THIS IS HUGE, DO NOT NEGLECT TO EXAMINE EVERYTHING

THIS SECTION NEEDS TO BE BROKEN INTO TWO OR MORE PARTS

Chapter  :  Breaking the Silence – From Darkness to Divine

Chapter  :  Maternal Love: A Journey Through Trauma, Addiction, and Spiritual Rebirth

Chapter  :  The Journey from Suffering to Awakening

 

Chapter  :  Part of My Journey Through Love, Loss, and Our Collective Mental Health Crisis

Chapter   :  Exploring Healing Through Cosmic Energy and Divine Love

70th birthday message?

PART IV:  The Inner Landscape, Personal Darkness into Light, and the Path of Healing

Chapter 23:  Author’s Note

Chapter 23: The Architecture of a Soul

Chapter 24 :  My Search For Truth: A Journey Through the Abyss to Redemption

Chapter 25:  When Dreams Die~The Silent Grief of Our Guiding Light (use in Part XII)

Chapter 26:  The Art of Inner Alchemy: How to Transform Trauma into Miraculous Healing

Chapter 27:  Oops deleted it here, still down below

OR

Chapter 26:  More on May 24, 1987: The Journey Through Childhood Wounds to Divine Connection

Chapter 27:  May 24, 1987, Revisited – Breaking the Silence: The Transformational Power of Spiritual Experience

AND OR

Chapter 27:  Breaking the Silence – From Darkness to Divine Maternal Love

Chapter 27.25: The Second Sex and the Divine Feminine

 

Chapter 27.5:  Exploring Healing Through Cosmic Energy and Divine Love ~~How the Universe Guides Healing for a Wounded Life’

Chapter 28:  Revisiting June 22 ,1987: Beyond the Self: Healing Trauma and Finding the Divine Within

Chapter 29:  July 21, 1987 Revisited: Finding Truth Within Yourself: A Journey Beyond the Mind’s Conditioning

Chapter 26 :  No More Turning Away: Confronting the Conspiracy of Silence

Chapter 27 :  Awakening from the Collective Dream: A Journey Beyond Illusion

Chapter 28:  How to Embark on a Conscious Journey of Insight and Mindfulness

Chapter 29:  Insight and Mindfulness: A Journey Through Dreams

Chapter 31: The Power of Then: The Process of Reclaiming Disassociated Parts of Ourselves, And Healing Traumas from Present or Past Lives.

Chapter 32:  The Sacred Journey Through Loss: A Testament to Healing, Compassion, and the Transformative Power of Love

Chapter 33:  2017 – Marty C. and A New Sunrise

Chapter 34:  My Father Beryl and My Search for Truth

Chapter 35:  Final Thoughts on Final Thoughts

Chapter 11 might be worthwhile to merge with the other Just Say No To Trauma chapter.

Chapter 11:  Just Say NO to Trauma: Why Our Collective Denial and its Conspiracy of Silence is the Greatest Barrier to Healing

Chapter 110:  Are We Living in a Simulation? The Architecture of the Mind

Chapter 23:  Author’s Note:

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man”-—Samuel Johnson

“We speak about losing our minds, as if it is a bad thing.  I say, lose your mind.  Do it purposefully.  Find out who you really are beyond your thoughts and beliefs.  Lose your mind, find your soul“—–Vironika Tugaleva

“I am only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand”—John Wayne.

I loved the way that I presented the material in this book, but most others did not. Even in my more loving human/spiritual experience, I still carry my father’s capacity to turn people away.  And, at times, I carry a little “John Wayne” energy.

We have all had “teachers” like that, haven’t we?

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The symbol for the number 8 is also the same symbol for infinity, if the number 8 is laid on its side.  This is a significant attempt by me, as I attempt to point out where “infinity” may actually be experienced.

We are infinite in our fundamental nature, being the very emanation of this universe in a human form, and with the capacity for an ever-evolving consciousness.  Yet, the unenlightened mind continues to interpret our sacred magnificence as if it is something profane in nature.  What is disturbing to me is that not enough of our population is curious about what our purpose might be on Mother Earth. Far too many accept that satisfying biological urges while working, maintaining a family, and entertaining ourselves is enough.

I remember the “show and tell” period from grades one and two.  I would stand up in front of the class at every opportunity, whether I had something to show, and talk about, or not.  I never wanted to miss an opportunity to share.  When I had nothing to show, it sure made for some awkward “tells” however.  Yet, that embarrassment sure beat the humiliation that I received just sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on, which was all too frequently my chair.

We are all in the same class now, though everyone has their own unique lesson plan.

This book is a part of mine.

The perception that the sacred, which is our world, and all of its life, is somehow profane is what motivates cultural insanity and darkness.  That is why ecological disasters and global warming stay in the forefront of human experience.  This darkness also creates the conditions for the proliferation of war, murder, greed, rape, and a common knowledge experience where it is socially acceptable to diminish the value of each other, animals, and our beautiful planet.

This book, like all other pointers to where true knowledge might lay, has no value to those who continue to look away.

If I allowed myself to continuously live in the fullness of my healing potential, this writing would be purely poetic in nature.  Yet, I made the choice long ago to be in the world, just not totally of it and its awkward nature.  My writing remains rather corrective in nature, and attempts  to point in the direction where love might exist, and away from where it definitely does NOT exist.

As biological beings, our brains are hardwired to protect our self, and our tribe, from continued threats and excessive pain.   Yet, we have access to a healing consciousness, which modifies those algorithms, and brings us back into balance from our excessive suffering, and our pain avoidance subroutines.

The conspiracy of silence that keeps us imprisoned within the structures of collective ignorance continues to rule much of our world, yet, to the evolving ones amongst us, the conspiracy of healing and love rules our hearts, and opens us up to our Soul..

This is what I do.  This is who I am.  I see problems.  I then look at the maps.  I find a healthier, safer, more functional path to travel, or, if it is not already available, I create my own.  I see opportunities for change, healing, and growth.  While the world continues spinning in its wobbly orbit, I present solutions that may assist awakening humans reach their spiritual possibilities.

It is often most beneficial to understand what is NOT true, that our native intelligence may finally connect with what MIGHT be true.

Stories from my own dark past have become the veins of the spiritual gold that I have mined for insight and wisdom.  My life timeline may be split into two distinct halves, the first half being the first thirty one years of my life, and the second half being the post March 1987 years.  For all intents and purposes, I have lived two completely different lives, though both parts have been characterized by my relative obscurity and, basically, anonymity.

The first period was informed by the internal voices for loneliness, anxiety, and insecurity, and feeling rather unloved, while remaining habituated to many self defeating attitudes and their resultant questionable self care behaviors.

 

The second part continues to be guided by deep curiosity, and the profound experience of our infinite capacity for awakening and healing.

Someday, this world will be part of love’s conspiracy of SILENCE.

“That SILENCE comes when the whole structure of the self is understood”—–J. Krishnamurti

INTRODUCTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Overcome Our Trauma

I didn’t always understand how past trauma was affecting my present. Earlier in life, I only felt like there was something wrong with me. As a child, I told my friends that “I want to get off of this fucking rock”.  Since then, I’ve gone a search for truth that involved connecting the dots from what is wrong with me to what is wrong with the people and society around me. A spiritual awakening process beginning in 1987 was the start of my own exit from the chaotic mindset that characterized my life up to that point.  I had to begin a search for my own personal truth. That means I had to start developing my own story. I had to start believing that my words had value. I had to start believing that even though other people weren’t listening to me, that I could start listening to myself and give what I’m hearing value no matter how painful or terrifying the messages that were bubbling up within me were.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Profound Power of Telling Your Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Telling Your Story Is So Hard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Better Life, Starting With Your Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is your story?

Where is your story hidden? 

We need to hear it.

Chapter 23:  The Architecture of a Soul

What is in a name? For me, it was a map of lineage, a prophecy, and a burden. Bruce Oliver Scott Paullin: a name cobbled together by my parents, linking me to ancestors on both sides. Bruce, a name that arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from a place in France meaning “the willowlands” or “brushwood thicket.” Oliver, from the English olive tree, a biblical symbol of fruitfulness, dignity, and peace. Scott, a designation for one from Scotland, a wanderer from Ireland, a “blue man” colored by tattoos. Paullin, of Latin origin, meaning “small” or humbled, and of the lineage of the mystic, Saint Paul.

My name, then, read like a poem: “From out of the brushwood thicket, an offering of peace, from a man not from here, tattooed by life, with a small, or humbled status, of the lineage of the mystic, Saint Paul.” It was a name heavy with potential, a lifetime’s work of becoming. But potential and actuality are two different worlds, and the journey from one to the other is the miracle experiment of a life.

My story begins in a northwest Portland hospital in November 1955, born into a world covered in nearly two feet of snow. My mother took a taxi alone; my father was at work. His employment, a relentless, dual-job compulsion, would come to define my early years and shape the very architecture of our family. His needs trumped all others. To guarantee he could sustain this endeavor, the affairs of our home were meticulously arranged around his schedule.

My cries, the primal calls of an infant for comfort and connection, were a disruption. So, I was wrapped in a blanket and stored in the car in our garage at night, silenced until my father left for work at 2:15 a.m. Only then would my mother retrieve me, attempting to mend the fractured bond before her own workday began. From there, my sister Pam and I were passed to a babysitter, a cycle that repeated for our first five years.

This early, profound disruption of the parent-child bond is not just my story; it is a quiet crisis emblematic of a society that increasingly prioritizes productivity over nurturing. What happens to a soul when its foundational needs are unmet? What future are we sculpting when care is outsourced, touch is minimized, and time is rationed?

The first few years of life are a crucible. Neuroscientists and psychologists agree that secure attachment in early childhood is critical. It is the unique interplay of a caregiver’s love, attuned presence, and responsiveness that forges a child’s ability to trust, regulate emotions, and form meaningful relationships. This is not mere sentiment; it is brain science. Secure attachment literally shapes the architecture of the brain. When these experiences are compromised, the consequences ripple across a lifetime, manifesting as anxiety, depression, and insecure attachment patterns in adulthood.

My life stands as a testament to this truth.

The Echoes of a Fractured Home

My sister, Pam, sixteen months my senior, was my competitor in a home where love felt like a scarce resource. Before I could speak, she was my companion. She reportedly spoke for me, a silent child who baffled medical professionals. When I finally found my voice around age four, it was a torrent. My father, who had once worried about my silence, now wondered if I would ever shut up.

Pam’s attachment to me waned, and over time, she often became a channel for our father’s negative energy, her anger a reflection of his. We shared a room for my first 2 years, a proximity that surely brought her little joy. We fought constantly, with our last memorable one gathering neighbors when we were teenagers. We were both considered smart, yet we were both deeply wounded.

My childhood world felt unsafe, especially at night. I lay awake for hours, fearing sleep and its nightmares, rehashing my day, trying to engineer a “better” self that might earn a peaceful night. But my impulsive, spontaneous nature rarely improved. The terror was so intense that I frequently wet the bed, which eventually led to my removal from our shared bunk bed and into my own room by age four. Even then, after the nightly terrors, my mother would allow me into her bed, but only after Dad had left for work. In those moments, I felt protected from my demons. This early experience forged an unconscious pattern: I would seek out women, not men, to find safety and acknowledgment, a desperate search for the maternal bond that had been so fragmented.

My relationship with my father was a landscape of conflict and love. He was often my only friend, yet I felt betrayed by his overzealous punishments. The belt was a frequent tool of his authority. In his mind, I deserved what I got, as I was usually guilty. But mercy would have been a profound gesture. These were, as A Course in Miracles would say, unrecognized calls for love from both of us.

Punishment delivered in anger teaches fear, not respect. My father’s role was to guide, not to dominate. Before reacting, he should have taken a moment to regulate his emotions. Discipline should be a teaching moment, not an outlet for frustration. My spirit as a child was far more fragile than he could know.

His love for dogs was a saving grace, and he instilled in me a deep appreciation for them. My first dog, Nina, died tragically, hit by a car while I was riding my bike as she ran beside me too far from home. The guilt was immense. Our third dog, Heidi, a beautiful Samoyed, became the most wonderful creature I had ever met, a pure vessel for the love I so desperately needed to give and receive.  A latent part of me awakened with the introduction of Heidi into my life.

The dysfunction at home was a confusing tapestry. My father was harshly judgmental of my mother’s weight, yet I couldn’t understand why she needed to be picked on. I never saw them hug; I would later teach them how in 1988. I was introduced to church at age six but found its language of sin harsh and its stories irrelevant. This early skepticism of institutional authority would become a recurring theme.

At home, I found solace in exploring nature, building forts, and climbing trees. These were my sanctuaries. A fall from a tree at eight, which knocked the wind out of me, was a terrifying brush with my own fragility. Another fall, from nearly seventy feet, left me briefly unconscious and bruised but alive.  I awoke still clutching the top of the tree that had reduced the impact of my fall. It was a miracle, one of many that seemed to punctuate a life of chaos.

My father took us to collect rocks for his landscaping projects, played board games, ran with us, and would wrestle with us on the floor. These moments built many memories of mutual love and respect, but they were planted in a field dominated by my sense of loneliness and poor self-esteem.

My father was critical of my athletic performance but never taught me how to play. His guidance and encouragement would have been far more powerful than his criticism. It would have been supportive to show up to my games not as a judge, but as my biggest fan. His lack of a supportive presence in two early settings is what I remember most, though he did show up for a freshman football game, totally surprising and delighting me as a 14-year-old.

The journey of healing is one of reintegration, of bringing compassion and understanding to the parts of ourselves that received neither when we needed them most. The revisiting of these early years is not an exercise in blame, but an excavation of the soul’s architecture. The parts of our lives we resist the most are those that resist healing, becoming the unconscious manipulators of our behavior. To heal, we must be willing to face the darkness we have been taught to fear, only to find that its face is, and always has been, our own.

The following is what I would tell my parents as a friend and advisor seventy years ago about parenting someone like me:

• Prioritize Presence Over Productivity: The demands of modern life are immense, but the first years of a child’s life are irreplaceable. Recognize that your consistent, loving presence is the most valuable gift you can offer. Explore flexible work arrangements, advocate for better parental leave, and fiercely protect the time dedicated to bonding. Your child’s emotional foundation is being built, and you are the primary architect.
• Respond to Cries with Connection, Not Convenience: An infant’s cry is their only language. It is a call for security, warmth, and sustenance. Answering these cries with physical closeness and comfort, rather than solutions aimed at silencing them, teaches a child that they are safe, seen, and loved. This builds a core sense of trust that will anchor them for life.
• Understand the Power of Physical Touch: The act of holding, rocking, and skin-to-skin contact is not supplemental; it is essential. These actions release oxytocin, the “love hormone,” in both parent and child, cementing the bond. Even if breastfeeding is not possible, creating intentional moments of physical closeness is vital for healthy attachment.
• Acknowledge and Process Your Own Limitations: Parental burnout is real. If you find yourself overwhelmed, it is crucial to seek support rather than resorting to neglectful behaviors, however unintentional. Communicate with your partner, seek help from family or professionals, and remember that caring for yourself enables you to care for your child. Modeling healthy emotional regulation starts with you.

