served our culture’s need to normalize and promote aggressive role playing behavior for males. This machine delivered simulated death by plastic bullets, and was a manifestation of the cultural perception that a need for such violent toys existed.
The promotion of the use of these toy weapons happened concurrently with the execution of the Vietnam War, but one can review history to see that in each era that there has been war, there has also been toy guns made available for children.
These toy weapons represent our culture’s unconscious support for common knowledge based attack/defense postures and the mutual bullying behaviors that frequently appear in human relationships. Symbolically, these weapons helped to prepare our male population for continuing as unconscious human beings, who, when feeling threatened, would rather “shoot first, and ask questions later”. This toy perfectly represents the tool for manifesting that intention.
Men, especially those from lower economic and educational backgrounds, were to be enforcement agents and soldiers for war, for our American economic and philosophical imperialism. Psychologically susceptible American boys, through the practice with and the use of such toy weapons were being prepared to continue in their father’s footsteps. Our leaders stressed that our international bullying behavior was intended to enhance world peace and protect individual freedom and liberties.
The clinging to and the use of “adult versions” of weapons of war by spiritually underdeveloped citizens such as white supremacist terrorists, shows the power of the potential for evil arising from excess fear and the perceived need for protection from the effects of one’s errant philosophies.
My physical relationship with Defender Dan began in 1968. At that time, my mother worked at the Oak Lodge Fire Department as a dispatcher. The department had an annual toy drive, where they collected and distributed donated toys to disadvantaged children within the local community. One of the toys donated was called a Defender Dan Machine Gun. It was not a new toy, as it had “minor damage” that made it an acceptable toy only for a boy, and a father with mechanical skills, who might be able to troubleshoot and repair it. It was reckoned that there would be a real disappointment to a family if the toy was given to them and they could not fix it, so the toy was pulled from the pool of gifts. My mother asked for it, and she was “gifted” with the defective toy, which she gave to me for a Christmas gift..
I was thirteen years old at the time, and when I opened up the gift at Christmas, I thought that I might be a “little too old” to be receiving and playing with a toy gun, even one as massive as this huge gun. I mean, this thing took up a lot of space (as do hurtful and self-destructive and other-destructive thoughts and judgements within our minds)! It was quite an intimidating looking piece of hardware. I set the machine gun up, and proceeded to fire about 20 plastic bullets at my sister (also symbolic of the fact that all war is fratricide) before the gun jammed up internally, and it would only misfire after that. Some friends of my parents showed up with their teenage daughter to visit, and it was then requested that I move the machine of war to the basement, much to my sister’s and to my parent’s relief..
I was confused as to what was expected from me. Why was I given something to play with that had known problems? Didn’t I deserve something that was new and perfect? My dad was disinterested in helping me fix it, and, in fact, he was not mechanically inclined enough to offer much help. I certainly did not have a fully developed skill package in troubleshooting and repairing this fairly complex mechanical system, but I liked a good challenge, and I thought that this endeavor might be worthwhile.
Ann C., a daughter of the friends of my parents, came downstairs to talk with me, while her parents continued to talk with mine. I tried one final time to get Defender Dan to work, but I could not get it to function properly and with consistency. I began dismantling it, trying to understand how it worked so that I could find the problem and attempt to repair it. And I also thought that I might be able to impress Ann just a little bit, if I were to succeed in fixing the machine. Dad came downstairs and saw the gun parts spread all over the basement floor, accused me of destroying the gift, and then proceeded to remove his belt, and whip the hell out of me, right in front of Ann. That one hurt a lot of different ways, for sure. In one sense I succeeded, because I am sure that the sight of a thirteen year old boy getting his ass beat with a belt was impressive. I was horribly shamed, with the feeling of shame not being unusual to me. Defender Dan, and all of the supporting behavior and attitudes behind its existence, was to become synonymous with fear, and shame, in my own mind.
My response to my father’s attack was to give up troubleshooting and repairing the toy. I did not treasure Defender Dan, and after my initial attempts at its repair failed, and my father’s shaming behavior, I took that as further affirmation of my lack of competence and value, so I took a hammer to the toy, smashing it into smaller, more useless pieces.
“Some men just want to watch the world burn”,
and this is one example of that principle in action, and why it arises in the first place. I placed the heap into the garbage can, while trying to forget about my latest “failure”. I then moved onto the next challenge facing me as a thirteen year old young man, which was to come up with a good story that might prevent another beating.
Designers and builders of machinery , or creators of ideas or new forms of art, are encouraged and empowered by their society and their own “creator within” to bring into the world of form their latest creations. Creators are happiest when they actually bring something new, or an updated version of the old, into the world. With the power of creation carrying us across the ocean of life, we can’t help but use that power to make idols, icons, and images that represent that which we are grateful for, or what has given us protection or sustenance. I am sure that fathers over the history of humanity have given crude versions of their primary tools of trade or weapons of war to their boys since the idea of gifting first arose. And, the father encouraged the boys interest in protecting himself, his family, and in a more recent evolutionary development, even his ideology. Yet I have to wonder how giving the gift of fear, isolation, shame, aggression, and the potential for violence is really the highest quality gift that our “creator” has to offer to us
Each human child is dependent upon the quality of love, safety, and prosperity of the family household, and these are primary factors that greatly influence a growing child’s evolutionary path through consciousness. The parents are by intention also designers, builders, and co-creators of the early life and consciousness of the new child, even if it is the DNA that determines a greater portion of the heritage. My father spent five years at a local university learning about psychology, child development, logic, philosophy and religion, and yet his successful mastering of these subjects in school did not translate into insight as to how to best parent his children. My mother studied Dr. Spock and others, yet did not develop the insight necessary to know that placing a blanket wrapped crying baby in a car in the garage at night until dad left for work so that he could sleep missed the bulls eye for perfect child care by the widest of margins. All creators strive for perfection, and most parents are no exceptions, yet that desire for excellence is difficult to identify in dysfunctional families, especially by children who were negatively impacted by chronic parental mismanagement. Victims of wounding carry the pain well into adulthood, and even unto death, in situations where the trauma is never made conscious or gets addressed in a loving, healing manner.
I never have met the lucky ones who had the perfect birth, infancy, and childhoods. Like me, childhood was probably a mixed bag for the majority of people on this planet. And, there are a few of us who were born physically handicapped, and it leaves us to wonder why human biological creative energy manifested itself in such a unique way. These physical handicaps are visible to all who look their way. And, those who transcend their physical handicaps are honored for their courage, and their achievements in life. Yet, what about the rest of us, who may have been born with another type of handicap, a handicap of the human spirit, caused by a diseased culturally inculcated consciousness?
True freedom is NOT about accumulating guns, money, or politicized religion as damaged males continue to interpret these symbols.
I might have been born with a predisposition towards an overly ignorant, fearful mind, or those deficiencies could have evolved from my parent’s faltering attempts at nurturing. I do know that I was handed and told to repair a ‘defective piece of equipment” over the course of my education as a young person. Just what was this “defective piece of equipment” that I am referring to? Of course I am referring to self-destructive mental programming created through societal, historical and genetic predispositions , cultural conditioning, individual and collective ignorance, and all vitriolic, bullying, war-mongering behaviors.The “piece” consisted of poor self esteem, and a sense of being ignored, undervalued, and lonely. I was hyperactive, restless and discontented, and I suffered from a feeling of not being heard or fully accepted as a child. I would let the immune system of my mind run overtime, resulting in excessive attacks against myself and others, and excessive posturing in passive/aggressive approaches to insecure and troubled relationships
My parents and my culture made their compelling arguments for trying to convince me that their paths and understandings were righteous, and I just needed to become mature enough to understand and find where I fit in this challenging place. All that I know is that the world sure appeared to be a fucked up place. And those who have successfully adapted to this fucked up place sure don’t like to be told the truth that they are also living in a fucked up place, and that their adjustments with and accommodations to the fucked up world keep the world, as well as their own puny little life, all fucked up, whether they are aware of that fact, or not..
My parents and my culture told me to become the best person that I could be. Yet, they insisted that I make do with their conflicted standards of understanding and behavior, adapt to it somehow, and to live my life with it. I could also try to “fix it”, if I had the time, inclination, and courage to learn more about it, interact with it on a different level, and become a conscious witness to its healing evolution. I have written extensively about toxic masculinity, and there is a direct relationship between the damaged American male, and the incidence of gun marketing, distribution, sales, use, murder and terrorism within our country. Enough is enough, my fellow male (and supporting female) citizens who are hypnotized by the destructive potential of their judgements AND their weapons of war and by the extremists that so effectively promote twisted values to our diseased society.
The floodwaters of gun violence have been created by the unleashing of weapons upon our society by the twisted advocates of the 2nd Amendment, gun manufacturers, the NRA, and insane minds who understand nothing but fear, self-preservation, and hatred. It is impossible to save ourselves from the ravages of flooding brought about by the dam of public mental health bursting, so why don’t we work on preventing the dam from bursting in the first place? Human and Civil rights are not equivalent to gun rights, period, and, in fact, supersede all philosophical claims to dominion by extremist gun rights advocates. The 2nd Amendment has been fine tuned by neurotic, overzealous gun rights advocates to promote ideals not conforming to a rational, effective approach to gun safety and ownership. Gun violence against innocent Americans is NOT SUPPORTED BY OUR CONSTITUTION, no matter what those who blindly support the 2nd Amendment claim. No individual is a militia, no matter how megalomaniacal they may be, and it is utter nonsense that paranoid people use that as an excuse to stockpile weapons of mass-destruction.
This is not a political statement to me. This is a statement of common sense, law, reason, and love. Those who “politicize” this issue with divisive, hateful reasoning, form their deadly alliances around their fears, and this prevents our society from healing. It is up to us to challenge these defective ideas in open forum, and to vote out of office all politicians who support politically sanctioned mass murder,. It is time to strictly regulate or ban the weapons used to assault our families, our own bodies, and our sensibilities, and it is time to change the dirty diaper that characterizes much of masculine thought in our country..
An American society dominated by the self-destructive and other-destructive fantasies of sick minds, (including the ultra-conservative “Christian followers” who believe in Armageddon, and who are doing everything in their power to create the conditions for it), have created this unsafe, upside down world where weapons of mass destruction are worshiped as tools of freedom and safety, rather than being seen for what they are, which are tools for murder, propagation of fear, bullying, and self-righteousness.
Freedom is not preserved and protected through the threatened use of lethal force of one citizen upon another with guns. Freedom is preserved and protected through the understanding that the enemy lies within our own consciousness, and then healing our world through insight, and the cultivation of collaboration, unity, justice, and love. To the extent that Christian America believes in their weapons, is the extent that they do not believe in their supposed Christian ideals, period. The ultra-conservative “Christian” gun promoter is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and should be recognized as such.
Time to listen up, America. Time to shut up, NRA, and the politician’s feeding at their troughs of gun violence, death and insanity.I just have to wonder when terrorism will hit these individuals in political power right where it hurts most, and then they can finally decide that their pro-gun, pro NRA positions are steeped in insanity and nonsense. When they start to feel the pain of the rest of our country, then they will act on behalf of gun control, rather than obfuscate the issues while monetarily profiting from our suffering, as they have in the past. People that profit from the deaths of innocent civilians are worse than terrorists. Why does America support domestic terrorism? Do we understand that our culture is disfigured, diseased, and in need of dramatic change? Guns kill people, and the people who supply guns to people KILL PEOPLE.
There are those who prefer to gloss over the darkness in our society, and call the evil, bullying, and cruelty by names other than what represents the truth of the matter. Learn to recognize these people, and remember that in any coercive society, including Hitler’s Germany, these types of individuals were part of darkness’ support network, whether inadvertently by their own ignorance, or intentionally by their own malevolence.
I have spoken out against guns and gun violence since 1980, and my voice has been drowned out by those who speak louder than me. Now, I am starting to believe that the silent majority is finally going to assert itself, and our country steer towards more rational approaches to gun ownership, and control. Our culture is INSANE, as are the people who support the unfettered DISTRIBUTION AND SALE OF GUNS AND AUTOMATIC WEAPONS. Once again, their specious reasoning and heartless, hollow arguments are filled with holes, the bullet holes of death to our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
NRA and the politicians who do not act to reduce the proliferation of automatic weapons are sponsors of national terrorism. Just how many automatic weapons does it take to make you feel safe? It is just that many weapons that it takes to make you unhealthy, insane, fearful, and outside of the picture of potential national healing. Gun violence directly stems from a national mental illness, and guns are never the proper medication to alleviate the symptoms.
Atomic weapons don’t kill people, people kill people. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. These are equivalent arguments, only differing by the degree of devastation that their use creates. Attitudes don’t kill people, people kill people. Anger, hatred, war, and despair don’t kill people, people kill people. Whatever position that one attempts to strike, the fundamental fact remains that people are the source of all of the attitudes, conflicts, hatred, fear, and other forms of ignorance that predicates the need for weapons of war, be they mechanical or philosophical in nature. Does the chicken or the egg come first? That is an invalid question, because both the chicken and the egg are the effects of consciousness, though they both have a direct relationship to each other. Consciousness is both causative and fundamental,
As a world civilization, we try to regulate our atomic weapons, yet we let other weapons of mass destruction run free. Would you allow the arming of groups of mad men with nuclear weapons (white supremacists like our POTUS or Kim Jung Un notwithstanding)? We all must be protected from the atom bombs. We all must be protected from the guns that are designed for and used to kill people. It is impossible to protect us from all of the bullying lunatics out there in the world brandishing their weapons of mass murder, so we must act rationally, and decisively, to thwart the self-destructive and other-destructive tendencies of unevolved, fear based males. We don’t allow children to drive cars, which are dangerous in their immature hands. Men who think they need guns to protect themselves from philosophical extensions of their own fear, ignorance, and hatred are also children, and should be treated accordingly. Politicians who cater to children deny the ability of the culture to accept and adopt more rational, healing approaches to the historical and cultural predisposition to male violence.
Automatic weapons are the tool of choice for mass murder and oppression now. Those who support the use of automatic weapons, are unwitting dupes for an evil that far transcends their limited understanding. It continues to be the time to turn these “swords into plowshares”, and create and enhance the conditions for honoring diversity and brotherhood between all peoples and nations. It is insanity to continue the proliferation of weapons of war, and there is NO sound argument, to continue distributing them in our country, as well. There sure are a lot of weak arguments, however, and the wayward pseudo-religious people and politicians who have failed to create the conditions for peace and safety within our society need to grow up, and assert what is true and right for humanity, and not what is right for ideologues and the immature male elements within our world culture. Have you ever tried to take a favorite toy away from your son? It continues to be hard to separate stubborn boys from their murderous toys.
Disempowered males identify themselves with weapons of war, giving themselves a sense of control over a life that they feel is threatening to them, and which they feel ill-equipped to deal with in a rational, even spiritual manner. Weapons of war are men’s spiritually impoverished substitution for true individual power, If we love ourselves, and our fellow man, we have no need for weapons of war, PERIOD.
Lenin wrote, “When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.”
When it comes to time for human beings to murder and kill each other, they will clamor for the rights to own guns and ammunition to do so, and, in darkened America, they will point to misguided interpretations of the 2nd Amendment. Just like many wayward Christians point to passages in the bible to justify continued judgement, evil and hatred against others not of their tribe, sexual preferences, or unlike themselves in other ways. My heart breaks, and goes out to the victims, and the victims families, of the massacres in America, Sri Lanka, France, New Zealand, and elsewhere.
The eternal fires of evil are always being fanned, and uses our weapons of war to accomplish its goals. It is sad, tragic, and, at times, evil that gun toting bullies determine the rules for engagement with the world.
It is time to grow up, and become part of the healing process of the human race. It is time to stop letting the unconscious male children run the world into ruination.
Men, as a collective, would rather have our neighbors, wives and children assaulted, raped, overdosed through drug use, or murdered through gun violence, than make the necessary changes to our culture, and to our hearts and soul. We need more women in positions of power and influence, and men need to get in touch with their potential for toxic behavior and attitudes, and begin to make necessary course changes in their hearts and souls
The rate of gun deaths in the United States rose in 2016 to about 12 per 100,000 people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released in late 2017. That was up from a rate of about 11 for every 100,000 people in 2015, and it reflected the second consecutive year that the mortality rate increased. Men, as a collective, appear helpless as to how to address the problems of violence, addiction, and failed families and successfully find solutions. Continued insouciance and/or reluctance to face problems places our neighbors, wives and children at higher risks of being assaulted, raped, overdosed through drug use, or murdered through gun violence. We must make the necessary changes to our culture, and to our hearts and soul. We need more women in positions of power and influence because of their ability to think and act globally, and more men to integrate more compassion, insight and mindfulness into their behaviors and attitudes, and together begin or continue to make necessary course changes in all hearts and souls.
A rational human being would posit that ALL rates are unacceptable, and that the American culture needs to treat ALL conditions seriously and equally. Why are we so self-destructive and irrational as a culture that we allow gun violence, sexual violence, and drug additive violence to continue against our fellow citizens? You already know the answer, and it continues to propagate in the genitals, and the damaged minds, of many men in power.
Collectively we really are not a very religious nation, let alone a “Christian nation”. This may not be a bad thing, taking all factors into consideration, especially the spiritual destruction that our supposed “National Religion” has experienced through recent political raping and pillaging. I believe that much of Christianity is in hibernation in this country, and in its slumber has been taken over by politicians and zealots intent on the disfigurement of our society, through contortions of our nation to conform to their own dark, superstitious, and selfish needs and agendas. These economic and political bullies continue to co-create an imbalanced, disfigured world where economic and social disparity reigns supreme, and where violence and mass murder have become culturally acceptable byproducts of the need to serve their own conscious desires for self-promotion, corporate welfare, as well as their NRA masters. Little do they understand, that these are also unconscious desires for their own self-destruction, and the destruction of all others unlike their own mistaken understanding of their selves.
I am not an American Christian, nor have I claimed to be since 1987. I am appalled and disgusted by those in political power who profess a belief in Christian religious ideology, and go ahead and rape and pillage America in the name of their corrupt Gods of power, hubris, death, and greed. .I follow the directions that Truth and Love create for me in my life. I am not afraid to confront darkness, wherever it might appear, in the Church, in the NRA, Congress and in the White House, in our corporations, in my family, or even if it is within my own mind and heart
What is the true source of your fear, those who stockpile weapons, cultivate hate and discontent, and fear monger? Patriotism does not support terrorism, Christianity does not support gun violence and terrorism, and true patriots, be they Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, or atheists, do not get confused by this
If these latest assaults against our Spirit has not brought us to tears, if we are not impacted by all gun violence, then all is lost for us, and I am sad for all of us, and for the people who count on us. We can’t make America safe or great, by blindly following the idiots that profit from our own self-destruction
Thoughts and prayers ALONE are for those who can’t or won’t act.
I want people to ACT, while your thoughts and prayers keep you spiritually in the game, and acting courageously against the oppressors and the evil-doers in Congress, the White House, automatic weapons manufacturers, distributors, and vendors, and the NRA
Jesus, in whatever form he spiritually exists today would take his “spiritual sword”, and hack the ideas behind 2nd Amendment hooligans to pieces. If you are seeking for guns, and for weapons of war, you are not seeking for peace.
Holster that weapon, partner, and start working for real, lasting peace!
That is what Jesus would do.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world
(of guns, greed, gonads, or gold) gives, give I unto you. Let not your
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. —-John 14:27 (NT)
—–Jesus of Nazareth, and every sane human being left on this planet.
Freedom. liberty, and justice can not be preserved and protected solely through the threatened use of lethal force of one citizen upon another with guns. Freedom is preserved and protected through the understanding that the fundamental enemy lies within our own consciousness, and then healing our world through insight, and the cultivation of collaboration, unity, justice, and love. To the extent that Christian America believes in their weapons, is the extent that they do not believe in their supposed Christian ideals, period. The ultra-conservative “Christian” gun promoter is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and should be recognized as such.
I wrote this chapter as a direct reaction to my relationships with my father, my father’s and my male friends and acquaintances over my lifetime, and my employment experience while working with toxic men in the electrical trades from 1987 to 2016, and at the US Postal Service from 1975-1985. The historical legacy of the American white man, and his support network of unconscious, disempowered, fearful and/or cowardly family and community members, continues unto today. America has normalized that which should never have been acceptable. How can we possibly “make America great, again”? Greatness only comes after we, as a society, face our collective darkness, cease our threatening or bellicose behavior against all we disagree with, acknowledge the damaging impacts of our fears on others, makes amends to ALL we have harmed, and find integrity, and stay on a more humane path in the future.
The foundational consciousness that spawned “Defender Dan”, and which contributed mightily to the development of my young mind, continues to energize citizens into unhealthy attachments to their own weapons of war, be they philosophical or physical in nature. With the collective normalization of destructive behavior and attitudes that have become historically ingrained within consciousness, the deferral of sound heart sense to irrational fears has dictated the continued need for and proliferation of all such weapons of death, bullying, and control. For me to disassemble and examine the Defender Dan unit, and then to attempt to reassemble it into a higher functioning manner, was symbolic for and the prelude to the search for healing for my own loneliness, shame and fear-based mind through recovery endeavors in adulthood.
I long ago made a decision to lay down my arms.
The world will never be completely safe, until everybody else does so, as well.
Chapter 2: Insight and Mindfulness
Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
—Eric Hoffer
What if a real miracle was trying to happen in our lives, and too few people cared or were not even aware enough to attempt to look for it? This indifference or ignorance is the foundation for chaos in our world, and within our own minds..Those who refuse to look at the toxic masculinity inspired darkness within our culture become its unconscious and, unwittingly, its most ardent supporters. Indifference and hatred continues to threaten to destroy everyone and everything. Tragically, in this age, collective outpourings of love and support for victims follow domestic terrorist acts, rather than healing and preparing the culture enough to actually prevent the heinous behavior in the first place. But through Insight and mindfulness, minds and hearts are transformed, making all of us much less likely to become the source of suffering for others, and we become the living examples of loving non-violence in action. Insight plants the seed of the miracle into our minds, and mindfulness is the great gardener of that miracle, resulting in a more abundant, healthy crop of happier, peaceful, loving, and ordered thoughts.
One of the greatest insights that I have made is a direct result of a science class that I attended in fourth grade. Mr Hill, our Principal and co-teacher of the fourth grade class, was going to perform an experiment, and he wanted to teach the students about the power of observation. Each member of the class was to record everything they observed onto a note pad, so as to completely describe what they had witnessed. He had heated a portable electric stove. He then grabbed with some insulated tongs a thin sheet of metal and set it onto the burner. The metal immediately began to distort in size, and became quite disfigured, and the metal no longer looked like it did before. I watched, yet I had no words to describe what it was that I had just witnessed. I had never seen anything like that before, and I was struck dumb by it. I saw two kids writing feverishly on either side of me, and in my need to be accepted, “fit in” and not look stupid I looked at each of the two student’s writings, and saw how they described the event. I used their expressions to help me to create my own descriptions.
At an early age I saw how dependent that I was on other people to give a description about events that I did not have the words for. As a result, I have seen how the mystery of life can sometimes get overrun by society’s need to establish and maintain a continuity of reality and a shared understanding of events between all of its members. Someone else had the description of what I could not yet describe, so I used second-hand words to fill in the gap. Extrapolate this need to fit in and to belong to all collective gatherings of human life, including religion, politics, and society, and it is easily seen the potential foundation for illusion within all such bodies of experience. The description is never the actual event, yet those who did not have the experience, copy and worship the description, and overlook the event that may be still happening right under their noses. They have never developed the capacity and/or the willingness, to give their own unique description of an event, they are in fear of offering a different or contrary version of the event, or they have never witnessed the event itself.
In my junior year in high school, I was required to keep a daily journal, and record my insights into myself for a writing class. The problem was that I had no insight, at least as far as being able to put into words what the interior nature of my mind and life looked like. I did not spend a lot of time giving descriptions to events happening around me, and, instead, listened to others as they described their own experiences, which I either accepted and supported or rejected and judged against. But for me to give a description of the interior dimensions of my own being seemed an impossible task. I had to submit something, and in my desperation to get a decent grade i went to a bookstore, to find a book to help me to ‘look at myself’.
Hugh Prather had written a book called ‘Notes To Myself’, and I stumbled upon it, and bought it. I was so empty of complete statements about myself and my life that I copied statements from Hugh’s book, and tried to ‘personalize’ them so that it would not be obvious that I had copied his work. I got my passing grade, felt very relieved, and continued on my awkward, highly dysfunctional path through high school. I was near the top of my class near graduation time, yet I was completely out of touch with the majority of my classmates, as well as with myself. I had hoped that to finally graduate from high school might change, if not end, much of my social anxiety and sense of disconnect. Of course this could not be further from the truth. When I entered my freshman year at the University of Portland in 1973, I was lost again, and I had no internal maps to guide me through the complexities of college life.The use of pot, alcohol, and relationships with emotionally diseased people continued in earnest, obscuring any clear vision of my goals, and I constructed many self-destructive road blocks that impeded all progress.
Looking back, this verbal and emotional disconnect would have been great stuff to write about in the high school class, but i was living a lie, without having the words to even describe it, and the telling of the truth to others, let alone to myself, might force me into changes that I could not embrace or consider as possibilities. The absence of personal honesty and insight, and to be verbal around it, and the inability to communicate my distress with others doomed me to a deteriorating life experience. This limited my choices so much that many days, and years, I felt trapped in a prison, with interior windows sometimes only opening to Hell. I did not even have an adequate description to communicate my hell to others, so this is the secret behind the motivation for many mysterious suicides. ..
I will bypass a few years, and revisit insight again. In April of 1984, I placed myself in the Care Unit of Portland’s Lovejoy Hospital for a month, with the intentions of maintaining my job with the U.S. Postal Service, as well as, maybe, staying sober for a little while. I had a female Christian counselor named Claire, who was my guide while residing in this facility. A requirement was to keep a daily journal, and to document our “internal weather” while undergoing reorientation into the new life of sobriety.
I remained quite uncomfortable recording my interior universe. Little had changed within me since high school in regards to becoming honest with myself, and finding any hidden gems to discover, and write about. I found that i could write a lot, however, if what I wrote had the intention of pleasing others ,especially if they were female in orientation. Also if I could sometimes make somebody else wrong for what they were, or, more regularly for me, accept FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MISTAKES OF OTHERS, I could find something to write about. Yet, something else was also brewing inside, which was the need to bring peace into my mind.
Every day my desire for PEACE was acknowledged, all the while attending the daily groups, and counseling sessions. I attempted to practice the 12 steps of AA, for alcoholic recovery, which demands insight, and rigorous honesty. My chances were still less than average, due to fundamental flaws in the basic makeup of my personal consciousness, and awareness. A lifetime of oppression, insanity, and repression of spirit, does not just magically disappear because others, or even myself, thinks that it might be a good idea. This first foray into intensive recovery from addiction was not to be a success for me, however. The three year period following the relapse was to become the most horrifying period of my life
The final descent into darkness is documented later. Suffice it to say, to follow new paths of consciousness means to become aware as a human being, and listen to my heart, and the heart of others, as we travel these uncertain paths of life that lay before us. And I must become conscious, and maintain the conditions for healing, for me to continue on an awakening path. I must make verbal, as best that I can, that which defies description, no matter where those revelations place me on the spectrum of human energy. And, I must continue to accept personal responsibility for all of my thoughts, words, and actions, while supporting others to do the same. We must try to walk together, or I will die alone.
A most diseased way that human beings acting out of their own wounded natures is by continuing the attacks against those that they have already hurt. It is just heartbreaking to be a witness to, or to be on the receiving end of, attacks against our souls and being by those who have already hurt us, and who cannot or will not acknowledge their own culpability. The victim is made wrong for having feelings, and for expressing their anger, fear, distress, or heartbreak at having been attacked, either in the past, the present, or both. Because the perpetrator does not want to face his own bad attitudes and behavior, he lashes out, and makes wrong, those who attempt to speak up for their own life, and rights. If we cannot accept responsibility for our own wayward thoughts and actions, healing and forgiveness, whatever that word may point to, remains an impossibility.
Those who remain silent about their own responsibility for and participation in their own projections of hatred, ignorance, pain, suffering, intolerance onto others, remain a fixture of our culture’s conspiracy of silence. It happens on the cultural level, and on the personal level. We are all victims of racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, and all other malicious, malevolent attitudes and behaviors, trickling down from our politicians, corporate boards, employers, family members, co-workers, acquaintances, fellow drivers on the road, or the person in the cashier’s line with us at the grocery store. Our country owes an apology and reparations to all of the minorities it has persecuted and punished, such as the Indians, the Blacks, the Hispanics, the Immigrants, the Infirm, the Old, and the Poor. Our religions owe an apology to the homosexuals, to the infidels, to the gentiles, to the “Jewish faith who crucified Jesus”, and to all who have been persecuted because they were “non-believers”.
MINDFULNESS
Please do not be intimidated or repulsed by the name God when I refer to it. For me, God is a historical name for the self-organizing principle of consciousness within each one of us, plain and simple. Each one of us has a self-organizing principle, or we would not remain integrated and true to our sense of self, and we would dissolve into chaos, fragmentation, and insanity. If you see God in terms of some sort of “He” or “His” or creative power of the universe or superpower, or transcendent mystical being, you may be right, but my present definition of God is designed to meet the need for the following discussion. The other directions that the name God might take us can be only a distraction from the primary point that I am about to make.