Chapter 24:  My Search For Truth: A Journey Through the Abyss to Redemption

• You know who we are, there is no need for our names
• We may be outwardly different, but inside are the same
• Vacationing on chemical trips, playing strange mind games
• Perhaps striving for success, and its dubious fame
• We remain graceless souls blended into life’s darkest mass
• Affirming our uniqueness, though we remain stuck in the same class
• As those parading around like winners, but appearing just like an ass
• Steering clear of self-awareness, Oh our transparency of glass!
• Spewing words of wisdom, but with only another dogs’ bark
• Seeking to make a good life, but on life’s script leaving a shit mark
• We may eventually see the light, but now life is always so dark.
• Needing more purifying inner flames, while snuffing every divine spark
• Hoping to someday blossom, yet we will never possess Love’s flower,
• While swimming in intoxicating sweetness, and then drowning in the sour
• Never realizing that, over life, we don’t hold any real lasting power
• We avoid the dark reality of our lives, by living in a chemical tower.
• We may bring up life’s rear, though we think that we should be first
• We want all of the best, somebody else deserves the worst!
• Our life should be more blessed, why on earth do we feel cursed?
• Our dependency creates overblown bubbles, just waiting to be burst!

— THE FOOLS (written in Care Unit, 1984)

It remains no mystery to me why many people choose continued addiction or suicide over recovery. Invisible wounds are the hardest to heal and the easiest to deny. I was starting to see the end of my own road, my out-of-control car crashing through all the safety guardrails, continuing its race towards the finish line of a dead-end life. I knew my problems could not be solved, at least not on my level, and I knew of no other levels accessible to me.

The period from January 1986 through March 1987 became the time container for my descent into the furthest reaches of hell and darkness, with addiction and a fragile will to live as my only companions on a lonely, isolating journey.

The Death of a Dream

My descent into addiction began at a tender age. I started with beer at five years old, and my occasional abuse escalated to other substances by the time I experimented with drugs with Randy Olson in 1971. Randy was more than a friend; he was a catalyst who introduced me to marijuana and my first wife. Little did I know, this was the beginning of a long, arduous struggle with substance abuse and a tragic relationship with a woman who had an incurable mental illness.

Fifteen years later, I found myself spiraling deeper into an abyss. I had walked away from a lifetime guaranteed job with the US Postal Service, and after a tumultuous breakup, I was again living with Randy. Alcohol and drugs were my constant companions, numbing the pain of failed relationships and shattered dreams. Despite securing a full-ride scholarship from the US Air Force and joining the ROTC, my addiction and a marriage to a woman who had a nervous breakdown derailed my aspirations of becoming an Air Force pilot and astronaut. My potential was vast, but my lack of self-esteem was greater.

January 28, 1986, marked a turning point. On that morning, Randy burst from his bedroom screaming,

“BRUCE, WAKE UP AND TURN ON THE TV!! THE CHALLENGER JUST EXPLODED!!!”

The Challenger explosion was not just a national tragedy; it was a personal one. Watching the horrific event on repeat, I had the crushing realization that my life was also over. It represented the destruction of all my hopes. I was 30 years old and had made a promise to myself at 15 that if I couldn’t shake my addiction by this age, I would end my life. The “conspiracy of silence” I participated in had kept my struggles hidden, but the pain became unbearable.

My plan was simple. I needed to refill a prescription for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication from Dr. Dan Beavers, my psychiatrist. I went to the pharmacy, intending to see the deed completed immediately. But the pharmacist refused to fill the prescriptions, telling me I needed to see the shrink again. Undeterred, I scheduled an emergency visit. Dr. Beavers, still grieving the suicide of another patient, elicited an empty promise from me that I would not kill myself with the medication. I immediately placed those pills under the front seat of my car, ready for the moment the agony became too much to bear. But because I no longer wanted only to die, a powerful thought erupted in my mind:

So now I must begin a search for truth.

As the slowly shifting sands of time Create ever taller hills for lost souls to climb. It is in my selfish, hated world of little reason and rhyme, That I began a search for truth, to find Love Sublime.

Into the Underworld

My search for truth led me into Portland’s underworld. My 1977 Datsun 310 sedan became my home, my sanctuary, and my prison. For a year, I lived in this vehicle when not squatting in unoccupied homes with other homeless people, distancing myself from family and friends. My only intention was to find the truth of living, if there was such a thing, and I intuited that it might be hidden somewhere in this darkness.

I committed to two principles. The first was to avoid sex and any new relationships. The second was to quit smoking pot, as it dulled my emotions and intellect—qualities I knew I would need for any hope of survival. I made a commitment to hang with the type of people I would have previously judged and avoided, believing they might hold the answers I was searching for. In my mind, I was already a dead man walking, so my fear of society’s undesirables receded. I now considered myself a fellow traveler in darkness.

During this time, I formed unlikely friendships with people society had cast aside. I realized that the same spiritual disease afflicting my underworld friends also plagued my privileged white middle-class acquaintances; the only difference was the latter’s ability to mask their afflictions. Methedrine, or speed, became my drug of choice, as it made me feel social and conversational. I would go without sleep for up to a week at a time. The Punjab tavern on Foster Road became my hub, a center for social contact with the revolving cast of characters on the tree of death I was now climbing.

I will begin my story of the underworld with Ralph. He was the center point for much illegal activity, and I quickly became his friend and driver through many adventures. Through him, I met drug chemists, motorcycle gang members, hit men, armed robbers, felons, prostitutes, and Steve. I learned to love Ralph, an incredibly damaged soul whose excessive drug use began to cause me concern. He was one of my protectors in the underworld, redirecting others who were tempted to harm me because I didn’t fit in—too educated, too well-spoken. My big vocabulary betrayed me on several occasions. I was once “busted” for using the word “magnanimous” and told that people who use “quarter words” where a “nickel word” is enough were not welcome there.

One night, I found all four tires of my car slashed. Ralph put the word out on the streets that this was unacceptable and whoever did it would answer to him. I felt strangely safe. While jacking up my car, I had to use my AA book for extra elevation, which attracted strange looks. I felt a little pleased with myself for finding a constructive use for the Big Book. Ralph told me to “ditch that evil book,” and I kept it hidden from then on.

In his appreciation, Ralph offered me Sarah, his long-term girlfriend with whom he had an open relationship. I declined, fearing a relationship would distract me from my goal of either finding truth or killing myself. But I did share many adventures with Sarah. One day, she decided we needed to visit our friend Jake, who was being held in the Clackamas County Jail. It was on the way there that I learned Jake was a hit man for a motorcycle gang.

Sarah and I snorted some designer meth just before arriving at the jail. Shortly after, I was struck dumb, unable to speak for two full days. When we met Jake, all that would come out of my mouth were awkward grunts. The stress of the meeting, coupled with the drugs, had probably caused my loss of speech, contributing to the “conspiracy of silence” my addiction enabled.

One evening, I met Robert at the Punjab. He was about my age and had just been released from prison after serving ten years for a robbery. He then told me he had killed a man during that robbery. I gulped, feeling uncomfortable, but told him everyone deserves a second chance and bought him a beer. A little later, an old friend of his joined him in the restroom. Robert returned to the bar, his eyes having lost their luster, slurring his words noticeably. He then slumped face down onto the bar and fell off his chair.

“Bartender, I think my friend here just got sick,” I said. “Should we call an ambulance?” Jack, the owner, replied, “Heck no, Bruce, he is right where he wants to be. Help him over to a booth.” “Did he just shoot heroin?” I asked. “Why would he do that? I want to talk to people now; that would be so counterproductive.” Jack’s words hit me with profound weight.

“Bruce, SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST WAITING FOR A BETTER DAY. Today is not the better day for Robert, and it may never arrive for him.”

The Conspiracy of Silence claimed another soul. The heroin completely shut him down to his humanity and left me wondering what my own fate might be.

My search continued through an endless array of struggling, spiritually darkened people. Each one helped me find the next step on my own path. Dorothy was a young heroin user with two small children. She was “shadowed” by a former lover who was in jail but who she believed could astrally project himself into her home.

“There is only darkness, Bruce,” she told me, “and all the people who attempt to use it. Good people do not really exist, just fucked-up people who occasionally make helpful choices, usually while they are really just trying to selfishly take care of themselves.” “I believe we all have both energies, Dorothy,” I replied. “Perhaps if we stumble upon the right understanding, we can act from a not-so-dark, not-so-selfish position.” “Well, how much time and energy do you put into that?” she countered. It was a good point. “I try to look at the forces of darkness within myself,” I admitted. “My old way of seeing life has not brought any lasting happiness. If there is no Truth to stumble upon, then I may as well allow the darkness to finish swallowing me up.” “Heroin is quite helpful for me, Bruce,” she offered. “My supplier will be here shortly. I can give you a little bit.” I thanked her and left. My search for Truth would have ended that day had I stayed. I felt disturbed by the darkness coming through Dorothy and never saw her again.

A Glimmer of Light in the Darkness

One significant relationship during my descent was with Steve, the man who knew Ralph and would play a pivotal role in my life. Steve was intelligent, well-dressed, and always carried a sense of mystery. He became the big brother I never had, offering guidance and criticism when needed. He introduced me to various situations and people, testing my resolve and pushing me toward my “search for truth.” He would use drugs with me, but in such small amounts that I wondered if they had any effect on him. He was very critical of my rate of use, stating I was abusing myself.

Through Steve, I met Georgette, a 15-year-old runaway escaping a sexually abusive father. She was with Greg, a young man who was about to “peddle” her for income. My heart broke for her innocence. She had developed pink eye, and I saw an opportunity. I whisked her away, took her to a clinic for medical help, and gave her the last of my retirement money. I told her in no uncertain terms that I never wanted to see her again with her “friends,” or there would be hell to pay. I never did see her again, but a few days later, a cassette tape of our conversation was mysteriously thrust across the floor of the Punjab. My voice emanated from the player, and a fear like I had never felt before took over me. The people at the bar regarded me with suspicion. All I could offer was that Georgette must have been miked.

My downward spiral continued. By November, I looked like I could be the “Aids Poster Boy,” as Steve had commented. I had become so slight and unhealthy. I started hearing voices and grew paranoid. I “heard” that a major undercover operation was active in Portland and that dozens of criminal indictments were imminent. I tore my car apart searching for a transmitter I was sure had been planted. I didn’t find it, but I started messing with any potential listeners, talking dark shit and renaming myself “the Wild Card.” I let my world know I was no longer aligned with anyone; I was on my way to my own death.

I lost touch with Steve. My core group had collapsed. I was now running with a new group, most of whom were intravenous drug users. I met Doctor Dave, who introduced me to using a needle. I feared needles so much I couldn’t shoot up myself, but the incredible rush made me want to use this hastened path to death frequently for the final two months of my drug-abusing life.

In early March of 1987, our new leader, Frank, organized a party at a commandeered house. I was ready for my swan song. My mental health felt irreparably damaged, and my search for truth had seemingly only uncovered a faster way to die. Frank had a fresh batch of speed and heroin and was mixing up his renowned witch’s brew. He invited me to join him.

Sure, why not? I had nothing to lose but a life that was already dead.

As I started to go upstairs with Frank, I spotted Steve talking with a healthy-looking woman. I overheard her call him by a name that was not Steve. He saw that I heard, and he knew that I knew.

He took me aside and tried to explain. I stopped him and told him I had suspected all along that he was undercover. I told him his secret was safe with me, but that my journey was about to end. I was going upstairs with Frank, and if I survived, I would return to my car, grab the pills under my seat, and finish the business once and for all. I was finished.

“Steve” grabbed my arm, excused himself from his ‘girlfriend,’ and took me outside to his car. We drove to my father’s house. “Bruce,” he commanded, “I can no longer keep you protected and safe. Your search for truth has to end within this dangerous world. Now your real search for truth must begin, starting with your relationship with your father. I never want to see you again, but believe me, I am going to try to help you, any way I can. You deserve so much better of a life than you have given to yourself.”

He let me out at my father’s house and drove away. He and his partner returned my car later that evening. The pills had disappeared from under the seat. I never saw him again. A year later, he called to check on me. I was a year clean and sober. In tears, I gushed with love and gratitude. He was the best friend I never knew I had.

I was still a mess. I was strung out, weighed a mere 135 pounds, and my face was broken out. I had horrific shakes and still heard voices. On March 13, 1987, Randy Olson came over, and we proceeded to drink an inordinate amount of my father’s booze. After he left, I was alone with my horrible problems.

I entered a blackout, picked up one of my father’s loaded guns, and drove to the home of a man named Brock, an associate of a drug chemist from the underworld. I have no idea why I went there, but I awoke from my blackout when the gun in my lap discharged, shooting a hole in his front door. He had two sleeping children and a wife in the apartment; I was fortunate not to have brought harm to anyone.

He brought out a hypodermic needle and injected me with speed. I immediately snapped out of my drunkenness and proceeded to talk with him for 24 hours. After one more injection, clarity finally hit me.

Literally, a light went on in my mind. I saw the utter insanity of the person I was with and the insanity of my own life. I stood up, laughed at him, called both of us nuts, and walked out. I got in my car and drove back to my parents’ home. I was changed, though I didn’t know how much at the time. With only five dollars to my name, I had to decide: buy more beer and cigarettes, or get gasoline to visit my grandparents. I kept the five dollars and drove to family. My grandparents were happy to see me but concerned by my appearance. I claimed to have the flu. My grandmother nursed me back to some semblance of health over the next five days as I detoxified from cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs all at once.

Two days after returning to my parents’ home, an old childhood friend, Craig Salter, called out of the blue. He asked if I wanted to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with him, which he was required to attend for a DUI. I went. I figured since God was a big part of AA, and I was searching for Truth, there must be a relationship between those two forces.

I proceeded to attend over 270 meetings in my first 90 days. I had nothing else to do, having lost my job and, basically, my life. Craig eventually stopped going, but I continued, feeling like I had finally found my spiritual home. I spent thousands of hours over the next several years in AA, in communication, investigation, reading, writing, and meditation, eventually healing my relationship with my parents, especially my father.

My search for Truth, which had taken me through the darkest regions of hell, was about to give me wings. The prison guard with one of the primary keys to my release from spiritual imprisonment was my own unhealed relationship with my father. Overcoming a lifetime of oppression and control is no easy task. It must be done clean and sober for the true depth of healing to take hold. I began a new relationship with my father, starting with my newfound sobriety.

The real fruit of that healing, however, is another story for later.

Chapter 25:  When Dreams Die~The Silent Grief of Our Guiding Light

Few human experiences carry the unbearable weight of tragedy as profoundly as the death of a child. It’s a wound so piercing, so absolute, that it leaves behind an emotional landscape devoid of light. Now, imagine a different kind of death — one that is equally crushing, yet less visible to the world.

The death of a dream.

This grief may not manifest through tears shed at a gravesite or the numb silence of mourners, but it lingers in the soul, darkening inner worlds. Dreams are guiding lights, the stars that illuminate paths in the vast terrain of existence. When these lights extinguish, the dreamer is often left wandering in the shadows of despair and confusion.

My life continues to explore the profound intersection of hope, loss, and resilience. It is meaningful to dissect the layers of this silent grief while seeking ways to rediscover meaning and rekindle our inner guiding light.

Dreams are far more than idle imaginings or lofty aspirations. They are the scaffolding of our identity, the force that propels us forward when nothing else will. A cherished dream infuses us with purpose, energizes our days, and fills our nights with visions of what could be.

To dream is to affirm life itself, to declare that there is something more—a horizon worth reaching for. Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard described despair as “being unconscious of having a self”—a feeling eerily parallel to losing the essence of what once inspired us. Without dreams, we run the risk of losing the “self” that connects us to our inner voice, passions, and higher aspirations.

The death of a dream isn’t always abrupt. Sometimes, it is a slow and agonizing dimming, as obstacles or doubts pile up until the horizon is no longer visible. Other times, it is sudden—triggered by a life-altering failure, an irreversible event, or perhaps harsh words that puncture our confidence.

Consider, for example, the aspiring writer or artist who abandons their craft after repeated rejection. Or the entrepreneur whose startup crumbles after years of effort, leaving them financially and emotionally depleted. Or, how about the man whose young wife suffers an irreversible medical condition, stifling all hopes for her emotional stability and joy in their marriage.Their grief, though rarely acknowledged, is no less real than mourning the loss of a loved one.

When external, tangible losses occur—such as death, a breakup, or financial ruin—the world often responds with condolences, rituals, or support systems. But when it comes to the death of dreams, the response is strikingly absent.

The grieving dreamer is often met with dismissal (“Maybe it wasn’t meant to be”), platitudes (“You’ll bounce back”), or worse, silence. Consciously or not, society pressures individuals to “move on” without fully processing their loss. This message fuels shame, leaving the individual with a lingering sense of failure.

Such invalidation only deepens the isolation. The dreamer feels as though they cannot acknowledge their grief, rendering their loss invisible not just to others, but to themselves.

The death of a dream often mimics the stages of traditional grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It can leave individuals feeling untethered, destructive, or swallowed by apathy.

Some signs of “dream grief” include:

• Loss of identity: Who am I without “this dream”?
• Chronic self-doubt: Was I foolish to believe in it at all?
• Fear of trying again: What if I only fail again?
• Cynicism: If my dream has died, what’s the point of having any?

This psychological fog traps the dreamer in a purgatory of longing and resignation, where the future feels impossibly distant, and the past remains an aching reminder of what might have been.

The road to healing begins with honesty. Acknowledge your loss—honor it as a profound chapter of your human experience rather than a failure to be forgotten. Acceptance doesn’t mean letting go of all hope. Instead, it frees you to reflect on the past, allowing space for new aspirations to emerge.

The death of a dream often clears the path for a greater, more authentic version of your life’s purpose. The artist, once paralyzed by rejection, may discover joy in collaborating with others instead of perfecting solitary masterpieces. The failed entrepreneur, stripped of their initial vision, may find success by pivoting or mentoring others in their path. The valedictorian student-athlete, felled by an injury and an addictive process, eventually finds recovery, and then shares their experience, strength, and hope with others still suffering.

This reframing begins by asking:

• What has this experience taught me about myself?
• If I could reimagine this dream, what would it look like now?
• How can I repurpose my knowledge, skills, or resources to serve a new vision?

Transformation is not linear, but it invites us to move forward—not with blind optimism, but with compassionate realism.

Sometimes, it’s impossible to rekindle the inner light alone—especially when consumed by self-doubt. Seek connection. Trusted mentors, supportive communities, or even professional counselors can offer a clearer perspective, gently illuminating paths you might not yet see.

The human being who witnesses the death of a dream—and dares to dream again—is among the most courageous. This resilience shapes not only individuals but entire communities. Our collective stories of failure, perseverance, and triumph unite us in the shared complexity of life’s bittersweet beauty.

Walt Disney once famously said,

“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.”

But perhaps a truer realization is this—dreams may die, evolve, or retreat into the shadows. Yet, it is the enduring hope, the belief in light itself, that ultimately keeps us alive.

If your guiding light has dimmed, know this—you are not alone. A single candle can reignite another. Surround yourself with those who uplift, inspire, and remind you of your inner worth. We are never meant to carry the weight of such loss in solitude.

The death of dreams is a profoundly human experience, yet it is also an opportunity to reconnect with self and purpose in ways previously unimaginable. While it may feel like the end of the road, it is often the spark of transformation waiting to unfold.  I know, for I totalled my vehicle of consciousness into a wall at the end of that dead-end road, forcing me into dramatic, life-affirming change.

We are the keeper of our inner light—challenged, perhaps, but never extinguished.

The path ahead may be unclear, but by choosing to walk it with curiosity and faith, we honor both the dreams we’ve lost and those yet to come.

Chapter 26:  No More Turning Away: Confronting the Conspiracy of Silence

In our fast-paced world, it is all too easy to turn away from the suffering of others. Yet, we must confront this tendency and the broader “conspiracy of silence” that pervades our society. This silence, this refusal to acknowledge the pain of the pale and downtrodden, is not just a passive act; it is a form of complicity. By doing nothing, we become part of the problem.

We are all interconnected. The suffering of one individual or community affects us all, whether we realize it or not. It’s a ripple effect—one that can either lead to further marginalization or to collective healing and progress. Our societal responsibility extends beyond mere acknowledgment; it encompasses active engagement and empathetic action.

The conspiracy of silence is not a new phenomenon, but its modern manifestations are particularly insidious. In an era where information is at our fingertips, indifference has become a troubling form of action. We scroll past images of suffering, tune out news of injustice, and isolate ourselves within echo chambers that reinforce our biases. This collective turning away is a decision—a choice to remain uninvolved, to avoid discomfort, and to shroud our lives in a comforting veil of ignorance.

The cost of this apathy is profound. When we turn away from social issues, we erode the very fabric of human empathy. This erosion affects not only the marginalized but also the indifferent. Apathy breeds isolation, both individually and collectively. Economically, it perpetuates cycles of poverty and inequality, stifling innovation and progress. Socially, it creates divides that are increasingly difficult to bridge.

To counteract this pervasive silence, we must adopt innovative approaches that foster engagement and solidarity. Here are some ways to break the silence and take meaningful action:

1. Education and Awareness

Education is the first step towards empathy. Schools, community centers, and online platforms should prioritize teaching the importance of social responsibility and the interconnectedness of human experiences. Awareness campaigns can highlight the stories of the weak and the weary, making their struggles visible and undeniable.

2. Community Engagement

Building strong, supportive communities can counteract the effects of isolation and indifference. Local initiatives that encourage volunteering, mentorship, and grassroots activism create spaces where individuals can connect and collaborate on solutions to social issues.

3. Policy Advocacy

Advocating for policies that address the root causes of suffering—such as poverty, discrimination, and lack of access to education and healthcare—is crucial. Engaging with policymakers, supporting relevant legislation, and participating in public discourse can drive systemic change.

4. Leveraging Technology

Technology can be a powerful tool for fostering empathy and action. Social media campaigns, virtual reality experiences, and online platforms for activism can bring distant issues closer to home, making them more immediate and personal.

Many individuals and organizations have successfully challenged the status quo of indifference. For instance, organizations like Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International tirelessly work to bring attention to and alleviate suffering around the world. Movements like #BlackLivesMatter have galvanized millions to stand against racial injustice. These examples show that change is possible when we refuse to turn away.

The dream of a world with no more turning away is not an impossible one. It requires a collective awakening—a commitment to confront the conspiracy of silence and to take meaningful action. By acknowledging our interconnectedness and our shared responsibility, we can create a world where empathy and justice prevail.

It’s not enough to stand and stare. We must engage, educate, and act. Only then can we hope to break the shroud of indifference and light the flame of change. Join us in this endeavor. Together, we can ensure that the weak and the weary are heard, supported, and uplifted.

No more turning away.

Why is this so important to me?

When I was much younger, you, “the world”, repeatedly turned away from me when I needed you the most…

Yet, i can never turn away from you now.

That is my curse,

That is my blessing.

On The Turning Away, by Pink Floyd

It’s a sin that somehow Light is changing to shadow And casting its shroud Over all, we have known Unaware how the ranks have grown Driven on by a heart of stone We could find that we’re all alone In the dream of the proud On the wings of the night As the daytime is stirring Where the speechless unite In a silent accord Using words you will find are strange Mesmerized as they light the flame Feel the new wind of change On the wings of the night

Chapter 27:  Awakening from the Collective Dream: A Journey Beyond Illusion

Some of the latest speculative theories suggest that our human experience of life might just be a simulation—a grand stage of role-playing and acting, all preprogrammed by advanced beings as part of a computer coding experiment in the future.

The human experience often feels like living within a carefully constructed dream—one where the boundaries of reality blur with collective beliefs, societal conditioning, and inherited truths that may not be truths at all. This dream, which spiritual teachers have long recognized as a form of collective hypnosis, shapes our understanding of ourselves, our bodies, and our place in the universe. But what happens when we begin to question the very foundations of this shared illusion?

The path to spiritual awakening requires us to examine not just our personal beliefs, but the entire framework of consciousness that humanity has constructed over millennia. It demands that we investigate the nature of healing, the reality of our physical existence, and the profound possibility that what we’ve been taught to see as solid and unchangeable might be far more malleable than we ever imagined.

The journey ahead explores the intersection of healing and consciousness through the lens of transformative teachers and personal revelation. It challenges us to consider whether true healing—of body, mind, and spirit—might require us to first heal our perception of reality itself.

The Revolutionary Healer: Understanding Jesus Beyond Doctrine

Jesus Christ stands as one of history’s most profound healers, yet his message has been filtered through centuries of institutional interpretation. Beyond the theological constructs that emerged from fourth-century Roman political maneuvering, Jesus represented something far more radical: the understanding that divinity resides within human consciousness.

His healings were not performed through supernatural intervention from an external deity, but through a recognition of the divine nature already present within each individual. When Jesus declared that the body is the temple of the living God, he was pointing to a revolutionary understanding that infinite consciousness can express itself through finite form.

This perspective transforms our understanding of healing entirely. Rather than seeking intervention from outside sources, Jesus demonstrated that healing consciousness already exists within us. The miracles attributed to him—raising the dead, multiplying loaves and fishes, healing the sick—become less about supernatural phenomena and more about the natural expression of awakened consciousness recognizing its own unlimited nature.

The skepticism many feel toward these stories often arises not from their impossibility, but from our conditioning to accept the limitations that collective consciousness imposes upon us. When we truly understand that consciousness creates experience, rather than being created by it, the nature of miraculous healing shifts from the impossible to the inevitable.

Personal experiences of spiritual awakening often arrive as sudden interventions that shatter our carefully constructed understanding of reality. In 1987, a series of three profound experiences revealed the illusory nature of what we typically consider “real.”

The first was a vision announcing the birth of divine awareness—not as something foreign entering consciousness, but as something already present finally being recognized. This wasn’t a mystical experience happening to someone; it was the recognition of what had always been true about the nature of consciousness itself.

The second intervention involved seeing through what might be called “God’s eyes”—perceiving reality through unconditioned awareness, free from the filters of personal history, cultural programming, and collective beliefs. In this state, the entire conceptual universe revealed itself as a kind of elaborate disguise worn by a much more fundamental reality.

The third experience transcended even the notion of having a body or mind, revealing the source of creation itself. This wasn’t a journey to somewhere else, but a recognition of what exists beyond all concepts, including the concept of a separate self having experiences.

These interventions demonstrated that our entire conceptual universe—everything we’ve been taught to believe about the nature of reality—functions as a substitute for direct knowing. The real teacher of truth had been silenced and held hostage by our collective commitment to illusion.

Jack Boland’s 12 Steps to a Spiritual Experience

Jack Boland revolutionized the understanding of the 12 Steps by revealing their true purpose: creating a spiritual experience that dissolves the painful illusions we’ve constructed through trauma and addictive patterns. His work demonstrated that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, not human beings occasionally having spiritual moments.

Boland’s approach recognized that addiction—whether to substances, behaviors, or thought patterns—represents our attempt to escape the pain of separation from our true nature. The 12 Steps, properly understood, provide a systematic method for dismantling the false identity that creates this sense of separation.

The genius of Boland’s teaching lies in his recognition that the steps are not about moral improvement or behavioral modification, but about spiritual transformation. Each step serves to dissolve another layer of the ego’s defensive structure, gradually revealing the divine consciousness that was never actually absent.

This process requires acknowledging powerlessness over the ego’s attempts to maintain control, recognizing a power greater than our conditioned self, and making a decision to align with this greater reality. The subsequent steps involve examining and releasing the psychological patterns that maintain the illusion of separation.

Through this work, what Boland called a “spiritual experience” emerges—not as something we achieve, but as something we uncover. This experience reveals that the spiritual being was always present, temporarily obscured by our investment in maintaining a separate identity.

Joel Goldsmith: The Hypnotic Nature of Conceptual Reality

Joel Goldsmith’s profound insight into the nature of healing centered on his understanding that the conceptual world functions as a form of hypnosis. According to Goldsmith, everything we perceive through conditioned consciousness represents the effects of this hypnotic state, preventing us from seeing what actually exists.

Goldsmith taught that every person is God made manifest, but our real bodies exist as invisible, spiritual realities governed by divine law rather than the limitations imposed by human thinking. Disease, suffering, and death belong to the hypnotic dream of separation, not to our true spiritual nature.

His healing work involved “impersonalizing” disease—refusing to see it as belonging to any individual—and then “nothingizing” it by recognizing its fundamental unreality. This wasn’t positive thinking or mental manipulation, but a clear seeing that transcended the hypnotic suggestions of the collective mind.

In Goldsmith’s understanding, the mind of God contains only perfection, wholeness, and well-being. Disease cannot exist in divine consciousness because divine consciousness knows no limitation or imperfection. His miraculous healings arose from this recognition: by maintaining awareness of what is true in divine consciousness, the hypnotic suggestions of the human mind lost their power to manifest as physical experience.

This approach requires distinguishing between the mind of man—which operates through concepts, beliefs, and learned limitations—and the mind of God, which knows only its own infinite nature. Healing occurs not through changing conditions, but through awakening from the hypnotic dream that convincing conditions were ever real.

Krishnamurti: The Disease of Collective Consciousness

Jiddu Krishnamurti’s uncompromising examination of human consciousness revealed the deeply diseased nature of our collective mental patterns. He observed how the need for social belonging and the corruption inherent in power structures maintain humanity in a limited and distorted understanding of themselves and reality.

Krishnamurti identified the central conflict between being and becoming as the source of psychological suffering. Thought creates the illusion of psychological time—a mental construct that keeps us trapped in regret about the past or anxiety about the future, preventing us from encountering the immediate reality of the present moment.

His teaching of “choiceless awareness” represents perhaps the most radical approach to spiritual awakening. This awareness involves seeing reality exactly as it is, without the interference of thought attempting to change, improve, or escape what is observed. In this seeing, liberation occurs naturally—not as something we achieve, but as something that happens when we stop interfering with what is.

The disease of collective consciousness manifests as our addiction to psychological becoming—constantly trying to improve ourselves, achieve spiritual states, or become someone better. This very effort maintains the illusion of a separate self that needs improvement, preventing the recognition that awareness itself is already perfect and complete.

Krishnamurti’s question—”Can we see something without thought interfering in what we are witnessing?”—points to the heart of spiritual awakening. When thought stops trying to interpret, categorize, or manipulate experience, pure awareness reveals itself as our fundamental nature.

Stephen Levine: The Buddhist Understanding of Perceptual Unreality

Stephen Levine brought a profound Buddhist perspective to the question of what actually dies when the body dies. His work explored the relative unreality of all perceptions arising from the conditioned mind, including our most cherished beliefs about our own identity.

Levine recognized that our perception of ourselves creates an unreal world, confusing who we actually are with the collection of thoughts, memories, and mental constructs we’ve learned to call “myself.” This confusion extends to our understanding of death—we fear the loss of something that was never real to begin with.

From this Buddhist understanding, what we call the self represents a kind of ongoing hallucination maintained by the mind’s tendency to create continuity where none actually exists. Each moment, the mind constructs a sense of being the same person who existed in previous moments, creating the illusion of a continuous identity moving through time.

When the body dies, what actually dies? According to Levine, only the mental construct of a separate self dies—the stories, the personal history, the accumulated identity. But what we truly are—pure awareness itself—was never born and therefore cannot die.

This recognition transforms our entire relationship to both life and death. Instead of identifying with the temporary mental formations that arise and pass away in awareness, we begin to recognize ourselves as the awareness in which all experience appears and dissolves.

The Laboratory of Consciousness: Understanding Our True Nature

The body serves as a vehicle for consciousness and a laboratory where we experiment with what it means to have a physical form in an Earth-based experience. We are the actor, and the body functions as both costume and vehicle, allowing us to participate in the collective experience of being human.