The Bible’s old testament has many wonderful stories about insight and mindfulness embedded within it. It is too easy to get captured by the historical, dogmatic, intellectual, and religious interpretations of this text, and miss out on the underlying meanings BEHIND the stories, where the real Truth is hidden. As a description, and a lesson plan, for the real true spiritual practice, AS I SEE IT, I only need to quote from the Old Testament, from our Christian bible (or it could be from the Torah). The religiously ignorant of the world think that somehow the early tellers of the story of Genesis were direct witnesses to the unfolding of God’s universe during the “creation of the Earth in seven days”. This story is only a myth or parable about how the organizing principle of consciousness itself, God, unfolds in space and time, and our responsibility for wisely guiding the naming process to create an accurate representation for the “outer” world, and a more peaceful, happy experience for self and other.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.”
– Genesis 1:1-2 NASB
It was the picture of disorganization and uncertainty, for the world had no order. Everything was “formless and void.” The Hebrew words here suggest that there was confusion, emptiness, and waste. And it was filled with darkness.
But ‘God’ changed everything. ‘His’ action began as “His” Spirit was “moving.” The Hebrew word here is found only two other times in the Bible. The picture is of observing or watching carefully and deliberately. The Spirit of God was brooding…studying…examining…lingering. And only after this hovering did God take action and start bringing order.
Then “God” declared, “Let there be light.” This light illumined everything about the world, and “He” was pleased with the impact. He “saw that the light was good; and “God” separated the light from the darkness. “God” called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”
Day after day, God continued to bring order out of chaos. And as He looked at His creation, He declared that it was “very good.” It was only AFTER he declared that it was “very good” that he could find rest.
So, here I am indicating the direct connection between the story of Genesis, and the development of spiritual discernment that must be developed within myself to enable me to ever find the “rest” that being in the presence of a creative, healthy, happy internal experience brings. In fact, “GOD” is the very ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE of our consciousness, and, ultimately, it is our PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to direct the internal construction project. We are responsible for incorporating love, rationality and understanding into our world views, and this successful action literally creates the “LORD” within us that informs and guides all of our actions. If one continues to look to a historical figure for salvation, one is engaged in blatant idolatry, and will remain ignorant of their true potential, and easily hypnotized by those still occupying positions of power within their religion and culture..
The ignorant of the Christian world would take this story literally, and miss out on the fact that this is the very process or procedure that we all must take with our lives. We must bring order out of the chaos that we created through ignorance in our minds, and in the minds of those people who are part of our community. We must separate the light from the dark, and we can only rest when we have become one with the goodness at the center of our being, and at the center of everyone else’s being. We must become mindful, or, in the words of Alcoholics Anonymous, continue to take personal inventory, and when we miss the mark, promptly admit it and change course, rather than waste time defending our illusions. Those who habitually defend personal, cultural, or religious illusions are the very ones who continue to create chaos, misunderstanding, and conflict.
God’s actions in creation help us understand how we actually approach our lives, and the ways this awareness can help us today. For ‘God’ still brings clarity to confusion. ‘God’ replaces disorganization with organization. Uncertainty is replaced by certainty. Chaos is replaced by order. Those who are aimless are given new plans. Emptiness is replaced by meaning and purpose. And any sense of darkness is replaced by a new light, or understanding. This is a process that is now known as MINDFULNESS, but it has been known to “godly people” for all of time. “God” does not judge us, we judge ourselves, and, thus, we can become more “godlike” in nature and manner, once our blocks to loves awakening and awareness are acknowledged within There is no white bearded man in the sky, ruling from the golden throne, with angels circling his head. But, there is wisdom within us, when it is cultivated, and our insight and true knowledge become “angels” to us, as they lift our spirits, and our understanding and connection with each other, the world, and all of the life upon it
A fixed truth about life is that if we can’t honestly look at where we are in life, we will never find the true motivation, or foundation for change in our life’s experience. The non-examined life always results in a damaged, dysfunctional life, and that characterizes both individuals, and the collective society that they participate in. The Christians tend to believe that they can be saved from their own darkness by claiming the work performed by somebody else (the blood of Jesus?). Well, for those who have really made “conscious contact with the God of our understanding”, the realization comes that our own “blood” is the sacrifice that we make, as we make mistakes, and learn from them. In fact, the only sacrifice that ever needs to be made (and the only sacrifice acceptable to the Truth within us) is our erroneous understanding of who we are, and who or what our fellow-man is. Our own “crucifixion” continues until our own physical deaths, unless we release ourselves from all of the false illusions of self and other. Our misunderstanding of life, no matter how “Christian” we claim to be, creates infinite opportunities for chaos and disharmony with each other, and we feel betrayed by, and suffer endlessly from, all of the wounds incurred through fragmented belief systems.
We are typically healed though the power of awareness, awareness that operates through the present moment of experience. We need not claim a healing through the long dead consciousness of some purported master or saint to have a true healing experience There is always somebody trying to layer the Truth of Being with their own misinformation and broken philosophies, and this includes the Church, in whatever forms we address it. Truth and healing DO NOT REQUIRE AN INTERMEDIARY, IMAGINARY OR OTHERWISE. No teacher will affect our salvation, we must work it out for ourselves. The God of our misunderstanding only needs our humility, patience, and sincerity to approach it successfully. The medium for healing is our own consciousness and the consciousness of our spiritually aware “helpers”, and this is always happening NOW. To believe otherwise is the absolutely damaged understanding that has been foisted upon the unaware, philosophically and spiritually uninterested, socially conforming group of people claiming to follow religious and spiritual teachings for countless generations.
I will allude to my own personal experience here, to add to the mental picture that I am trying to re-create. Recently I was motivated to write a story about my unfolding as a human being, and my entry onto the path of spirituality. This inspiration resulted in the writing of a story that resulted in a more complete understanding of the blocks to love’s awareness that existed in my mind/heart during my childhood and early adult years. A cathartic event resulted, revealing a long ignored inner voice that I was called upon to finally listen to. I had to look at and listen to my history completely, as there were early periods in my life when there was nobody to listen to me when I needed it most, and thus some damaging marks were left on my soul, which were then healed through the powers of present moment awareness. Healing can be instantaneous, or it can be a lifelong process, but because refining the powers of awareness is a lifelong process, children would be well advised to begin early the study of themselves and their developing hearts and minds, and not some worn out lines of dogma that do not carry the spirit of Truth within them.
I attempted meditation upon my own source of pain and suffering, and what came to me was how most of what I know about myself, and my reactions to the world, was created by my fundamental relationship to my parents. I had never developed a complete sense of self in my early years (I will not call it Asperger’s Syndrome, or Autism, though it manifested similarly to ADHD) and my sense of self revolved around internalizing what my mother and father expected from me, what I could or could not give back to them to attempt to please them, In addition, I developed defense mechanisms for managing the fallout when I failed to either please them, or protect them, or myself, from the results of the conflict that arose in our house when I either made yet another mistake, or when father overreacted to any situation that brought a sense of fear or threat into the home environment. I needed to be heard yet I did not know what to say to make myself heard in such a way that I could feel love and peace consistently. There was also that aspect where I felt a need to balance whatever energy was being over-expressed at any particular moment, which certainly added to my passive-aggressive component of self-expression. It was as if I had extra self-organizing principles or personalities occupying my ego mind, my creations of who I thought my father and mother were, and my own need to be heard and recognized, which was crowding out the real me, whoever or whatever that might be, if anyone. I wondered if there ever was a real “me” present, or only some sort of complex verbal construct that became collectively known as Bruce.
Who, or what, am I now? I am a mystery, even to myself. I need not be anxious, though the transition times from what I thought I was to who I am predestined to become can create intense anxiety. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment. Living into the Truth of what that is now is the new story of my life. There is but One Mind, but its truth cannot be experienced except by resting in the Unknown of the present moment.
While watching our minds both while in meditation and being mindful, we will watch many trains of thought just passing through. While physically and emotionally engaged with the outside world, we will find many trains of thought just passing by, as well. The first thought response to any situation is usually a conditioned response, which means, to be mindful, we must take a pause before acting on each thought. There is always another train of thought ready to take the place of the last thought, and this next train might be the better response.. This is almost the equivalent of taking a deep breath before taking action. That next train has a much higher likelihood of being filled with more spiritually inspired passengers, especially when it arises from the pause moment. We can have a happier, more peaceful and loving “train of thought” ride, just by pausing before acting, and not jumping on the first train that passes through..
The Windshield Wiper
One evening, a Cherokee elder was teaching his grandson about life.
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. This battle that goes on between the two wolves is inside us all.
One wolf is Evil. He is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is Good. He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf will win?”
Wisely, the grandfather simply smiled and replied, “The one you feed.”
I get questioned from time to time about why I need to write about performing personal inventory work about the impact of Toxic masculinity upon my life, and upon the human race in general. Some perceive that I must have anger or hatred motivating me for attacking our masculine heritage and background. Those questions have led to the following story appearing here:
A man got into his car, and put Jimmy Cliff’s song “I Can See Clearly Now” onto his car audio player. He started the car, and began driving down the road during a driving rainstorm. Not more than one block down the road, he slammed head-on into another car, critically injuring himself and the other driver, who happened to be a female. The policeman who showed up on the scene investigated the accident, and noted that the male driver had failed to turn his windshield wipers on. He visited him in the hospital to interview him, so that he could finish his report. When the driver who failed to turn on his windshield wipers awoke from his coma, the officer asked him why he didn’t turn on his windshield wipers.
“Officer, I did everything right. I was playing the right music in the background, and I trusted that I was seeing all that I needed to see. I just did not think that I needed my windshield wipers”.
The officer immediately cited him for reckless endangerment and driving while impaired.
There is your answer.
Our unconscious behavior causes damage every moment of every day. Turn on those damned windshield wipers, fellows, and leave them on! If we are still a man, and a human being, it is always raining somewhere inside of our minds, or even in our heart. If someone writes us a citation for our behavior, we need to learn from it, rather than resisting it.
Why would anybody think that they can just apply another coat of spiritual paint to cover over a house experiencing rot and decay, and expect that new paint job to have any lasting, positive effect? New thoughts layering over, or covering our non-examined embedded belief structures are just like slapping another coat of paint over the decaying house. This is like affixing a fig leaf over our genitals, like in the Garden Of Eden myth. In the program of AA, we call that our “look good”, which means that we keep our exterior looking just fine, thank you very much, all the while our interior remains corrupted, unexplored and unhealed. A favored expression is “we are only as sick as our secrets”, but our secrets do keep all of us sick, whether we want to deal with them, or not. The examined life demands that we take inventory on our self, and make every effort to understand the motivations behind all of our thoughts and actions in this world. The deeper we dig, the more that we learn that we are connected at a much deeper, more profound level with the rest of humanity than we ever dreamed possible. It is then that the healing we undertake as an individual can have a “ripple effect” upon the rest of humanity, because we all influence the collective, as well as individual, consciousness that we experience as human beings.
There is hope. I found balance and healing in my own life, without using outdated religious fundamentalist modes of thought, which continue to pollute the minds and hearts of millions of Americans. The 700 Club on TV should be called the 666 Club, and Pat Robertson, and all of the other unconscious supporters of this nonsense, need to make way for the New Truth dawning in the minds and hearts of our Awakening America.
The Evangelicals who continued to obstinately support Trump revealed their true colors to all thinking and feeling Americans, and I remain appalled by their collective ignorance, hatred, and collusion with anti-Christ principles. Many promoted loyalty pledges to their anti-Christ master, and who knows what the dangerous endpoint will be for this nonsense. I fear that the formation of the pseudo-Christian equivalent of the Taliban is happening right before our eyes. If you have ever wondered how Germany descended into Nazism, now you know. Thank you Republican Party, and the undereducated and ignorant Americans who supported the Trump administration, even in the face of his dysfunction and threats against decency and democracy.. Yet, each offending party still has the capacity for insight and change.
In the absolute, All that we ever see, unto eternity, is our own self. As I look upon the world, and all of my relationships with the people, the land, the animals, and inner and outer space, I see an evolving landscape that demands collaboration and involvement by ALL PEOPLE, and representation for those beings who do not have a voice in such matters. This is a landscape that demands that I make my own unique impression upon it. I must first confront the demons within my own mind and heart, and give them personalized names representing the truth of my life experience before I strike out against the “outer world”, lest I project unhealed non-verbalized images and intentions upon the unsuspecting population.
Insight and mindfulness, meditation, walking away from self-destructive dependencies, maintaining dialogue with others, speaking my truth, fighting against oppression of others, and repression within my own heart and soul, following new paths of consciousness, working out my own salvation, while helping others on their own paths as well, are ways to develop collective awareness, and healing, and bringing peace of mind to my own interior universe. I cannot love others, or my own life, completely, until I make peace within my own heart and soul.
“The unexamined life will be painfully lived”
—-Jack Boland
The Word (peace, love, healing, wholeness, unity of life) must become flesh, and dwell within me, and within all of us. To not have that experience is to invite all of the darkness, turbulence, and disease that the world has to offer into our individual, and collective, lives. Through insight and mindfulness, the difficult emotions that arise within the human experience are experienced in the most sacred, honored way of the Spirit within us , and not subservient to the controls of those in religious, cultural, or political power who attempt to dictate to their flocks who we should be, and how we should express ourselves. We become more free, and honest, human beings. And, a few of us get to experience the real miracle, where we see from that aspect of our real nature that can watch our thoughts arise, without being the self who remains unconsciously controlled by them
“Nothing will come near your dwelling place, for those who live in the secret place of the most high”.
—Psalm 91:1
Mindfulness is meditation, with our eyes wide open. One day, perhaps we will all stop looking through the kaleidoscope of our broken minds, and see a glorious vision of unity, love, peace, and healing. Insight and mindfulness work together to bring the parts of our selves back into alignment with each other, and reduce the profound impacts of brokenness and chaos in our lives. It is a lifelong process, and personal awareness is more necessary than the brushing of our teeth, the daily changing of our underwear, or the eating of organic and/or non-processed foods for our overall well-being (but please do not discontinue those healthy behaviors!). With mindfulness cultivating the seeds planted by insight, a new world order can grow, and bring our world back into alignment with the higher orders of peace, health, and collective well-being.
Chapter 3: The Common Knowledge Game and The Lemming Effect
Each and every one of us has the capacity to be an oppressor. I want to encourage each and every one of us to interrogate how we might be an oppressor and how we might be able to become liberators for ourselves and for each other.
— Laverne Cox
The Common Knowledge Game (CKG) is a newer name for a form of consensus social understanding used in collective consciousness since humans first became verbal, and used more than just grunts and body language to communicate with their peers. The Lemming Effect has also been with us from the beginning, and its most powerful energy takes the form of peer pressure. There are several good books to be read on these matters, and many articles on gaming theory and the common knowledge game are now available on the internet.. My thanks to several writers for providing some of the background for my creative exploration of personal perceptions, the Common Knowledge Game, and the Lemming Effect.
The common knowledge game is a phenomena well-studied in the last generation by Nobel Prize winners, mathematicians, and New York Times best-selling authors and philosophers. What has not been adequately developed is its unconscious component, which is the Common Unconscious Knowledge Game, an area where hidden pain and suffering, instincts, intuitions, and archetypes rule, and which also informs and drives all unenlightened human thought and behavior, in co-creation with the CKG. The combination of the CKG and the CUKG, in addition to the related Lemming Effect, has been called many other names by seers and seekers over the millennia. The word “Maya” has been given as the name from Hinduism and Buddhism for the tendency to both individually and collectively create a fragmented perceptual universe, where in truth there is only the unity of the Universe.
In the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, he mentions that
“My father’s house/mansion has many rooms“
“My kingdom is not of this world”, and
“be in the world, don’t be of the world”
which are pointers to the fact that there are two possibilities for living, as a sleeping being in a dark, disfigured world, or as an awakening being in a multi-dimensional human relationship with infinity. The sleeping beings are those who live in the world of Maya or hypnosis without being aware of the many illusions of thought that dominate their minds and lives. The awakening ones no longer are subservient to socially promoted and accepted ignorant and illusory foundations for knowledge and communication that characterize.the CKG.
This adaptation and acculturation process has become so ingrained in consciousness, so accepted, so standardized, so normalized that the individual who even casually practices its dark side continues to contribute to the collective imprisonment of all of mankind through this process. In future chapters I will extensively develop some of the principles of toxic masculinity that dominates the CKG, the CUKG, and the Lemming Effect, which will help the reader understand at a deeper level why our society has become so corrupted by our wayward masculine energy.
The CKG and the CUKG informs our understanding of our own lives, how we see others, and how to use it’s often times twisted knowledge of poor self-esteem and negative judgments of others to help inform our decisions about actions we can take in our own lives. The CKG and the CUKG can provide to us both a blessing, and a curse, depending on the messages that we mine and successfully apply to our lives from conformance to its social principles. But, regardless of the messages that we mine, we are still directly influenced by ALL messages, no matter how much in conflict that they may be with each other, until we have had enough insight into this process to heal ourselves of unconscious adherence to its often times confusing, conflicting principles. We each have an internal pendulum which swings gently, or erratically, between all of the poles, and our shared consciousness reflects those sometimes divisive inner rhythms.
Effectively, there are two sides to the CKG. What sets up the darker side of the CKG in our minds and hearts is continuous internal access to our negative assessments, or judgements of others, and of our self, both of our physical form and our spiritual essence. These negative assessments also include our perceptions of what we believe others think negatively about us, as well, which is another self-defeating component of the CKG. This becomes one of the pillars, albeit a dark one, for the CKG, and the reason for the spiritual imprisonment for all of us. What might set up a liberating side of the CKG is the potential energy of a shared belief that we are all good people at heart, and/or that we are all practicing the spiritual understanding that the word “namaste” represents.. These internalized collective beliefs are social processes of consciousness that may become culturally inculcated into our awareness, and thus we all might share in the benefits, and the detriments, of collective consciousness as well as collective unconsciousness.
An item of information is common knowledge if all of the relevant citizens of a community know it to be so (it is mutual knowledge) and all of the citizens know that all other citizens know it and all other citizens know that all other citizens know that all other citizens know it, and so on. This is much more than simply saying that something is known by all, but also implies that the fact that “what is known by me” is also known by all, etc. Thus, common knowledge implies not only that we all know some piece of information, but can also be absolutely confident that the rest know it, and that the rest know that we know it, and so on.
I first consciously encountered the darker side of the CKG in my employment with the US Postal Service during the time period from 1975 to 1985. There were several boundary conditions of the Common Knowledge Game for my continuing employment with that agency. Many of my co-workers, as well as myself, worked there because we felt that we could do no other work, and that we did not have the skills, qualification, competency, or motivation to try anything else. Everybody knew that truth including members of the management team, not only about our selves, but also about all of our co-workers, which in turn, was what the co-workers understood about each other, as well. It was part of shared story that we told to ourselves and joked about with each other on many occasions.
In addition to the CKG, many of us also shared a common foe, chemical dependency, which adds several critical internal self-defeating calculations to the CKG. These baseline understandings helped to define my relationship to the Post Office career, as well. I really enjoyed my time working as a machine clerk, however, as the fast pace of the job, and the fact that it was a lifetime guaranteed job, kept me from feeling too bad about my personal and employment decisions. Even though I felt “trapped” by my own insecurities and dysfunctions, through the use of drugs and alcohol I found a way to sing in my cage often enough to delay the inevitable crush of despair that was to follow in earnest later on in my career after I joined the sorting machine maintenance department.
Consider the example of a sexually abused woman, say, a woman abused by a powerful man while she was in high school or college. There are many “common knowledge parameters” to be considered here, but the following are several items to consider, from the women’s perspective: Depending on her religious upbringing, she may believe the following about herself:
(In the CKG understanding of reality, we should begin each one of the following statements with “Everybody knows that . .) .”.
1). I must be subservient to the male, whatever he says, I must obey. I dare not raise my voice against any man
2). I will bring shame to my family by being truthful, so I must keep silent about the abuse.
3). Nobody would believe my word against a powerful man, so I must keep silent
4). I should have known better than to wear that dress, or to place myself in such a defenseless position.
5). I should have known better than to be in this person’s presence, and it is my fault that I was attacked
6). If I speak out against this man, I will be crushed by him, and be considered a whore, or a person of poor morals by others.
And on and on it could go, the foundational logic embedded within the common knowledge game that would keep a woman silent in the face of sexual abuse by another.
Consider competitive work environments where there are several jealous office workers seeking to demean a common foe, be it a boss or a motivated co-worker, through practicing racism, sexism, religious persecution, etc. This can be several human beings practicing typical mutually inaccurate assessments of a party not currently in their presence, such as through racism and/or sexism, and also typical of what happens in big companies, politics and Donald Trump style “tweet attacks” , high school, or in church. The participants will not attack unless they are sure that the other will attack at exactly the same time, as nobody wants to be the lone attacker, becoming vulnerable and thus expose their own intent for aggression. This is indicative of the “mob mind”, and how it acts in the real world. The first person sends out a “feeler” (verbal exchange of internalized culturally inculcated thought process) to the other parties with the message “You know, I am really unhappy with Mr. X, he is problematic.” Yes, we warm up for the attack, by gently degrading the third-party, while awaiting the others reply within the group physically or emotionally present, which, hopefully affirms our intent. Our verbal or written means of attempting to communicate with the other “attackers” may be misinterpreted, so we initially have no collective security in adopting an “attack mode”. If however, the message of attack is received simultaneously by others within the group, which it does in “common knowledge modes of thought”, then the attack is on. Note that all parties already know the message. They all knew in advance that the “other attackers” had the message as well, because it is COMMON KNOWLEDGE that others share at least some of their negative perceptions, and they will attack the other, because they always have before, and they have already prepared their internal fortifications, as well as their “verbal and social weapons” for such an experience.
This is the classic attack/defense posture or mechanism that the entirety of the human race is now participating in. Anybody who has worked in the construction trades, or in work areas dominated by men, know this process quite well. The terms repartee, badinage, bantering, persiflage, etc. are the kind names given to this culturally accepted, and sometimes revered process, whereby we “lightly and without intentional malice” impugn the dignity and reputation of others, through pokes at each other. We call this “humor”, and some may feel almost hurt when others do not engage in this behavior with us. This has been an accepted standard of behavior (though we are finally awakening to darker aspects of this by identifying hostile work environments, and instituting regulations for reducing persecution, racial discrimination, age discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual discrimination in the workplace).
In schools, the wimps, greasers, jocks, nerds, eggheads, goths, transsexuals, homosexuals, hippies, outcasts, or whatever name that defines the “out group” outside of the popular, socially accepted standards of behavior that characterize a grouping, can be quite susceptible to aggression, antagonism, and bullying. I think that everyone who has attended school has had experience with this phenomenon. There only needs to be one in an “in” group, in the presence of others from that group, who may want to impress their peer group, and they begin by attacking a member of the ‘out” group. It may be only verbal, or it can be a combination of both physical and verbal, but the rules of engagement have already been worked out generations in advance of any new bullying behavior. It follows standards paths of aggression, hostility, belittlement, and debasement, and somehow the aggressor becomes elevated in stature, at the expense of the victim. Of course, these are the same behaviors that get translated into our adult life as racism, xenophobia, and the callous judgement against the poor, old, disabled, and the rest of the compromised members of society, that our conservative leaning politicians and wayward POTU$ continue to try to abuse and deprive of health care and welfare.
Human appearance certainly figures strongly in the CKG and CUKG, and the Lemming Effect, especially in regards to sexual intentions for males viewing females, and females viewing males. It might not be especially surprising that evolution wired the male brain to find attractive bodies rewarding, but this unconscious fact is another pillar within the CKG and the CUKG. Watching a curvaceous woman can feel like a reward in the brain of men, much as drinking alcohol or taking drugs might, research has revealed. These new findings might help explain the preoccupation men can have with “checking out” the figures of all women that they encounter. Shapely hips in women are linked with fertility, peer acceptance and overall health. As such, it makes sense evolutionarily speaking that studies across cultures have shown men typically find the hourglass figures quite sexy and worth extra attention.
Guys who check out the sexy female models in magazines have more body-image problems than those males who do not, as well, so curiosity may lead to some forms of suffering. While it is fairly well-known that women feel worse about their bodies after viewing other “more attractive” females. guys apparently take the same knock after perusing the images of lingerie-clad women. The researchers have found that by looking at idealized, sexualized women, guys feel inadequate because they start thinking they need to measure up on the attractiveness scale to snag such a mate. Men make the inference that in order to be sexual and romantic with women of the similar caliber they see in magazines or on the internet, they also need to be attractive.
Women find similar optimally female human bodies as attention-grabbing, but for different reasons. Women size up other women in an effort to determine their own relative attractiveness and to maintain mate guarding. In other words, insecure women must keep their mate away from optimally designed females. Thus, the intersections of the worlds of both common and unconscious knowledge rules our experience in human sexual interactions.
Be aware, once again, of what the “common knowledge game” really is. Briefly, it is the process whereby we have internalized the verbal understandings of all others, whereby ignorant, judgmental, limiting, obfuscating, damaging, soul-destroying concepts of self and other are “socially acceptable” modes for assessing and understanding the self, and the other. This are internalized, and socialized, and this “knowledge” becomes a collectively shared experience. And, we all know that everybody else knows what we know, while we know what everybody else knows. Within the Christian churches with backwoods understanding, we are all “sinners”, we are “corrupt”, we have no hope for “salvation”, etc. unless we believe a certain way, and bow down before certain philosophies and religious and political leaders. Who wants to be damned to hell for eternity for not following the religious path? Everybody knows that everybody knows that HELL is where you go when you disobey the laws that are represented in the bible, or expounded upon by the minister.
Through a process which has existed since verbal consciousness first formed in humanity, we develop verbal constructs to represent the outside world in our own internal universe. Yet, none of these internalized assessments are 100% accurate, NOR COULD THEY EVER BE, even though the entirety of human consciousness now shares in the illusion that what they do represent what is actually “out there” as represented by their current misunderstanding of their fellow human being, and their current relationship to the other (“the finger pointing at the moon can never be the moon”). And what exactly, does despair, optimism, faith and hope look like? We chase their true meaning with our words. How can our infinite spiritual heritage ever be adequately measured through words?
We use verbal constructs to oppress, repress, and deny the other, all the while unconsciously honoring the culturally inculcated process of mutual oppression, and repression of feminine energy and the Divine. We are all potential scapegoats for “the other”, especially when collaboration in a process is not a value, and much of our energy may become directed to prevention of us from becoming blamed or accused of behavior everybody is already responsible for, with or without us, anyway. PROJECTION IS PAINFUL, and we all feel its wrath from time to time.
Our culture shows many examples of this process playing out in movies, on TV programs, and, of course, we all experience this in our day-to-day lives, as we interact with our social and cultural environment. The implications are vast, and insidious. Please consider the following excerpt from the movie COOL HAND LUKE
Captain: You gonna get used to wearing those chains after a while, Luke. Don’t you never stop listening to them clinking, ‘cause they gonna remind you what I been saying for your own good.
Luke: I wish you’d stop being so good to me, Cap’n.
Captain: Don’t you ever talk that way to me. NEVER! NEVER! [Captain hits Luke, who rolls down the hill to the other prisoners] What we’ve got here is … failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men.
The “failed” communication of the Captain to Luke is the basis for the successful communication of the Captain to the prisoners: subvert my rules and you will be crushed. The brutal message is made in public, not so that all the prisoners can see what happens to Luke, but so that all the prisoners can see all the prisoners seeing what happens to Luke.
In environments like prisons, the education system, the military, and larger groups up to, and including, American society, behavioral decisions based on private information (“I saw Luke beaten down for breaking the rules. If I break the rules I might get beaten, too.”) are almost always weaker than behavioral decisions based on Common Knowledge (“Everyone knows that if you break the rules like Luke you will be beaten down. Why would I even think about breaking the rules?”). The latter has more binding power, because, in effect, the prisoners themselves end up enforcing the warden’s (or society’s) rules. Even if you privately believe that you and your fellow prisoners could make a break for it, so long as you believe that “everyone knows” that you will be punished for breaking the rules, then you do not believe that you will receive any support from your fellow prisoners (fellow citizens, or friends). It is irrational to even raise the subject with your fellow prisoners, as you will mark yourself as someone who is either too stupid or too dangerous not to recognize what everyone else knows that everyone else knows. And because everyone is making a similar calculation, no one ever makes an escape attempt and the Common Knowledge grows stronger over time, as does the no-escaping binding attitudes. This is why the Captain goes to such lengths not just to punish Luke for his escape attempts, but to break Luke, and not just to break Luke, but to break Luke as publicly as possible.
A variation of the Common Knowledge game appears in a story first presented in ancient times. Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality. Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the manufactured reality that is the shadows seen by the prisoners.
The inmates of this place do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life. The prisoners manage to break their bonds one day, and discover that their reality was not what they thought it was. They discovered the sun, which Plato uses as an analogy for the fire that man cannot see behind. Like the fire that cast light on the walls of the cave, the human condition is forever bound to the impressions that are received through the senses. Even if these interpretations are an absurd misrepresentation of reality, we cannot somehow break free from the bonds of our human condition – we cannot free ourselves from phenomenal state just as the prisoners could not free themselves from their chains. If, however, we were to miraculously escape our bondage, we would find a world that we could not understand – the sun is incomprehensible for someone who has never seen it. In other words, we would encounter another “realm,” a place incomprehensible because, theoretically, it is the source of a higher reality than the one we have always known; it is the realm of pure Form, pure fact.