Yet on a deeper level, the body exists as a living, dynamic image within consciousness itself. The question arises: Is our image of the body actually the body? Does it possess real existence outside of the mind that perceives it?

While others certainly confirm the apparent existence of our physical form, our concept and experience of the body remains primary. The body-image we carry influences every aspect of our physical experience, often more powerfully than any objective physical condition.

This points to a fundamental question: Are we the body? Are we identified with our clothing, our car, our house? The suit may make the man in social terms, but does it define the essence of who we are?

The revolutionary insight that emerges from spiritual inquiry is that the body, like everything else in our experience, exists within consciousness rather than consciousness existing within the body. This doesn’t deny the relative reality of physical experience, but it places that experience in proper context.

When Jesus spoke of the body as the temple of the living God, he was pointing to this understanding. If God is infinite consciousness, and the body exists within consciousness, then the body participates in divine nature rather than limiting it.

True healing addresses not just physical symptoms but the fundamental confusion about the nature of reality that creates the conditions for suffering. This healing requires recognizing the difference between what we are and what we think we are.

Most healing approaches work within the framework of the hypnotic dream, attempting to rearrange conditions within illusion rather than awakening from illusion itself. While this can provide temporary relief, lasting healing requires addressing the consciousness that creates experience.

The healers discussed here—Jesus, Goldsmith, and others—worked from the recognition that perfect wholeness already exists as the fundamental nature of being. Their healing work involved removing the mental obstacles that prevented this wholeness from being recognized and experienced.

This approach doesn’t deny the value of medical treatment or practical healing methods. Instead, it addresses the deeper level of consciousness from which all healing ultimately springs. When we heal our relationship to reality itself, physical healing often follows naturally.

The process of awakening from collective hypnosis requires tremendous courage because it involves questioning everything we’ve been taught to believe about ourselves and reality. This questioning isn’t intellectual skepticism but a deep inquiry into the nature of experience itself.

The first step involves recognizing that most of what we consider normal human experience represents a form of trance state maintained by collective agreement. Our beliefs about limitation, separation, aging, and death may be widely shared, but this doesn’t make them true.

The second step requires developing the capacity to observe our own mind without being hypnotized by its contents. This involves learning to distinguish between awareness itself and the thoughts, emotions, and sensations that appear within awareness.

The third step involves experimenting with different possibilities—entertaining the radical notion that consciousness might be fundamental rather than emergent, that healing might be natural rather than miraculous, that wholeness might be our true condition rather than something we need to achieve.

Spiritual awakening doesn’t follow a prescribed path because it involves recognizing what has always been present rather than achieving something new. Each person’s journey unfolds uniquely, though certain principles remain constant.

The recognition that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, rather than human beings having occasional spiritual experiences, fundamentally shifts our approach to every aspect of life. This shift doesn’t require adopting new beliefs but releasing the beliefs that obscure our natural state.

The teachers explored here offer different approaches to the same fundamental recognition: the divine nature we seek already exists as our deepest identity. The spiritual journey involves removing the obstacles to recognizing what we already are rather than becoming something we are not.

This recognition brings profound healing—not just of physical ailments but of the fundamental sense of separation that creates all suffering. When we know ourselves as consciousness itself, the limitations that seemed so real begin to dissolve naturally.

The invitation before us transcends intellectual understanding and enters the realm of direct experience. We are being called to investigate the most fundamental questions of existence: Who are we? What is real? How does healing actually occur?

These questions cannot be answered through thinking alone but require a willingness to look beyond the comfortable certainties of collective agreement. They require the courage to consider that reality might be far more magical, malleable, and magnificent than we’ve been taught to believe.

The path of awakening involves discovering that the infinite consciousness we seek exists as our own deepest nature. This discovery doesn’t separate us from the world but reveals our fundamental unity with all existence. From this recognition, true healing becomes possible—not just for us but for the collective consciousness of humanity itself.

The journey continues with each moment of willingness to see beyond the veil of collective hypnosis to the luminous reality that has always been present, always been perfect, and always been waiting for our recognition.

Chapter 26:  The Art of Inner Alchemy: How to Transform Trauma into Miraculous Healing

The journey of healing is rarely a straight line. It is an intricate dance between shadow and light, a profound internal alchemy where the lead of our suffering is transmuted into the gold of wisdom and wholeness. Many of us carry the weight of unfinished responses to grief and trauma, two potentially overwhelming events that may fragment our sense of self and tether us to the past. But what if these wounds, these very points of fracture, held the key to a miraculous healing? What if the path to transcendence wasn’t about erasing our scars, but learning to read the stories they tell?

This guide is an invitation to explore the deep, often paradoxical, layers of healing. It is not a prescription of simple fixes but a philosophical map for navigating the complex terrain of your inner world. By reading on, you will learn how to move beyond the narrative of victimhood, dismantle the constructs that keep you imprisoned, and consciously craft a new story—one of resilience, connection, and profound spiritual renewal.

Before we can heal, we must first understand what we are healing from. Trauma is not the event itself, but the body and mind’s incomplete response to it. When an experience is too overwhelming to process, our nervous system can get stuck in a state of fight, flight, or freeze. This suspended energy becomes lodged within us, creating echoes of the past that manifest as anxiety, depression, addiction, or a pervasive sense of disconnection. My own journey through addiction and mental illness was a testament to this; I was trapped in a relentless feedback loop of unresolved pain, a “committee of conflicting voices” narrating my every move from a place of fear and judgment.

To begin the healing process is to first acknowledge this incompletion. It requires the courage to sit with the discomfort and recognize that these responses, however dysfunctional they may seem now, were once your mind’s best attempt at survival. This is not about reliving the trauma, but about gently and compassionately recognizing its lingering presence within you. It is a radical act of self-love to say, “I see this pain, I honor its origin, and I am now ready to help it complete its cycle.”

We are beings of narrative. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, shaped by our experiences, become the architecture of our identity. Trauma often creates a powerful, rigid story—the story of the victim, the broken, the unworthy. While this narrative may feel true, it is an illusion, a construct built from pain. True healing requires us to question and ultimately dismantle this story.

My own turning point on the peak of Larch Mountain occurred in a moment of profound surrender, with the boundaries of my “self”—the addict, the failure, the isolated soul—dissolving into the interconnected tapestry of existence. The relentless third-person voice in my mind, the ultimate symbol of my separation from my own being, fell silent. In its place was a state of pure awareness, a connection to a divine presence I could only describe as “God.” In that moment, I understood that who I truly am was far greater than any story my mind could create.

This is the path of “via negativa”—not defining what we are but clearing away all that we are not. Healing asks us to let go of the identities forged in suffering. We are not your trauma. We are not our addiction, or the damage it may have caused. We are the awareness that observes these things. By cultivating this observer consciousness through practices like meditation and mindfulness, we can create space between ourselves and our pain, allowing the old stories to lose their grip.

Healing is not a solitary endeavor. While the journey is deeply personal, it is through connection with others that our transformation becomes fully realized. The isolation that trauma breeds is one of its most insidious effects, convincing us that we are alone in our suffering. Yet, when we find the courage to share our truth, we discover that our personal wounds echo the collective wounds of humanity.

After my awakening, the question that burned within me was, “Where are my people?” This wasn’t just a search for friendship; it was a deep longing for a community where I could be seen and accepted in my newfound wholeness. I found this connection in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, in spiritual groups, and in new, healthy relationships. In these spaces, I learned that sharing my story was not an act of ego, but an act of service.  My narrative became an inspiring story pointing to the higher possibilities of being alive. It created a bridge for others who were also searching for a way out of their own darkness.

To heal, we must actively seek our people. Find those who are also committed to a path of consciousness and growth. Be vulnerable. Share the story, not as a tale of woe, but as a testament to resilience. In the shared reflection of each other’s journeys, we find the universal threads of the human experience and remember that we are not separate. This reconnection extends beyond humanity to the natural world itself. Spending time in nature, as I did on that sacred mountain, reminds us that we are part of a vast, intelligent, and unified system of life.

So much of our suffering stems from living in the past or fearing the future. Trauma keeps us anchored to what has been, while anxiety projects that fear onto what is yet to come. The antidote to this temporal prison is presence. Healing happens in the now. My experience of God was not a vision of Jesus, Mother Mary, or an afterlife, but a profound realization that paradise is not a destination; it is a state of being, available in the present moment when the mind is still.

Cultivating presence is a daily practice. It is about learning to anchor ourselves in the sensory experience of the moment—the feeling of our breath, the warmth of the sun on your skin, the sound of a bird singing. When the mind wanders back to old pains or future worries, we gently guide it back to the here and now. This is not about suppressing thoughts but about choosing not to be ruled by them.

This practice requires a total surrender of what we think we know. As Krishnamurti taught, it is a “choiceless awareness,” a quality of vision unburdened by the self. In this state, we are no longer reacting to life through the filter of our trauma. Instead, we are responding from a place of clarity, wisdom, and peace. We begin to understand that we do not need to escape this world to find peace; we need to be more fully present in it.

Crafting a New Story: Living a Life of Transcendent Purpose

Once the old narratives have been cleared and a connection to the present moment has been established, we are left with a blank slate. This is both terrifying and exhilarating. We are no longer defined by our past, so who will we choose to be? This is the final and most creative stage of healing: crafting a new story, not from the debris of the past, but from the infinite potential of the present.

This new narrative is not one of perfection, but of purpose. It is a story where our greatest struggles become our greatest teachers, and our healing becomes a source of light for others. My path led me to share my experiences, to write, and to connect with those who are still struggling. This act of turning outward, of using my journey to serve a greater purpose, is what has given it meaning.

Your story, too, has the power to become a beacon. By living a life of integrity, compassion, and connection, you embody the truth of your own transformation. You become a living example that healing is possible, that even from the deepest darkness, a new, light-filled reality can be born. The true miracle is not in being heard by others, but in finally hearing, and honoring, the truth of your soul.

This path of inner alchemy is not for the faint of heart. It demands courage, honesty, and an unwavering commitment to your own evolution. But the reward is nothing less than liberation—freedom from the chains of the past and the birthright of a life lived in wholeness, connection, and divine purpose. If my story can offer you anything, let it be the unwavering belief that no matter how fractured you may feel, your essence remains whole, and within you lies the miraculous capacity to heal.

From the Depths of Trauma to the unlimited bandwidth of the Universe: A Guide to Inner Liberation

We are all born into stories not of our making. These narratives—woven from cultural norms, familial expectations, and personal wounds—can become a form of hypnosis for those who do not seek deeper insight. We inherit beliefs, dysfunctions, and a certain societal static that fills the gaps in our self-awareness. Living solely within these inherited frameworks risks an incomplete existence, one lacking the profound truth, integrity, and alignment with reality that our souls crave. To break free is to embark on the most vital journey of all: the path from the turmoil of trauma to the serene clarity of a divine frequency.

This guide is not a simple map but a philosophical compass. It is for those who feel the tremors of inner turmoil, who sense the ache of loneliness even in a crowd, and who recognize that the chaos of modern life often reflects a deeper, internal brokenness. Here, we will explore how to identify the layers of trauma, dismantle the conditioning that binds us, and ultimately, align with the universal, interconnected essence that resides within all of life. This is the journey to rediscovering the master within—the source of infinite wisdom and peace that awaits beneath the noise.

Understanding the Tapestry of Trauma

Trauma is not always a singular, catastrophic event. More often, it is a complex web of personal, familial, and cultural wounds that compound over time. To begin the healing process, we must first learn to see these threads for what they are.

• Personal Trauma: This is the realm of our direct experiences—addiction, anxiety, broken relationships, and a pervasive sense of inner turmoil. It manifests as a deep ache, a loneliness that can lead us to numb the pain with substances or distractions. These are the symptoms, the visible cracks in a foundation weakened by unaddressed suffering. Without introspection, these chaotic forces can become overwhelming, pulling us further from our true selves.
• Familial Trauma: We are all downstream from the generations that came before us. Their unresolved pain, their silenced stories, and their cycles of dysfunction become our inheritance. We may unconsciously repeat patterns of behavior, internalize limiting beliefs, and carry burdens that were never ours to begin with. The silence we maintain around these inherited wounds can trap us, just as it has trapped countless others in cycles of addiction, mental illness, and despair.
• Cultural Trauma: A broken individual often reflects a broken culture. Societal constructs like toxic masculinity, which suppresses emotional depth and fosters domination, perpetuate cycles of trauma on a massive scale. When a culture denies its systemic issues—its history of oppression, its environmental destruction, its marginalization of the vulnerable—it creates a collective wound. We internalize this “societal garbage,” this inherited confusion, which further disconnects us from our shared humanity and the natural world.

To heal is to first acknowledge the existence of these layers. It requires the courage to look at the brokenness in ourselves and our world, not as a source of shame, but as the starting point for creating a culture that values healing, humanity, and hope above all else.

Healing is not a destination but a process of continual re-alignment. It begins with the simple but profound intention to see life anew and allow our will to align with a vision of greater wholeness. This is not a path of blind positivity, but one of profound understanding—of clearing the debris of old patterns to uncover our potential for true freedom.

The journey inward requires turning away from the external noise and peeling back the layers of societal conditioning. This can be a radical act in a world designed to keep us distracted. The first step is often to find silence. For some, this has meant obsessive involvement with recovery groups like AA and NA, finding community in shared vulnerability. For some it means participating in therapy or joining with shamans and their plant medicine ceremonies to find healing. For others, it has involved deep dives into spiritual works, like those of M. Scott Peck, which offer a framework for understanding human evil and the hope for healing.

A critical tool in this process is reconnecting with the natural world. Taking trips into the wilderness, away from the concrete and the digital, allows us to dissolve the artificial lines between ourselves and the world around us. In nature, we are reminded that our struggles are not separate from life; they are life. Sensing the interconnectedness of all living things—from the ancient trees to the smallest insects—can bring a profound sense of peace and belonging. The tremors in the body begin to cease, and the mental noise grows quiet.

This process of turning inward must be balanced with extending outward. It involves making amends to those we have harmed, acknowledging our part in perpetuating cycles of pain. It requires seeking genuine connection, sharing our truths—however imperfect or painful—as an act of rebellion and creation. To listen to our own inner voice is a radical act; to speak what we discover is even more powerful.

What does it mean to live on an “unlimited bandwidth”? This is not a mystical or religious concept in the traditional sense. Rather, it is the realization that divinity is an intrinsic part of all living things. God, or the divine, is not an external entity to be worshipped, but a shared essence—a unity often obscured by our own ignorance, judgment, and fear. It is the understanding that we are each a single, irreplaceable thread in the infinite tapestry of existence.

When we align with this frequency, the torment and fears that once plagued us begin to fade. Clarity replaces chaos. Our understanding of love broadens from a transactional emotion to an unconditional state of being. We realize that heaven is not a distant afterlife, but a reality available in the present moment—a moment touched by peace and love. Paradise is not an external destination but an internal state.

Living on this frequency is a practice. It is cultivated through daily acts of care and presence.

• Seek Connection: Actively build community with like-minded individuals. Share your journey and listen to the stories of others.
• Extend Peace Outward: Your inner peace is not meant to be hoarded. Extend it through small acts of kindness, patience, and compassion in your daily interactions.
• Be Truly Present: Develop a practice like meditation or journaling to quiet the mind. The silence does not come through effort, but through surrender. Take walks in nature and simply observe, allowing yourself to dissolve into the flow of life.
• Reframe Your Identity: The ultimate spiritual freedom is shedding the limitations of a rigid, ego-driven identity. It is a leap into the unknown, guided only by trust in your newfound connection to the whole. Let go of the need to be “right” or to cling to old beliefs.

This transformation demands total release. It is not about adding new beliefs but about shedding the old ones to uncover the light that has been within you all along.

The journey from trauma to an unlimited bandwidth or divine frequency is the act of weaving a new story—one not of victimhood, but of transcendence. It is a path where even the harshest edges of adversity become our greatest teachers. It begins with small steps: sit with yourself in quiet reflection, reconnect with someone you’ve drifted from, step into nature and remember you are part of something vast and beautiful.

By courageously aligning the personal, collective, and divine aspects of ourselves, we learn to navigate life’s valleys without losing sight of the peaks. We embody our spiritual truths in the mundane and find equilibrium even in times of imbalance. The master within is available to anyone willing to surrender old attachments and listen deeply to the silence. Our liberation is not a distant dream; it is a present possibility. Begin the work of tuning in, of loving the moment exactly as it is, and watch as the world transforms.

Chapter 27:  Revisiting May 24, 1987: Breaking the Silence: A Journey Through Trauma to Spiritual Rebirth

The human soul carries within it an extraordinary capacity for renewal—a truth I discovered not through theological study or philosophical contemplation, but through the raw crucible of personal devastation and subsequent spiritual awakening. What began as a descent into addiction and despair ultimately became my pathway to understanding the profound healing power that emerges when we courageously confront our deepest wounds and embrace the transformative presence of the Divine Feminine.

This is not merely a personal testimony, but an invitation to examine how trauma—particularly that which stems from rigid gender roles and religious conditioning—can become the very catalyst for our most profound spiritual evolution. Through sharing this intimate journey, I hope to illuminate pathways toward healing that honor both our individual struggles and our collective need for authentic spiritual connection.

The Roots of Collective Trauma

Before we can understand the healing journey, we must first acknowledge the pervasive sources of trauma that shape our earliest experiences of self and world. Two primary wellsprings of collective wounding have dominated human consciousness for millennia, creating patterns of separation that echo through generations.

The first source emerges from the unconscious acceptance of rigid gender roles that extend far beyond biological distinctions between male and female. These culturally imposed expectations create artificial boundaries that limit the full expression of our humanity. Men are conditioned toward competitive individualism, encouraged to suppress emotional vulnerability, and taught to measure worth through dominance and achievement. This paradigm not only traumatizes masculine energy but also systematically devalues the collaborative, nurturing qualities that represent the essence of feminine wisdom.

Women, conversely, face their own constellation of limiting expectations. Religious traditions have often relegated feminine voices to subordinate positions, while broader cultural narratives reduce women to roles defined by their relationships to others—as objects of desire, vessels of procreation, or support systems for male achievement. These imposed limitations deny the profound creative and spiritual power that the feminine principle represents.

The second major source of collective trauma emerges from religious teachings that fundamentally misconstrue human nature and worth. From childhood, many of us absorb messages about our inherent sinfulness, our separation from the divine, and our need for external salvation. These doctrines create deep wounds of unworthiness that can persist throughout our lives, obscuring our recognition of the sacred presence that dwells within our very being.

My own journey into trauma began early, rooted in maternal absence during my most vulnerable months. Unable to breastfeed and consumed by work responsibilities, my mother could offer little of the nurturing presence my infant soul craved. Nights spent crying alone in a car in the garage, away from the household’s peace, created a foundational wound of disconnection that would echo through my formative years.

This early deprivation manifested as delayed speech, recurring nightmares, and a persistent sense of not belonging in the world around me. At school, my attempts to gain attention often resulted in disciplinary trouble, while my natural affinity for the gentler company of girls left me feeling alienated from male peers who seemed more at ease in their prescribed roles.

Adolescence brought little relief from these struggles. The competitive, often cruel dynamics of teenage social hierarchies amplified my existing wounds, while romantic relationships remained elusive mysteries that deepened my sense of inadequacy. An ill-fated early marriage and its subsequent dissolution in 1984 further compounded feelings of failure and despair.

By 1986, these accumulated wounds had reached a breaking point. The pain of disconnection from love, from purpose, from any sense of belonging in the world became so overwhelming that I attempted to end my life. Yet even in that darkest moment, something deeper stirred—a recognition that there might be pathways through suffering that I had not yet discovered.

What followed was a year-long descent into Portland’s criminal underworld, my consciousness numbed by substance abuse as I navigated the shadows of society. Yet this apparent destruction was actually a necessary dissolution, breaking down the false structures of identity that had never truly served my authentic being.

Recovery began in March 1987 with my engagement with Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs. These frameworks provided essential tools for rebuilding my foundation, but it was the integration of genuine spiritual practice that gave my healing both depth and meaning. Through the guidance of teachers like Jack Boland, whose tape series “Twelve Steps to a Spiritual Experience” became a crucial influence, I began to understand that recovery extends far beyond abstaining from substances—it represents a profound transformation of the soul itself.

Two months into this new journey, on May 24, 1987, my yearning for healing culminated in an experience that forever altered my understanding of both divine love and my own nature. While driving through the West Hills toward my lifelong friend Randy’s house, I was overwhelmed by a vision of extraordinary power and beauty.

The image that came to me was that of the Mona Lisa, serene and timeless, nursing a baby. But this was not merely a visual experience—it was a complete sensory and emotional encounter with what I can only describe as infinite maternal love. For an entire week, I felt enveloped in a profound sense of divine nurturing, as though all the maternal care that had been absent in my earliest months was now being bestowed upon me in transcendent form.

The light of this divine motherly love seemed to permeate every corner of my being, healing wounds I had carried since infancy. I had to stop my car on Canyon Boulevard, fall to my knees, and offer my gratitude to a Creative Force that had finally found me receptive to its presence.

Understanding the Vision’s Deeper Meaning

This profound experience revealed layers of meaning that continue to unfold in my understanding. The choice of the Mona Lisa as the vessel for this divine communication was not arbitrary—Leonardo da Vinci himself is said to have painted this masterpiece as a self-portrait in feminine form, honoring the divine feminine aspect within his own consciousness. His message, interpreted through contemporary understanding, represents the recognition that all true creativity emerges from the mysterious, intuitive center where wonder, compassion, and sensitivity to others arise.

The image of the divine mother nursing represented my own spiritual rebirth. I was literally being re-mothered by the universe itself, receiving the unconditional love and nurturing that forms the foundation for all healthy development. This was not the conditional love we exchange in daily relationships, but Love itself—a generous, boundless essence that flows eternally through creation.

More significantly, this vision introduced me to the Divine Feminine—not as an abstract concept or theological metaphor, but as a living, healing presence that complements and balances the Divine Masculine. This revelation stood in stark opposition to the patriarchal religious narratives I had encountered, where feminine wisdom is diminished or entirely erased from spiritual understanding.

The suppression of the Divine Feminine represents one of the most profound spiritual tragedies of our time. For centuries, patriarchal systems have systematically devalued the collaborative, nurturing, and intuitive qualities that the feminine principle embodies. This suppression has created a profound imbalance not only in our spiritual understanding but in our approach to relationships, governance, and our connection to the natural world.

The Divine Feminine brings qualities essential for our collective healing: the capacity to nurture growth rather than demand performance, to seek unity rather than perpetuate division, to honor the interconnectedness of all life rather than fragment existence into competing parts. When we suppress these qualities—whether in individuals or in society—we create the conditions for the very trauma and disconnection that plague our modern world.

My vision revealed that healing our deepest wounds requires not only personal work but also the restoration of this sacred balance. The maternal love I experienced was not simply divine comfort for my individual pain—it was a revelation of the healing presence that humanity desperately needs to rediscover.

The journey toward spiritual healing and recovery requires both inner work and practical engagement with transformative practices. Based on my own experience and continued exploration, several key elements emerge as essential for anyone seeking to heal from trauma and connect with their authentic spiritual nature.

Acknowledge and understand your trauma. Healing begins with honest recognition of the wounds we carry, particularly those stemming from gender role conditioning and religious messaging about our fundamental worth. This acknowledgment is not about blame or victimization, but about creating the foundation for transformation.

Explore spirituality as a path to healing. Traditional recovery programs, while essential, often lack the spiritual depth necessary for complete transformation. Investigate practices that connect you with transcendent love—whether through prayer, meditation, time in nature, or other contemplative disciplines.

Embrace the Divine Feminine within yourself. Regardless of your biological gender, you carry within you both masculine and feminine spiritual qualities. Learning to honor and integrate the feminine aspects—intuition, collaboration, nurturing, and unity consciousness—is essential for balanced spiritual development.

Seek supportive community. Recovery and spiritual growth thrive in environments of authentic sharing and mutual support. Find others who are committed to genuine spiritual development rather than adherence to rigid doctrinal positions.

Practice radical honesty about your experience. One of the greatest barriers to healing is our tendency to present polished versions of ourselves to the world. True spiritual growth requires the courage to share our real stories, including our struggles and failures.

Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of spiritual healing is our willingness to break what I call the “conspiracy of silence” that surrounds authentic spiritual experience. Too often, fear of judgment or rejection keeps us from sharing the very experiences that could offer healing to others who desperately need to hear them.

When I shared my vision with others, I encountered a range of responses—from Randy’s physical reaction of tingling and raised arm hair as I talked to him about spiritual transformation (though he rejected the process for himself) to the Baptist minister’s attempt to redirect my experience into acceptable theological categories through more indoctrination at his church. These responses taught me that genuine spiritual experience often challenges established frameworks and may not be immediately welcomed by those invested in conventional approaches.

Yet sharing our authentic spiritual experiences—no matter how unconventional—serves not only our own integration but also provides permission for others to acknowledge their own encounters with the sacred. Each time we speak honestly about our spiritual journey, we create space for others to explore their own deeper truths.

Spiritual awakening is not a single event but an ongoing process of integration and deepening understanding. The vision of May 24, 1987, marked the beginning of my conscious relationship with divine love, but the work of embodying that understanding in daily life continues to this day.

This integration involves constantly choosing love over fear, connection over separation, and authentic expression over conformity to expectations that do not serve our highest good. It means recognizing that our individual healing contributes to the collective healing our world desperately needs.

The Divine Feminine presence that revealed itself in my vision continues to guide my understanding of what it means to live from spiritual authenticity. This guidance manifests not as external commands but as an inner knowing that draws me toward choices that honor both my own deepest nature and the interconnected web of life of which we are all part.

The time for spiritual pretense and surface-level healing has passed. Our world faces challenges that require the deepest wisdom traditions have to offer, integrated with courage to transcend the limitations of past religious and cultural conditioning.

If my story resonates with your own longing for authentic spiritual connection, I encourage you to begin or deepen your own exploration. This might involve sharing your experiences in the comments below, joining any awakening community forum to connect with others on similar journeys, or exploring related resources that honor both the masculine and feminine aspects of spiritual development.

Consider seeking support from therapists or spiritual advisors who understand the integration of recovery work with authentic spiritual practice. Begin implementing practices like prayer, meditation, and conscious time in nature that can open you to direct spiritual experience.

Most importantly, have the courage to break your own conspiracy of silence. Your story—no matter how unconventional or challenging—has the power to heal not only your own wounds but also to provide hope and guidance for countless others who need to hear that transformation is possible.

Remember to acknowledge and honor the Divine Feminine in all of us, by integrating spirituality into recovery, and by sharing our experiences freely, we serve not only ourselves but the greater good that our world desperately needs.

The time for silence is over.

The time for transformation is now.

Will you answer the call?

Chapter 27:  May 24, 1987, Revisited – Breaking the Silence: The Transformational Power of Spiritual Experience

(potential for duplication later in chapter with another chapter)

What if the most profound experiences of your life—the ones that have fundamentally shaped who you are—were not meant to be kept a secret?

But, what if, in the moments when the world needed them most, you were compelled to keep quiet?

For too long, this “Conspiracy of Silence” has pervaded our collective consciousness, discouraging us from openly sharing our transformative spiritual journeys. This silence robs us not only of personal growth, but also of the opportunity to ignite healing and change in those around us.

I know this because I’ve lived it. My life has been marked by moments of profound connection to the Divine and an extraordinary spiritual awakening. Spiritual experience not only lifted me out of the darkest depths of addiction and despair but also revealed a shocking truth that our world—steeped in patriarchal values and resistant to acknowledging higher levels of consciousness—desperately needs to hear.

The institutional structures we often turn to for spiritual guidance—churches, synagogues, mosques—have buried divine energy under layers of dogma, hierarchy, and rigid gender roles.  I have experienced a universal love that extends to all beings, great and small. This moment crystallized my understanding of why so many people have rejected organized religion—not because they lack faith, but because these institutions often fail to reflect the expansive truth of the Divine.

Reconciling this truth with societal expectations is no easy task. It requires rejecting the narrow norms that have been imposed on us and courageously stepping into higher awareness. This is the work of personal transformation—and it is not for the fainthearted.

Before my awakening, addiction had consumed my life. Recovery—guided by the 12-step programs of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and Adult Children of Alcoholics—gave me the tools to rebuild my foundation. But spirituality was the missing link that gave my recovery depth and meaning.  And, sometimes, these steps are known to carry those that practice them to new heights of spiritual experience and understanding.

One pivotal moment in my recovery was listening to Jack Boland’s tape series, Twelve Steps to a Spiritual Experience. These recordings helped me move beyond the mechanics of sobriety and into the heart of what it means to live a spiritually rich life. Boland’s teachings introduced me to the idea that recovery is not merely about abstaining from substances; it is about experiencing a profound transformation of the soul.

Through practices like prayer, meditation, and exploring nature, I began to feel truly alive again. I felt unspeakable gratitude for the interconnectedness of all things—a gratitude that continues to sustain me today. This connection to spirit introduced a resilience I never thought possible. It has enabled me to face—and ultimately transcend—the societal stigma and the internal self-doubt that so often accompany both addiction and spiritual seeking.

Today, I share my story not as an act of self-expression alone, but as an act of service, a love letter to humanity in its darkest hours.  And, though I also know that many are not interested in this type of material, I will not let that fact discourage me from breaking the conspiracy of silence.

On May 24, 1987, I experienced what I can only describe as a direct encounter with universal love. Driving along Canyon Boulevard toward my friend Randy Olson’s house, I was overcome by a vision of a loving, infinite motherly presence cradling me like an infant. As I drove over the West Hills, that wonderful vision came to me, accompanied by a feeling that I had not had before. The vision of a loving mother, in the image of the Mona Lisa holding a baby, was chosen by my inner spirit to represent this infinite energy, for reasons to be explained later.

For the first time in my life, I felt the true depth of love—a force so overwhelming, so healing, and so inexplicably beautiful that I had to pull my car over to the curb, get out of the car, and fall to my knees. I felt the love of this wonderful UNIVERSE. There is the love we have for each other, for our friends, our pets, our children, our families, but this love that I felt flow into me, and through me, transported me into a heightened awareness, and awe. The beauty was too great to talk about, the feeling so overwhelming, so healing, so resurrecting.

I eventually made it to Randy’s house, and I met with him for the first time since drinking to a blackout fourteen months previous. Randy and I had consumed high levels of alcohol many times together over the years, and the impact of drugs and alcohol had really taken its toll on me. Randy could not believe his eyes when he saw me and loudly exclaimed.

“Bruce, what has happened to you? You look different, you look happy. You look at peace. You have changed!!!”

Yes, I had changed. I started talking to Randy about my experience, and Randy started to get tingling sensations up and down his spine. The hairs on his arms started sticking up straight off of his arms! Randy exclaimed

“Bruce, what is going on. When you talk, I start to tingle all over. What has happened to you?“

“Well, I think that I am having an experience with God, Randy.”, I said.