Because of the Common Knowledge game, there is enormous power in making a public spectacle out of information, which is why our local and national news, especially those tainted by the present day propaganda generators (see Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting), Presidential Twitter posts, terminations from employment, public humiliations, coronations and executions (remember Timothy McVey?) alike are carried out in front of live audiences, posted to Facebook, broadcast through Twitter feeds, and/or are televised. This lesson in behavioral influence – the crowd doesn’t just need to see the event, the crowd needs to see the crowd seeing the event – is why religious revival events, rock concerts, and so many of our modern social institutions – from political campaigns to American Idol – are staged in front of live audiences. When you sit in front of your TV set and watch, say, a national political convention, you are infinitely more engaged with the event when you see a crowd than when you don’t. We can’t help our self. It doesn’t even matter if the live audience is faked and we know that the audience is faked … have you ever listened to a sitcom without a laugh track? It’s just not as funny. The fact is that humans are social animals. We are hard-wired to look for and respond to Common Knowledge, and smart people – from political leaders to religious leaders to business leaders and concert organizers– have taken advantage of this for years.
What happens in the diseased family structure (alcoholism and drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse, psychological abuse of all types) in many situations of discipline and control exactly parallel the common knowledge game? Eventually, the children learn not to attempt to act out, or break free from, the oppressive qualities of an abusive parent, or parents, their church and its interpretation of “religious thought”, and their educational experience. Breaking the spirit of the abused child, and making sure that other members know that such “punishment” will also come their way keeps children under control, but also victimized, and traumatized. Children entering the school system where bullies are allowed to run free get to experience this process once again, in a bigger social setting. And, children who attend a church where the dignity of the individual is constantly degraded through their religious philosophy (you are a sinner, you always have been a sinner, and unless you believe the way we do, you are evil, and doomed to an eternity in hell) also will feel the horrific abuse of the COMMON KNOWLEDGE GAME. If any of us were to speak out against our oppressors, we will be punished severely, and we will be smacked down, and “roll down the hill” just like what happened to Paul Newman in the movie Cool Hand Luke. The character Luke, like all of us do frequently, gets smacked, and we are roll down the hill and confirm everybody’s bias, until we come out from under our oppressors.
Well, I am not an atheist, or an agnostic, or a believer, or a disbeliever. I am awake.
There are two great acts of insanity that members of our family, and our culture, engage in, which are integral to the Conspiracy Of Silence, and the Common Knowledge Game of human perception:
1). There is the perception that if an authoritative political or religious leader or family member brings harm or damage to another, the victim must have somehow deserved it, and they should not expect an explanation, change of behavior, or apology from the aggressor. In fact, the victim of the aggression will be judged and punished even more harshly by calling a foul, or claiming harm, from the offensive behavior.
2). There is a perception that we all are of questionable origin, and value, except for, maybe, our self, depending upon who we are unfairly comparing our self to. This is a classic component of the Common Knowledge Game. Depending on the needs of the tribe we belong to, and how much we are acculturated within the group, we may devalue our self and all others, until we heal, and find our own unique voice and true value.
The mind must be clear so that the heart can hold others near and dear..
Our COMMON KNOWLEDGE GAME keeps all of us in some sort of order, albeit one that affirms the false truth that we are all broken human beings, with our only hope for salvation lying with chaotic, and insane, orders of unreality that continue to be inculcated into our collective consciousness. In other words, unless we march to the drummer of our religious and cultural past, we will be judged, persecuted, marginalized, and otherwise thrown to the wolves, with little hope for our own redemption. Woe to the brave individual that strikes out on his own, and attempts to find a new way of being in this world of chaos, distraction, and torment.
If it’s painful for you to hear my story, it’s OK. That’s part of the process because my story includes pain, so don’t stop listening because you are uncomfortable. If you would just move past your discomfort you might learn something about empathy and compassion and mercy and justice. —-Pastor Gricel Medinas
Far too many men engage in our cultural conspiracy of silence daily, which is a most deadly component of the CKG. These include the following admonitions:
don’t talk
don’t tell
don’t touch
don’t feel
don’t engage
don’t listen
don’t change
Caricature of men working things out between themselves.
The Buddha had his own ideas about what constitutes mental health, and by his definition anyone who isn’t well on the way to Enlightenment is insane. Quite how literally he meant it when he said “All humans are mad” is hard to say, but when he looked at ordinary people like us going about their daily business he saw a world out of balance — and a world that by necessity is out of balance, because it is composed of those same off-kilter individuals. He viewed this imbalance as a form of perversion, inversion, and/or derangement He understood that we, collectively, misunderstand the world that we live in, misunderstand ourselves, thus we all end up living in a virtual reality of delusion, confusion, and distortion. What’s more, we largely share the same delusions, which mean that we don’t even realize that our minds are disturb
As Krishnamurti suggests, it’s possible to think that we’re spiritually and mentally healthy because we share our mistaken values and understandings with those around us. Collectively, our ill minds create social circles, or society that is itself ill, and we consider ourselves healthy because we see our values reflected in our spiritually sick fellow travelers.
Jesus of Nazareth stated quite clearly that “My kingdom is not of this world”. Also he stated “Be in this world, yet do not be of it”. And, “Do not attempt to remove the sliver from each other’s eye, before first removing the log from your own eye”. Finally, he also stated “Straight is the way, and narrow is the gate, and very few there are who will enter in”. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus also said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
This is a pretty clear message, for those who have “ears to hear”.
Pockets of conscious, self-aware, healthy people have been sprouting up among the weeds of American misunderstanding since the beginning of our time together as a people and nation. Perhaps these pockets will someday be woven into a national garment of spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical well-being, to be worn by all. This is not happening while I am still alive, however, and may not ever be realized in our time, or any time for that matter. Changes must happen within consciousness itself, and the “common knowledge game” that we all unconsciously play must be examined, and re-examined again and again, until we are no longer subjugated to its darker sides of oppression and repression of human spirit.
Yes, our country is in a downward spiral, where telling the truth is no longer a virtue, but instead it is bastardized, and spun into alternate reality fantasies, to be just another tool to be abused by propagandists. Propagandists are masters at manipulating fear, distrust, lies, half-truths, and specious reasoning, which also help to create new channels of control in the Common Knowledge Game. We are in a war of ideologies, and the “first victim of war is the truth”. Supporting and promoting Pseudo-Christian Apocalyptic irrationality, and making “America Great Again” for the rich, for the polluting energy industry, and for the military, spells doom for the rest of us, and for our precious world. Donald Trump and his family constitute non-holistic capitalism, and, at times, a borderline criminal enterprise. It is both a reflection on Donald Trump, and of America itself, that a known liar, cheater, manipulator, and one time Russian money dependent bankrupt businessman would be elected as Commander-in-Chief.
The most corrupt human being to occupy the White House in many, many generations (maybe ever?) knows a little about corruption and lying. It is kind of hard not too, since he is a master at both. Accusing others of his own bad behavior is typical of all “projectionists”, especially when guilty of all charges, and unable to mount a rational defense. The only fake news here is when Donald Trump opens his hyperbolic mouth, and entertains his minions with his verbal drooling. This dirty diaper of a human being needs to be changed, QUICKLY. TREASON: Trump Related Extreme Anxiety Strikes Our Nation.
Also a most insidious part of the CKG, coupled with the Lemming Effect is the belief in our leaders and religious texts without exposing their message to the light of reason and truth. We have tens of millions of Americans who believe in their “leaders” no matter what (and many of these “blanket believers” also regard their religious “reasoning” AS BEYOND QUESTION), thus insanity and irrationality are built right into most of our collective understandings, and our individual personalities. i have little or no hope for that backward segment of our country, and the poor will always be among us and have a need to be dealt with. The laziness of their obese minds, overweight with rampant materialism, distrust of others unlike themselves, and ignorance, coupled with the rest of America’s present ineffectiveness at dealing with this national disgrace known as our POTU$, will potentially rain down all sorts of cruel and unfortunate outcomes upon all of us.
The healthy, sane, spiritually inspired individual steps outside of the COMMON KNOWLEDGE GAME, and practices seeing him or herself through a new lens with few or NO VERBAL CONSTRUCTS from our personal pasts, and our culturally damaged memories. This is the only “place” where a “heart centered experience” of the other becomes possible. Ultimately, if there is any words to be shared about what is experienced, it serves only as a temporary bridge to understanding, to be discarded at the earliest possible moment, as truth reveals itself MOMENT TO MOMENT, and not just through the shared verbal constructs of a dead past that may have arisen. When two people are observing the same beautiful sunset, there is little need for words, other than to affirm one’s joy in witnessing it.
In mystical Christianity, The WORD was meant to represent the spiritually realized person, whose very being, and words, come from the Truth as it exists in this eternal moment. Historically, some religious interpreters mistakenly believe that the Word becomes flesh in only one human form (Jesus), and dwelt among us some 2000 years ago (sorry, to those who misinterpret the first Christian mystic, St. Paul and his main disciple through the New Testament book of John). The Word actually points to a loving, non-verbal reality, far above and beyond the limiting verbal beliefs and insane actions of man in the world, and it also points to the human beings who through all time have been able to access that energy, express it in new, unique, loving ways, while practicing its universal principles in all of their affairs.
To ultimately transform the Common Knowledge Game of mutual imprisonment, we need to become aware of how we are seeing others seeing ourselves. Changing the way we allow our own perceptions of how others expect us to behave opens the door out of our own uniquely created prison cells. This is not to say that others’ intentions are always bad or nefarious towards us, as most of us want what is best for us as individuals, and hope that our best expectations for ourselves are also good for others, as well. To see how we have ignorantly been controlled by others, or, more insidiously, how we have used our perceptions of how others expect us to behave and believe, grants insight into the whole process, and opens the door to a new way of seeing life, and being in life with others in more supportive, holistic, healthy manners. Our words can then carry all of the potential of the love behind the collective good heart of mankind.
Those blessed few in this world who can finally see the complete matrix of the CKG within their own consciousness and awareness, will no longer be unconsciously controlled by its often times imprisoning parameters. In the seeing of the matrix, is the liberation of the mind from its bondage to other people’s opinions, and freedom from our own wayward ideas, as well. To finally break free of the Common Knowledge Game, and the Lemming Effect, is find our UNCOMMON knowledge, where wonder, awe, love of each other, love of self, love of earth and all of its animals, and the desire to help alleviate all suffering in the world, spontaneously arises within consciousness itself, and finally guides us to our own unique promised land. We finally can leave the world of our pseudo-knowns, to explore the real world where newness, love, and truth’s unfolding goodness predominates.
THE LEMMING EFFECT
Now that we have thoroughly investigated human collective consciousness, we have found through the common knowledge game (conscious and/or unconscious) that there are many unconscious or unwritten rules for engagement between all members of society, in addition to the conscious and/or written ones.. The unconscious rules have been with us from the beginning, well before the introduction of mega-cities and civilizations, when mankind first falteringly attempted to both explore and to define inner experience. The conscious “rules” or laws have been developed over the last two hundred or more generations with the intention of establishing and maintaining the best order and harmony for the ever enlarging populations congregating together into the structure of cities or settlements. Hammurabi’s code of conduct and the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament are two great examples from our distant past of the documentation and implementation of rules defining acceptable conduct. The human race may continue to evolve in spirit and in truth as long as it is able to provide a minimum foundation of safety and security for all of its members, so it is important to remember that not all requirements to conform are misguided or evil in intent.
Yes, I finally stopped running with the disempowered, tribal minions of our economy and religions (one too many fast descents off of the cliff)
A great allegory for the social behavior of humans is that of the story of the life cycle of some populations of lemmings. Lemmings are little rodents that live near the cold northern Arctic regions. They are focused animals by nature, meeting only to mate and then going their separate ways, but like all rodents, they have a high reproductive rate when food is plentiful. When population density becomes too high, some of the lemming species migrate in large quantities and since they can swim, they choose to cross the water in search of a new habitat. Lemmings have been known to follow each other as they plunge off the edge of cliffs into the water below. Even though lemmings have been found to be “swimming migrants” rather than victims of collective suicidal ideation, the myth of mass suicide is still called the Lemming Effect.
Regardless of the lemmings real intentions, the lemming story has become a metaphor for people who go along unquestioningly with a group, with potentially dangerous consequences. The “Lemming Effect” is an innate psychological phenomenon, a survival trait, an inborn instinct in the majority of people. We see this happening in many occurrences from bad collective investment decisions such as the dot com boom of the late 1990’s, craving the latest Apple I Phone releases, excessive alcohol consumption at a party, following theological assertions such as “the blood of Jesus is the sacrifice to God that saves our soul”, to modern day automobile and fashion trends.
This Lemming Effect enables entire segments of a society to lose their sense of judgment and the application of personal wisdom all at the same time. It can be linked to the “mob mind” phenomenon inherent within collective consciousness itself. Anybody who has witnessed a Trump rally understands this mindset, and the participant may feel threatened, or even be appalled by such crowd behavior if not presently an active member of the violent tribe.. If you have ever been a member in good standing in the problem drinking division at the local bar, you have intimate understanding of the suspension of wisdom and good judgement with your drinking decisions, as well
We are all alive today due to the self-organizing principles of life itself. In manufacturing and industrial processes, in our planet Earth and its journey through the solar system, and even in the human mind, we bear witness to the wonders and mysteries of self-organizing systems. The human brain has evolved into a capable predictive mechanism since the introduction of language as a tool for communication. Words are used for the measure of our experience, and are now our primary avenue for communication with each other. Words are forever containers for energy, and are not the actual energy itself, being only pointers towards that energy. Yet the introduction of words into the conscious void of the ancient human being must have been the most transformational, apocalyptic event in human history, probably being more important than the harnessing of the power of fire and water for the creation of the conditions for safety, security, and even society itself.
The development and the evolution of human language itself has had the effect of bringing the hope for new or enhanced order to the chaos inherent within the unconscious human experience, at least through the structure of words used to represent the world that one is experiencing. We only need witness the “committee”, or the “monkey mind” operating overtime within our minds while it unsuccessfully tries to make sense, or bring order, out of the background chaos forever present in our lives. Those who are neophytes in meditation, and even some of us when troubled by current events, experience this hyperactivity and perceive it as a block to peace of mind. In truth, this internal mental chaos, when reinterpreted, becomes a gateway or portal to be passed through so as to access deeper, more peaceful and benign regions of our spiritual identify.
There is an interesting interpretation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle which carries great relevancy to our understanding of the word. The Principle simply states that in our effort to describe or define any particle, or object, or to establish its exact location in the universe, we can never know all of the characteristics of the object of observation at one time, such as its angular momentum, direction, speed, and mass, being limited to three out of the four descriptors. Like our imperfect attempts at locating a particle in space, our words, literally, are our sincere, though incomplete, collective measurements, or representations, of reality, or our theories for how things now are, or could become in the future. We attempt to measure and locate eternally elusive phenomenon, and our words are perpetually in a state of “catch up” with an ever-unfolding new reality.
If establishing or maintaining order is our concern, we can effectively channel all relevant knowledge into intelligent systems of control that will maintain maximum stability wherever necessary, but only under those conditions where we understand most or all of the variables.. The basic process control theory underlying all modern industrial and manufacturing systems has an equivalent in the human mind, where we use feedback and feedforward information loops for refining and maintaining order (mindfulness, personal inventory, and meditation). For humans, though our primary system of control is through the laws of our society and of our religions, we have not yet developed the understanding of all of the boundary conditions for our human experience. Humanity’s egregious blunder has been in attempting to bring stability to itself while disregarding the laws of our spiritual heritage and of Mother Nature, which mankind continues to ignore, at its own peril. The instability introduced into our collective Earth life system by humanity’s ignorance of these laws will not be correctable until we humble ourselves enough to learn from our mistakes, be they theological, philosophical, religious, economic, ecological, or social in nature.
The nature of self-organizing systems is that once the quiescent point (also known as the Q point, set point, the functional operation level, the balance or the homeostasis point) has been altered, the system naturally seeks a return back to its native state, or “normalcy”. For our human experience, this may be both a blessing and a curse, depending on the “state” to which we are being returned back to. Typically, if we stretch a rubber band, and then release it, it returns to its original state. But, if we have stretched the rubber band too hard and too often, the rubber band loses its elasticity, and will never again return to its original state. A human being who has been stretched beyond their capacity through excessive stress, anxiety, and/or addictive behavior cycles will NOT be returning to their “normal” state, once it is recognized that the “normal” state was, in fact, an unhealthy, abnormal state of being in the first place, which in turn led to the creation of their present chaotic mindset..
For our planet Earth, this may mean ridding itself of any or all offensive life forms that threaten its very existence, and that continues to drive it out of balance with itself. The time intervals for finding a new, or returning to an old, “set point” that indicates a healthy life is far different between an individual human life and the life of planet Earth. The Earth may take thousands, or millions, of years to return to or reach its optimal state, whereas the evanescent ones must act immediately and decisively, lest we not live long enough to witness any real healing progress.
A life out of balance means that not enough knowledge has been uncovered, or applied, to guarantee harmonious system operation. And it is of ultimate importance to realize that, in the end, the human race is not the determiner of what homeostasis is for the world, as that has been established through many billions of years of its evolution and, thus, its changing relationship with itself and the rest of the Universe. It is also of greatest importance to realize that no man, or woman, is an island in this vast universe, and that our perception of harmony and balance is inextricably intertwined with the rest of humanity. No matter how healed, balanced, or empowered we believe that we are becoming, we are eternally linked with the rest of humanity, and the universe, in our attempts to create order or balance out of our own unique versions of the collective chaos known as human knowledge. The temptation to follow the herd, or to swim with the lemming, is built right into the foundational nature of our socialized existence.
We don’t realize how often our decisions are based on other people’s behavior. Lemming effect depicts a negative side of the conscious following of the crowd, especially when following leads to falling off the cliff. In real life situations it could mean losses of money, self identity and slower spiritual development. As it might sound easy to grasp the concept, it is difficult to notice in our own actual behavior. Moreover, social togetherness is sometimes very pleasant and valuable, for instance at a rock concert where one man starts to dance, then few people join and once the critical 10-20 people threshold is passed, massive amounts of people may join the dance.. It is a pleasant example of a positive manifestation of the lemming effect. It is all part of the process of making our unconscious parts more conscious, which must also bring awareness that mass behavior does not always result in positive experience for the individual.
Lets take the stock market dot-com bubble implosion in 1999-2001 and a recent real estate/collateralized debt obligation bond fiasco in 2007-2009, which also caused another stock market crash. Many investors were too emotional, irrational and instead of conducting the research themselves, followed the commonly accepted level of valuation. Believing that our world is always operating effectively and efficiently in short time periods results in the lazy approach of following what others do. A take away from this situation is that we each must remain vigilant in our awareness, and that we cannot walk individually, or join in the stampede as may be the case, on the same path as the others and be guaranteed that we will retain our integrity.
From a spiritual development perspective, following the masses could mean losing our individuality, feeling anxious, uncomfortable and discontented. For instance, if the most popular educational program in universities happened to be engineering and we choose engineering while ignoring our true desires, this could lead to some serious cognitive dissonance. The supporting rationale that we have the best grades and this career would please our father the most may lead in unhappy directions. Many of us fail to perform sufficient research of what studies would fit us the best. Our choices could result in the premature termination of our studies, or worse, finishing the studies and then having to be retrained to work in a different field. I have pointed out a very real phenomenon here, as my educational life was directed through this very same unconscious process.
The lemming effect is not that far from pleasant, life affirming social togetherness, but the effect has some potential negative effects that we need to be aware at all times. It is healthy and wise to participate in social movements, but we must not lose our heads in the emotions. We must be critical of the movements of the crowd that are going against our vision and values. Also, we must do the research, and even experiment with unpopular ideas, before deciding that any massive new movement is for us. It is important not to ignore the “leading edge” movements, because accidentally standing on the way of the movement could bring harm to us or others. On the other hand, we could have a very good experience with the lemming effect, if played well. This is one of the aspects where an aware individual can play the common knowledge game and “lemming effect” to maximum personal benefit, without changing the collective rules of engagement. Our politicians, marketers and advertisers, and religious leaders have harnessed the power of the “lemming effect”, and our entire world civilization continues to be manipulated, for good or for evil, by these practitioners.
I dare not leave this subject without the presentation of an amazing, though disquieting, theory of human population control. We have an immune system which is automatically activated to fight and neutralize any invader into our body. Our minds work on a similar level, as it attempts to fight and neutralize any offender who threatens our safety, security, or peace of mind. Our planet Earth, or Gaia, also is a vibrant, living being with almost infinite potential to bring forth new forms of life into the universe. And Gaia has its own innate power to bring balance back to itself, with unexpected consequences in store for our unwary, overpopulating human race. It is not a stretch of reason to assume that whatever consciousness Gaia may be infused with may interpret our reproductive over exuberance as indicative of the presence of an imbalance within its own energy field, and make attempts to correct it.
Our planet Earth is now engaged in balancing itself and its energies, just as it has for billions of years. Though it may not have consciousness of the same nature as humans (the mind of the immortal, and the mind of the mortal, do not have a lot in common), the self-organizing principle of this vast system includes the elimination and/or balancing of all forces that do not positively contribute to its life and further its evolution. The human race, due to overpopulation, has brought great imbalances to planet Earth. Some experts believe that we may have ten times the amount of humans on our planet than our planet can sustain in harmony. The stress being generated in the mind of man by this overabundance of humanity may well be part of the self-protective mechanism of planet Earth itself. Humanity has captured a piece of Universal consciousness, which includes planet Earth and its collective awareness (see Teilhard de Chardin and his Noosphere concept). Our collective desire to go to war, to kill each other, to commit suicide, and/or to not generally thrive as a collective, may well be the Earth, acting through human consciousness, to bring healing to itself through the removal of damaged parts of itself, at least enough to bring balance back to the Earth. The Earth is, basically, eternal, as far as we are concerned, and is PRIMARY here, while the human race presently has little conscious presence in eternity. Our own Armageddon may well be written right into the operating system of Earth consciousness as it brings stability back to itself through all of its agents, be it earth, air, sunlight, fire, or water, and its almost infinite expression of flora and fauna.
Without harmony and peace, no homeostasis around a healthy operating point is possible.
Anyone care to take a plunge into the water from a cliff, or go for a long swim? Like lemmings, we are all migrants, albeit spiritual migrants, until we find our unique spiritual home. Once we have found our truth, we may follow our heart and our intelligence, and if that means following the herd for the moment, so be it. But if it means leading the herd, or even leaving the herd for a time, we must be ready to answer the call, as it may lead to all manners of healing and spiritual prosperity.
If we really are ready to embark on the new paths of consciousness, we must be prepared to leave our old minds, and ideas, behind. The Common Knowledge Game must be seen for what it is, and its capacity to diminish our sense of self and other must be dealt with consciously. The CKG has become so inculcated into societal norms that we must break free from the herd effect, the mob mind, that would have us make self destructive choices while being carried by their rivers of ignorance and darkness.
Chapter 4: Recovery, and the 12 Steps of Alcoholic Anonymous, with my interpretation
“Our lives begin to end, the moment that we become silent about things that matter”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I consciously and with the highest integrity began attendance in 12 step meetings in 1987, and I have benefited in immeasurable ways from my participation. Perhaps all human beings should consider joining a recovery program, as we are all challenged and threatened by our changing world and human conditions, and most of us feel powerless about doing anything constructively about it. And because most of us are not now actively seeking healing and personal transformation, we are susceptible to the sometimes capricious currents that carry an unhealed life. NO ONE IS IMMUNE from the damaging effects of living in an unconscious world, and we all pay a spiritual, emotional, and physical price for our collective, and my individual, avoidance of engagement with evolutionary options.
Be mindful, oh Mankind, of all of the painful secrets that we must keep,
For, by our suffering silence, we will not awaken, but just die alone, powerless, and asleep.
—–Elisha Scott
Recovery is not just for habituated abusers of sex, food, drugs and alcohol, it is for ALL people who want to make positive, life affirming and healing changes in their lives. It is for people desiring to shed toxic attitudes and behavior, and experience a more loving, collaborative effort with life.
It is a long, happy life, for those who find the personal Truth that leads to enhanced connection, forgiveness, empathy, and compassion for others. It is something much less pleasant and desirable for those who don’t.
12 Steps Revised To Reflect My Spiritual Experience
- Through our own extended suffering, we finally found the desire to want it to end. We admitted that when we become self-destructively habituated to any substance, situation, or relationship, we lose our freedom of choice, bring unnecessary trauma into our lives, and into the lives of others, and, thus, fail to achieve any lasting sense of inner peace and joy. We finally realize that our lives have been lived unconsciously, and have become unmanageable as a result of that neglect.
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With our new found hope and openness for change, came the desire to begin to awaken to higher possibilities for our lives. We realized that, in our essence, we have an interior, though neglected, power that will heal us and restore us to balance, if we pursue it in earnest. We now realize that we have not been living up to our full potential as human beings.
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We made a decision to turn our will, and our lives, over to the care of our higher interior power. We become open to the possibility of embracing a new Truth for our lives. We want to access the power to continuously evolve, and we want to cultivate our heart to be more loving to ourselves and to others. We decide to let go of ANYTHING that impedes our progress towards happiness, healing and wholeness. We realize that without the deepest of desires, and intentions, to change our behavior, we will not be transformed.
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We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We have lived a life without a high sense of self-esteem, and we have made unfortunate choices because of the scarcity consciousness that has resulted from it. We realize that when we find the blocks to our evolution, and become willing to remove them, our new found insight will guide our paths with precision to the Truth of our existence. We do not blame others for our misfortune or mistakes, accepting full personal responsibility for all of our perceptions and behaviors. This is our entrance onto the path of mindfulness and higher consciousness.
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We admitted that we were not being truthful with ourselves and with others, and by talking with another who we may trust, yet not be beholden to, about our errors in judgement and in actions towards our self and others, we can better deal with the shame and self-judgement that so often arises from the deadly secrets that we once felt that we must keep. Just by honestly talking with someone else, our burdens can be lifted. Our secrets need no longer keep us imprisoned, and mentally ill. When two or more people come together in the spirit of truth and honesty, mutual compassion and empathy also become part of the gathering.
6.We became entirely willing to let go of our attachments to unhealthy attitudes, behavior, and hurtful perceptions of other people. We wish to see clearly, without the limitations of our past, of our family history, and of our cultural conditioning, with all of their embedded trauma.
- We open our hearts through humility and the willingness to change to embrace a new possibility for our life. Our new found sense of connection with our higher interior power inspires us to become more grateful for the gifts that we now have, and we are now spiritually preparing to finally give back to the world in a meaningful, positive way. We want to finally let go of all of the emotional charged memories which keep us trapped in a dead past. Rejoice, for the old demons are being transformed into the new angels!
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While we were unconscious to our higher potential as human beings, we brought emotional, spiritual and perhaps even physical harm to other innocent beings, and we want to try bring healing and peace to those who have suffered from the effects of our ignorance. We realize that through the mirror of all of our relationships, dysfunctional or otherwise, we are granted a view into how we truly see ourselves. We want to see through the eyes of Truth, and not through the pain and suffering that unfulfilled relationships may have brought to us.
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We made direct amends wherever possible to all people we may have brought harm to, except when to do so would bring further injury to them or to others. Our guilt will not be assuaged at the expense of others. We make full application of our new found wisdom, and our renewed desire to bring no harm to any sentient being. We want our world, and our own personal sense of self, to feel safe from further attacks from us, and our honest disclosure of our mistakes to those impacted by our errors in judgement will continue to support that intention.
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We continued to take personal inventory, and, when wrong, promptly admit it. We have become honest with ourselves. We practice mindfulness, and continue to develop our capacity for insight into ourselves. We now know ourselves, and we now know many of the potential impediments to experiencing and expressing the Truth of our being. We no longer solely abide in old modes of thought, and now we are more focused on the beauty of the present moment.
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We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Truth of our being, praying only for knowledge of Truth, and the willingness to live within its infinite domain. We now understand that this whole process of recovery is a meditation on life, and that the evolving, healing life that we are now experiencing is our living prayer. Each time we drink from the deep interior waters revealed to us by meditation, more of our painful dreams are dissolved. We finally realize that the capacity to change, to evolve, to grow in our infinite spirit is the whole point of our human existence. We are now traveling upon new paths of consciousness.
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Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we attempted to carry our message of recovery to our world, while continuing to practice these principles in all our affairs. We have finally become whole, and are now conscious, caring human beings. We have accepted full personal responsibility for our lives, including healing our past, and keeping our present balanced and harmonious, and we no longer blame others for who we are now. We are now experiencing prosperity on many levels, and have witnessed the healing of ourselves. We have saved the world—from ourselves. Our life is now our truest teacher. The world has been saved FROM US. We realize that we have no power to bring salvation to others, yet, it is our responsibility to point to the way of healing for others who may still be suffering, and who may finally become interested in overcoming their own limitations.
“Love, and do what you like.”—–Saint Augustine
Once we begin our program of recovery, we also need to create a new life affirming story for our self. Our initial stories in recovery will start with the repetition and rehearsal of the painful stories of suffering from our pasts. There is short-term value in sharing stories of this nature, and after a healing period, we should feel no guilt or shame in revealing those parts of ourselves to others.
I first experienced long term sobriety in 1987, though I did not have a lot to talk about, except while with other recovering individuals. With my dramatic change of mind and heart, it took a substantial period of time to develop the language to surround this energy with, and to talk about the new present moment experience.. Stories get developed after the fact about our life experience, unless we are patterning ourselves from the disfiguring stories thrust upon us by our families, our religions, our cultures, and our diseases. In these cases, those outdated stories become the rickety structure that we attempt to weave our new life experience around, and thus we don’t fully claim, or find our own unique identity, or story.