“Umm, Bruce, such an experience is not for me right now, but I am sure happy that you are having it, because you needed something different in your life really bad, and really quick!”.

How right he was!

I could not take Randy into my new-found world of love and happiness, I could only share, ever so briefly, my personal experience of it.  Such is the way of much of the world, who have adapted in their own unique ways to not experiencing cosmic love.  Our egos do a fine job shielding us from our greatest good.  Sometimes, it takes a miracle, a transcendent vision, to shake us free from the ego’s pillory.

The image of the Mona Lisa holding a baby is a fascinating, enlightening image. I was later taught to understand that this energy is the Divine Feminine, of which our patriarchal world continues to suppress daily, and has successfully done so, more or less, for at least the last 2000 years.  The wonderful feelings that accompanied that vision became known to me as divine horripilation.

It was reported some time back that Leonardo DaVinci had painted the Mona Lisa as a self-portrait of himself, in feminine form.  His message is subject to interpretation, but in today’s terms, he was honoring his feminine side, or nature.  He saw that the source of all creativity came from this mysterious, non-conscious center within himself where feelings of wonder, awe, mystery, and sensitivity to and compassion for others arises from.  His mission was to symbolically represent the divine within himself, through the most effective medium of the day, which was painting.

Consciousness presented this as a healing image to my awareness.  I saw how this feminine side carried all of the divine love and deep feelings of goodness that I had ever wanted for myself.  I was literally re-birthing myself, and this image of the mother holding the baby represented that new birth to perfection.

This was not the conditional love we exchange in our daily relationships. This was Love itself—a generous, boundless essence that coursed through me like an eternal stream. The universe, which had once felt cold and indifferent, now embraced me as its cherished child.

This was my introduction to the Divine Feminine. It was a revelation that stands in stark opposition to the patriarchal narratives I had so often encountered within religious institutions, where the feminine is diminished and, at times, entirely erased.

My spiritual awakening illuminated an essential truth—the Divine Feminine is not an abstract concept or mere metaphor. It is a vital energy that complements the Divine Masculine, bringing balance, nurturing, and creativity to the cosmos. Yet, for centuries, patriarchal systems have sought to suppress it.

One of the greatest challenges we face in both personal and collective transformation is breaking the silence that fear of rejection and shame enforces. Too often, we feel compelled to “look good,” presenting polished exteriors to the world that we think will be readily accepted while hiding our authentic selves. This tendency creates barriers to honest connection and healing.

Recovery, much like spirituality, thrives on vulnerability. Sharing our stories—our real stories, not the airbrushed versions—is an act of courage that not only liberates us but also invites others to reflect on their own journeys.

It takes strength to defy societal norms that encourage silence about spirituality, addiction, or even emotional suffering. However, each time we speak openly, we chip away at the walls of ignorance, misunderstanding, and judgment.

Spiritual transformation is never just about the individual. When we embrace our own healing, we create a ripple effect that benefits our communities and the larger world. Whether it’s guiding someone else to begin their recovery or simply modeling authentic living, the small acts that stem from spiritual integrity have the power to inspire profound change.

By acknowledging and honoring the Divine Feminine in all of us, by integrating spirituality into recovery, and by sharing our experiences freely, we serve not only ourselves but also the greater good.

If there’s one message, I hope you’ll take away, it’s this: Seek authentic self-discovery. Uncover the layers of self-doubt, shame and conditioning that keep you from experiencing who you truly are. Explore the depths of your spirituality, and don’t be afraid to share your story—no matter how raw or unconventional it may be.

Your story has the power to heal—not just you, but the countless others who need to hear it. Together, we can break the “Conspiracy of Silence,” honor the balance of the Divine Feminine and Masculine, and create a world more open to Love itself.

Are you still attempting to search for your own personal Jesus?  Your time is better spent searching for your true nature, rather than preying on Jesus and the collective ignorance surrounding his life and teachings.  Then, other spiritually realized people can take their rightful place in your life, as your brothers and sisters in Spirit..

If you need someone to believe in, if you need to believe in a sacred presence that is real, and present for you in this moment, then start believing in yourself.  Open your heart to the divine potential in yourself, everyone and everything and open yourself to your highest possibilities.

The time for silence is over.

The time for transformation is now.

Will you answer the call?

The Quiet Crisis of Early Childhood Bonding Disruptions

What shapes the foundation of a soul? Beyond genetics and biology, the earliest moments of nurturing and connection leave an indelible mark on the emotional and psychological blueprint of a developing human being. Yet, in modern society’s relentless pursuit of productivity and achievement, we increasingly sideline these foundational experiences, creating a quiet crisis that remains underexamined and poorly addressed.

Consider the plight of an infant whose cries in the night are answered not by the warmth of an affectionate parent, but by the cocoon of a warm blanket while being “garaged” in a car to accommodate exhausted parents. Imagine the lingering effects on a child whose earliest bonds are fractured by a mother’s limited ability to breastfeed or her absence due to the demands of a career. These scenarios are emblematic of a larger cultural issue that prioritizes economic output over nurturing bonds, and are my real life experience.

What happens to these children when vital aspects of human development are compromised? What future are we sculpting when care is outsourced, touch is minimized, and time is rationed? What happens when a child is traumatized by lack of nurturing and attention in the formative years? And what healing is possible for the adult who still is impacted by those deficiencies in their upbringing?

The first few years of life are a crucible where emotional, psychological, and even physiological characteristics are cast. Neuroscientists and psychologists alike emphasize the critical importance of secure attachment in early childhood. The unique interplay between a caregiver’s love, attuned presence, and responsiveness directly shapes a child’s ability to trust, empathize, manage emotions, and form meaningful relationships throughout life. This isn’t just anecdotal. Research shows that secure attachment and early bonding literally shape the architecture of the brain, particularly regions responsible for stress regulation, empathy, and social functioning.

Breastfeeding, while often discussed in terms of its nutritional benefits, also serves as a profound vehicle for bonding. Oxytocin, sometimes called the “love hormone,” is released in both mother and child during breastfeeding, cultivating a sense of closeness and attachment. When breastfeeding is absent, either by necessity or choice, this avenue of connection narrows.

When these early experiences are missing or disrupted, the consequences can be far-reaching. Studies link disrupted attachment to a range of long-term challenges, from difficulty in emotional regulation to an elevated risk of depression, anxiety, and insecure attachment patterns in adulthood.

For many modern families, the solution to these challenges lies in non-family caregivers such as babysitters or daycare providers. These caregivers can play an essential role in a child’s development, providing care and nurturing in the absence of parents. However, their ability to fully replicate the unique emotional bond shared between parent and child remains limited.

Although good caregivers can soften the impact of reduced parental involvement, they are unlikely to completely fill the void left by the lack of a consistent, loving parental presence. Psychologists suggest that frequent changes in caregivers or a lack of emotional attunement may exacerbate attachment disruptions, leaving children vulnerable to insecurity and mistrust.

A deeper societal examination reveals the systemic forces at play. The economic structure of modern society often forces parents to prioritize work over early nurturing, despite the profound long-term effects this may have on their children. For mothers, the pressure is magnified. Many women face impossible choices in balancing the demands of a competitive workforce with the emotional and physical labor of parenting.

This isn’t just a personal struggle; it’s a societal dilemma fueled by inadequate parental leave policies, high childcare costs, and cultural narratives that undervalue caregiving roles. When the nurturing years are left unsupported, we witness a ripple effect across generations, where children inherit the voids left by institutional neglect of families.

The scars of disrupted early bonding rarely fade. Adults who experienced insecure attachments as infants may struggle with forming trusting and fulfilling relationships. Research also links such disruptions to increased risks of developing anxiety disorders and depression later in life. These outcomes extend beyond individual suffering to a societal level, contributing to public health challenges, social disconnectedness, and rising mental health concerns.

By failing to create an environment that supports early bonding experiences, we limit the full potential of human flourishing. The cost of “efficient” parenting today may be an epidemic of emotional inefficiency and instability tomorrow.

If we are to address this profound issue, we must begin by recognizing the critical importance of parental presence and early bonding in a child’s life. Here are steps we, as a society, can take to reverse the trend of prioritizing productivity over nurturing:

• Advocate for policy changes such as extended parental leave, affordable childcare, and breastfeeding-friendly workplaces.
• Promote awareness campaigns that emphasize the importance of early bonding for healthy child development.
• Support parents with resources, such as counseling, education programs, and flexible work schedules, to help them balance their careers and family responsibilities.
• Redefine societal values, celebrating caregiving as a vital and honorable role while challenging the narrative that productivity solely defines self-worth.

Consider the immense untapped potential of a world where every child’s early emotional and developmental needs are met with care and intention. By reshaping societal priorities and structures, we hold the power to cultivate a generation better equipped to lead, empathize, and connect.

This isn’t just about parenting; it’s about fostering a more compassionate, emotionally resilient society. We must ask ourselves difficult questions about the systems we’ve built and the prices we’re willing to pay for progress.

If we continue to deprive future generations of the foundation they so desperately need, we risk creating a world of individuals perpetually seeking connection in all the wrong places. But if we choose awareness and change, we can build a future marked by secure attachments, stronger communities, and unparalleled human potential.

The time to act is now. Society requires us, as individuals and communities, to reevaluate what we prioritize. Start by reflecting on your role within this dynamic and consider how we can collectively realign our systems to support both family growth and broader societal health.

Together, we can reclaim the nurturing bond that every human being deserves.

The Silent Epidemic of Our Age ~How Societal Shifts and Childhood Trauma Fuel Mental Health Crises

Why do so many individuals in our modern world feel unseen, unheard, and unanchored? What does it say about society when suicide is a leading cause of death in certain populations?

We stand at a crossroads in human history, confronting a silent epidemic that continues to grow in scale and consequence while being too often ignored. Mental health crises have become a defining challenge of our age, one exacerbated by sweeping societal shifts, the erosion of community empathy, and the enduring scars of childhood trauma.

It’s time for an honest, unflinching exploration of how we arrived here and what must change for individual healing and collective transformation to occur.

Modern culture prizes individual success, enterprise, and self-actualization above all else. Throughout much of history, communities operated with a shared sense of responsibility for one another. Empathy, connection, and collective well-being formed the fabric of thriving societies.

Today, that fabric has been frayed by the threads of hyper-individualism. When success becomes synonymous with self-reliance and autonomy, vulnerability is treated as weakness. People suffering from mental health challenges are stigmatized, often left to grapple silently with their struggles.

Social media exacerbates this isolation, presenting curated portraits of success that lead individuals to internalize feelings of inadequacy and failure. The polished exteriors mask the inherent messiness of human imperfection, perpetuating the harmful belief that personal struggles are abnormal. The result? A society where emotional suppression and loneliness thrive, leading to skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide.

Communities thrive when the value of collective support outweighs the obsession with personal achievement. Healing requires us to reconnect with the sense of shared humanity largely lost in today’s culture.

Childhood trauma doesn’t remain confined to the early years of life; it ripples outward, influencing adult relationships, self-worth, and the ability to address stressors effectively. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study highlighted a stark reality: early trauma significantly contributes to long-term mental and physical health challenges, from higher risks of depression and anxiety to chronic illnesses such as heart disease.

Neuroscientific research confirms that childhood trauma alters brain development, particularly in regions governing emotional regulation, empathy, and stress responses. When left unaddressed, these changes create cascading problems that persist across future generations.

Societal change must prioritize early intervention. By investing in trauma-informed approaches in schools, healthcare, and community programs, we can mitigate the lasting effects of adverse experiences and empower individuals to rewrite destructive patterns.

Mental health crises thrive in silence. To dismantle stigma, society must shift its paradigm toward open, empathetic dialogue. Denying or concealing struggles amplifies isolation, while sharing stories humanizes the experience of mental health challenges.

From a personal perspective, one encounter clearly illustrates this truth. Decades ago, I stood on the precipice of despair, burdened by layers of unresolved childhood trauma. A fleeting attempt to seek connection ended in rejection, encapsulating the cold indifference haunting much of modern society. Yet surviving that moment catalyzed a profound realization—that the silence surrounding mental health serves as both a barrier and a battleground. More than anything, breaking away from shame and speaking openly is where societal healing must begin.

Key Actions:

• Encourage conversations about mental health in families, workplaces, and public forums.
• Share personal narratives of resilience to normalize vulnerability.
• Build and fund community spaces where individuals can feel safe letting down their guard.

A path forward exists, but it requires radical shifts in priorities, understanding, and support systems. Here are some actionable ways society can begin to tackle the mental health crisis at its root.

To counteract the loneliness fostered by individualism, institutions and leaders must invest in rebuilding community connections. Policies promoting group engagement, volunteerism, and peer-led mental health programs could serve as hubs for reconnection.

Schools represent critical ground for identifying at-risk children. By training educators to recognize signs of trauma and offering resources for intervention, we can provide support before wounds fester into lifelong scars.

One of the most significant barriers to mental health support is cost and availability. Expanding access to affordable therapy, counseling, and community mental health services, especially in underserved regions, is paramount.

While technology can isolate, it also holds immense potential for connecting individuals with care. AI-powered tools, teletherapy platforms, and crisis intervention apps have already shown promise but must be deployed with ethical oversight.

Business leaders, policymakers, and educators must serve as advocates for mental health awareness. By modeling empathetic leadership and prioritizing wellness initiatives, they can set the tone for inclusive, supportive environments.

At its heart, the silent epidemic reflects more than individual struggles. It signals a societal failure to extend empathy where it’s most needed. Each interaction, whether between neighbors, colleagues, or loved ones, carries an opportunity to choose compassion over indifference.

We need a cultural shift that redefines success—not as a measure of individual achievement but as a collective commitment to seeing and supporting one another. Empathy must return to the forefront of human interactions, permeating policies, workplaces, and everyday experiences.

Begin with small acts of connection in your own life. Reach out to a friend, colleague, or family member who might be struggling. Advocate for the integration of mental health discussions in your workplace. Join or support organizations advancing mental wellness initiatives. Together, these micro-changes can initiate macro shifts.

The march toward a mentally healthier society begins with breaking the silence. It’s a truth steeped in both ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience—healing arises when individuals feel seen, heard, and supported.

We must collectively stand against the tide of isolation and indifference by fostering environments rooted in empathy, resilience, and proactive care. It’s not enough to merely hope for change; we must embody it.

For those ready to take the next step, there are abundant resources and professionals ready to guide you on your path to healing. Together, we can rewrite the narrative, remembering that mental health is not an individual burden but a shared responsibility.

This is a call to action for all of us—to listen, to learn, and, most importantly, to lead with compassion and connection. Because when we choose to see beyond ourselves, we reclaim the humanity that binds us.

Nobody should have to attempt suicide, and go through years of despair and darkness, to finally find the divine light switch to turn their life back on.

Nobody.

More on May 24, 1987: The Journey Through Childhood Wounds to Divine Connection

Rethinking Miracles A Journey Beyond Religious Boundaries

What is a miracle?

For many, images of divine interventions, visions of Jesus Christ, or appearances of the Virgin Mother immediately come to mind. These depictions of the miraculous are deeply rooted in the traditions and beliefs of religious dogmas.

But what about those moments of profound spiritual awakening that are not tied to traditional religious figures?

Consider the secular spiritual aspirant who experiences an undeniable revelation or vision—not of a saint, prophet, or deity, but of something perceived as “nonreligious.” Is this less of a miracle because it does not conform to institutionalized doctrines? Far from it. I have discovered that these secular moments of transcendence are just as valid, powerful, and universally meaningful as their traditional counterparts.

Throughout history, miracles have been seen as events that defy the natural order, profoundly pointing to divine intervention. Religion often casts these miraculous moments through the lens of cultural and theological narratives. Christianity, in particular, offers some of the most iconic imagery of miracles, often involving sacred religious figures.