Most people love a good story, and this medium for communication has been proven to be an extremely effective method for the transmission of our wisdom and human values to others. Even the belief in God, whether or not “God” actually exists, has its own origins in the need for mankind to create a story around its own origins, and to give its existence some sort of context and meaning. 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 could not fathom the possibility of such a “miracle”. Prior to recovery, my bullshit detector would sound off long and loud whenever I heard such a story.
There was nothing special or spiritual about my birth or early childhood, and, in fact, I was on the opposite end of the peace spectrum from those luckier, supposedly divinely blessed children. When I was a baby. I was quite the disruption to my family, because I cried almost non-stop, and my crying kept my father from sleeping. I was wrapped in a warm blanket, and kept in the car in the garage until my father left for work. This potentially destructive isolation of a developing baby was far more common in the baby boomer generation than the reader might be aware of.
When the cries for love and survival go unheeded, fear and a sense of abandonment becomes the primary creative companions to the developing brain of a baby. While I was still a boy, up to nearly nine years of age, it was every night that I had horrible nightmares so terrifying that I could not get out of bed to go to the bathroom, for fear of what was going to get me from inside of the closet or under my bed. The disabling dream stories that I created were a direct result of the troubling marriage of fear and a sense of abandonment. One only has to look at the life that I experienced to get to the truth that those dreams were representative of my daytime reality, too.
As a result of my early training and nature, though, I had a good, loving relationship with my mother. I had an often times troubled relationship with my father, whose acceptance and approval of me meant a lot, but he infrequently expressed his heart and feelings skillfully.. I came to feel that the world outside of our family had a lot of dysfunctional similarities, as well . There were quite a few friendly adults who were my parent’s friends, or who were loving relatives such as my aunt and uncle, and my maternal grandparents..But my father and my world appeared to be dramatically impacted by men abusing their personal power, men who were impacted by what I now know as toxic masculinity.
I was ill equipped to successfully deal with many of the interpersonal challenges within peer relationships. Because of poor self-esteem, self doubt, poor insight, and general anxiety around my relationship with the world I as an easy target for escapism, isolationism, and those hucksters hawking quick fix solutions for longer term problems. As a young person, 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, feelings of inadequacy, and my sense of disengagement from the resident aliens who also shared planet Earth with me. I longed for a way “to get off of this fucking rock”, and that became my driving intention for life.
My life prior to drug addiction was quite lonely at times, especially for several years prior to age 9 years while living in our West Linn home along the Willamette River. Yet, I made the best of it. When I was not in the outdoors climbing trees, building forts, riding bicycles, studying tadpoles in local ponds, skipping rocks in the river, playing “doctor” with the neighbor girl while she played “nurse” with me, or exploring fields, forests, or islands in our neighborhood, I would spend copious amounts of time reading. The steady reading of fictional books, especially science fiction, enabled me to take vacations from a world that never seemed to me to be very welcoming..
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 that had crashed upon landing. Michael learns from the Martians, who end up raising Michael until near adulthood, that all, ultimately, is God. Michael was eventually rescued, and returned to Earth. When Michael proclaimed to all of Earth’s inhabitants after his introduction back upon Earth that “Thou Art God” I had my first ever feeling of hope that there might be a God available to be present in life, maybe even 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, that the search must somehow begin and end within myself..
In the era of my life from 1971 to 1987, I led a highly dysfunctional life. After succumbing to peer pressure to use recreational drugs as a sophomore in high school, I quickly became addicted to alcohol and drugs. I was an addict from the start, and I knew that I would either die as an alcoholic/addict, or I would kill myself by age 30, if I had not yet recovered from my disease. What I did not know was what would happen if I survived my affliction, what kind of life there would be for me to live, and what kind of person that I could become. I had made no preparations for how to live life without substance abuse, nor would I, at least initially, have adequate language to describe my hopes for the sober life, other than in the simplest, vaguest of terms.
With my timely exit from Portland’s underworld community, in March of 1987 and my own exit from the drug-induced and culturally supported insanity, I hoped that a new world waited to welcome me. But, but the world did not just reach out and grab me by the hand, and lead me down the path to recovery and reintegration back into the community. It would be a mistake to assume that I was totally conscious about what was going on, and the direction that I was headed from 1987 forward. All that I knew was that after I had made “conscious contact with the God of my understanding”, my old life seemed to disappear. I had an ability to describe the world that I had left behind, but I had no language to describe the new world that I was entering into, or the new experiences that were unfolding in the new life of sobriety. I had never felt like I was an accepted and honored part of the outside world in the first place, so finding my new people, and my language, were important endeavors to me, once I was firmly on the path to sobriety and enhanced spirituality.
This desire for a loving integration into the wholeness of life arose several years before, when I yearned for peace during a tumultuous period preceding my stay at the Care Unit in 1984.. While addicted, I could not fulfill the conditions for the experience of peace. The transformation was many, many years in the making, but when it appeared within me in 1987, 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, though the “new me” always had a smile, and felt continuous joy. 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 that “committee of the many” had permanently adjourned, and there was now only one peaceful presence, a new ordering principle for my consciousness. And not only did I not have the language developed for the new story, the small story that I did begin to tell did not necessarily meet with a friendly reception from others. When I told my story, I would usually be met with silent stares, a quick change of subject, or general disinterest., though a friend from a men’s group 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. The act of writing a book about this experience has vigorously renewed my perception that there just is not a whole lot of interest in the material that, even now, I am trying to present to my world.
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.
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, until I met my present wife Sharon in August of 1989, 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.
We all have access to inner wisdom not borne of our personal experience, yet it lies, mostly ignored, in the inner recesses of our hearts and souls, for much of our lives. I was given a new blank slate to write my new self upon, a new possibility for living, and being, in this world, aided by this new connection with my own wisdom. 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 have noted from my understanding and experience of others who have had dramatic spiritual experiences, is that, initially, they experienced a state of being poor communicators around the event. This lack of articulateness is quite a common, for several years that follow such an upheaval. Those that have a strong religious background try to use the language of that system of thought to interpret and communicate 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. Then there are also those who just throw up their hands, and give up on the idea of ever communicating with others about the transcendent state. And, finally, there are those whose minds are irreparably damaged by the experience, and though they may remain “connected to the Spirit”, their behavior and style is indicative of a person who is insane, and operating well outside of socially and culturally accepted standards.
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. 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.
I eventually became active in the great outdoors again through hiking and backpacking, I resumed bicycle riding with an association with Cycle Oregon over several years, I learned tennis, and I also ended up excelling in road and trail racing as a runner, albeit an older runner (in the master’s division), competing individually and also appearing on several championship or near-championship level Master’s teams in both the Hood To Coast and Rainier To Pacific races. I was able have a “redo” of my life, and experience success and failure based on my own decisions, and actually glean wisdom from my interactions with life, rather than hate myself and/or others for its sometimes difficult teachings. And, yes, the new life was quite fertile ground for learning.
This new life also provided me with some of the language that I needed to communicate better with others what I had experienced on the inner plane. It also started to provide me with the language needed to describe the foundational consciousness which predisposed me, and our world to dysfunctional and self-destructive behavior, but I was not to get the full message until much later in life. Having allowed myself to return back into the world after this second birth, I subsequently gained insight into the matrix of collective human misunderstanding that was the foundation for our collective consciousness as a human race. I had no inclination to attempt to describe the “light” as the mystics and poets experienced it, for I saw the futility of that path of “via positiva” for me. My path was primarily informed by two major categories for spiritual liberation. These two are “via transformativa” and “via negativa”. which are the techniques using personal responsibility, insight, meditation, as well as other agents for spiritual evolution. If the debris field of human consciousness has been healed and cleared, via negativa.and via transformativa have been successfully accessed, integrated together, and applied to one’s spiritual journey.
What is left, after the piles of historical garbage is cleared? If might be considered similar to the process of metamorphosis, which brings forth the butterfly from the caterpillar. If the butterfly could talk, I would assume that it would much rather talk about its new freedom,and the ability to fly, rather than its previous form of life sliding over the dirt Yet, the only life that the butterfly arose from was with ground dwellers, and that is where all of its past stories were created. Could you imagine that butterfly going back and telling his caterpillar friends about the potential for a new life, and what the “ground dwellers” might say in response? How about
“get lost, you were never one of us, anyway?”
or
“well, it must be nice for you to fly, but it is just not for me right now?”
or
“have you heard about the great tasty leaves that parsley plant has?”
are three potential responses from those who think that change is threatening, unnecessary, irrelevant, or impossible, for themselves.
There is new life available to all. The life and its light is best experienced personally and, initially, non-verbally, for then there are no conflicts created between “the word” versus “the truth of the moment”. It is best to see this process for oneself. The word will forever remain a shadow, cast by the light built into the divine heart of mankind, as it tries to define the “undefinable”. The word is like an arrow, chasing an every moving target. Yet, if the heart is in the right place, the words formed and delivered will become more attuned to and resonant with the energies pointing to the healing of self and of the other.
The fundamental oppressive force in the human universe is not our wayward religious, political, economic, or social agendas or systems, however, as the fundamental problem is within the human mind itself. Jesus Christ would be crucified again (and, in fact, the Truth continues to be sacrificed daily), and Muhammad and the Buddha, were they alive today, would be ignored or attacked, in today’s diseased, divisive, dark money controlled political, social, and religious climate. Some say that it may be time to PUNCH A NAZI, in whatever form it takes, but it is best to first master the Nazi within our own minds.
A new story needs to be told by each and every one of us, as our old stories are killing us, both individually, and collectively. We need a new world religion, one that honors ALL life upon the planet, and the very planet Earth itself, as our Lord and Savior. We must have a story that allows for each being to have the opportunity to live in peace and harmony, and to share in the benefits of an evolutionary consciousness. We either grow together as a race, and as a planet, or we will not survive as a species, and, potentially, we may destroy the rest of our supporting animal species, the environment itself, and the planet.
Punch A Nazi Sign at June 2018 Portland, Oregon Rally for Immigrants and their families
“if you tell a big enough lie, and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”.
― Adolf Hitler
If we tell a lie often enough, we are prone to start to actually believe it. All of the internal defense mechanisms are engaged to support the story and to maintain the lies existence, and the corruption that living a lie creates can become part of our nature. Be careful out there, the world, and our minds, can be a dangerous place. Unlike TV entertainment series, where the programs have the potential to resolve the contrived issues before the ending of the weekly show, life carries our issues for prolonged periods of time, sometimes whole lifetimes, if we do not find a way to dislodge our lies, and our stories of disease and dysfunction from the cells of our bodies, and from our consciousness. There is no freedom to be found, if we do not first see that we are trapped.
We all need a bigger story, with more heart and healing, higher accuracy, and maximum inclusivity! Pay attention to all of our stories, many of which have created quite the mess to sort through. Constantly question reality,, search for available facts, and learn not to unconsciously accept statements from authority figures. “Reality” many times, is only someone else’s opinion about “what is”, so a cautious, probing mind, not rushing to simplistic conclusions, or susceptible to popular suggestion or hypnotism, is required to maintain, or re-establish, personal integrity, healing, sanity and reason.
What is “reality” and who am I?
Watch out, for more stories are always forming around preliminary answers to those questions!
I am what I am, but I am not what I seem
Chapter 5: To Find Our Voice
Powerlessness and silence go together. We … should use our privileged positions not as a shelter from the world’s reality, but as a platform from which to speak. A voice is a gift. It should be cherished and used.—- Margaret Atwood
There has been an epidemic of white middle-aged American men dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast, for the past 25 years, not including the COVID-19 casualties. There has also been a marked increase in anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and mental illness in our general population, for both men and women. I have personally witnessed both mental illness and the early death syndrome of the white American male through many of my acquaintances, and I may yet be captured by the phenomenon, as well.
One of several causes around both lifespan decline and increased mental illness revolves around chronic abusive drinking of alcohol, and this has been reflected in our bodies by higher incidences of liver and esophageal cancer, especially in people under fifty years of age. There has also been the recent news reports with many references to the opioid epidemic, painkiller addiction, fentanyl laced drugs, and heroin addiction. Drug overdoses killed 72,000 Americans in 2017 alone. Since 1999, more than 700,000 Americans have died from drug related causes. America is losing the war on drugs, that is for sure. Alcohol and drug misuse are only symptoms of our cultural disease, and the abuse of intoxicants may be the way America medicates itself to avoid feeling the distress of feeling victimized by the forces of oppression within our society, failure to find one’s true voice and mission in life, with the continuation of the conditioned response of repression of our essence.
I will attempt to address our personal and collective consciousness, their potential for both dysfunction and recovery, as well as our attempts at connection with humanity’s highest potential. I point out the darkened movements of human energy that become the underlying foundation for “toxic masculinity”, a name coined to encompass all that is detrimental to the male version of the human spirit. I discuss the process by which we all become imprisoned by the way in which we form words, ideas, and judgements against self and other, while attempting to maintain society’s twisted notions of how we should perceive each other and what normal social connections should look like. I attempt to address difficult human emotions such as anger and grief, and problems with expressing them skillfully.
I indicate my own unique path towards wholeness and healing, through my “miracle experiments”. One definition of the word miracle, according to the Course in Miracles, is the capacity to see things in a new way through a shift in perception.. I do not specifically address our culture’s problems with physical fitness, or environmental, water and food supply toxicity, which are important issues, but are better left to the medical writers, scientists, and environmental and nutritional experts. Yet, for us to survive as a civilization, and for the endangered species of our planet to continue to exist, we also need a new way to engage with our bodies, while purifying the air that we breathe, and the food that we eat. Nothing short of a “miracle” will save us from the historical momentum of collective disease already carrying us to the possibility of an epic downfall.
.Those who continue to suffer and are not following a path of recovery live and operate in the background of our culture, and have a message that may not be spoken and/or cannot be heard or acknowledged because of the power of the collective Conspiracy of Silence. Our culture is broken, which leads to broken people and broken families. Yet, collectively, America has created a culture of denial, where we don’t look at our fundamental problems together, and confront them directly. To the extent that the broken individual might indicate a brokenness of our culture, is the extent that the broken individual is marginalized and minimized by the entrenched power brokers of our civilization and their sycophants. There are many economic, religious, and political leaders who have derived the greatest personal and economic benefits through the exploitation of the those who have no voice, and it is perceived as an existential threat for them to examine the damaged structure that gave rise to their own predominance, while others still suffered. There must be a national discussion about our shared disease, its treatment, and the healing and changing of our culture to reduce the probabilities of its recurrence.
The race is on between those who are spiritually supporting personal and collective Armageddon, and those who are promoting a more holistic, healing approach to living together in lasting harmony, peace and health upon our sacred planet. Those who can become receptive to their own spiritual awakening will become part of a world-wide healing movement, through co-creating the roots of the Tree of Life that supports a new world order of Love, Compassion, and the preservation of our home planet Earth and all of its sacred inhabitants. Those who choose to stay asleep will continue to contribute to the suffering, and the destruction of life in all of its diverse forms, and unconsciously contribute to the ravages that toxic masculinity brings to our shared world. It can be quite the mosh pit dance of conflict between the colliding forces of need for change, and the need for clinging to the status quo.
I have been asked why I seem to perseverate on the damaged American male psyche, why I exclude the female perspective, and why I don’t focus instead on love and peace.The conspiracy of silence has dramatically and negatively impacted all human beings. My perspective will be male in orientation, and I will not attempt to be the voice for the females, though I must acknowledge their collective suffering under toxic male domination over the past several thousand years. . The question itself reveals the flaws inherent in living an unexamined life, and the fragmentation already present in our collective understanding of how to bring healing to our self, and to our world. Does anybody think that the suicide victim, lone wolf arsonist, abusive alcoholic, mentally ill man shot by a policeman, drug overdose victim, morbidly obese person, rapist, child abuser, corrupted national politician and/or reality TV star, or mass murderer, is a unique being, with no relationship to the rest of the very humanity that spawned him? Just because we are not now consciously aware and viscerally experiencing the damaging effects of the unhealed American male psyche, does not mean that we remain unaffected by its self-destructive, and other-destructive, energies. Ignorance never leads to bliss, but instead to more suffering by self and others.
It is extremely difficult in finding a way to reach those who have unconditionally accepted a diseased culture and/or one’s own unique fragmented individual life, while they remain in rigorous denial of those facts. Those who have made a decision to slowly and painfully commit suicide, individually and collectively through their addictive and self-destructive cycles of behavior are becoming part of the new normal in American life. Each mentally ill human being, including all alcoholics and drug addicts must find their own unique “bottom”, where the pain of the disease causes a change, or turning point, in their lives. Insanity, poor physical health, loss of job, loss of family, jail, DUI, threat of death, or near death experiences, and deaths of close friends or family members also suffering from cultural disease and addiction have been known to bring the desire for healing. Personally, it took all the previously mentioned negative addictive cycle outcomes to convince me to change my self-image, self-esteem, attitudes and behavior.
Before we can proceed into a new world order of better health, increased happiness, peace, and preservation of our sacred planet and our relationships with the totality of life upon it, we must first completely see where we came from, or our self-destructive history will repeat itself. No human being remains unaffected by our damaged common core of consciousness, whether we personally express it, are impacted directly by it from others, or only read about it in the newspapers or on Facebook. For the truth is, our core of collective consciousness gets transmitted from our individual minds to the rest of the conscious universe, and we receive back from collective consciousness, as if it were an eternally uttered prayer shared by all of humanity.
In your own experience, if you have never dealt directly with a mentally ill family member, drug addict or alcoholic, or had a desire to search for a new understanding and/or direction for your own life, this book may carry little meaning and have no value for you. When you watch the news, and witness all of the dysfunction of our world, if you are a disinterested, disconnected spectator, your emotions will not become engaged, nor will you be moved to action. The intention to heal can carry almost anyone to their own unique “promised land” of recovery, but without that intention, all hope for healing is lost. As I was finally to learn, intention is the very slingshot which launches our will into the human universe, and the universe ALWAYS returns back to us the energy that we have given, often times in the most unexpected of ways. Learning to fine tune those intentions for healthier outcomes is akin to the preparation for prayer, a process that is a rather mysterious, yet a completely natural form of energy exchange between all manifestations of life. For humankind, it is what we give off in life force vibrations that reflects what we truly are, so the more holistic the “prayer”, the more healed becomes the person “praying”.
The light of our country, though still burning brightly for the healing and the hopeful, still attracts all manners of darkness to it, as evidenced by heartless terrorists, capitalists, and politicians victimizing our most innocent of beings. While witnessing victims of persecution and oppression within our own homeland, including our immigrants, our minorities, our homeless, our mentally ill, our children, our old, our diseased, our poor, our disabled, our sacred animals, or our environment itself, it can be difficult to feel the miracle of life that is constantly with us. Yet, to not have that experience, is to live a life devoid of much of the greater meaning available to us as human beings. And, the American male, who carries most of the self-destructive, earth destructive, socially destructive, and feminine destructive energy within humanity, is paying a huge spiritual and physical price for the errors in both the presentation of our lives to the world and the experience of others’ contributions to our own lives. We, as a gender, continue to carry the historical fallout from many generations of callous indifference to the needs of others, and to our own spiritual needs for wholeness, love, healing, and compassion.
Toxic masculinity is a disease of Spirit that has targeted males since the beginning of civilization, and it continues to strike down men to this very day. Our world remains both addicted to and intoxicated by its masculine hubris, greed, indifference and insensitivity, and the resultant domination and subjugation of all life upon our planet. Callous, ignorant, hate inspired masculine energy runs rampant in our world, victimizing and destroying sacred life in all forms, while extremists of all types, including capitalists, politicians, and other opportunists profit from our own destruction. I have seen how men run in tribes or packs defined by their acts of self-destruction, the destruction of others, and the destruction of our planet. And I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my own being, that disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to the predisposition towards disease within the body of mankind.
One only needs to look around, and view the effects of toxic masculinity, and several of its ugly spawn, toxic religion, toxic politics, and toxic capitalism, to see that repression of our collective emotional/feeling natures, including the feminine and the Divine, is built right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. Our POTU$ is the perfect representation for all of the ills of our culture, and to the extent that the men within our culture practice his unholy principles of engagement with the world, and with its women, and men, they also share in his disease of mind, body, and spirit. What happens to a man defeated by the dark energy of unhealed masculinity? We don’t need to look too far to see the insanity around us, the monetization of humanity and the world, mass murders, early deaths, suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, abuse of woman, and children, extinction of species, destruction of our ecology, and see the relationships that now continue to a very bleak future, unless the men in this world awaken, and rebel against the prevailing dark attitudes of our dying culture.
I have watched an endless parade of friends, family members, co-workers, and acquaintances suffer from mental illness, alcoholism and addiction, and/or meet an early death, and I nearly died prematurely, as well. Most of my grade school and high school friends have already suffered, and have either become disabled or have had early deaths. Both of my best friends from earlier in my life died young from alcoholism and poor health choices My nephew has a bipolar condition along with alcoholism, and has alienated himself from important parts of his family I have a cousin who in February of 2018 was comatose and near death from the DT’s in the ICU, and who continues to drink, and we buried another drug addicted cousin in August of 2017. I have also witnessed two close family members who are practicing alcoholics continuing to ply their self-destructive trades, as well as one of our own grandsons has been addicted to pot and other substances since he was 11 years old. I just can’t ignore this disease of the Spirit which has taken over my family, and our country.
Randy Olson (left-1955-2013) Dan Dietz (1955-1997). I miss them.
In many cases, those early deaths or disabilities from mental illness and/or alcoholism were, literally, a divorce from their lives, as their lives were so unfulfilled and unhappy, and they had lost all hope for any positive change. In some of the cases that I am familiar with, the men were not happy at the end, and their death appeared to be a welcome release for them. Some had lost their careers, and could not recover from that. Some had no meaning in their lives, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to the idea that their only function was to provide for their wives or family, and, having achieved success or failure, they could not recover from that. Some were just waiting for a better day, and when it never appeared, they could not recover from that. Some were lonely and depressed, and they could not recover from that. Some had profound mental illness, and they could not recover from that.
The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.– Lois McMaster Bujolda
What is the hidden story, the real back story to all diseased men and their lives that may not have been told to their families, to their religions, to their culture, to their employer and co-workers, and to their Gods? Were any of our male victims of society able to listen to themselves, and identify their own unique pain and suffering, and bring it to the light of Love and Reason, to search for, and eventually find a newer path to healing and meaning? Or, did they blindly follow down the well-worn path of premature deterioration and death that unconscious humanity, through engaging in our collective common knowledge game, the road defined by “sin”, suffering, and dying, is doomed to trudge upon?
A recent book club meeting that was held at our house in November of 2016 exposed me to the Emmy award-winning journalist and author Sheila Hamilton. She visited our home, and shared with our book club insights into her life, and her marriage with David Krol, her deceased husband who had committed suicide. While reading Ms. Hamilton’s book “All the Things We Never Knew”, I was struck by how Sheila had to piece together what David’s inner experience must have been like, as David did not communicate to others his inner turmoil and chaos effectively. When Sheila told the group that David’s parents had wrapped him up in a blanket as a baby and left him in the garage at night because of his excessive crying, I had an AHA moment, because that is exactly what had happened to me, as well. I felt a need to give another voice for our shared disease, as I am a person who had also walked through the gates of hell itself. Somebody has to speak up for David, and for the people who suffered like David, and myself, and that person is me.
I am a product of our civilization, and of our shared humanity. Thus, I am also a broken container for our Spirit, like everybody else, who is not in denial of their own human nature. The act of writing this book was a difficult proposition, as I had to overcome a lifetime of internalized oppression, poor self-esteem, and repression of major aspects of my spirit. The messages that I received from my world, or collective consciousness, as both a child and as an adult are that I had nothing to say, or what I had to say had little or no value.
As a human race, all that we will ever see, unto eternity, is our Self. Can we see our Self with love and compassion today?—–Elisha Scott
I continue to attempt to honor all of those whispers of the Spirit, which have demanded that I deliver their words, regardless of what others might think, or how resistant I might be in sharing them. In the face of the evil and ignorance that predominates our world mind, those who have the sensitivity of the artist, skill of the musician, message from a miraculous healing, or even the voice of the prophet, must continue their best efforts to bring forth the Word, even while our civilization continues its seeming inexorable slide into chaos, hatred, and planetary destruction. This work is the culmination of my own efforts in that direction.
I have recounted a small part of my own drama and internal struggles, with the hope that I can bring to verbal light some of the inner workings of my own mind and life as it existed when I was an addict/alcoholic and mentally ill person, as well as while I was upon the journey back to wholeness. I am a three-time diagnosed depressed individual, as well as a recovering addict/alcoholic. I have the label and experience of a dual-diagnosis human being. Dual diagnosis is the term used when a person has a mood disorder such as depression or bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression) and a problem with alcohol or drugs. We are one of the dark castes of our society, and, collectively, our spirits are stymied, and our voices have been quieted. When we don’t have a voice, the most we can hope for is to be a silent witness to life, rather than a robustly interactive participant with life, with little hope for ever being seen for who we really are.
I attempt to indicate my path towards wholeness and spiritual integrity, while moving away from both my own personal insanity and our culture’s schizophrenia. I have had many hard-earned insights that I have been given into the life that we all share. Please forgive me in advance if my insights and realizations appear obvious and simple, or challenge basic sensibilities. Though it is not my intention to be offensive and argumentative, I hope that some new energy is stirred within the reader. It is not my intention to create more “spiritual froth” with trite all-encompassing statements like “love heals all wounds”, or “love is the only power”. Love of this type and nature can be a most elusive spiritual resource, and is not what the vast majority of the human race initially seeks or believes it to be. The following work is the documentation of my own “hero’s journey” towards that noble human value.
This work is a mantle woven together by the words and stories that I have chosen to represent the whole of my life experience. I wear this garment in honor of all those who have preceded me, and for those who still walk beside me in spirit, in love, and in healing. I honor my deceased parents and grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and the countless generations past. I honor those who have sacrificed their lives to diseases of the body, and of the Spirit, be they the addict, alcoholic, mentally ill, victim of violence, or the so-called normal person who struggled with comprehending the insanity in their own life, and of their civilization, and died before finding healing. I honor those who are still alive, and suffering under the forces of oppression and repression that characterize much of life lived under our present economic, religious, and political systems. I honor those who will take the time to consider this work, and I also honor those who will never find the opportunity or the willingness to do so. Finally, I honor my wife Sharon White, who suffered with me through some tough times during a relapse in 2007, caring for my dying father the last several years up to 2017, and for the actual writing of this book.
My life certainly has not been newsworthy or extraordinary in any obvious ways. In my youth, I was the person who was best described as one who was on the “outside looking in” on life, versus the one who was on the “inside looking everywhere”. I never really quite fit in, when it came to living life. But, the best part of my story lies in the lessons learned from a life experienced from both perspectives, with much of my personal truth having been derived from the movement through my family and its history, as well as through the bigger picture painted through my movement through our culture and civilization. There is a direct connection between what unfolded in my life while being a masculine energy dominated addict, alcoholic, and isolated, mentally ill human being, and the dysfunctional patriarchy that continues to unfold in our world today.
My personal story will be told after I discuss the collective influences of consciousness on the individual. In my personal story I use more than one linear time line, with some overlap between the stories. There will be no lurid tales of debauchery (well, maybe a reference or two), nor overt acts of aggression or crimes against my fellow-man, though I certainly carried the capacity for all manners of the evil inherent in the human mind. In my journey through Portland’s underworld community, I associated with people who had acted on all manners of ignorance, evil, and darkness, and many lives had been destroyed or damaged as a result of their behaviors. While a practicing addict/alcoholic, I had the potential to damage or destroy many lives, especially through driving. I was pulled over seven times for drunken or reckless driving, though I never got a DUI because of my capacity to appear sober, no matter how intoxicated that I was. I drove intoxicated over two thousand times, and though I never hurt or killed anyone, there were a few wrecks, and many near misses. In alcoholic blackouts, I accessed incorrigible attitudes and contemplated egregious acts, but good fortune saved the day for me, and for the world.
I discuss several spiritual and cosmic consciousness oriented events. I refer to a life-altering friendship with a long-term friend who died in 2017. I finish with some of the greatest teachings that life has revealed to me. This project has taken on epic proportions for me, and though it may appear to be quite fragmented, and repetitive at times, this narrative is united together by my present moment understanding..
My intention remains to provide a voice for my own process, as well as for those who cannot or will not speak out against the ills of the society and the minds that created the conditions for their own disease or early demise, be it through heart attacks, brain cancer or cancer in general, alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, murder, or “accidents”.
“Our lives begin to end, the moment that we become silent about things that matter” –—Martin Luther King, Jr.
The conspiracy of silence is built right into the framework of our collective consciousness. Dead men tell no tales, but the nearly dead MUST continue to tell their stories, with respect for themselves and others, until our civilization finally wakes up. To not express ourselves honestly and openly results in our own early demise, Spiritually as well as physically. We each must penetrate the conspiracy of silence, and bring the light of a loving heart and healing words to the hidden darkness. My conditioned response would be to keep silent, as I have nothing of value to share with the world, and/or the world could give a shit about what I have to say anyway. Extrapolate that response to all of life, and we can perceive the isolating framework that imprisons much of the American male psyche.