Healing the blind, walking on water, the resurrection of the dead—these are deeply entrenched stories of Jesus Christ performing miracles. Over centuries, appearances or visions of Jesus or Mother Mary have become synonymous with faith and reassurance for millions. These experiences are revered as profound connections to the divine and serve to affirm one’s devotion and belief in God.

Religious imagery also offers a sense of collective validation. If you share your vision of a saint or Christ within the wall of a church, those around you are likely to nod in recognition. The shared belief system acknowledges and perhaps instinctively validates the miracle, reinforcing its spiritual significance.

But what happens when the vision you experience doesn’t involve a sacred figure from religion?

Imagine a person witnessing a moment of profound clarity triggered by the grandeur of a mountain range at sunset, the painting of a revered artist, or the quiet wisdom in the eyes of a stranger. These secular visions may not involve icons of established theology, but they are no less striking in their impact. For the secular spiritual aspirant, the miracle lies not in the figure appearing but in the overwhelming sensation of connection, understanding, or awe.

Take, for instance, a vision of an abstract symbol or an encounter with the archetype of human compassion rather than a deity. Artists, authors, or even anonymous members of society might appear in a vision, speaking profound truths that transform thought and perspective. While such moments don’t fit the confines of religious dogma, they still carry a deeply universal meaning, transcending conformity.

Historically, even in nonreligious settings, humanity’s capacity to experience spiritual connection has been evident. Eastern philosophies, for example, encourage visions of enlightenment through unfamiliar or symbolic forms that might not tie to gods but to the greater truths of life itself. Secular miracles often allow for broader interpretation, offering a bridge for those who seek spirituality outside traditional religion.

To consider miracles only valid when aligned with religious doctrine is to limit the boundless scope of the human spirit. Whether a vision involves Jesus Christ or the image of a lone child offering an act of kindness, the core essence of a miracle remains unchanged. It is an event that forces us to pause, reflect, and realign ourselves with truth beyond the material.

Psychologically, miracles tap into the universality of human emotion and consciousness. What we perceive as miraculous often resonates deeply because it reflects something inherently transcendent within us. For steadfast believers, a vision of a recognized religious figure feels like confirmation of their beliefs. For a secular individual, the vision of an abstract truth or an invisible force of nature can ignite the same level of wonder and reverence as any divine appearance.

Miracles, at their core, are about awakening. They don’t require conformity to be understood. They are manifestations of connection, awe, and profound realization no matter their external form. Rejecting secular visions simply because they are not wrapped in religious familiarity undermines the universal power of such mystical experiences.

It’s time to revisit how we define miracles. Should miracles be measured by their alignment with institutionalized imagery and traditions? Or should they be valued for their ability to break us free from the mundane and propel us toward deeper dimensions of understanding?

Both religious and secular miracles hold the power to guide us, challenge us, and transform us. They remind us of forces greater than ourselves, whether those forces are connected to divine beings or represent the intricate beauty of the human condition. True miracles are not bound by conformity; they exist to lead us toward truth and liberation.

If we allow ourselves to transcend the confines of dogma, there is a world of possibility for spiritual realization. Whether born from faith or open-ended wonder, miracles remind us of the extraordinary within the ordinary, the divine within the secular, and the universal nature of the human experience.

The Journey Through Childhood Wounds to Divine Connection

What does it mean to truly feel whole?

How do we bridge the gap between early pain and a spiritual connection that allows us to flourish?

For so many, the answers to these questions remain shrouded in the depths of early trauma and the absence of nurturing bonds. The foundation of a soul, beyond biology and circumstance, rests in the tender moments of connection and care during our formative years. When these moments are fractured or absent, they leave behind cracks that reverberate through adulthood, shaping our ability to trust, love, and experience the divine.

Yet, hope persists. While childhood wounds create profound blocks to spiritual awakening, they also shape the very paths we must take to uncover a sense of universal love and divine presence. Together, we’ll explore how a fragmented beginning can transform into a spiritual awakening, shedding light on the interplay between trauma, healing, and the ultimate discovery of the Divine Feminine.

The first years of life form the emotional, psychological, and spiritual mold for the rest of our existence. When those early days are filled with neglect, absence, or conditional love, they shape our capacity for connection—not just with others, but with ourselves and the universe.

Imagine an infant left to cry in a parked car so their cries won’t disturb the household. Or a mother too consumed by work and exhaustion to open her arms to nurture her child. These moments of disconnection plant seeds of unworthiness, leaving scars that manifest in adulthood as distance—from others, from oneself, and from the divine.

Such experiences are not anomalies. They are silent epidemics born of society’s prioritization of productivity over relationships, of rigid gender roles that trap mothers and fathers alike in impossible expectations. Amid these societal pressures, children grow into adults carrying unfulfilled yearnings—for love, for trust, for a sense of connection to something greater.

To sense the divine is, at its core, to feel love. But what happens when life teaches you to associate love with pain, neglect, or absence? How does one approach the divine when its supposed reflection in early life has been fractured?

For many, the answer lies buried beneath anxiety, depression, or addiction. These challenges become the body and mind’s attempt to fill emotional voids, to numb unresolved wounds, or to reclaim power in a world where powerlessness was once the norm. Spirituality for such individuals isn’t simply an abstract interest; it becomes a desperate longing. And yet, the path forward is often blocked by layers of false beliefs about unworthiness and shame.

My own journey reflects this difficult road. Born into a household where exhaustion outweighed affection and loneliness was a constant companion, I carried invisible wounds well into adulthood. Early neglect led to challenges in relationships, addictions to emotional numbing, and an internalized narrative of insufficiency. For years, I grappled with the darkness that these wounds created.

And yet, darkness has a way of revealing light.

In 1987, after a year of sobriety and soul-searching, I had what I can only describe as a divine revelation. I experienced the vision of the Mona Lisa nursing a child, an image steeped in mystery, love, and healing. This was no ordinary vision. It was an overwhelming sensation of infinite maternal love, flooding every corner of my being. For the first time in my life, I felt deeply held, seen, and cherished—not just by an abstract presence, but by the profound feminine energy that lay within me all along.

This vision was far more than a fleeting image. It marked a rebirth. It urged me to reconnect with the parts of my soul fractured by early neglect. It reminded me that divinity and love were not “out there,” but already woven into the fabric of my being.

This healing energy revealed itself in the form of the Divine Feminine, a concept buried for centuries under patriarchal systems that diminish its power. The Divine Feminine represents nurturing, compassion, balance, and creativity. It complements the Divine Masculine rather than opposing it, bringing harmony to our understanding of the universe and ourselves.

But the cultural suppression of this sacred energy has left us fractured as a collective. By elevating only masculine ideals of control, hierarchy, and external achievement, we’ve lost sight of the inherent balance that allows humanity to flourish. Emotional depth, collaboration, care, and connection have become undervalued. And in the process, so many of us have lost access to these energies within ourselves.

Awakening to the Divine Feminine requires breaking through the cultural narratives that have conditioned us. It calls on us to redefine what it means to succeed, to love, to be human. And for those who have been wounded early in life, it becomes the key to rediscovering what unconditional love truly feels like—not just from external sources, but from within.

One challenge we face in the modern era is our silence around topics like childhood trauma, addiction, and spiritual experiences. Our culture prizes polished exteriors and self-reliance, leaving little room for the vulnerability necessary for healing. This “Conspiracy of Silence” only deepens the divide between our authentic selves and the love we so desperately seek.

However, recovery thrives on connection. Sharing our stories of pain, healing, and spiritual awakening is not just an individual act of courage but a collective act of transformation. Vulnerability, though terrifying, allows walls to come down, giving others permission to rebuild their own inner worlds.

When I shared my vision of the Mona Lisa with a close friend during my recovery, I saw the ripple of its impact firsthand. Even though he couldn’t fully enter my experience, my vulnerability in sharing invited him into a space of possibility, wonder, and reflection. This is the power of spiritual truths released from the prison of silence.

Childhood wounds may attempt to convince us of our separation from the universal love that binds all things. However, each of us carries within us the potential for profound healing and divine connection. The scars of the past do not define our futures. Instead, they guide us toward the parts of ourselves that long for integration.

The Divine Feminine energy that awakened me is not exclusive to mystics, prophets, or those labeled “spiritually inclined.” It is universal, accessible, and woven into the fabric of existence. Its essence is limitless love, the antidote to the isolation, fear, and pain that block us from experiencing our divine nature.

To those searching for that connection—for wholeness, for grace, for the “presence of God”—the time for silence is over. It is time to honor the balance of the feminine and masculine within ourselves, to share our stories bravely, and to seek the truth that love is not earned but simply and always present.

• Reflect on Childhood Wounds: Consider the areas of your life that carry unresolved pain. Rewrite your personal narrative, allowing space for forgiveness and growth.
• Connect With the Divine Feminine: Explore the nurturing, creative, and compassionate aspects of your being. Allow these energies to complement the drive for control and achievement.
• Share Your Truth: Break the silence and connect with others through your story. Healing is often found in the shared experience of vulnerability.
• Advocate for Balance: Challenge cultural norms that prioritize productivity over connection. Reclaim the inherent value of nurturing and caregiving in yourself and others.

The time for healing is now. The barriers to love, trust, and the divine are illusions waiting to be broken.

Will you answer the call?

Together, we can create a world where every wound becomes a passage to boundless grace, universal love, and spiritual awakening.

Chapter 27:  Breaking the Silence – From Darkness to Divine Maternal Love (definite duplication with two 27’s above)

(56, 58 merged)

A Journey Through Trauma, Addiction, and Spiritual Rebirth

The human soul carries within it an extraordinary capacity for renewal—a truth I discovered not through theological study or philosophical contemplation, but through the raw crucible of personal devastation and subsequent spiritual awakening. What began as a descent into addiction and despair ultimately became my pathway to understanding the profound healing power that emerges when we courageously confront our deepest wounds and embrace the transformative presence of the Divine Feminine.

After reading earlier chapters in this book, it would be easy to assume that I had led a fairly well-organized life and had sufficient native spiritual and emotional intelligence to find my greatest good without too many problems. Nothing could be further from the truth! Conventional wisdom often suggests that a life imbued with uncommon knowledge follows a predictable path: religious study, gradual enlightenment, and methodical progress toward divine understanding. My journey shattered this assumption entirely.

This is not merely a personal testimony, but an invitation to examine how trauma—particularly that which stems from rigid gender roles and religious conditioning—can become the very catalyst for our most profound spiritual evolution. Through sharing this intimate journey, I hope to illuminate pathways toward healing that honor both our individual struggles and our collective need for authentic spiritual connection.

The Roots of Collective Trauma

Before we can understand the healing journey, we must first acknowledge the pervasive sources of trauma that shape our earliest experiences of self and world. Two primary wellsprings of collective wounding have dominated human consciousness for millennia, creating patterns of separation that echo through generations.

The first source emerges from the unconscious acceptance of rigid gender roles that extend far beyond biological distinctions between male and female. These culturally imposed expectations create artificial boundaries that limit the full expression of our humanity. Men are conditioned toward competitive individualism, encouraged to suppress emotional vulnerability, and taught to measure worth through dominance and achievement. This paradigm not only traumatizes masculine energy but also systematically devalues the collaborative, nurturing qualities that represent the essence of feminine wisdom.

Women, conversely, face their own constellation of limiting expectations. Religious traditions have often relegated feminine voices to subordinate positions, while broader cultural narratives reduce women to roles defined by their relationships to others—as objects of desire, vessels of procreation, or support systems for male achievement. These imposed limitations deny the profound creative and spiritual power that the feminine principle represents.

The second major source of collective trauma emerges from religious teachings that fundamentally misconstrue human nature and worth. From childhood, many of us absorb messages about our inherent sinfulness, our separation from the divine, and our need for external salvation. These doctrines create deep wounds of unworthiness that can persist throughout our lives, obscuring our recognition of the sacred presence that dwells within our very being.

My own journey into trauma began early, rooted in maternal absence during my most vulnerable months. Unable to breastfeed and consumed by work responsibilities, my mother could offer little of the nurturing presence my infant soul craved. Nights spent crying alone in a car in the garage, away from the household’s peace, created a foundational wound of disconnection that would echo through my formative years.

This early deprivation manifested as delayed speech, recurring nightmares, and a persistent sense of not belonging in the world around me. At school, my attempts to gain attention often resulted in disciplinary trouble, while my natural affinity for the gentler company of girls left me feeling alienated from male peers who seemed more at ease in their prescribed roles.

Religious dogma, which provided structure and meaning to many others, became objects of total scorn by me. The sacred texts, the rituals, the promises of salvation—all of it felt hollow, disconnected from any authentic experience of the divine. This wasn’t mere rebellion; it was a complete spiritual revulsion at organized religion that began in grade school and eventually left me adrift in a world devoid of meaning.

Adolescence brought little relief from these struggles. The competitive, often cruel dynamics of teenage social hierarchies amplified my existing wounds, while romantic relationships remained elusive mysteries that deepened my sense of inadequacy. An ill-fated early marriage and its subsequent dissolution in 1984 further compounded feelings of failure and despair.

The Descent into Darkness

What followed was a fifteen-year odyssey through the often-turbulent landscape of despair, loss of hope, and self-destruction. Drug and alcohol abuse became my primary spiritual practice, offering temporary escapes from the overwhelming emptiness that had consumed my existence. Each substance promised transcendence but delivered only temporary relief from the burden of self, and only deeper entanglement in cycles of craving and disappointment.

The casualties accumulated relentlessly. Friends eventually failed to provide comfort and companionship through the slow erosion of trust and connection that addiction inevitably brings. Family relationships, once sources of support and identity, crumbled under the weight of broken promises and repeated failures. Employment opportunities vanished as my reliability dissolved along with my sense of responsibility to anything beyond the next high, the next forgetfulness of the misery of the moment.

By 1986, these accumulated wounds had reached a breaking point. The pain of disconnection from love, from purpose, from any sense of belonging in the world became so overwhelming that I arrived at the logical conclusion of my trajectory.

The Ultimate Darkness: January 28, 1986

The descent reached its nadir in a moment of absolute clarity about the futility of my existence. The explosion of the Challenger spacecraft on January 28, 1986, became the exclamation point on my life of failure. I once aspired to be an Air Force pilot, with hopes of becoming an astronaut. But my relationship with a mentally ill wife and my own insouciance in the face of overwhelming odds against my success goaded me into taking extreme measures.

The Challenger explosion became a symbol of my life’s destruction, and there could be no resurrection from this. This wasn’t an impulsive decision born from temporary despair, but a calculated assessment that life, as I was experiencing it, held no value worth preserving.

The attempt failed, but the failure itself became a catalyst for transformation. Lying in the aftermath of my unsuccessful bid for self-annihilation, I experienced something unexpected: not relief, but conditional acceptance. I was confused at a universe that kept me trapped in an existence that felt meaningless, while amazed at some coincidences that prevented the successful ending of my own life.

In that moment of faux empowerment, I made a demand that would alter the entire trajectory of my journey. I reloaded my pill bottle—my insurance policy against continued suffering—and issued an ultimatum to existence itself. Unless I could find a truth worth living for, I would complete the work of self-destruction that I had been unconsciously pursuing for fifteen years.

This wasn’t a plea or a prayer in any conventional sense. It was an ultimatum to myself, a demand that I would stay alive only if I could unearth authentic meaning. I had moved beyond hope into something more primal: a raw insistence that truth, if it existed, must either reveal itself or I would face the consequence of my permanent departure from this most troubling game of existence.