“If you really, really knew me, you wouldn’t love me”
—Often heard in many recovery meetings, and one of the foundational beliefs behind our collective conspiracy of silence, which supports poor self-esteem, and distrust of others.
I am trying to communicate, as best I can, the unfolding new reality bubbling up within my heart and soul. But, this new reality exists side by side with my typical human response to life, no matter how much I attempt to walk the path of spirituality, healing, and wholeness. The statement that the “poor will always be among us” even refers to me. The personal me, the collective me, and the divine me all walk together as one being, and now it is my day-to-day responsibility to stay in balance, and to try to bring myself back into equilibrium whenever I get disturbed.
This is not a self-help or pop psychology/spirituality book. I will not be appealing to the ego, nor will I explicitly attempt to make anybody feel good about life, and their prospects for economic, social, or spiritual success. I am not seeking money, respect or adoration from the reader. I am not engaged in any people-pleasing need, or out of any passive-aggressive need to hurt the world, without letting the world know why I was angry or distressed with it in the first place. All that I ask for is the suspension of judgement for a few hours. and the treatment of this manuscript like it is a meditation on life. Those who are able to tune into this work with their heart, and attempt to listen to what has been written here, may find compassion, insight, and wisdom revealing itself, as I attempt to reveal my own life.
I walked through many miles of underbrush, stickers, thorny bushes, weeds, stinging nettles, mud, and too many mine fields to count, to get to my mountain top, so be prepared for an uneven journey to the place in the book where the greatest, most far-reaching views are finally presented. Life is sometimes like the childhood game of Chutes and Ladders, so I will not be expounding solely from upon neither the spiritual mountaintops of peace and love for all beings, nor from the darkened valleys of mutual judgement and condemnation, suffering and death. What value is a story, if it is never told? What value is love, if it is never shared?
Through this book, I will not be whispering my message to the world, as I have learned to turn to volume up a notch or two, especially in areas where I need to hear myself the most. And, just because I finally am listening to myself does not guarantee that others who are conditioned to ignore me will suddenly change behavior. Sometimes, a bird sings in the forest, even though there are no other birds to listen to it. The real miracle is not that others listen to us, it is that we finally are listening to ourselves.
Newness happens in the world when long silenced people get their voice enough to sing dangerous alternatives.
– Walter Brueggemann
Can I hear me now?
Chapter 7: Marty, Me, and Our Lost Voice
Over the years, I have become deeply disturbed by the developments within our shared world, within my individual consciousness, and destabilized points of connection between self and other. Our dysfunction manifests through the languages, religions, and philosophies that create oppression, repression, and the resultant physical, emotional, and social diseases that characterize much of mankind’s present collective experience. Starting within myself, I have seen how a lifetime of oppression, and repression, had brought about a sequence of serious illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity, lived, moved, and had its being enshrined within my own heart and soul. I also saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions had failed in their understanding of humanity, and it’s basic, innermost needs of being valued and listened to.
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. We have all attempted to manage our symptoms in our own unique, yet all too often broken and dysfunctional ways. I have wanted to help myself, my father and several of my male friends, to develop greater insight into these issues over the years, but I did not find a consistent interest being expressed by others in exploring these issues with me. But my friend Marty did begin to show great interest in my Facebook posts beginning late in 2016, and this opened the door to a different level of sharing between the two of us. Concurrently, by this point in time, most Facebook “friends” had either ceased responding to my posts, save my wife and my friend Jim H., or had stopped following or unfriended me altogether.
Marty and I had shared over twenty years in a couple’s group, which was three couples who were long term friends. We shared many weekend trips, nights out for dinner and entertainment, and an unrelated book club experience that Eddy, Marty, Sharon and I shared together until July of 2017. Marty and I were quite friendly with each other, yet rarely spoke at great length or depth, or showed extraordinary interest in developing a deeper friendship apart from our wives. In 1996, Marty came into Eddy’s life, after successfully answering a 140 question philosophical and spiritual survey that Eddy had created. An uncomfortable truth is that Eddy created this questionnaire with the specific intention of drawing a person most closely resembling myself, of whom Eddy had grown to find various attractive qualities that I expressed that she wanted in a man. Marty and I even had an overall similarity in appearance (see photograph). Marty and I were eventually to find, near the end of his life, that we were linked to each other in deeper and more mysterious ways.
Eddy organized and dominated parts of Marty’ life over the years that I had known him, and she would often speak for, or even verbally run over, him in group meetings. She was not being a bitch, as she was just making sure that Marty was being recognized. It was common knowledge that when Eddy was present, Marty would not consistently reveal himself and his own story, and through his silence he would defer to his wife. My own experience of Eddy was that she was usually quite willing to listen to what I had to say initially, then she would often fill whatever empty space appeared between my sharing periods with herself, rather than wait for me to finish my story and whatever message I might be trying to deliver. Under these conditions, much like Marty, all further talk from me would end, and I would just listen to her, no matter what important items I might have to share with her or the group that we might be attending together.
On January 11th of 2017, I awoke at 2:45 in the morning, and went into my office and sat down. Suddenly, I lost all ability to move, and to even think, though I remained quite aware during this approximately one minute process. I was experiencing a seizure for the first time since early 1987, when I was trapped in my final period of drug addiction and alcohol abuse.I became aware of my body as both a field of energy, and as a vehicle for my consciousness moving within it, for the second time in my life. The first time, the vision lasted for a very short period of time. This time, it would not go away. It was disorienting, to say the least.
It was then that I became aware of a black mass, almost the size of a golf ball, in the left portion of the brain area of my inner field of body awareness. This was the first time that I had awareness of the energy field of my body since July of 1987, when I had my first, and only, experience of detecting my own life energy field. This was a pretty “woo woo”, or “out there” vision, and I became quite concerned by it, keeping it secret, at least initially. Every subsequent time I looked internally, I could still see the dark mass. In February, I had yet another seizure, this time much milder, and in a public setting, while playing cards at Jim’s, who was a mutual friend of both of us and the third male member of the couple’s group.
I did not talk about the seizures, or the black mass, initially, because I thought that I might be losing my mind. I later began talking about it with my wife, and two friends, and it was theorized that it might be related to something spiritual or psychic in nature. But I came to know it as a harbinger of death, at least in a spiritual sense. I saw that there was no negotiating with it. Prayers, meditations, affirmations, reading, talking with others, nothing seemed to have any impact upon the dark mass. I knew that some sort of death was coming my way, while still feeling little need to discuss it with a doctor. I did tell my family doctor that I feared that my own death might precede my father’s, when I took my ill father to see her about January 4th of 2017..
On March 5, 2017 Marty suffered a major seizure and was hospitalized at OHSU. , Marty had been in a four year recovery phase from malignant melanoma, a process first diagnosed in late 2012. He appeared to have been successfully treated with Interleukin II therapy, a powerful immunotherapy regimen. Now, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. My wife Sharon and I visited him two days prior to its surgical removal. Marty and I talked about our seizures, and I was struck by the similarity of his seizures with my own, though mine were relatively tame by comparison. I told Marty that my perception was that Death was making itself known to me, through the dark mass that I could see in my own energy field. I was also beginning to see a relationship between our problems, but I was hesitant to tell Marty about it, wanting him, and myself, to remain hopeful, though I told him that I did not know for certain if his brain mass indicated a death for him.
That next day, Wednesday, at noon, I had another episode of such intensity, and duration, that I dared not even attempt to get up from the couch. I had previously arose from the couch, and briefly lost consciousness, so I was all shook up, yet I still had no desire to get a doctor involved. Sharon came home later that afternoon from her creative writing class, and found me quite compromised. She listened to my story, and accepted my decision not to seek further medical attention, since this was perceived as a spiritual crisis, while she offered her own love and care. She monitored my blood pressure, and when she noted when my breathing became shallow, offered to me a paper bag to breathe into, lest I sink into a panic attack.
Whenever I tried to get off the couch, I became quite dizzy. I continued feeling quite physically subdued, and some sort of anxiety reaction was also happening with my body/mind. I was also losing my ability to talk. It took all of the power that I could muster to force words out. It was reminiscent of a time 31 years before, when for two days I had an event that prevented me from speaking during a portion of my trip through the underworld. I lost my voice for two days when confronted with the reality that there were dangerous people who I was associating with, and this fact had finally, and powerfully, struck home.
The present time, I actually felt like my consciousness was trying to escape, and it took all of my resources just to hold myself together. I characterized this present event to Sharon White as losing my mind, while having a neurotoxic component to it. I did not want anything to do with another neurological exam, having been through that horror several years before, when I had experienced excruciating headaches. I tried to go about my normal activities, while being grateful that I did not have to provide care for my disabled father, whose care that week was taken over by others.
Thursday came, and I had not improved much. It also was the day that Marty’s tumor was being removed. I had dual concerns, not only for Marty, but also for myself. I went about my limited daily activities as best I could, but I became quite conscious of my own fear and anxiety around Death, both of self, and of Marty. I continued to listen to the occasional taped spiritual wisdom tapes of some of my past teachers, hoping to hear something that might bring me comfort. I listened to Jack Boland, a nationally renowned speaker and master of the recovery process, and a man who I had known since 1987.. I owned a tape where he referred to me personally, said he knew me, probably better than I knew myself. He then stated that he wished pain, not peace of mind, to all who had not yet fulfilled their interior spiritual obligation to cleanse their hearts, as this is the great precursor to any lasting spiritual progress . Those who understand this statement UNDERSTAND. And here I thought that I had already performed that process! How wrong I was.
Thursday evening came, and after yet another nearly sleepless night, I got up and sat in the family room, and awaited for Sharon to join me . My life’s message was bubbling up within me, and I felt a compulsion to share it with my world. Yet I also knew that there were few, if any, people presently in my life who had the time, or even the interest, in listening to what Spirit was trying to pour through me. As I lay out on the couch, feeling my own emotional/spiritual death about to overtake me, I cried out in despair to Sharon,
“Please share my message! I don’t believe that I have the capacity to deliver it in a way that others can hear, or understand!”.
Sharon looked at me with acceptance, love, and compassion. Sharon had been listening to my story for close to thirty years, and she had witnessed me sitting on my voice for most of that time. She then stated unequivocally that my message was my own, and must be spoken through me, or not at all. Even my tears, and begging, would not change her mind. I was in such pain and agony, that I knew that I could not go on with my life in any kind of healthy way, and I did not know what to do.
I had the lifetime experience of people experiencing me as less of a human being than I am, starting with my own diseased father, followed by a steady progression of angry, sometimes hateful, judgmental male and female power figures, with a few very notable exceptions, and I did not know how to act or feel differently. My voice had been silenced by myself and others, even in many settings where spiritually aware, conscious people gathered to celebrate ‘connection’.
This loving act on Sharon’s part by refusing to speak for me was instrumental in the recovery of my ability to speak and to write. I could not let myself die again emotionally and spiritually, so I asked my Spirit how to best deliver my message. A prayer from my past, first created from a dream in 1992, formed in my mind and began with “Grandfather, Great Spirit, Thank You”. All of a sudden I was COMPELLED to write, and I did not stop the process until fifteen pages of a story poured through me. My Spirit chose the format of a parable, perhaps knowing that it would be discarded, without reading, by those who already believed that they knew me. But the curious ones, the ones who had an inner Spirit that had not been yet stymied, would read, and appreciate, this aspect of the message that I now felt compelled to give to my world.
The parable took less than two days to write, and it was the first story I have ever written. I was never a writer, and before recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, most of the insight that I had was irrelevant to recovery and healing, and certainly was not worth “writing home about”. While hospitalized for a month in 1984 for alcoholism, the journal that I was required to write about my daily insights seemed to be written by our society asking for permission to continue to be dysfunctional, rather than me getting in touch with my pain, and making progress with healing. People pleasing stories may be easier to read and write, but they sure lose their allure when one finally decides to move into the neighborhood of truth and real insight into self.
The dark mass in my body of energy disappeared upon completion of my story, coincidentally at about the same time that Marty’s tumor had been surgically removed. To this day, I remain healed of that darkness, though I am forced out of bed frequently now, to write, and to share with, the One who listens. Yes, I have finally learned that I need to listen to myself, more than just listening to other “authorities”. During the following year, I slept only 3 or 4 hours a night, getting out of bed to write until my wife Sharon awakened at 5 am.
As a result of this process, I had an insight that is extremely difficult to talk with others about, an insight about my relationship with Marty and his disease in the final year of his life. I saw how I had become attuned to Marty, resonating on a psychic level. Some have called this connection radical empathy, some have called it telepathic, some have called it just plain fucking mysterious, and some would call it insane thinking on my part. For me, this is a natural outcome, as I came to understand it after I had a miraculous experience around prayer with a co-worker in 1992.
Somehow, Marty’s ego mind, the limited sense of self that we both shared, had resonated within me, and I “felt his presence” within my own sensitive, susceptible consciousness through love, compassion, and empathy for him. This is how I was able to sense the dark, golf ball sized mass in my own brain. It was not my cancer, it was Marty’s. And I was also finally able to articulate the forces of oppression and repression within both of us for the first time. Previously, I never had the capacity to articulately describe the essence of my own personalized version of two “black holes” or tricksters, revealed within my own field of consciousness during a profound, apocalyptic meditation experience early in recovery. Somehow, a bridge of words was created to describe the vast matrix whose complete description had eluded me since. The light of my own awareness, shown through our shared matrix of consciousness, created the shadows, or words, words that ached to reach from the unknown to the knowing parts of myself.
Chapter 7: There Is Something Fundamental Here
This message was attributed to the Oracle, and inscribed at the Temple at Delphi, in Greece. Note that wisdom states to first know thyself, and then the knowledge of the Universe and God may become available.
- Does love come to, from, or through us, if it ever comes at all?
- Why does the racing, turbulent, “monkey mind” develop, causing deprivation of peace of mind and the absence of sacred silence?
- Why do many decent, caring people remain unacknowledged for their worth by their communities until their final eulogy?
Do you have any interest in finding the answers to these questions, and do you perceive that they are related to each other?
If your answer is “YES”, then you are already on the path to healing, and the following missive may have value to you..
The empyrean realms of human experience are reserved for those willing to consciously unhitch their spiritual wagon from their troubled pasts and skewed understanding of life. In the lifetime journey of self discovery, therefore, some of the hinterlands remain beyond the reach of those not in search of such realms, such as the superficially oriented, indifferent or spiritually antagonistic traveler. There must be a deep desire to see beyond the limited vision of the self, to get to the deeper reality hidden within the soul. There, the potential for an inspired and higher powered human experience lies buried under the detritus of a traumatized history. This can be perceived as being dangerous territory for the uninitiated heart and mind, and often elicits fear and distrust of the process, even though profound healing may result from this interior journey.
My intense desire to “Know Thyself”, coupled with the incredible spiritual strength and wisdom of my life partner, Sharon, helped to guide me back onto a long forgotten, though profoundly influential, internal path of memory. At the path’s starting point, when I first became verbal, began the creation of my own internal tomb for my spiritual potential. A lifetime of not adequately addressing and healing from the disease of my spirit led to two profound insight experiences in 2017.
For the first cathartic event, I was preparing to go to the Pilates class that Sharon and I attended each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at our athletic club. Typically, I get there a little early, so that we can warm up on an exercise bicycle, with a little aerobic activity that I still enjoyed participating in. I no longer ran, having retired the last year after a lifetime of enjoyment, and pain. It was 9:15, and I was fully prepared to leave, while Sharon remained on the telephone, talking with a friend. As it turned 9:19, I spoke to her, in my most innocent of voice,
“Can we go now?”
Sharon had a series of humorous and minimally derisive responses that I won’t repeat, but three things that she said coincided with me entering a “spell”. I felt the presence of something so basic, so fundamental, so raw, so real, so hurt, that I raged for a couple of minutes, declaring several times:
“THERE IS SOMETHING FUNDAMENTAL HERE!”
The trapped energy of a lifetime was released. I became aware of a pain so deep, and so all-encompassing, resulting in an anger from a source that I had never touched before, at least as a verbally conscious human being.
Sharon and I went our separate ways for a few hours, while we both tried to understand what the hell had just transpired. We had only two arguments or angry exchanges our entire nearly three decade relationship, and this exchange was quite shocking. Leading up to this experience, I had been intensely exploring the entirety of my life experience, having written 70 pages about my early childhood, maturation process, addictive and self-destructive cycles, and glimpses into higher possibilities for living. All of this writing had placed me, without realizing it, into the psychic world of the pain and suffering of a pre- verbal being (I developed the capacity or willingness for speech very late, at nearly four years of age),
After a meditation, I had a realization. My wounded essence had actually cried out for the first time and I actually listened to it, without my ego repressing it as it had for 61 years. And I also saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father. I felt an incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents.
I finally had experienced the most basic nameless suffering of an ignored child, or baby, and I have now given it verbal description:
“MY VOICE/CRIES ARE WORTHLESS, AND I MUST HAVE NO VALUE, AS NO ONE RESPONDS TO ME, THUS I DON’T FEEL LOVE WHEN I NEED IT MOST. I MUST BE ALONE IN THIS WORLD.”
And, a most insidious false assumption about life and love came to me at age 5, a little over a year after I began to talk.
“If there is any love in this world, I have to compete with others for its grace and experience”.,
As a lonely five year old boy, I began to fantasize about saving someone’s life, so that they would feel obligated to love me. I also learned to attack myself by minimizing my own value to others, so that they might take pity upon me, and spare me from their own desire to be punitive. Ultimately, it led to the idea that I would kill myself when life had lost all meaning, and the accompanying pain became too great. . My “tricksters” were already well established, and erroneously informed my perceptions from the very earliest of ages.
Sharon paid the price for a couple of hours, while I witnessed the wounded baby within me, and I paid attention to its long muted cries. Through this process, I had an insight that still informs me daily.
I saw how we, as humans, keep layering ourselves and our ideas upon what somebody else is saying, rather than meeting the being where they are, and responding according to the dictates of our “heart center”, which in most people, ESPECIALLY MEN, has been scabbed over by our own early spiritual wounding. Men typically inflict their own wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not so subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in dominating, or being dominated, by others. Philosophies of oppression, and of the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. Women and children are usually victimized, and/or those with sensitive and/or non-confrontational natures.
“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 own unnamed, unrecognized dark/unconscious energy, we end up with an energy exchange dynamic where we “project” our shadow onto others, and make them wrong for it, not recognizing that we were the source of our misplaced judgement. That judgement may have arisen from one’s own personal experience, and/or drawn from the experiences of others..
We just can’t quiet our minds long enough to listen with our hearts to what is being said, and respond accordingly with our heart. We are much too eager to respond with ego programmed responses, which, typically, are based on incomplete perceptions or someone else’s ‘knowledge’, and it remains our attempt to control other people’s perceptions and experience through linking our own unhealed energy with their own.
In our attempt to be “heard”, we instead try to program people, unconsciously, to behave and react more in accordance with our expectations. When they don’t (they rarely do, unless they are our impressionable young children), we are very disappointed, and feel rejected, and, in the absolute, we feel betrayed by the sum total of exchanges between the parties.
Why do I submit such intensely personal information? I do not want a life that has been lived in vain. I also see a world where the majority of us still suffer from the same, basic issues that I have tried to describe here. Even amongst some people closest to me, denial reigns supreme, and I have only a small measure of hope that the “personal truth” that I am trying to convey here will actually be heard, and applied by others that I care about, which now includes the entirety of our planet Earth.
“There is something fundamental here.”
As a baby, my parents placed a blanket around my baby body, and deposited me in a car in their garage so that my father could get at least 5 hours of sleep a night. My father was “chasing the American Dream”, and worked two jobs at the time.
I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the profoundly damaging effects of denying love and interactive time to a developing human being. What I might need to remind myself at times is that others, no matter what their age, or how much that I think that I know them, deserve my undivided attention, as they attempt to reveal who they are in this moment.
It is funny, sometimes when I share some of my creative work (which, incidentally, just started happening in early March of 2017), I get the very strong impression that some important people in my life just don’t have the time to listen. Oh, how that trickster tries to convince me that nothing has changed with the world’s listening ability since my infancy!
Another clue about our own, or another person’s listening intention, is when we try to share a profound life event, and are immediately run over by another with more knowledge of the subject. Sometimes we, or the other, either have too much book knowledge, we have the certificate, we already have read about it on the internet, we have memorized something from a class that we already took, or we have a friend who has already “been there, done that!”
Trust me on this one. If I do not want to grow anymore, I will stop listening to what others are really trying to say. If i don’t want to be of service to my fellow-man/woman, I can just stop listening to what they are trying to express, and just layer my own ignorance and judgement, over somebody else, and not let them reveal to me who they Really Are in this special moment.
Our religious and political leaders are masters at this, as well as family members who promote their “control dramas” in the place of loving, open communication. Please don’t inflict this same treatment on the ones you love. It is like putting a blanket around our heart and soul, and putting us into the car, so that those with a dehumanizing or monetizing philosophy can continue to oppress others, while keeping themselves spiritually asleep.
We all deserve to be listened to. I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the potential of the damaging impacts to our relationships with others, by merely not taking the time to listen with our hearts, to the other’s deepest meaning. Most of my closest connections already practice this, and do not intentionally ignore the needs of others.
We are all developing human beings, no matter what our age. And, we are all God’s children, and God speaks through us, whether we can hear the “truth”, or not. Sometimes the “truth” is so difficult to hear, that we shut down emotionally, and we either ignore what is said, or substitute our own story for what the “other” is trying to communicate.
What is it within me that causes such a disproportionate reaction to other people’s deafness or indifference towards me?
UNHEALED TRAUMA.
I must have been whipped by my father’s belt at least 100 times over the course of my youth, from ages of four through thirteen years. One beating, and my memory of it, stands as a testimony to the penetrating power of childhood trauma. In this memory, I see my father standing in one corner of the room, with my mother in the other corner, opposite from me. I was cowering, and crying, while I witnessed dad removing his belt. I cried out to my mother to protect me. She could not, and did not, and broke into tears. Dad proceeded to beat the hell out of my behind.
My mother, who I loved and trusted with my life, all the way to her death in 2009, could not protect me from the wrath of an overenthusiastic toxic masculine master of discipline. Mom could not express her voice for mercy, love and compassion, as my father’s aggressiveness scared her away from her spiritual moorings. My mother had not yet developed her voice and her power, though by the time I had turned twenty five years old, she sure had.
It’s been two decades since the research linking childhood adversity to adult illness began. It sometimes takes a lifetime for the effects of trauma to show up in devastating and difficult to treat diseases that ruin lives, for a second time. According to the CDC, the annual health care cost of adult patients who have a history of early trauma is $124 billion a year.
Statistics tell us that two-thirds of Americans reading these words, including physicians, will recognize that experiences in their childhood still trail after them today, like a shadow. Fortunately, medical science now recognizes many proven interventions for recovering from trauma, even decades after events have occurred. The first steps towards recovery are becoming aware of the possibility of their presence in our past, acknowledging that a present or future problem have arisen from their damaging effects, and becoming willing to face them holistically to bring a measure of healing to our self. We must become conscious of the fact that internalized trauma has destabilizing effects upon our health and life, and recognize that our lives remain anchored to the past trauma, until we treat our wounds..
It is in “knowing thyself” that one finally comes into conscious contact of what is the foundation of our own limited sense of self, so that we can mindfully manage and consciously dismiss those lies generated from our own traumas. Our unconscious traumas, many of which have been internalized since birth or before, are guards who stand at the gate preventing our access to our higher possibilities. When we remove those guards, we access the sacred, and secret vault that is within. We are then free to wander upon new paths of consciousness, where spiritual prosperity reigns supreme, and “the Universe and God” may reveal their true nature.
The awareness and the healing of childhood trauma places us squarely on new paths of consciousness, which leads us into sacred realms.. Without such freeing insight, we continue on the older, more familiar paths of painful existence, where replication of errors of perception continue, suffering predominates, and the profane reigns supreme.
Please see into self, and find the willingness to be set free from its pillory, to reveal our Self.
For most people, healing requires perseverance and patience, to bring the us the fullest measure of healing. And, until the final release from ego’s grasp, we must remain vigilant through insight and mindfulness, catching ourselves whenever we stray back upon the old paths. I took several photographs of my baby and early childhood self, and grieved with these images of self my loss of innocence and healthy self-esteem.during the early years. It is heartbreaking work, and the floodgates of tears opened up, threatening to drown me, Yet, this grief, like the unexpressed anger, are the most important contributors to the letting go of the old, familiar lonely path of feeling ignored and unloved by the world.
It is important to acknowledge that we tried to love ourselves since birth, and we also tried to love those who did not appear to return it back to us.
The truth is that our world does not heal, until we do.
“We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are”—Anais Nin
The new name for the guards preventing our entry into our eternal self is Anger and Grief. We must identify their source within us and face them directly, without judgement or condemnation, or we will be prevented from assuming our rightful place in the spiritual universe.
We can’t give to others what we do not feel to be true about our self.
We can save the world . . . from our limited sense of self.
Our anger and our grief are the keys to the door to our lost kingdom.
Once the inhibiting power of trauma is recognized, the desire for freedom erupts, In the seeing of this embedded trauma, the seer is transformed, eventuating in liberation of the heart and mind from the pillories of the past.
When we finally see what is false within our self, the liar loses its voice, and the silence born of oppression and repression is dissipated.
Chapter 8: A Meditation On Anger
In these times when our leaders betray our trust, and when some of our fellow citizens and family members abandon all conscience and even stick out their middle finger at the truth, anger can arise. Anger can be a powerful, positive spiritual force, when expressed from a clear heart and healing consciousness. Those that fear anger, fear change, and growth. Understand anger, know thyself, and apply anger and love as liberally as is needed. Those who continue to witness the world as it currently exists, with no response other than indifference, or offering spiritually derived platitudes, have their heads buried in the hypnotizing sands of personal fantasy, and are missing an opportunity to unfold into the immensity of their power and being.
I have found that the use of anger for defensive and humanitarian purposes, and as an act of tough love is quite similar, philosophically and spiritually, as the need to use military force, and war for humanitarian purposes. However, weaponized, institutionalized, and dehumanized anger can result in unnecessary suffering and unethical wars; Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, like most religions, believe that war is undesirable and avoidable. I have never been a promoter or supporter of senseless and selfish wars, yet I don’t have much use for religions, especially Christianity as it is now understood and practiced, which I do not now see as developing sufficient insight into how each of its adherents may achieve the peaceful life, thus deterring interpersonal violence or war. The corruption of their moral and ethical fabric has become so prevalent in modern society that our present political and religious mores are almost indistinguishable from each other. Just tune into Pat Robertson of the 700 club (666 club), or listen to the children of Billy Graham to get a horrifying view of the modern disease of the American pseudo-Christian Spirit. We have all been victimized and traumatized by the well-meaning, and not so well meaning, adherents of that philosophy.
All of the religions of our world still tend to guide much of the discussion about the rules for engagement with self, and the other. Religious reasoning around human emotions, such as happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger tend to be attuned to the cultures and geographic locations in which the religions are practiced the most. And, these emotions, coupled with whatever rationality and reason might still be present in the humans experiencing them, become the foundation behind all action in our world, including the search for love, family and friend connections, personal and cultural evolution, healing, crime, and war. Understanding all of these internal relationships, ie. having deep insight into self and other, is essential to establish the foundation for proper action in the world.
A great story from classical spiritual literature around human values and war comes from the Hindu tradition, and is called the Bhagavad Gita & War. In the classic Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita & War, is documented the story of Arjuna, the fabled bowman of the Mahabharata. Lord Krishna’s view of war is revealed in the Gita. .Krishna’s obsession throughout the entire Mahabharata was to establish a society where Dharma was the guiding principle. This is a society where there is protection and happiness for all, and where people live in a balanced, spiritually orientated way, with respect for other people, creatures and all of nature…
There were two warring factions in this story, Pandavas and Duryodhana. Pandavas, consciously strove to act for the betterment of the masses rather than for their own personal gain. They were rulers who could be instrumental in bringing about such a society as Krishna wanted to create. The rulers from the Pandavas philosophy were guided by the principles underlying true statesmanship. On the other hand, Duryodhana stood for hedonism and self-aggrandizement, and is the ancient version of America’s Trump phenomenon.
There is an incident in the Mahabharata where Duryodhana complains that Krishna always favored the Pandavas. Krishna’s reply was simple – “Adopt a Dharmic way of life, and I will give you, Duryodhana, the same support and guidance I give to the Pandavas.” As such, it would have been disastrous for society if Kaurava, the legendary king of the Duryodhana, had come to hold sway over the most influential and powerful kingdom of that era. A Kaurava victory would have meant a rule of darkness over Hastinapoor, Indrapastha and beyond.
And for Arjuna, the warrior in dialogue with Lord Krishna, as a member of the “Kshatriya” or the warrior caste, fighting the battle is eminently ‘righteous’. It is a just cause and to defend it is his duty or dharma. And, he receives conscious support from Lord Krishna, who even bends the code of war to support Arjuna to defeat his foe. In this brief overview, it can be seen that Krishna’s guidance to the Pandavas reflects a universal and valid approach to certain predicaments that will always face mankind. His efforts to help the Pandavas should be understood in the sole context of the establishment of a righteous society
The philosophies behind the decision to defend ourselves, and/or our communities, from attack from others are biologically, historically, spiritually, and rationally based. Our biological natures, beginning at the cellular level with the dispatch of antibodies against foreign invaders such as bacteria and viruses, up to the threats against our lives by armed aggressors, demand that we work at self-preservation. Also, whenever there is an immanent threat against our community, our cultural and personal values and natures require that we protect ourselves from “outside threats” whenever those not from our area attempt to bring harm and/or steal resources from our community, especially after peaceful outreach and advances have been rebuffed. Just as a peace-loving community must generate a protective force against the bellicose attitudes and outside aggression of others who do not hold peace and loving communication as a cultural value, so must the individual within that community learn to entertain and balance those complex energies, in order to bring forth the most effective and life-affirming responses to threats.
So, just where does anger and love fit into this preliminary discussion? There are those who despair of the violence in society, and within themselves. They seek to go beyond this distress, yet they perceive few available options. Not knowing that the answer lies deep within themselves, they seek elsewhere, and find mentors, gurus, counselors, therapists, or methods of actually hiding from the self, such as excessive drink, drugs, sex, or the obsessive pursuit of outward accomplishments in the world. There are those who go to India to sit at the feet of the latest Master of renown, or follow the latest popular spiritual teachers, who appear to be popping up like weeds everywhere, including television and Facebook. Unless the “Teacher” or “Master” loves the great outdoors, communes with nature and its glorious creatures, hikes, camps, bicycles, and generally loves their own body, and its movement across this sacred planet Earth, they have nothing to offer to me but more spiritual “froth”. Our bodies are formed from the sacred soil of this sacred planet Earth, and those who do not honor or respect them as ONE can be no teacher for me. Finally, the teacher must appear within our own hearts and minds, and it demands of us to be listened to, or to be ignored at our own peril..
Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.
—-Saint Augustine
Dialogue between Jules and myself
writers note: I have changed my friend’s name to Jules in the following representation of our dialogue. In the interest of fairness, I have changed his name to Jules because I have not represented his responses in their entirety, and thus this is an incomplete document not deserving of his name.
The time directly preceding our dialogue was an unprecedented period in my life. After the dialogue, I will extensively develop that beautifully turbulent period in my life. The reader may ignore the last half of this extensive blog without missing out on my main message. My experience in the first few months of 2017, was characterized by prolific writing, conscious dreaming, enhanced creativity, joy, happiness, and a desire to share some of the amazing insights that seemed to be just popping up like wildflowers. I called Gary after a remarkable shared experience around the onset of a brain tumor, and its subsequent removal, in our deceased friend and former member of this book club, Marty C. In a future chapter I will extensively develop this aspect of my profound relationship with Marty.
This challenging time opened a mysterious, creative interior door within myself. The timing of our extended lunch meeting where we had our dialogue was three months after Trump was inaugurated, in April of 2017. For reasons based on his own understanding of proper attitude and action in this world, this US based spiritual guide took exception to Portland’s, and to my own, anger at Trump becoming the president.
The day before Marty’s passing
Jules founded the World Peace Institute, and served as its president until four years ago. He continues to host a weekly Saturday spiritual gathering in West Linn. I wanted to resume my friendship with him, and I was excited about the new energy that had lifted me into a new dimension of understanding. We scheduled a lunch meeting, and I shared my desire for continuing friendship and communication with him. In the past, I was much more reticent about sharing my insights, instead deferring to Jules (Gary) and his persona of being a teacher and spiritual guide. I was much more aware of what was going on with Jules, than he was with me, so I tried to bring him up to speed a bit. We were friendly and quite engaged with each other initially. He then stated:.
.
”There is so much hatred arising within our Portland area since the election of Donald Trump. It does not matter who is the President, for our society to continue to be a loving place, the people need to reign in their emotions and follow a path towards peace and reconciliation.”
“Jules, it is unsettling to be a witness to what is being uncovered in our country right now. I had no idea of the predominance of ignorance and anti-social tendencies of many Americans. I hope that we are not witnessing the takeover of our country by a false prophet and liar.”.
“Um, Bruce, perhaps there is a different way for all of us to see what is unfolding right now. When I think of you, I think of Joel Goldsmith’s teachings. I see you as the perfect channel for the great teachings from that mystic and spiritual guide. Isn’t there a more spiritually appropriate way for you to be viewing this national process?”.
“Jules, Joel’s teachings were indeed a blessing for me in the past, but a new energy has come upon me. I have a new love offering to bring to the spiritual buffet, I think, that is much more appropriate to the times, and the situation”.
“Oh, I look forward to hearing about your experience. Have you dramatically diverged from your spiritual path, or is this just a new description for the way towards love and peace?”.
“No, I believe that a bridge to peace and healing has been provided for me to offer to those still struggling with the human condition. It is not a time for absolutist philosophies and reasoning. It is the time to acknowledge our sacred humanity, and to not judge parts of ourselves as less divine, or Godly, than other parts. This divide and conquer routine that mankind has offered to the seeker is a fragmented, unholy approach to spiritual well-being. It is reminiscent of the “mortification of the flesh” processes that even the Buddha finally renounced”. I witnessed you almost destroy your own body through those disfiguring fasts that you performed in the late 1990’s, thinking that by starving yourself, you would be closer to God. I am not sure how close to God you actually got, but you sure got close to death! The same principle applies when we try to starve ourselves of our own emotions. . . the fast fragments and eventually destroys the very fabric of our being and integrity.
“Bruce, I am not sure what you are trying to say. Can you give me some examples?”.
“Well, for instance, anger is one of our human emotions that is judged as unacceptable by those supposedly in the spiritual “know”. We are all beings sourced from the energy of infinity. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it certainly can be accessed, and modified to meet the need of the moment. Anger is a name given to an aspect of human energy. Anger naturally arises in human consciousness, just as does love, sexual desire, and a desire for community, peace and personal safety. I have seen how anger itself is not either bad or good, it is a manifestation of the divine impulse within all of mankind. It is a call to immediate action with complete self-awareness, and not a call to escape into other people’s ideas as to how to behave”.
“Bruce, that is an ignorant, shocking statement. The Dalai Lama himself says that anger is hatred, and that it damages the mind of all who use it as part of their life’s practice”..
“I have to respectfully, but STRONGLY, disagree, with your interpretation of what the Dalai Lama has said, or even with him, if he holds strong to that idea. This is America, Jules, not Tibet, or India. None of us were born, raised or treated like we were the next Jesus Christ, or reincarnated Enlightened One of the Buddhist tradition, like the Dalai Lama. Had he been born into my family, he would probably be speaking to you today with my point of view. Had I been born into his reality, perhaps I would be the one that you are quoting from right now. You simply cannot take a teaching like the Dalai Lamas, and apply it universally like some sort of magic salve. This is America, and we are a broken culture and civilization. Anger is appropriate and necessary in these times, as long as it is not institutionalized anger like racism, misogyny, xenophobia, white supremacy, genocide, or religious persecution. Anger born of the moment is infinitely different, and pure, whereas anger born of collective or personal memory is the source of hatred, revenge, lack of forgiveness, and what you now appear to fear.”.
“Oh Bruce, I can’t believe that you are saying this. You have changed, and I don’t recognize you anymore. Please read my book again, and, here, make sure to read some of the Dalai Lamas’ teachings. You have gone astray.”.
“Jules, no, I believe that I have found a middle path. If a stranger were to come over to our table right now, and urinate on our meals, or hit us, anger would spontaneously arise. What about the young man or woman about to be raped by a predator in a dark alley? It is that very energy of self-protection and defense, that anger, that we can channel for the good of the moment, to either inform the individual of their injustice against us, or to actually defend ourselves from the threat to our safety and well-being. To just sit there and turn the other cheek is NOT the proper response. If you believe that your thoughts and prayers could transmute the situation without action of any kind, that is fantasy thinking, and thus keeps us victimized and oppressed. We must stand up for our rights!
You have not fully connected with nor understood the inner matrix of collective consciousness that underpins the entirety of the human race, where darkness, isolation, fear, and hubris reign supreme, and operates as a strong potential energy under the surface of many men’s thoughts and actions. The Common Knowledge Game that plays out in collective human consciousness is what we have to consciously deal with. The aggressor is playing out a story that has been told and retold since man first created stories, and first lifted a hand against his innocent, or guilty, brother or sister, and either felt self-justified in doing so, or was oblivious to his own intentions. Our prisons are filled with millions of human beings who all of humanity’s best thoughts and prayers could not and did not help.
Right now, virtually all of the people who you associate with cultivate peaceful, loving attitudes, and that is just great. But there are many of us who still have to make contact with the rest of humanity, where such intentions are not even considered. I made trips through toxic male dominated workplaces, and even the underworld, where such “sacred” concepts would be regarded with suspicion, if not outright antagonism. There is a fight for survival, a fight to defend one’s tiny little plot of life, land, illusions of thought and sense of self. And there is mental illness, and an indifference to the feelings of all others who are unlike their own limited understanding of themselves. If we do not rise up and let the indifferent know not only that we exist, but we have feelings, and that we will defend our right to continue to have feelings, and existence, then those who ignorantly attempt to repress and dominate us will continue their abhorrent behavior..
Like a virus, those who oppress will be drawn to others who also have a desire to oppress, and the infection spreads through the collective mob mind. It is the feedback that we give back to them that eventually becomes part of the new knowledge for them, that others have feelings, and need to be respected, if they want to maintain some of their own freedoms. If we sit back and pray, as if the offenders already have the sensitivity to pick up on those finer vibrations, and that all they need to be reminded of is the underlying goodness of all is a self-defeating delusion, as our good intentions and prayers have little power for those people. The prayer that has the greatest power is the vocal one uttered through
THE SPOKEN WORD
We must be loud, if necessary, to remind the offender that another human being is present, has rights, and will protect itself and reflect back to the offender his own offensive energy, until the offender finds a way to present a more favorable side of himself to the rest of the world. We are part of the feedback loop for the rest of the world. We neglect our responsibilities as teachers and healers if we do not confront evil wherever evil arises. To not confront evil, or to mask it over with another name, and make it OK, as long as its influence does not directly impact us in this moment, is a dereliction of spiritual duty, and is one of the responsible parties for the continued proliferation of darkness and evil upon our planet…
Your vessel is shining on the outside, yet on the inside there appears to be an incompleteness of understanding, and of spirit. You attempt to suppress and repress part of your own humanity, and thus, the humanity of others. You are a well-meaning, but unconscious part of the conspiracy of silence, where men are made wrong for speaking or acting from their strongest emotions, through which our true spirit may reign supreme.”.
“Bruce, where you are wrong is simple. Through meditation, peace and reconciliation, we can create all of the relationships that either prevents the anger and hatred from arising that you believe that you may have to defend yourself against, or gives you a more creative, loving way to deal with the assaults.”.
“Jules, how is that working for you, and for our world, so far?”
“History shows the cyclical nature of human civilizations, with the rise of collective order, culture and spirituality, mutual trust, intelligence, creativity and the arts, and infrastructural stability, and then their decline into chaos and disorder, and then resurrection in new ways. Our own personal history parallels the same cyclical principle, except in a more compressed time frame. To be aware is to note that as far as we can see, we can only see ourselves, and our own projections of what we think that we see, or might be. Note that to not see what is happening in the real world is remain in a dream world, the world of illusion, no matter how much you want to make peace and love the picture of the world. The world is in decline, no matter how much we might want to try to spin this one. The world is overpopulated with people who would rather defend their lies against facts, and fight for fantasies and conspiracy theories over established truth and knowledge. You cannot reason with insanity, or pray it away. It must be faced directly, honestly, courageously, and with access to all of our spiritual resources, which includes anger, as well as compassion and forgiveness..
The Far Side Wait, Wait, We don’t have to be just sheep
ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL.
Do you think that just because you are giving love to the offender, that his behavior is going to spontaneously change? You noted at the start of our lunch the predominance of anger and hatred arising in Portland right now. I am not seeing all of our prayers and meditations working right now, nor have they for thousands of years. All of the Dalai Lamas prayers and meditations for Tibet were useless. He left his country, and did not defend himself. He left the country in fear for his own life, and his country was to be overrun by the Chinese, to be defended only by those who could not escape with him. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama, was left behind, and spent many years philosophically fighting the Chinese incursion, and languished in jail as a result of his best efforts. He stood up, and made his voice heard, in the only place and way a man of true spiritual integrity could. The Dalai Lama’s peaceful attitudes did not change one Chinese invader’s mind. I don’t see any of our thoughts and prayers reaching this reality TV star parading as our President, either. Three hundred and fifty million jabs back at his pudgy belly will help, though.”.
“Violence begets more violence, period. I think that our lunch time has come to an end. Please reconsider your position, Bruce. You have so much to give to the world, yet giving anger to the world is no gift, it is a curse. I can help, perhaps come to more meetings at our church, where we can give you the support of our spirit of peace”..
“Thanks, Jules. I know that you say this with love. And I say this to you, this is also love, if only you had the ears to hear. Right anger leads to right action, as well. Protecting oneself against the violent assaults from others is an act of love, as well. Loving oneself through defending oneself, while giving an offensive human being necessary feedback from which to learn is an act of love, too. Would you watch your own child torture and torment a neighbor’s pet, and have no emotional reaction to it, and not confront him and teach him another way to behave? Love and righteous anger as a response to aggressive and offensive philosophies can live together in harmony, and they must, if America is to survive. Jules, I don’t have a church, a book for you to read, nor can I provide a forum for you to understand what I am talking about. Just know that my own “still small voice” is thundering from the silence in the center of my being, affirming the truth as I speak it, and live it. I am not a lamb before another person’s sincere, but wayward teachings, I am led from within, and I will go where the teachings lead me..
Blessings to you on your journey, Jules. I love you.”.
And I left the lunch, and we have not spoken since, except for through Facebook and emails. He recently unfriended me from Facebook for my outrage at him for posting a bullshit meme and video from the king of anti-semitism, hatred, racism and mediocre and outdated Rock and Roll, Ted Nugent. Ted was trying to “rehabilitate” his horrific image, without making any changes in his outlook, and I was not buying it. Jules has an international audience, and did not appreciate me calling him out before his crowd.
.Jules has grown quite weary of my point of view, as have a few others.
I have found my voice. Others have not found their ears, however!!
Fear, anger, grief, and other often times unpleasant feelings respond in healthy manners to our mindful attempts at understanding them. We must avoid become the oppressors of our self, we must avoid repressing feelings
My Monologue On Human Mastery (extended version)
People pleasing and ass-kissing behavior, and unquestioning loyalty to people with power and influence is like renting a room in a burning building. Once we get in touch with our feelings, heal ourselves of the oppression by our culture, and undo the bondage from the repression of our true nature, we can finally bring integrity back to the forefront of our consciousness, and find the long ignored leader within ourselves. Then we no longer rent a room in a burning building, but instead reside in the luxurious abode of “. . . the secret place of the Most High abiding under the shadow of the Almighty.”
In the timeless words of Bob Marley, come the words of a real spiritual warrior:
Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights:
And in the words of another great spiritual warrior:.
“I come not to bring peace, but a sword!”
—-Jesus of Nazareth.
as he, too, tried to break down the patterns of social, economic, and religious injustice of the day.
A lifetime of oppression, of not being heard, having cries of pain and suffering ignored because of some sort of prevailing philosophy, thus ignoring major energy centers of who I AM, creates energy field corruption and damage. How can a young woman, or man, not respond with anger and fear while being sexually abused by yet another Toxic Man, and his own distorted theories of how life should be? Extrapolate that to our entire country, where millions of our fellow Americans, or, more accurately, our fellow human beings, be they African-American, Hispanic, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, or whatever label we want to foist on another child of God, continue to be persecuted and oppressed by the dark philosophies spawned by other Patriarchal ideologues..
I layered myself with all manners of philosophies that suggested that I should ignore my personal human emotions, and all of the so-called dark energies that plague us, through the labeling, judging, and condemnation of all of these energies. Maya, or illusions, or cultural hypnosis, are terms coined by the “aware” that help us to understand that what appears to be in the “real world” may not actually be there, and to be aware of the potential of our minds to project out of our own unenlightened ignorance our misunderstanding of life, and our actual relationship to it. Ignorance and darkness, and their love child, evil itself, do exist, and is not an illusion. Rwanda, Syria, and any number of modern-day countries have witnessed the ravages of evil, and those residents who stayed seated in meditation and prayer are now dead, while those who are still alive escaped or had to defend themselves..
The key is to place these so-called dark energies in the service of understanding and love. Enlightened anger IS wisdom, and if we deny our anger about the oppression we have experienced, or that which is persecuting the innocents of the world, our access to vast sacred energy centers will continue to be blocked away from us, by those who inadvertently become part of the control mechanism that we are attempting to become liberated from..
Somebody has to act as a bridge between highbrow spiritual theories and/or realizations, and the damaged, hurt, misunderstood, persecuted, abused, sick and ill, and I AM THAT, along with countless millions of awakening abused people around the world. One size does NOT fit all, when it comes to how to spiritually respond to challenging situations. If we are sitting in an ivory tower or lofty spiritual “reality” then we will have one style of engagement with the world. If we are still in relationship with all of humanity, we have to be ready for anything, and we will have to be ready to engage ALL of our resources to meet the safe and sane requirements for each unique relationship . This is how my awakening world now spins, around the reunification of all rejected energies of our Holy Spirit (the spirit of wholeness that still resides within all of us, even in the “least of these” people, who may still reside in their own personal hell).
There are those purporting to be “spiritual teachers” and advisors, who are admonishing their followers to abhor using human emotions with their dealings with the public. Specifically, I am frequently hearing that a “requirement for maintaining spiritual integrity” is to NOT EXPRESS ANGER, in any form, and instead to substitute “loving thoughts” and “forgiving actions”.
Really?.
First things first!.
Anger is a natural, normal response, in any particular new moment, to any assault on our being, on those that we love, or on our inner sensibilities. Anger, among all other emotions, and in balance with those aspects of our self, help us to manage our response to the outer world, which is, at times, quite the aggressive, distressed, ugly, oppressive environment. Anger is not positive or negative energy, it is HUMAN ENERGY ITSELF, and like all aspects of our humanity, it needs to be understood in the context from which it arises, and when and how it expresses itself..
Anger can bring fear to the unaware among us, because of an incomplete or unhealed response to its expression in their past. We have all been persecuted, at one time or another (or many times), by the angry parent, boss, co-worker, or stranger driving next to us in a car. Or, how about the rapist, or child molester, who tries to attack us, or our children?. According to classic psychology, humans engage in “fight or flight” behavior, when they experience fear and/or perceive that they are being attacked. Whether we choose one or the other depends on any number of circumstances, and ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL. When we are backed into a corner, and there is no way out, where is our energy to come from, when the attacker makes his final lunge at us?.
We all feel a need to “be in control”, and to conform to social norms, especially those “norms” expressed in the common knowledge game that dominates the unaware human consciousness. Philosophies and theologies that stress the need to repress aspects of our human nature need to be examined in their fullness, and not accepted at face value. By their very nature, any umbrella philosophy and theology devalues the “intelligence of the moment”, and intentionally and/or unwittingly contribute to the suppression, and repression, of sacred human values and emotions. This unrepressed and unoppressed human energy, when balanced, keeps us as complete beings, capable of accessing and expressing the wholeness of our being, with emotionally intelligent actions appropriate to the activity of the moment..
There is a Wisdom deep inside us all, waiting to inform all of our thoughts and actions in this world. And, this world requires Ultimate intelligence to navigate through it successfully, without bringing harm to ourselves and others needlessly. Anger and fear are not to be repressed by any healthy human being, but instead are to be witnessed, and studied, and utilized intelligently for wise action in this troubled world.
Stand up, stand up, stand up for your rights!.
But, make sure that the anger is appropriate to the moment, and not some formulaic response that the “non-healed, unbalanced” nature within your own self offers up under many questionable circumstances. An “institutionalized expression of anger” becomes hatred in disguise, and that characterizes the oppressive nature of far too many male originated, and dominated, philosophies. When anger becomes an automatic response to all situations where threat is perceived, then the intelligence of the moment is denied, and we are susceptible to bringing needless harm to our bodies, and to our minds, as well as to the “other”..
When I was a eight-year old boy, while on a camping trip with family and friends, my sister and I complained to my parents about the father of the other family,, who had severely overreacted to us, and we accused him of being excessively angry and threatening to us. When my father confronted Bob about his rage, Bob got angry again, denied that he threatened us, and then commanded me to “get my story straight”, before complaining about his behavior in the future. Several years later, while in a fit of rage with his wife, he intentionally crashed his car head-on into another car at a high rate of speed, killing himself and crippling his wife for life.
The act of “getting our story straight”, and calling out ourselves or someone for being disrespectful or engaging in hurtful behavior will not necessarily guarantee any immediate positive outcomes, but it disrupts the conspiracy of silence, if only for a moment. In the seeing, or the development of insight into self, change is facilitated. Everybody needs to become more conscious of the self, and fine tune how we respond to our emotions, but the point is to accept personal responsibility for our emotions, see how they impact ourselves and others, and make necessary adjustments in course if we have behaved inappropriately. Repression and oppression helps nobody in the long run, though they maintain an order of false peace and control for the status quo.
To respond successfully in anger, we need to measure how mindfully we can engage these threats, and successfully group our own thoughts and actions, with others also engaged in the situation, to either fight the oppressors, or to speak our truth, and be heard. We do not engage in mass protests because we want to go for a walk with a bunch of strangers, we engage in protests because we want our voices heard. Channeled anger is an effective, time-tested method for standing up to those who would keep us silent in the face of their own misdeeds.
One only needs to review history to see how well the silent sheep held back the Nazi oppressors. If you want to conform to the “spiritual philosophies” of those who did grow up in our country, and did not share in our American Experience, good luck to you. I choose to wisely tend to my own “flock” of thoughts and feelings, and not to become just another follower in someone’s “herd”. I am now a shepherd of my own thoughts and feelings, and not just someone’s lamb..
Anecdotally, we hear of those rare few who have successfully mitigated dark, evil circumstances, through some fortunate “intervention” through prayer, or luck, where those who are attacking us somehow are diverted, and move their aggression elsewhere. Stories of Gandhi’s non-violent protest against British occupancy of India’s lands gets a lot of play in so-called “spiritually aware circles”. Remember, though, the many years of British occupation prior to that stand, and Britain’s diminishing will to keep their empire extended throughout the world. We only need watch the news, or read the paper, to see that these anecdotal stories do not embrace the reality underlying most of the final acts, and resulting actions, of the aggressive ones. Murder, rape, child molesting, intimidation, oppression, misogyny, road rage, terrorism, paternal violence in ALL OF ITS FORMS, keeps manifesting itself, and has throughout all of history. Those who are inspired to make peaceful approaches to these problems must continue, yet, so do those who aggressively confront the forces of oppression and darkness.
WE NEED BOTH ENERGIES FOR CHANGE
By the way, have you ever noticed how so many of the so-called spiritual savants, or gurus from foreign lands, do not have families? What is the real teaching here, do you think? It is so much easier to talk love and light for all beings, especially when one does not have to deal directly with the most challenging of human relationships. From the middle of 1987 to early 1988, I spent over 6 hours a day in meditation and prayer, and I had very few problems with my relationships with people. I lived in perfect peace and harmony within myself. Also, I had no children, or nobody to call me on my isolation and (potential) loneliness. All in all, it was beautiful for me, yet totally disengaged from the challenges of integration into society, and family and friendship development. I value my time in the “real world”, where the beauty, and the pain, of human existence is my greatest teacher. Mysticism has a place in our world, yet I struggle to find how to best stay in alignment with its ecstasy, and enlightenment, while maintaining a “normal human experience”. Perhaps I will drink again from its deep waters, when I have finally wearied of this world..
If our minds are fed anything other than facts, ESPECIALLY WITHIN ESTABLISHED COMMUNITIES OF HUMAN BEINGS, we are involved in a process known as maya, or illusion creating, and our world(s) tend to end up in chaos. The result is individual, and cultural, hypnosis and schizophrenia, where we can end up losing personal power, and we can be too easily bullied by the wayward opinions and false insights of others. Too often those who claim to have real knowledge are as lost as everybody else, even though they may be claiming righteousness, religious or otherwise. When we try to fit into a situation or setting where our heart tells us we don’t belong, honor those feelings, and investigate where they are coming from. If we feel that we are already “swimming in the divine ocean”, then we can watch, and wait, and see who is swimming with us, and join with them as indicated (or reach out and help lift another up, as they request help). While in the marketplace of human thought and reason,
LET THE BUYER BEWARE!
It has taken me many years to speak my truth to our cultural, political, and theological power and knowledge brokers. My enhanced attention to my inner needs and the greater good of all finally took precedence over my own feelings of inadequacy in confronting this collective American life experience about it’s alienating, crazy making communications and relationships, and its collective consciousness, and collective unconsciousness. Our cultural spiritual dementia needed to be challenged, lest we all lapse into deeper degrees of anxiousness, powerlessness, and unreality. Confronting a difficult reality takes more energy than most of us care to bring to the table, yet, not doing so diminishes our own standing in Truth, Life, and Love.
I had very poor training since birth in how to successfully navigate group energy, up to, and including, the whole of society that we all participate in. As a boy, when family discussions turned into arguments, many times I found myself either raising my voice against the angry voice of my father, or retreating into submission and fear at the threat of being attacked for being contrary to the flow. And, I internalized that I was probably wrong anyway, and would be punished if I stepped out and asserted myself too much. I learned that I could undertake less obvious means of rebelling against authority, sometimes through indirect, or obvious, self, or other, destructive behavior..
Passive/aggressive tendencies have haunted me most of my entire life, and becoming “self-aware” has gone a long way to keep me from employing those unskilled coping mechanisms unconsciously, though I am still occasionally haunted by their presence. Having undertaken the inner work of insight, and maintaining mindfulness, and identified those sources of suffering within myself, does not instantaneously remove all of the darkness within. But is also does not remove from me the responsibility to call out those who are the external agents of oppression and repression, no matter how much I might love them or want to protect them, or even to protect myself from the ramifications of asserting what is right, true, or proper in any situation.
What is not expressed is de-pressed. It seems the more we express, that is, bring out what is in, the more alive we are. The more we give voice to our pain in living, the less build-up we have between our soul and our way in the world. However, the more we depress, the more we push down and keep in, the smaller we become. The more we stuff between our heart and our daily experience, the more we have to work through to feel life directly.–Mark Nepo
Alcoholism, depression, mental illness, murder, suicide, participating in the continued destruction of our sacred Mother Earth, and other manifestations of dis-empowered male energy can be the results of loss of integrity, and stifling ones feelings and voice. And, this is NOT yet another spiritual theory, this is the ACTUALITY of American male life, and of my life. Sitting in meditation, and or quoting other “spiritually enlightened individuals” may have brought me a temporary measure of peace, but this whole process became yet another “opiate”, and it never brought the change required by my spirit for its own emergence into its own unique wholeness. Thoughts and prayers are great preparation for action, but, without action, thoughts and prayers are only mental masturbation.
Ignorance, and its most deadly spawn Evil continues to exist, in spite of Love’s presence, and I will not allow the “wise ones” and their dismissive theories on evil to discourage me from confronting that force, both within myself and within my American culture. It takes a force of will, or an energy FAR transcending those that the absolutist philosophies of unconditional love promote, to address this darkness. Jesus facing the devil in the desert has no value to me, if I do not also face my own “devil”, and our collective “devils”. If I lived in a spiritual “ivory tower”, where I never witness man’s inhumanity to man, then these philosophies might serve my needs. Why would any sane man create more Fake News, deny what they see, and gloss it over with Universal Love, whatever that means? I no longer need permission from “higher powers” to deal with all of our difficult emotions directly and honestly..
It is fascinating to watch what happens in group processes, where the “active issues of the moment” are finally met by the active participants within a closed group. M. Scott Peck had a great understanding of the stages of spiritual growth, as well as how communities respond to challenges within themselves. He coined a term “the dark prophet” for those who take an antagonistic position in regards to a prevailing attitude, concept, or accepted norm established by the community. When those other members within the community are confronted by the perceived “attack”, they immediately go into a defensive posture, and begin the process of self, and other, protection, and scapegoat or marginalize the “dark prophet” who has spoken out against the accepted norms. Unfortunately, in our spiritual and emotional therapy groups, or in the political process itself, the person who speaks out against the so-called prevailing norms is over-analyzed by, or redirected by, those who cannot or will not share in the observation, or insight offered. Eventually, truth will dawn on the rest of the community, but not before an innocent is punished for offering up a contrary truth..
It is not a fun position to be in, to be the “dark prophet”. It is the position of greatest spiritual growth, and evolution, and only for those who have made a decision to separate from the “common knowledge game” of human (mis)understanding. My old tendencies would be to try to hide under the nearest table (figuratively, and literally) to avoid confrontation. Or, I would rather defend the person who is being challenged, rather than consider both or several points of view simultaneously, and doing the real work of healing of conflicting and diverging energies, and the resultant synthesizing of a new group outlook. But, we are dying, and our world is dying, and it is time to speak out about the underlying issues with our culture, and the male consciousness that supports it. The destruction of our planet, and the monetization and dehumanization of our people, especially including the feminine aspect of all humanity, where our feeling nature and divinity lives, will continue unabated until a critical mass of awakening humanity rises up and asserts itself in the face of these assaults against life and human decency..
Without the integration of the divine feminine with our unhealed male consciousness, any hope for a bright future cannot be maintained. I cannot and I will not be led unconsciously to my own spiritual slaughter, and to the slaughter of my Values, Morality, and Ethics that World Patriarchy continues to threaten us all with on a daily basis. The Demon must be recognized, and challenged by all, or prepare for the darkened ending to all that is important to us as an American culture, and as a world civilization.
We must strive to keep an equilibrium, between our need to confront the forces of oppression, repression, darkness, and mutual imprisonment, and our need to listen carefully to the needs of those promoting values antithetical to the very spiritual values that we are affirming and practicing in our own lives. A continuing part of our education, and evolution, is dependent upon our willingness not to reject the human being still covered in a darkened shroud, but instead to reject the ideas that the ignorant person is still clinging to. Therein lies the great challenge in communication with spiritual integrity, separating the person from the offending agenda or philosophy..
Those stuck deepest in their own illusions are those most prone to stubbornness in holding onto the ways perceived as threatening to ourselves. The ideas that “God said it, I believe it, and that is all that there is to it!”, and “My country, and its leaders, RIGHT OR WRONG!”, are sure to stimulate a positive response within those who have been raised to, or like to follow authoritarian principles, but for all awakening souls, there may not be a supportive or friendly response. It is best to first pause, before reacting to any offending statement, and wait for a response from the deeper reaches of our heart. Keeping the doors open to dialogue and mutual respect are of primary importance, and not attempting to convert another to our own beliefs, no matter how “wrong” they appear to be, and how “right” we might feel in our minds and hearts..
Chapter 9: Cannon Beach And An Anxious Silence
On the first weekend in October of 2017, we arrived at the Oregon coast, at Cannon Beach, on a partly sunny Monday afternoon. We were quickly greeted by our very long-term dear friend from Arizona, June and her ten-year love interest, Michael (are you ever getting married?). After checking into our hotel rooms, and getting geared up for a walk, we headed out to the beach, to walk northward up the coast, past Haystack Rock. We engaged in our normal conversations, catching up on June and Michael’s activities, as well as giving them a brief download on what has been happening in our own lives.
As the walk progressed, we separated a bit into two groups, the guys and the girls, though we did not create a huge distance between the two groups in our walk. We continued to enjoy the scenery, the clearing blue skies above us, the seagulls swooping and gliding, the watching of and engaging with the other tourists and their dogs, while being continuously soothed by the constant breaking of the waves upon the sandy shore. Small talk continued between both groups, until I had to remove my shoes, due to extreme pain in my right foot.
The pain in my foot was accompanied by another unidentified discomfort, deep within my heart, which continued to trouble me. I looked at Michael, and I began to relate the experience of my friend’s very recent death, and how the notice of my own father’s death coincidentally occurred at the moment that I was helping to place my friend’s body into the hearse. I wanted to talk about the disturbing appearance of insanity in the marriage of my deceased friend, and it’s impact on my friend’s final days, and its impact upon my own being.
Michael looked up at the nearby mountains, appearing not too interested in what I was trying to say. He attempted to redirect my attention away from myself, and the view away from the ocean. Suddenly, a strangely uncomfortable, unidentified feeling came over me, and I also felt like my heart was starting to beat harder. The skin on my face, and on the front of my body started to tingle, and I felt light-headed. I attempted to breathe deeper and slower, thinking that I had somehow lost my breathing cycle rhythm, yet a deepening, sickening feeling continued to creep through my mind, and through my body.
I sped up my pace, so that I could join up with my wife, who was ahead of us with June. I started to shudder a bit, and shake as if I was cold (there was a breeze, though it was sixty-five degrees, and not extraordinarily chilly). My condition continued to deteriorate, yet all that I felt comfortable with sharing with the group was about my sore foot, which was aching horribly. This foot would eventually need surgery, and I had delayed such surgery for quite a while, but it was not the only source for the pain that I was presently experiencing. Yet, in this group, it was the only pain that I could safely talk about.
We neared our hotel room, and the anxiety reaction that I was experiencing (yes, I finally named it ANXIETY) was threatening to overwhelm me. It was dinner time, so we walked over to the Mo’s restaurant that was connected to our hotel, and ordered dinner. Sharon was very light, and happy, and introduced a “spinner” to the dinner table, to try to keep lightness going, and bring humor and delight to our group. Yet I had lost my sense of delight, and humor, and my appetite, and I knew that I could not even eat dinner, even though I had already ordered a meal with the rest of the group. June commented that I looked like I had turned a gray color, and that I looked ill, and ill I was. I had to leave the table immediately.
I went back to our hotel room, took off my clothes, and lay down in our bed. The world felt like it was spinning around me, and my heart beat so loudly that it sounded like a drum was being bashed in my ears. I continued to try controlled breathing patterns, thinking that this was an anxiety reaction, but I really felt extremely ill, and I felt like a visit to the hospital may be in order. I became so concerned that I got my tablet and went to a medical portal to ask a doctor some questions about what was happening, and ask if I should be hospitalized. I was not sure if I was having an adverse neurological response to something toxic, preparing for a stroke or seizure, having the beginning of a migraine headache, or if I was losing my mind.
The response from the doctor brought some temporary relief to me, when he stated that I was having a stress induced anxiety reaction. OK, that sounded like something I might be able to manage, so I prepared myself to go back to dinner, and finish the evening with our friends. I felt much better, and looked forward to eating, as my appetite had returned from the dead, as well.
Everyone had already finished their meal, so I shared dessert with everybody. I felt good for a while, as we finished our evening together, and headed back to our individual units. But something was still active in my mind, and I began to again feel nauseous, with my heart beating wildly again, and, now, my body started shuddering like I was frozen. Sharon crawled into bed and held me close, I was shaking so violently, and her warmth, and presence, brought some comfort to me. Yet my foot ached like I had never experienced pain before, and I was definitely anxious about that pain, as well as something a bit more undefined, up to that point.
After two hours of holding me, Sharon had fallen asleep, yet I was so wired by my anxiety that I could not sleep, so I left the bed to lay on the couch, and listen to some meditation music. I felt like I might still be “losing my mind”, whatever that meant, or that I was having some sort of nervous breakdown. While meditating on what was happening to me, I came to realize that I really needed to communicate around the absolute insanity of the family activity revolving around the life and death of my dear friend, and, to a lesser extent, that of my father, as well. Michael had shut me down at the moment that I needed to talk most, thinking that by redirecting me away from talking about death, he was doing me a favor. Instead, by not communicating with him and the group what was troubling me, the anxiety reaction launched me off of the pad into outer space, and brought upon me a sickness, and a pain, that I had never experienced before in my life. Oh, that blessed pain and suffering, for it would lead me further down the path to my own ‘liberation’.
As I was awake all night, I attempted meditation upon my own source of pain and suffering, and what came to me was how most of what I know about myself, and my reactions to the world, was created by my fundamental relationship to my parents. I had never developed a complete sense of self in my early years (I will not call it Asperger’s Syndrome, or Autism, though it manifested similarly to ADHD) and my sense of self revolved around internalizing what my mother and father expected from me, what I could or could not give back to them to attempt to please them, and my defense mechanisms for managing the fallout when I failed to either please them, or protect them, or myself, from the results of the conflict that arose in our house when I either made yet another mistake, or when father overreacted to any situation that brought a sense of fear or threat into the home environment. There was also that aspect where I felt a need to “balance” whatever energy was being over expressed at any particular moment, which certainly added to my “passive-aggressive component” of self-expression. It was as if I had two extra self-organizing personalities occupying my ego mind, my creations of who I thought my father and mother were, which was crowding out the “real me”, whoever or whatever that might be (if anyone, maybe there was never a real “me” present, only some sort of complex verbal construct?).
With the death of my father, it ended the era of subservience to his needs, and the need to “protect” my mother from my perception of his aggression towards her.. It also ended the era of incomplete grieving for my own mother’s death, as I had to immediately support my mentally deteriorating father when mother died, and I never completely worked through my own grieving process. I was finally an “orphan”, and all of the entanglements that kept me wound around their lives were now physically removed. My fathers’ spirit no longer needed to overshadow my own life, and now I was allowed to live fully into whatever, or whoever I am, or was supposed to be.
For me this is an extraordinary release, because my “ego” formed much differently that most of the rest of humanity due to unusual parental bonding issues just after birth, and through my first 4-5 years. Being placed on “formula” right after birth, and being placed in a chilly car in the garage at night so that my father could sleep better (I was just another “damned crying baby”) left me as a young being feeling abandoned, and lonely, from the beginning. Though I loved my parents, I certainly did not want to grow up and be like them. Yet, I was not able to offer to my developing self a viable alternative to being like my father, being extremely limited creatively, and my resultant dull, though at times insightful, personality reflected that darkness.
Up to this most recent point in my life, I have perceived the collective impact of toxic male consciousness upon my individual existence, with some insight into my own father’s sometimes toxic involvement in my own mind’s formation. I saw that I had two Tricksters roaming through the inner recesses of my heart and soul, and their continued presence, though they kept me from being lonely as a young being, kept me from developing into my greater good as an independent, free human being. In our world, there are countless examples of “self organizing systems”, and all creatures, and the minds of those creatures, are examples of that miracle in action. The bodies appear to be primarily organized through the pattern created by the history of that species, and it’s interactions with its earthly environment. DNA appears to carry that pattern within our very cells.
Yet the mind appears to have an extra self-organizing principle attached to it, as it organizes itself into a personal sense of being. That little mystery revolves around how well the organism feels accepted by, and connected to the environment that the body travels through. Thus, healthier senses of self arise, and are supported, by myriads of “successful” interactions with its social and physical environment. First and foremost is the beings’ acceptance and integration into the primary family cell, or group. If the young being does not get the requisite positive feedback early on, it faces tremendous odds against forming a happy, well-adjusted self organizing principle, or ego. My first 31 years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed by the “conspiracy of silence” created by my subservience to a damaged image of self, and other. My own true nature had been masked over, or silenced, through that process.
Who, or what, am I now? I am a mystery, even to myself. I need not be anxious, though the transition times from what I thought I was to who I am predestined to become does create intense anxiety. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment. Living into the Truth of what that is now is the new story of my life. There is but One Mind, but it is only experienced in the Unknown.
That next day at the beach, on Tuesday, I experienced the most beautiful perfect peace, and sense of wholeness, that I can recall. The rest of our shared day was characterized by a strong sense of the sacred, and I felt a deepening connection with everybody, and everything. The beauty of the ocean and it’s scenery, the beauty of our friendships, the taste of our food, even the continuing pain in my foot, all felt to me like lyrics of a heavenly song that was connected together by the rhythm of Love.
The conspiracy of silence has to be broken, again and again if necessary, and the silencing of my true identity through adherence to old, worn out patterns of behavior inculcated into me by our culture, our religions, our so-called teachers and teachings, and our misunderstandings of our parents, our God and creator, and our outdated sense of self have to end, for this present moment healing event to have any hope of transforming the heart and soul.
In this moment, I am no longer anxious, I am free. I will find a way to manage future moments, if they bring anxiousness back to me.
“I” will not be denied. I will not deny your own excellence, and your own potential for greatness. Our shared sense of self, and our stories will support and highlight the rest of our continued existence on this plane of being.
May all sentient beings remain free from suffering.
May my own sentience guide me away from all temptations to bring suffering to self, and other.
Please, save yourself.
Depression, Anxiety, and Panic Attacks
I never chose this uneven life path of recovery from trauma, life chose it for me. I choose how to deal with the sights along the way, however.
The amygdala in our brains under duress from trauma creates new paths, leading in unhealthy directions, when these issues that arise through trauma are not promptly dealt with honestly and openly. For me, my number one intention for facilitating healing of myself is to avoid situations or people where poor communication and suppression of human emotions has become ‘normalized’. There are guaranteed negative outcomes associated with those interactions which have resulted in secondary damage and the potential for profound anxiety attacks.
I began to experience the “BIG THREE” of depression, anxiety, and the occasional panic attack, in the latter part of 2017, beginning about two weeks after the death of my father, and three weeks after the death of my friend Marty.
I grappled with:
1). (from 2010-2017) The care for, and eventual death of my father, and the difficulties in the management of his estate,
2). (from 2017) The challenges in supporting the protracted dying process, and the eventual death of my good friend Marty in the week prior to my fathers’ death
3). (from 2017) dealing with the intense neurosis and isolating grief of the wife of my deceased friend, and her ongoing spiritual crisis,
4). a crippling foot problem characterized by the highest possible pain intensity,
5). cancelling a lifetime “friendship” with a high school best friend who had become physically, spiritually, and emotionally unavailable through the past 40 years,
6). becoming alienated in 2016 from an alcoholic/bipolar nephew, and his family which we had been spending much time with, and not being able to talk to them about the issues, after a vicious divorce cycle,
7). an ongoing issue of dealing with and managing the health and safety of my elderly aunt (dad’s sister) who is disabled, and abandoned by the rest of her family, including her own daughter, and
8) (from 2016-2021) TREASON (Trump Related Extreme Anxiety Striking Our Nation)
I have intimate knowledge of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and I consider myself a personal expert in these matters, albeit a reluctant one. It is inappropriate to keep these issues “secret”, as I tend to be as sick as the secrets that I attempt to keep. Remaining unconscious and victimized by these conditions is not a helpful option for me now, or anytime.
The following have been found to be helpful for me:
1). Seeking “professional help” from therapists or physicians/surgeons as required,
2). exercise (such as walking, yoga and/or pilates, with emphasis on proper breathing techniques), Aerobic exercise is a proven activity for neurological enhancement and creativity.
3). immersion in Nature (walks through parks, forests, deserts, etc. as available),
4). meditation (listening to relaxing music is useful, if the mind will not quiet on its own),
5). getting plenty of rest/sleep (not automatic or easy when in anxious states. Use of melatonin and non-caffeinated relaxation tea prior to bed is helpful),
6). honest and open communication with friends and family (hanging around people with positive, loving attitudes and behaviors is important), Make amends where appropriate.
7). insight (and taking my inventory, to use the parlance of 12 step groups),
8). prayer (focused intention/thought energy for personal and collective change, for those so inclined),
9). service to others who are less fortunate, and
10). medication (if necessary) can be helpful. Ibuprofen is effective for anxiety, as well as (in the short term) some “heavier hitters” such as Ativan and Xanax, or anti-depressants (FYI, I can’t stand Xanax).
11). avoiding obvious anxiety producing behaviors, like excess coffee consumption, eating sugar or high carbohydrate mix foods excessively, or over booking my day-to-day life,
12). continue to allow feelings to naturally arise, with no judgement.
13). continue without shame and guilt any unfinished emotional business, such as grieving for the loss of loved ones.
14). watch a few good comedies, or go see a good comedian (lighten up!)
15). Go to live music performances, and enjoy the presence of powerful positive group energy.
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a name given to one powerful variation of related symptoms, and therapy and techniques developed for its healing may be appropriate, as well (a form of acupressure called the “tapping” technique is quite helpful).
Writing into a personal journal or blog can be helpful. Posting to Facebook, with the hope or expectation that somebody who cares might read a posting and give meaningful feedback, is unrealistic, and can potentially be dangerous, depending on the state of mind of the writer at the time of posting. It is best to have friends and connections who respond directly, preferably in person, where our humanity shines the brightest and has the most healing potential. Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, or whatever other media vehicle that one may employ for communication in isolation just cannot get the job done, PERIOD. Just passing time without helping myself would never have allowed for sufficient healing either.
It really is distressing to experience the fear of losing my mind and sanity, the light-headed spacy-ness, extra fear around health issues, and the all around sense of discomfort and disease of being in a disturbed state of mind, and being. It comes to me in cycles now, with about two to three weeks of reprieve, followed by two or three troubling days. This coming from a man who knew perfect peace and harmony for most of the last 30 years of my life.
As I move toward healing, compassion towards myself and others is one of the intended outcomes. The absence of this only perpetuates the anxiety cycle.
For those who still suffer, please save yourself.
The Universe and God preexisted our civilization and our religious and philosophical misinterpretations. Our unique self preexisted our family and our culture’s misinterpretation of who we really are.
The journey of a thousand lifetimes culminates in the union of the Universe and God, and our unique Self.
Look out from our new eyes. As far as we can see, unto eternity, is our Self.
How we see our self today determines the quality of our life, our relationships, and the love and its miraculous healing that we experience.
Is but supported by opinion
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From “A Course In Miracles”. or ACIM.
.Exercise #`1: One of the two great thought experiments of all time revolves around how we view our world, and our self. In a nutshell, the first “Experiment” posits the existence of a transcendental energy, common to all, yet invisible to the senses. Then the “Experiment” posits that consciousness itself is the co-creator with that higher energy or power. Finally, it reveals the perceptual blocks to the individual’s awareness of higher consciousness and its energies, through perceptual enlightenment, which is the long term effects of understanding the ultimate statement of humility and self-negation:
LIM dT/dt, dt->0, T=Thought(Time, Timeless), d= change in (dt is ” change in time” , DT= change in Thought).
This is a classic “rate of change” equation, and is a form of differential calculus. Thought in its infinite diversity is both a function of the change of time, and of the changeless within the timeless. There are the special few people who understand the dependency of the personal sense of self with the movement of time, and the relative independence of a higher powered self that lives a time-independent life. When the knower, which is our pure awareness, finally releases its self from the moorings and limitations of a time dependent experience, miracles can occur. We can then travel new paths of spiritual consciousness, as our brain concurrently creates new neurons and neural interconnections.
Pilloried to the past, or to the future? We can release ourselves from imprisonment to time, and becoming, and find a more healing relationship with our true being.
The miracle may be nothing more than changing the way that we perceive a situation. When we can see that in a time based reality, “the thinker” and “the thought” are equivalent. Who, or what, is left when we no longer seek for our good in the future, or in the past?
A great example of the interplay between a concept that can be considered both time based and timeless is the movement of consciousness that occurs with the development and experience of gratitude. We can be grateful for something that is happening right now, that is, dependent only upon viewing wondrous activities of this moment, as would occur with sunsets, rainbows, spectacular views, or a newborn baby’s smile. On the other hand, gratitude for that which will be delivered in the future, such as the practice of faith, and hope, postpone that which one seeks for in the present into an unknown future, dependent upon a higher power that one does not understand. This is time dependent gratitude, and only delays ones envelopment into the trust of the present moment, and its infinite gifts. We must let go of the controls, and finally quit wishing for a different future or past.
Prove me now, safety the Lord of Hosts ( from the Bible)
Time independent thinking will not change proportionately or in any previously defined way with the passage of time, and creates a life experience, or “result”, that is undefined, indeterminate, and/or unknowable. Time dependent thought, however, will have a defined relationship with the passage of time itself, and, in fact, under these circumstances both are philosophically equivalent. Yet, time dependent thought will behave in predictable and previously understood or defined ways. until the effects of the change of time are minimized, which then pushes the value towards infinity.
“New paths of consciousness cannot be explored while remaining hypnotized by the older paths of memory, knowledge, and repetition.”
When we stop experimenting with our consciousness, we stop expanding our vision of who we are, and we fail to realize what our true potential might be. Experimenting may involve noting how our whole demeanor changes when we hike in nature, or when we witness incredible beauty, or experience life with an enhanced sense of awe and wonder. Experimenting may also involve exploring our potential for slowing down the thousands of years of momentum of cultural conditioning. It is through witnessing our thoughts, and investigating what might occur, if anything, with the end of thinking processes, that a more all-encompassing vision may be acquired.
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Chapter 11: The Mystery and the Mastery Within
I would like to present a rather unique “thought experiment”. This is a both a teaching, and an interior journey, and it can be useful for accessing the One Real Teacher, which lies deep within all of us. Thousands of years of conditioning and education have made our innate capacity to tune into our interior power for personal change and evolution, more of a threatening proposition, rather than the natural avenue towards freedom and discovery that, in fact, they are.
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In the end, it is the mind that has found the present moment, imbued with the healing potential of its infinite, sacred silence, that becomes a Teacher onto Itself.
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This is my own unique verbal bridge, from the deepest part of myself (which is non-verbal in nature) to my conscious mind, and may not work for others, who must make their own unique, ‘direct connection’.
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This is only a template, to be filled in by one’s journey towards Truth. It only points in a direction.
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This ‘meditation’ is not for everybody.
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THE MEDITATION
After quieting the body by sitting down comfortably, let us breathe consciously, and deeply, for a few breaths. Usually, the following of our breathing will quiet the mind a bit, which is important if this “experiment” is to bring any results.
Let’s now ask of our self if we are ready to listen for the truth of the moment. Are we willing to travel to a new place in consciousness, and conscious awareness, that perhaps we have never traveled to before?
Ask our self if we can “let go of all thought controls” that keep us in the past, that keep us in judgement of self, or other, that keep us from experiencing a deeper appreciation for what this moment might be able to bring to us?
Now visualize for a moment that we are driving a car, heading to a direction that we feel quite familiar with. Before arriving at the usual destination, ask our self what would happen if we just “LET GO OF THE CONTROLS”, even if it is for just one moment?
Is it possible?
Keep trying, until we can see our self actually letting go of the steering wheel. As we let go of the steering wheel, imagine, now, that the car “disappears” that was around us, and find that we are now being carried into some new, as yet, unexplored realm of experience.
If it is still familiar territory in our interior visual field, we will need to restart the thought experiment, or just give up altogether on this particular thought experiment, and find a different path to the interior dimensions.
If we have “LET GO OF THE CONTROLS”, we are now finding that we are being “guided” by a “teacher” or a “messenger”, who has not revealed who or what it is, what kind of form it might take, or why it might, or might not, exist for us in this new moment.
Yet we know that there is no need for fear, even though we are now being “guided” into a complete mystery, and “unknowable” experience.
There is a sense of exhilaration, because we are no longer secured to our “body of knowledge” anymore, which may also feel like we are having an “out of body” event.
We are free, yet we do not yet know what we are being liberated from. Stay in this “unknowing state”, while still being “guided by our inner teacher”.
We now pass by an amazing, infinite array of interconnected, interlocking “membranes”, which are neither “light” nor “dark”.
We seem to “float through, and then underneath” this web of “who knows what?” – then we reach a place of absolute still, and calm. {Much more will be revealed later, when we have developed the interior fortitude to face our individual and collective demons}
If we are really “there”, we find a silence, which is so quiet, and peaceful, that it may “startle” us initially, yet we quickly settle into it, and appreciate its essence and nature.
A “voice” may appear within our now quiet minds, and may begin to speak “through us” rather than “to us”. We will become the mouthpiece for a teaching, or a message, that we have never heard before, yet we are willing messengers for this new moment.
We begin to recognize an incredibly happy, joyful, laughing voice, and we know we are right where we are supposed to be, in a state that is so natural, and normal.
We might wonder why it was so “unknown” in our past, but we save all questions for later, so as not to miss the rest of the experience.
“Follow the new paths of consciousness” we hear, and speak within our hearts and minds simultaneously, directly and powerfully to ‘our self’.
“No teacher can give to us our salvation, we must work it out for our self”.
“Think no thoughts, especially time based thoughts (memories) about the “you”, as any “YOU”, cannot ever be real here”.
“To return to the “UNKNOWN”, we must eliminate all time based thoughts about our self, and “THE OTHER”.
We now know that this moment, outside of time, has all of the information that we will ever need, and does not need our input to reveal itself and its real, eternal nature.
As the “teaching” ends, we are shown those forces which have attached themselves to our energy fields, which provide “companionship” yet they provide no lasting spiritual value, and will inhibit our future growth and development.
FURTHER FRUITS FROM THE TREE OF LIFE
Be easy on our self, as it will not be immediately obvious what the nature and purpose of these inner/interpersonal forces are.
They served a purpose, yet they will have to leave. But, first, we have to meet them directly, to get to know them better, while further dealing directly with our “conscious” world, and the life we live in it.
Welcome to our Real individual, and collective, self. There is no room here for “you and me”, “us and them”, there is only room for the ONE.
This will trouble us greatly when we return to our ‘normal’ consciousness from this experiment. This is normal, and we will learn from the tension created by this dynamic.
Eventually we learn that we dream through the “collective” mind of mankind, and the “collective” also dreams through us. Yet there is also One Other Option, which has eluded most of Mankind.
As we travel back to this place, over and over, over many years, if necessary, we find what we have always been looking for.
We also find what has been holding back the rest of mankind for all of time. Many of the very structures of thought that have been ‘worshipped’ or unconsciously accepted are seen to be the source of the Shadow within mankind’s heart and soul.
This journey is not for those who want to continue to just worship the past, and all of its dead thoughts, and heroes.
This thought experiment is a technique for shaking the mind free, even if just for a moment, from its lifetimes of its ‘knowns’ or certainties.
Truth does not come into a mind that has already been crystallized into a structure that does not permit curiosity, and insight.
If we are sincerely seeking Truth, prepare for a real shock. If our minds have not been shocked, we have not yet met our goal.
“YOU WILL FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR”, just don’t give up looking before the Real miracle appears, OK?
Otherwise, we will only find a continuation of our past, as it extends into an all too familiar future.
Final thoughts: I found that there are tricksters within each of our consciousnesses that tell us lies, and make us want to reject life in some obvious and subtle ways. I have found two tricksters.
#1: Life has already rejected me, and has told me that I am unworthy of love and attention. There are many fascinating aspects to this infantile “realization”. Trust in others does not come quickly, and it is easier to reject others, often for vague or specious reasons.. Not everyone will experience this trickster, as I had a fairly unique upbringing. I learned to try to use the threat of my own death, to try to control my life, and to even help open the door to some sort of meaning..
“Unless I find meaning, unless life improves, I will kill myself outright” is the anthem this trickster sings.
I have found this trickster is active whenever I become unconscious. In previous years, I have suffered one relapse from drug addiction and a brief foray into legalized cannabis as a result.
#2: My voice will never be heard, and my cries and words have no value. Welcome to the conspiracy of silence, where we all stop talking, or listening, with integrity, understanding, and mutual compassion. Its effects are pervasive, to the point that the truth of others, especially those who have previously brought harm to us, are minimized, or ignored, because they are too threatening.
I have written a book or three about this one, as it has ultimate collective and individual importance.
I have faced my demons, and I now invite them to tea, so that I can more deeply understand my unique, yet universal in nature, trcksters
We must become a light unto ourselves
Spiritual Experience of July 21, 1987 (maybe make this a chapter, perhaps a prelude to this one)
The year was 1987, and 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. Well, 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 until I came to a place of complete “darkness”, or emptiness. I felt totally at home here. Almost immediately, a “laughing, happy voice” seemed to be speaking to me, or, more precisely, through me. As I/we spoke, it said
“No teacher shall effect your salvation, you must work it out for yourself”.
Then, “we” said:
“think no thoughts”;
“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), or lim dT/dt, as dt approaches zero, and T=f(t). The solution of this equation is the great unknown (and, in fact, equals INFINITY), or that which I sought.
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.
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 stay alive and be more present for this moment, and have a better ongoing human/spiritual experience.
Many more profound experiences have both preceded, and followed, the summer of 1987 spiritual events. I owe a profound debt of gratitude to my wife Sharon White, who helped midwife a life changing “birth” during the week of March 4, 2017. That was the experience that allowed for me to bring “healing” to both of the dark unconscious companions that I carried with me for my entire life, resulting in a higher measure of peace with my tricksters. Trickster number one is that I cannot be heard, which takes on many forms, and Trickster number two are the control dramas around death itself, which also appears in a multitude of forms. Writing a story around my recovery, called “Grandfather, Great Spirit, Thank You”(which was actually written by the Creator Within), is the direct outcome of facing both vortices simultaneously.
Chapter 12: You Can’t Be Real
I have always known that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that we, as humans, live our lives, and communicate with each other. I have not always known what the source of my own disease was, however. My disease of misunderstanding drove me to the brink of death, into insanity, drug addiction, despair, loneliness, and suicidal ideation. My life could only be characterized, by the time I had turned thirty years old in 1985, as a committed search for the grave.
In 1987, I experienced a series of real spiritual transformational events, resulting in the miraculous healing of my body and mind. There was such a huge disconnect between the consciousness of the “old ways”, the “diseased”, the “dying” aspects of myself, and a new order of being that was trying to discard the “old me”. My old misunderstanding of life, and of myself, was to be replaced by another version of my infinite potentiality. It was a remarkable time, and people who knew me then could feel the energy that was bubbling up within me. I had found a newborn enthusiasm for life, living, and a healthy re-integration back into the flow of humanity, Humanity, alas, did not collectively share in my inner experience, nor could it.
I traveled all around the City of Portland, much like I did when I sank into its underworld, on my original search for truth. I no longer visited the drug dealers, manufacturers, itinerant thieves, motorcycle gang hit men, or any of the other characters that helped to enlighten me while I traveled the road of darkness. I now met with, literally, thousands of people who were new to me, in a multitude of different group experiences, to engage with and get to know “my people”. When I literally, and spiritually, came off of the mountaintop on June 22, 1987, an intention planted into my heart was to locate “MY PEOPLE”. My life had changed, and so did the nature of the people that I was to become interested in , and who became attracted to me, as well.
On one of my journeys, I visited a crystal store, which was a new-age rock shop on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway. The owner of the store stocked books which promoted some of the speculative spirituality of that time. Every day, many people congregated at that store. They appeared to be part of a well-meaning group of spiritual aspirants, yet I could not quite grasp the ideas that “spiritual masters”, or even ultra-evolved aliens, were communicating to the human race through these crystals, many of which were originally located in Brazil. Books had been written about them (such as the Starseed Trilogy), and there was a popular, though misguided, attraction to the possibility that these crystals had special powers. Even some of these supposedly evolved people had evaded the truth that their enlightened minds were the source or cause of special powers, and not any objects in the world of effect.
I had several conversations with Jack, the owner of the shop, as I visited the shop at least three times to look at books, and be conversant with this “new-age” community of people. I challenged him about selling some of these crystals to naive purchasers for several thousand dollars each. Jack, quite the economic and spiritual realist, claimed that he was only meeting a need, and not promoting an idea or agenda. After all, he is a capitalist now, and he needed to pay his bills.
One of our conversations had to do with what our responsibility as evolving, healing beings is to the rest of humanity, which continued to struggle with its own broken truth, as it had since time immemorial. Jack listened with great interest in what I had to say, as he always did. Jack had the capacity to listen to what was being said, acknowledge the person where they were, and point to a direction where they might want to look. In some sense of the word, Jack was a GURU. I was not attracted to GURU’s, however, as my nature tended to rebel against so-called authority figures.
My own “Master Teacher”, which revealed itself within me on July 21, 1987, in a most spectacular fashion, rejects the notion that any teacher can deliver to another their salvation. The inner message, received as if delivered by thunder in the silence of my being, was that “no teacher can bring salvation to others, it must be worked out within the self”. There were a few other messages delivered, as well as a few visions, but I did not have the context at the time to fully interpret and understand the totality of its life-changing, life-affirming message.
That is where personal experience must rise up and become incorporated within a new narrative, a narrative informed by the new energy, an energy that is more inclusive, and universal in its application. Without our personal story becoming married, as it were, to the new truth, life changing wisdom could not become part of our nature, nor could we become verbal around a new world order that was trying to reveal itself to all receptive beings.
I pondered with Jack the possibility of bringing healing to others, as I felt so blessed by my own healing, and I felt that I had something unique and precious to share with the world. Jack listened intently, as he always did, thought for a moment, then with a BIG SMILE stated simply:
“FUCK THE WORLD!”
I was confused, and asked for clarification.
“Bruce, the world could care less about your healing, and what new truth or messages that you might be able to bring to assist others in their journey. The world, as it now exists, exists for a reason. The whole fundamental consciousness has been established to make the common man feel OK about being less than who they are, in truth, and to limit and control those who might develop the insight to rebel against the established disorder. The whole of religion, and philosophy, was designed to help keep people in their darkness, while telling them that they are on the path to their own salvation through the belief in powers greater than themselves. It has always been about disempowering, and controlling, the population. Could you imagine how the powers of the age would respond if everybody sought for, and found, the Truth?, There would be chaos, and the world would collapse into a form of Armageddon. The world of religion, and this bastardized Christianity that Americans practice, is the ultimate form of oppression. And the oppressed BELIEVE that they are the chosen ones, while they subject themselves to the fantasies and hypnotism of their faiths”.
One of his final statements set me back in my chair, and I almost fainted.
“The “world” has created its own dysfunction, and revels in swimming in its own cesspool of misunderstanding, and there is NOTHING a sane man can do about it, other than just laugh at it.”
Though I felt a part of myself feel rejected by his statement, I also felt a resonance with his statement of truth.. I had lived a life of little or no value up to my transformation, and I felt that I finally had something to contribute to the world, yet here was a prominent figure lecturing me to turn my back on the world, and to just go out and enjoy my life, and LAUGH AT THE WORLD.
Here is the eerie part:
In the spiritual experience of July 21, 1987, when I first reached the “Master Teacher” within my own being, I had traveled, without my body (of thought, past consciousness, etc.) to a place of silence so deep and powerful, and which was subsequently perceived to be the very “womb of creation” of consciousness itself. It was there that I heard my own Master’s voice.
“You can’t be real”
was the message, laughingly expressed through the deepest silence, peace, and love that I had ever experienced. For a moment, I was allowed to “look through the eyes of God” and see that the entirety of the matrix of consciousness of the human experience was unreality itself. All that the “Truth” can do, is to laugh at it, and dismiss it.
And now Jack, two weeks later, was parroting the very idea that my “God” had revealed to me.
All that I knew was that I was a “guided missile” of the truth, and I was to have many more remarkable connections with evolving people over the next several years. These connections helped me to “flesh out” what had been revealed within myself by my own “Master Teacher”, or source of wisdom common to all of mankind when it chooses to access it.
I chose to be silent about my experience, for many years to follow. I carried a grin on my face that the despair of the world could not erase for several of the following years. I stopped “laughing at the world” when my responsibilities to my life increased.dramatically in the mid 1990’s, while, concurrently, my new, more spiritually inspired, persona developed. I was not to live the life of an acetic monk, or live the artificial, though idyllic, life of a member of an ashram. Traveling through the diseased world of form, with one’s need for eating and gainful employment, while witnessing the world’s corruption, its sin, suffering, and dying, tends to distract one from the truth that “all that is human, is illusion”.
And having watched the drama that continuously unfolded from within the Trump White House from the Anti-Christ himself tends to be quite disturbing, and shows how twisted human consciousness may become. I am still attempting to “laugh at the world”, though my “God consciousness” appears to have dramatically ebbed, at least for now, and all that I can do, many times, is be anxious, and cry. I have known, at times, the darkest night of the Soul.
Unlike the years from 1987-1993, when I meditated up to six hours a day, and lived in a continuous blessed state, I am unable to meditate for longer than a half hour now. And, yes, the continuous blessed state is only a memory for me. I could return to it if I abandoned the world, but I love too much of the world and its infinitude of sights and sounds to do so at this time. Reading, writing, integration into nature, exercising outdoors, and conscious meditation upon day to day life now fills my day. Most days, I am at peace, and I feel fulfilled. The daily news remains a source of information, and I tend to avoid conservative points of view, opting for more liberal and progressive interpretations of reality.
I have recently attempted to write several books about the potential for the transformation of consciousness. To the best of my ability, I have translated the message from the ‘Master Teacher”, but I am not an adequate messenger, for sure. Publishers dislike my style, and editors have a problem with my tendency towards verbosity. Yet, potentially, we are all containers for Infinite Spirit, albeit broken ones, and that can be more than enough to bring a blessing to our self, and to others.
All that I can now say is this:
Welcome to the ILLUSION.
Please, enjoy yourself while you are here.
Discard all of our knowns and conclusions into the universal dumpster, and live from the state of “unknowing”, where insight and new knowledge may be spawned. There is only one Mind, and it can only be experienced in the “unknown”. Intelligence and its active agent, curiosity, only thrive when one is not permanently committed to a point of view.
Changing our consciousness is a natural and normal experience, when we are not suffering under the infinite weight of the oppressive nature of collective consciousness. Drinking alcohol, using drugs, spinning madly on a merry-go-round, jumping out of airplanes, or even traveling to outer space is the expression of our natural need for change. The key is not to become addicted to the avenues chosen for release, for then they become new forms of oppression for our hearts. Permanent release, liberation, or enlightenment, occurs, when one loses attachment to the world of form and effect, its accumulated verbal constructs, and all forms of release, with its accompanying pleasure and pain.
If you are not enjoying the show, remember, you are the co-creator of it. Try changing the channel, and see what happens.
Pain is inevitable, though many forms of suffering are optional
There must be the DEEPEST of desires to find the truth, and the DEEPEST of intentions to not neglect it in the face of attacks from others.
The human “Conspiracy Of Silence” points to the FACT that mankind covers itself with illusory verbal constructs, and worships the illusion as if it is fact. The Truth remains forever buried, thus, the foundation for the “conspiracy” is created, and maintained, throughout eternity.
The truth that I live is the only truth that I can give.
I have saved the world from myself, and there really is nothing more for me to do, save witness the suffering of others, and point my finger to a potential new direction for those who choose to awaken.
Those that do not choose to awaken, will remain stick figures in other people’s dreams of world domination.
Hildegard of Bingen, the great German mystic and writer from the 12th century, became ill whenever she did not write. The same experience has become the truth for myself, and, potentially, may be the truth for all of mankind. Collectively, we are terminally ill. We are all participants, to varying degrees, in the self, and other, destructive attitudes that have plagued mankind for over 300 generations
Please, save yourself.
And write a great story, or book!
Chapter 13: MY VOICE, MY PASSION
Throwing A Blanket Around The Moment, And Walking Away,
As a baby, my parents placed a blanket around my baby body, and deposited me in a car in their garage so that my father could get at least 5 hours of sleep a night. Crying babies and sleep do not mix well, do they? My father was “chasing the American Dream”, and worked two jobs at the time.
I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the profoundly damaging effects of denying love and interactive time to a developing human being. What I might need to remind myself at times is that others, no matter what their age, or how much that I think that I know them, deserve my undivided attention, as they attempt to reveal who they are in this moment.
It is funny, sometimes when I share some of my creative work, I get the very strong impression that some “important” people in my life just don’t have the time to listen. Earlier in my life, my father was just too busy to pay too much attention, and towards the end of his left he just fell asleep, whenever I attempted to tell him my latest “story”. Hopefully, he did not represent the rest of humanity, yet, realistically, he probably does..
Another clue about our own, or another person’s listening intention, is when we try to share a “profound life event”, and are immediately “run over” by another with more knowledge of the subject. Sometimes we, or the other, either have “too much book knowledge”, we have the “certificate”, we already have read about it on the internet, we have memorized something from a class that we already took, or we have a friend who has already “been there, done that!” What about that “friend” or “family member” who checks their phone, and Googles information, perhaps to confirm their own biases or (mis)understandings, instead of accepting the validity of the energy that we are attempting to share in this new, unique moment?
Trust me on this one. If I do not want to grow anymore, I will stop listening to what others are really trying to say. If i don’t want to be of service to my fellow-man/woman, I can just stop listening to what they are trying to express, and just “layer my own ignorance” and judgement, over somebody else, and not let them reveal to me who they Really Are in this special moment.
Many of our family members, co-workers, acquaintances, and even politicians, are masters at this. Please don’t inflict this same treatment on the ones you love. It is like putting a blanket around our heart and soul, and putting us into the car, so that those with a dehumanizing or monetizing philosophy can continue to oppress others, while keeping themselves spiritually asleep.
We all deserve to be listened to. I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the potential of the damaging impacts to our relationships with others, by merely not taking the time to listen with our hearts, to the other’s deepest meaning. Most of my closest connections already know and attempt to practice this, and do not intentionally ignore the needs of others.
We are all developing human beings, no matter what our age. And, we are all God’s children, and God speaks through us, whether we can hear the “truth”, or not. Sometimes the “truth” is so difficult to hear, that we shut down emotionally, and we either ignore what is said, or substitute our own story for what the “other” is trying to communicate.
Whether any of us can accept it, or even want to try to believe that it is possible, the Divine is revealing Itself moment to moment. In my ignorance, disguised as “knowledge”, I throw a ‘blanket” around IT, and throw IT in a car, so that I can continue to sleep.
We all have a secret that needs to be told
We all have secrets from others that need to be told.
We all need to be more willing to listen for the deeper meanings of each other.
There is something fundamental here.
I choose Compassion today.
Also,I must protect at all costs the sacredness and health of our Mother Earth. I must respect all of life, denying dignity to none. I must bring no conscious harm to self or others, encourage all others to do the same, and to give the love and support for all of life, including all animals and insects.
To support the planet, and to enhance my search for truth, I practice meditation, mindfulness, insight, and I perform personal inventories, and make amends, according to the needs revealed through honest and integrated self-examination and evolving spiritual intentions.
I continue to reject exclusivity, which is endemic to tribalism, isolation, bullying, indifference, and false judgements. I continue to embrace inclusivity, which points to the foundation for collective healing. Those whose isolating philosophies motivate them to take up arms against their fellow man, are actually taking up arms against love, and our potential for healing. Those who exploit the planet for personal or corporate gain, are exploiting all of us, and are the source of a great evil.
Too much of American Christianity or “Religion” now appears to be only the elevator music playing in the background while the bad boys and girls continue to misbehave, celebrate their special, if not imaginary, relationships and connections with their “Santa Claus God”, while lording that pseudo-truth over all others not presently included in their squalid little tribes, and lives. For Christian oriented thinkers, Jesus dying on the cross DOES NOT REMOVE from each of us the absolute necessity to accept personal responsibility for the quality of our relationships and of our lives. Nobody, I mean NOBODY, can sacrifice their own life, to save a person, or a tribe, from their own dysfunctional self. We each must consciously and carefully address our own lives, our thoughts, and our actions, and see where we create disorder and disharmony, learn from it, and create in more loving manners. There is no God or Jesus who spares humanity from the personal responsibility of developing and experiencing the consciousness of Love. That means letting go of the twisted mind controls that our culture and religions pillory us with. To follow in the steps of our culture’s mistaken understanding of Jesus, the cross has already been assembled, and is unconsciously carried over one’s entire life. Prepare for inevitable irreconcilable conflicts, suffering, disease, and crucifixion.
Truth only requires the overcoming of fear, and an innocent heart and open mind to recognize it, and it does not need religion to create or support it, but religion needs the truth to bring healing back to itself from the self-generated diseases of its man-made misinterpretations. lest it continue to devolve into the tribalistic buffoonery that presently characterizes the political elements of that philosophy..
The truest test for Christianity that there is, is how well do those who profess a belief in “Christ’ adhere to this passage from John?
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.
– 1 John 4:18
Those religions who promote fear have failed at their most basic task in life.
Members of these tribes are just more relatively unevolved, ignorant power hungry, fear based broken human beings, though still ONE with the rest of us, which is this eclectic package of damaged goods known as HUMANITY..
Who is responsible for bringing order out of this chaotic scrum of humanity?
Rather than asking the silly, potentially disempowering question:
“What would Jesus do?”
We should be asking of ourselves,
“What will we do?”
So, really, just what is my religion? To save the world from aspects of my unevolved self, while encouraging others to do the same, which is the beginning of the opening of the spiritual doors to infinite love, healing, and transcendence. In truth, there is no “you” to attack, or to support, as there is only one life expressing through the many, with billions of human beings looking through their own broken kaleidoscopes of perception, and thus spawning all manners of mistaken judgement of others, those non-unified, scattering parts of their fragmented self. “You” can never be real, but it certainly can be entertained as an incomplete, ignorant concept within one’s own mind, or the collective mind that mankind shares through its conditioning, education, and historical ignorance.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite”—William Blake
What should be our world’s religion?
“To save your world, first, save yourself”.
You are worth it!
Please, save yourself
A New Way For Me To Look At Life And Religion
If the seeker has truly become fed up with the fantasies of the human mind, and is willing to have them healed by a touch of the Spirit, then all such psychosis is much less likely to visit the mind, but there are no guarantees.. The closer that one gets to the truth, the easier it should become to discern the distortions of truth from those who have touched, and personally experienced, the essence of that which is sought. But, the best truth that exists is the actual truth that has unfolded within the secret, interior dimensions of ones being. The educational experience, though it is seen as a necessary adjunct to the search (especially at the seeker’s initial stages of spiritual unfolding) must have its influence reduced, and ultimately eliminated, if one is to finally achieve unity with the goal. There is a time and a place for teachers and teachings, but they must be transcended if one is to achieve the fullness of spiritual potential.
When contact is finally made, the seeker may not be able to contain, or embrace the totality of the essence of the teaching, or insight, given. The message(s)/insight(s) will be shocking, and should rock the seeker to the core, as Truth is completely foreign to the human mind. No amount of education or training can prepare the individual for what is to be experienced. As is said, the “finger pointing at the moon can never be the moon”. Most people confuse the description of the event with the actual inner experience of it, and thus delude themselves into believing that they have already experienced the truth, when, in fact, all that they have experienced is strong emotions wrapped around some personal or social experience. When the truth hits the center of one’s being, it sets in motion a series of inner events that eventuates in the seeker having a totally different outlook on life, on the universe, and on their self. But, because we are human, and still retain the power of free will and choice, the message may be rejected (at least temporarily), and we may try to cling to our old, worn out way of reasoning, feeling, and relating to our lives, to each other, and to Truth. On the one hand, we may have said to our self, and, perhaps to others, that we are fed up with our lives, and with the way the world is experienced by us, and we will do anything to bring about a change in our life’s situation. But, when the inner pathway to our transcendence is finally revealed, we balk at its implementation, finally comprehending how dramatically that we must change to be aligned with the path of Truth, and Righteousness. We may not be really ready to “die to ourselves” and truly be “reborn” of the Spirit. If we can humble ourselves enough, we can continue the journey. But, those who recoil, as if burned by a hot flame, spend many more years, if not the rest of their lives, avoiding making the final adjustments to become aligned with their Life’s True Message.
When one finally accepts the path of Truth, and is willing to relinquish their hold upon the world of the ego, then they are in the neighborhood of the real One. More than once, certain members of our human race have had “mountain top” experiences, where true insight has been gained into understanding life, love, and both the ephemeral, and eternal, natures or aspects of reality, or That One. That One becomes the source for all future understanding and engagement with the world.
That One sees beyond the limitations of the isolated, suffering self, and could see the unity of all creation, and how all systems of thought tend to separate us from each other, rather than unite.
That One saw how the limits of love shared was typically tribal in nature, and rarely extended beyond the imaginary boundaries of their perceived communities.
That One saw how organized religion had become a tool for the political powers of the day, and no longer existed to serve the needs of the spirit, but instead to follow the dictates of those male power figures who inaccurately, and sometimes falsely, interpret the scriptures to control people, and arrange selfish outcomes.
That One saw how the rich and powerful within the religion used its truth to dominate and control others.
That One saw these religious power figures actually monetize their brethren, to see how their “flock” could bring them wealth through their superstitious tithing, or offerings to their “God”.
That One saw that the poorest in spirit occupied the most fertile ground for healing, yet all too often were the most separated from any benefits of their religion.
That One saw how the religious powers of the day were corrupt, potentially beyond repair.
That One saw that all sense of religion needed to be “born again”.
That One came down from the mountain top to bring the good news to the people, that they did not need their religion anymore to keep them philosophically imprisoned.
That One then advised the world:
If their “religion” does not allow for them to love another as them-self, then discard those dark aspects of their religion, honor the underlying spirit of love, and affirm the dignity and value of the human being through the healed human heart (which is the source of all true religion).
That just might mean removing the log from our own eyes (even if the log is our very own religion), before attempting to remove the splinter from another (yes, this is the inventory step).
It means stop monetizing humanity for business purposes.
It also means separating the Church from the State.
It means taking personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it.
It means lying, cheating, stealing, destroying, murder, greed, selfishness, destroying the animal and plant kingdom and the like are antithetical to the spirit of love which has created this universe, therefore they are unacceptable patterns of behavior only reserved for those who have chosen to stay asleep..
You know who That One is, because That One lives today, and it is not just the Jesus of two thousand years past. That One has existed since the beginnings of the illusion of self, and other, and the illusions created by competing philosophies. That One has the voice for God, for Truth, for Love, and Life, bubbling up inside of their hearts, just waiting to be listened to, and obeyed. And That One understands all to well the difficulties in bringing Truth and Love to the masses, because in the masses is where corruption of thought gets institutionalized and normalized, instead opting to bring it to humanity one person at a time.
“Higher Power”
“God” can a major impediment to people’s understanding and willingness to pursue a change in heart and/or recovery from addiction (it sure was for me, especially in the early 1980’s!). For some, God is simply a name for the human capacity to make positive changes in our own lives. It is not the God of religion that need be sought, it is the God of one’s personal understanding. Nobody in recovery needs the self-righteousness, judgement against those not yet “saved”, and the guilt and shaming of others that all too often gets promoted from within fundamentalist Churches. On the positive side of religious practice, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Rastafarians, and Jews have all found a “higher power” to guide and direct their paths, as well as pagans, agnostics and atheists. Perhaps you can find a new path, where the promise of a healing change can happen in your own life?
For me, in sobriety, “God” could never be just a man, or a “he” or “him”, but instead “God” is our collective universal life force, and the innate human creative capacity for personal change, healing and evolution, and love of self and other while practicing compassion. God is a state of mind and body that One experiences, after the ego has been laid to rest. God, the same yesterday, today, and forever, eternally Now, eternally Love, eternally unfolding in creative new ways of being and expressing itself. The Infinite Indivisible Invisible, defies all logic, and all human attempts to categorize and control (but oh, how religions, philosophers, and scientists, and the verbally expressive part of me in this post, love to keep trying, don’t we?). We will never find God through a Google search algorithm, or through mindlessly following other people’s opinions as to what the “truth” is. It is a uniquely personal journey, and no one can do this for us but ourselves.
God must be individually experienced, and then the fruits of the experience can be collectively shared with other interested parties (AA meetings, friendship circles, etc.), to create the strongest atmosphere for healing of self and others. Our own intention must start the process, though the healing intentions of others for us, and for themselves, can bring us together into a “healing formation”, where the miracle of the collective/shared mind of a love inspired mankind can really work its wonders. Here we may actually share in the real Master Mind that has attempted to guide the human race since the beginning, since well before our present day diseased world mind took over. The right group of people, sharing love and healing together, creates a palpable energy, and this can characterize some recovery groups, depending on the quality of recovery present, and being expressed, in those groups.
A New World Religion?
A new world religion has emerged upon our consciousness, one that does not exist solely to support the needs of the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or Christian communities. Its sacred texts are written in the stars, upon the lands that we inhabit, and upon the fabric of universal awareness. The real “word of God” can be examined on a daily basis, for those who have retired (temporarily?) their hand-held zombie making devices long enough to start getting acquainted with the real ground of all being. Can God, or Truth, be found through an internet search? Can old worn out “sacred texts” written by people wrestling with their own ignorance give us enough light to clear out the destructive aspects of human nature? Can even a newer collection of words, thoughts, and written literature fill our spiritual needs?
The quickest way to prepare for the new world order (which was once the old world order, by the way) is to get outside of the house, the computer, the movie theater, the Facebook pages, etc. and start getting acquainted with the great outdoors. We are not connected to God through our technology. In fact, most of our media related technology has separated us from the quiet state of being that allows God’s will to be readily accepted into consciousness. Gaia is a living being, and is the true “son-daughter of God”. And yes, we are children of that sacred child. God’s face is seen clearly, once the detritus of human misunderstanding is moved aside long enough so that Reality may emerge, once again.
Technology is only a tool, though it has become another new world religion, a way of life for far too many people. Our country, and our world, shows the collective effects of falling far short of meeting or even acknowledging the existence of our spiritual needs, or attempting to meet our spiritual needs through illusory processes. Most of our media devices have continued the promotion and distribution of cultural hypnosis, and most people continue to be separated from a greater good through that process. The world exists in a state of hypnosis, and it is easy to see that truth when the mind finally takes itself off of the grid of shared cultural and religious misunderstanding.
Taking dominion over the world, and then destroying its wildlife, forests, rivers, oceans, and lands was never part of God’s will. It was always part of a worn out patriarchal attitude that still pollutes human awareness to this day. The greed and self-serving interests of our ancestors has been glorified, and exalted, over and above the preservation of our planet, and the cultivation of harmony between the diverse interests of people on this planet. The “mark of the beast” is seen daily in the attitudes of those who promote the destruction of our environment, and who incite hatred and enmity..
Freedom may not be for everybody now, but it certainly is for me, now, and for all of eternity. I am grateful for my wife Sharon White, who shares in the new/old insight.
Death
Our lives are like a story that we write to ourselves. Enhanced meaning and joy accompanies us when the sagas of others can be assimilated, and rewritten with love and compassion into our own chronicles. Today is always a good day to recognize the innate goodness in all of life, even when it appears that life is not heading in a good direction. Today is always a good day to recognize our own innate goodness, even if our own life is not quite measuring up to our highest standards.. Today is always a good day to celebrate the innate goodness in our family, in our friends, in our co-workers, in our pets, in the person in the checkout line at the grocery store, or even in that ever-present homeless person, in spite of first appearances that may indicate that they may not be deserving of our highest regards.. Today is always a good day to celebrate the story and recognize the ever-present miracle that is unfolding within our own lives
Some of the most difficult stories to tell are the narratives describing disease, dying, and death itself. Rarely would we characterize such topics as having the potential to be good stories, or to have much hope imbued within them. When I am trying to entertain myself, I typically gravitate towards tales that celebrate expressions of the innate higher potential of mankind, I like stories of perseverance and the overcoming of impossible odds in the process of accomplishing something great, or of an individual’s or group”s recovery from disease or dysfunction. I am not alone, and throughout our history, there have been myths, legends, and religious stories created about those who have attempted to overcome life”s greatest challenges, including death itself. Collectively, we appear to need stories that indicate that death is not the end of our story, but just another event that welcomes a new chapter of life to us, albeit in another mysterious realm. Yet, we still need to be present with our own reality of being embodied, of carrying this body of flesh around with us until we depart this earthly plane, as we continue to share this adventure with everybody, and everything, around us.
What stories do we offer to those who are actually diseased, suffering, and dying, and what might be the stories that these challenged people offer back to us? All of the considerations involved with assisting a family member or a friend who has a potentially terminal diagnosis can be daunting. Of course in the end, death of the body is one hundred percent certain for all of us. Yet for those who still have hope of continuation of life in the body, even in the face of poor survival probabilities, a sensitivity to the changing needs that each moment dictates requires an incredible nimbleness of spirit, love, and discernment. And, when that body becomes our own, we really have to learn the subtleties of letting go of everything that we know, or think that we know, on an incredibly intimate, profound level. What story do we want to tell around this experience, or what story do we want to hear from others, when life is fading?
We can all be on planet Earth to live as good of a life as is possible, and, hopefully not destroy ourselves, our neighbors, or our world in the process, We can all be on planet Earth to take a permanent vacation away from our ignorance and darkness. We can never get lost on the healing vacation, we can only find ourselves on challenging adventures, in newer, spiritually healthier places, if that remains our heart’s intention, even in the face of death or disease.
For me, living a full, spiritually fulfilled life with its constant companionship with death can be likened to a lifelong adventure hike, perhaps along the Appalachian or the Pacific Crest Trail of everyday life.. On one side of the trail we have the potential to witness the unbroken beauty of nature and of our own wholeness and connection to it, and the joy of unfettered movement of an innocent mind and healthy body while walking through the magic, beauty, and mystery of the unknown. Yet, on the other side of the trail, a wicked forest fire eternally burns, and daily threatens to obscure our views, our safety and our freedom, and to take us out of the beauty and wonder of each new moment. As we inch closer to death, either the death of self, or of a loved one, death’s flames more than gently, lap at our back side, burning away at our past, burning away at our clothing, at all of our hidings and holdings, and at all the knowledge and memories that we all cling to, and hold so dear.. When we search for names to characterize this process, I understand at the deepest level why it is hard characterizing the experience as good or perfect while being so painfully burned by aspects of it.
We all must let go of the controls from past. We all must eventually let go of the controls of being an embodied Spirit by accepting death as our final adventure on this planet, at least for this incarnation.
I AM
I am the brightest of mornings, I am the cloudiest of days,
I am the silent night altar upon which mankind prays and preys.
I am the Olmec and Mayan of times old, recent, and new,
I am all civilization’s ruins, and I am the ever-evolving life that regrew.
I am the bird’s call, I am its flight, and the wind beneath its wings,
I am the music and its spirit that joyously lifts all hearts up to sing.
I am the water, I am the lagoon and the bay,
I am the infinite ocean where my children are birthed, live, love and play.
I am the blue sky, I am the weather changes, and the gathering of clouds,
I am the lightning storms that are now appearing so dangerous and loud.
I am the wind and the sun, I am the warm soothing breeze,
I am even our cold’s most raucous cleansing sneeze.
I am the dolphin and manatee, I am the mangrove lined shores,
I am waves crashing against rocks, that photographers adore.
I am the mind, and I am the end to its lonely thoughts,
I am the heart’s loving web in which we are miraculously caught.
I am the boisterous protests, and I am the crowd made quiet,
I can be even be found witnessing the white supremacists’ riot.
I am the wealthy, and I am the hurt, oppressed and poor,
I am your heritage, history, and future until we all are no more.
I am the Sanders and Pelosis, I am the Putins and Trumps,
I am love’s warriors, and I am also hate’s chumps.
I am the Christian, and the Hindu, I am the Muslim and the Jew
I am the Atheist and Buddhist who you never thought that you knew.
I am the cancer and its treatment, I am the movement towards health,
I am the healing balm that works mysteriously in stealth.
I am the grief, and I am the pain and the sorrow,
I am the deepest well of hope from which we eternally borrow.
I am your lifetime, I am your body and its breath,
I am the blessed last moment before each of our deaths.
I am the death of the false self that leads to the only true heaven,
Our denial of this truth brings the hellish news on channel two at eleven.
I am the sacred, and I am even the profane,
I am the source of all that we treasure, resisting me only adds to life’s pain.
I am not the movement of our thoughts, while we cling to concepts of time,
I am the emergence from all shadows, we all must reach for the sublime
What is my name, and where is my place?
Being ONE is seeing Me on every smiling and suffering sentient beings’ face.
(inspired by our trip to Belize in January, 2019)
In honor of all of the innocent oppressed, bullied, victimized, traumatized, gassed, misogynized, persecuted, marginalized, neglected, abused, murdered, alienated, and institutionalized human beings, and all of the animals that are being driven into extinction, as we are all overrun by the principles of toxic masculinity in it’s almost infinite varieties of forms.. Toxic masculinity, toxic fatherhood, and toxic religion are cultural and historical impediments to achieving and maintaining happiness and good health.
If we do not become masters of our own reality, we remain slaves to to the ignorance and misunderstanding of others. When fantasy is witnessed by healed awareness, the shadows of illusion are illuminated and thus vanquished —-Elisha Scott