The months that followed my ultimatum were characterized by gradual movement into the deepest levels of Portland’s underworld. Over the next year, until March 17, 1987, I was sucked into Portland, Oregon’s shadow realm—a community populated by those who, like me, had fallen through the cracks of conventional society.

Here, among the addicted, the lost, and the forgotten, I encountered a different kind of wisdom. It wasn’t the polished philosophy of academia or the comforting platitudes of mainstream spirituality, but the raw, unfiltered insights that emerge when all pretense, and often all hope, has been stripped away.

During this period, I encountered a competent confidant, an undercover DEA agent who happened to befriend me and who possessed the clarity to diagnose the foundational issues underlying my self-destructive patterns. His assessment was both simple and daunting: I needed to achieve sobriety and confront the unresolved father issues that had been driving much of my destructive behavior.

Getting clean required a complete restructuring of my relationship with consciousness itself. For fifteen years, I had relied on substances to mediate my experience of reality. Sobriety meant facing that reality directly, without chemical buffers or altered states to soften its edges. The withdrawal was not merely physical, but existential—a confrontation with the unadorned experience of being human without pharmaceutical assistance.

Addressing my father issues proved equally challenging. These weren’t simply matters of personal psychology, but fundamental questions about authority, masculinity, and my place in the larger patterns of existence. The work required examining not just my relationship with my biological father, but with the entire concept of paternal authority, divine and human.

Two months into sobriety, I discovered Jack Boland’s tape series “12 Steps To A Spiritual Experience.” These three hours of recordings contained the most powerful information about recovery and spirituality that I had ever encountered. Unlike the religious dogma I had scorned or the new-age platitudes that had left me cold, Boland’s teachings possessed an authenticity that spoke directly to my experience of spiritual bankruptcy and renewal.

Boland’s approach wasn’t about conforming to external religious structures, but about discovering the spiritual dimensions inherent in the recovery process itself. He presented the twelve steps not as mere psychological tools, but as a genuine spiritual path capable of producing profound transformation. His teachings suggested that the very experiences I had dismissed as purely destructive—addiction, loss, despair—could serve as doorways to spiritual understanding when approached with the right perspective.

The Vision of Divine Maternal Love: May 24, 1987

Two months into this new journey, on May 24, 1987, my yearning for healing culminated in an experience that forever altered my understanding of both divine love and my own nature. While driving through the West Hills toward a friend’s house, I was overwhelmed by a vision of extraordinary power and beauty.

The image that came to me was that of the Mona Lisa, serene and timeless, nursing a baby. But this was not merely a visual experience—it was a complete sensory and emotional encounter with what I can only describe as infinite maternal love. For an entire week, I felt enveloped in a profound sense of divine nurturing, as though all the maternal care that had been absent in my earliest months was now being bestowed upon me in transcendent form.

The light of this divine motherly love seemed to permeate every corner of my being, healing wounds I had carried since infancy. I had to stop my car on Canyon Boulevard, fall to my knees, and offer my gratitude to a Creative Force that had finally found me receptive to its presence.

This wasn’t a theological concept or a psychological projection, but a direct, felt experience of love unlike anything I had ever encountered. It possessed a quality of unconditional acceptance that made every human love I had experienced seem conditional and limited by comparison. This love didn’t require me to be different, better, or more deserving. It simply was, and I was held within it completely.

Understanding the Vision’s Deeper Meaning

This profound experience revealed layers of meaning that continue to unfold in my understanding. The choice of the Mona Lisa as the vessel for this divine communication was not arbitrary—Leonardo da Vinci himself is said to have painted this masterpiece as a self-portrait in feminine form, honoring the divine feminine aspect within his own consciousness. His message, interpreted through contemporary understanding, represents the recognition that all true creativity emerges from the mysterious, intuitive center where wonder, compassion, and sensitivity to others arise.

The image of the divine mother nursing represented my own spiritual rebirth. I was literally being re-mothered by the universe itself, receiving the unconditional love and nurturing that forms the foundation for all healthy development. This was not the conditional love we exchange in daily relationships, but Love itself—a generous, boundless essence that flows eternally through creation.

More significantly, this vision introduced me to the Divine Feminine—not as an abstract concept or theological metaphor, but as a living, healing presence that complements and balances the Divine Masculine. This revelation stood in stark opposition to the patriarchal religious narratives I had encountered, where feminine wisdom is diminished or entirely erased from spiritual understanding.

The Suppression of the Divine Feminine

The suppression of the Divine Feminine represents one of the most profound spiritual tragedies of our time. For centuries, patriarchal systems have systematically devalued the collaborative, nurturing, and intuitive qualities that the feminine principle embodies. This suppression has created a profound imbalance not only in our spiritual understanding but in our approach to relationships, governance, and our connection to the natural world.

The Divine Feminine brings qualities essential for our collective healing: the capacity to nurture growth rather than demand performance, to seek unity rather than perpetuate division, to honor the interconnectedness of all life rather than fragment existence into competing parts. When we suppress these qualities—whether in individuals or in society—we create the conditions for the very trauma and disconnection that plague our modern world.

My vision revealed that healing our deepest wounds requires not only personal work but also the restoration of this sacred balance. The maternal love I experienced was not simply divine comfort for my individual pain—it was a revelation of the healing presence that humanity desperately needs to rediscover.

The Second Experience: Healing and Restoration

The following month brought another spiritual experience, this one focused on healing rather than love. After a hike up to Larch Mountain’s observatory, years of physiological and psychological damage from drug abuse and neglect were simply erased in a single transformative moment. This wasn’t gradual recovery or slow healing, but instantaneous restoration that defied every assumption I held about the irreversible nature of the damage I had inflicted on my body and mind.

The healing was comprehensive, addressing not only the obvious physical deterioration from substance abuse, but also deeper psychological wounds that I had carried for decades. Patterns of thought and perception that had seemed permanently etched into my consciousness were suddenly absent, replaced by a clarity and vitality I had never experienced, even in childhood.

Most remarkably, this healing experience included a shift in perception that allowed me to see without words for the first time in my life. The constant mental commentary that had always mediated my experience of reality fell silent, leaving me in direct contact with what I can only call the underlying reality or foundational awareness that supports all experience.

This wordless perception revealed the extent to which ordinary consciousness is filtered through conceptual overlay. Without the constant stream of mental labeling and interpretation, I encountered the world as pure presence, unmediated by the categories and judgments that typically shape human experience. Colors became more vivid, sounds more immediate, and the sense of separation between observer and observed began to dissolve.

The Third Experience: Beyond Body Consciousness

Another month later, the most profound spiritual experience came in the form of what I can only describe as spiritual or psychological transportation beyond body awareness entirely. In this state, I found myself at what seemed to be the foundation of all perception and creativity, able to observe the mechanisms by which consciousness constructs the apparent reality based upon duality that most of humanity accepts as fundamentally real.

From this vantage point, I could see the utter unreality of what we typically consider real. The solid world of objects, the linear progression of time, the separation between self and other—all of these revealed themselves as constructions of consciousness rather than fundamental features of existence. They weren’t illusions in the sense of being false, but rather temporary formations arising within a more fundamental awareness.

This experience provided access to what I can only call the creative principle itself—the force by which consciousness manifests the apparent multiplicity of forms and experiences from its own unified nature. Most significantly, I was shown that the elimination of all time-based thoughts—those mental activities that reference past or future rather than the eternal present—leads directly to the doorstep of what Jesus called the kingdom of heaven, or what followers of the Buddha called the Buddha mind.

The journey toward spiritual healing and recovery requires both inner work and practical engagement with transformative practices. Based on my own experience and continued exploration, several key elements emerge as essential for anyone seeking to heal from trauma and connect with their authentic spiritual nature.

Acknowledge and understand your trauma. Healing begins with honest recognition of the wounds we carry, particularly those stemming from gender role conditioning and religious messaging about our fundamental worth. This acknowledgment is not about blame or victimization, but about creating the foundation for transformation.

Explore spirituality as a path to healing. Traditional recovery programs, while essential, often lack the spiritual depth necessary for complete transformation. Investigate practices that connect you with transcendent love—whether through prayer, meditation, time in nature, or other contemplative disciplines.

Embrace the Divine Feminine within yourself. Regardless of your biological gender, you carry within you both masculine and feminine spiritual qualities. Learning to honor and integrate the feminine aspects—intuition, collaboration, nurturing, and unity consciousness—is essential for balanced spiritual development.

Seek supportive community. Recovery and spiritual growth thrive in environments of authentic sharing and mutual support. Find others who are committed to genuine spiritual development rather than adherence to rigid doctrinal positions.

Practice radical honesty about your experience. One of the greatest barriers to healing is our tendency to present polished versions of ourselves to the world. True spiritual growth requires the courage to share our real stories, including our struggles and failures.

Master the elimination of time-based thinking. The most practical and transformative insight from my spiritual journey was the recognition that time-based thinking is the primary obstacle to experiencing eternal presence. Every thought that references the past or projects into the future pulls consciousness away from the only moment in which divine reality can be directly experienced: the eternal now.

Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of spiritual healing is our willingness to break what I call the “conspiracy of silence” that surrounds authentic spiritual experience. Too often, fear of judgment or rejection keeps us from sharing the very experiences that could offer healing to others who desperately need to hear them.

When I shared my vision with others, I encountered a range of responses—from those who experienced physical reactions of recognition to others who attempted to redirect my experience into acceptable theological categories. These responses taught me that genuine spiritual experience often challenges established frameworks and may not be immediately welcomed by those invested in conventional approaches.

Yet sharing our authentic spiritual experiences—no matter how unconventional—serves not only our own integration but also provides permission for others to acknowledge their own encounters with the sacred. Each time we speak honestly about our spiritual journey, we create space for others to explore their own deeper truths.

Spiritual awakening is not a single event but an ongoing process of integration and deepening understanding. The vision of May 24, 1987, marked the beginning of my conscious relationship with divine love, but the work of embodying that understanding in daily life continues to this day.

This integration involves constantly choosing love over fear, connection over separation, and authentic expression over conformity to expectations that do not serve our highest good. It means recognizing that our individual healing contributes to the collective healing our world desperately needs.

The Divine Feminine presence that revealed itself in my vision continues to guide my understanding of what it means to live from spiritual authenticity. This guidance manifests not as external commands but as an inner knowing that draws me toward choices that honor both my own deepest nature and the interconnected web of life of which we are all part.

The trio of profound spiritual attunements happened over a fifty-eight-day period during the summer of 1987. This transformation still impacts my daily life thirty-eight years later. The fundamental shift in perception has been an ongoing evolution, integrating transcendent awareness with ordinary life. The ability to access the uncommon knowledge of wordless perception, divine love, and eternal presence hasn’t diminished, though I’ve had to learn how to function practically while maintaining awareness of these deeper dimensions.

Distinguishing Genuine Experience from Hallucination

How does anybody distinguish between genuine spiritual experience and hallucination, especially given historical accounts of religious delusional activity or even with my history with substance abuse? The distinction lies in the transformative effects and lasting insights that persist long after the experience itself.

Hallucinations, whether drug-induced or psychological, typically leave consciousness unchanged once they pass. Genuine spiritual experiences produce permanent shifts in perception, lasting healing, and practical wisdom that continues to function years later. The three experiences I describe weren’t temporary altered states but doorways to ongoing access to transcendent dimensions of consciousness.

Can someone achieve similar spiritual awakening without going through addiction and near-suicide? Absolutely. My path through the underworld was neither necessary nor recommended. Many achieve profound spiritual realization through meditation, mindfulness, practicing the Presence, service, study, or other traditional means. However, some individuals seem to require complete ego destruction before breakthrough becomes possible.

The key isn’t the specific path but the willingness to release everything that isn’t ultimately real, whether that release comes through discipline or devastation.

The time for spiritual pretense and surface-level healing has passed. Our world faces challenges that require the deepest wisdom traditions have to offer, integrated with courage to transcend the limitations of past religious and cultural conditioning.

Looking back across the landscape of this journey, I can see that every element—the religious disillusionment, the addiction, the losses, even the suicide attempt—served a function in dismantling false foundations to make space for authentic spiritual realization. What I had sought through destruction was actually construction: the building of a consciousness capable of directly experiencing divine reality.

The meaning I had demanded from the universe in my moment of ultimate despair wasn’t provided as a philosophical concept or belief system, but as direct access to the source of all meaning itself. The eternal presence that underlies all temporal experience, the divine love that embraces all beings regardless of their worthiness, the creative principle that manifests infinite possibility—these became not objects of faith but dimensions of immediate awareness.

Perhaps most significantly, I discovered that the kingdom of heaven that Jesus spoke of isn’t a reward for good behavior or a destination reached after death, but a dimension of consciousness available in any moment when temporal thinking ceases. The elimination of time-based thoughts serves as a perceptual key, unlocking access to the eternal presence that is always here, always now, always loving.

The journey from darkness to divine wasn’t an escape from human experience but a descent into its ultimate depths followed by recognition of its transcendent foundation. Every moment of suffering, every encounter with loss, every brush with annihilation contributed to the destruction of illusions that prevented direct contact with ultimate reality.

The universe had indeed provided truth worth living for, but not through comfortable revelation or gradual enlightenment. Instead, it offered complete transformation through complete destruction—death and resurrection played out in the theater of consciousness itself. The pearl of great price was discovered not in spiritual treasure hunting but in the ashes of everything I thought I was.

This is the paradox of authentic spiritual awakening: sometimes we must lose everything, including the desire to live, before we can discover what life actually is. The kingdom of heaven remains closer than our own breath, available not through achievement but through the simple recognition of what has always been present, waiting patiently for us to stop looking elsewhere and return home to the eternal now.

The time for silence is over. The time for transformation is now.

By acknowledging and honoring the Divine Feminine in all of us, by integrating spirituality into recovery, and by sharing our experiences freely, we serve not only ourselves but the greater good that our world desperately needs. Each of us has infinite capacities of insight and perception, and to avoid living a second-hand life experience, we must each directly make conscious contact with the infinite source within our heart and soul.

If your path is one of continuous conscious evolution without extraordinary pain and suffering, more power to you. Mine took me through the fires of hell to reach the promised land. Looking back, it could not have happened any other way. We each have a unique path to take to finally enter into the universe’s unlimited bandwidth of life, love, and death.

Will you answer the call?

Chapter 28:  Revisiting June 22 ,1987: Beyond the Self: Healing Trauma and Finding the Divine Within

Life is rarely a linear narrative. More often, it resembles a fragmented reflection, a tapestry of joy, loneliness, and transformation. Our deepest wounds often coexist with our greatest revelations, and the path to healing is rarely a straight line. Instead, it is a journey of confronting our brokenness, questioning our conditioning, and ultimately, discovering a profound sense of connection that transcends our individual stories. This is an exploration of that journey—from the depths of addiction and mental turmoil to the liberating realization of the divine presence that permeates all of existence.

For many, the search for meaning begins in a state of disconnection. It can manifest as a quiet loneliness, an academic pursuit of answers, or a desperate escape into substances. My own early life was marked by a feeling of being out of sync, a sense of alienation that books, particularly science fiction, helped to soothe. Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land planted a seed with its concept,

“Thou Art God,”

a quiet whisper of hope that something sacred might exist even within a life that felt profoundly flawed. This idea became an anchor, though one I would drift far from before finding my way back.

Adolescence brought the storm of addiction, a deceptive salve for anxiety and self-doubt that only pulled me further from myself. The dream of escaping this world, whether as an astronaut or through some other form of transcendence, was a powerful force. Yet, even as life spiraled, the search for spiritual truth persisted. Traditional religious frameworks, with their doctrines of inherent sinfulness, often felt unsatisfying, leaving a spiritual malnourishment that no amount of searching could seem to fill. It was not until I reached a breaking point, a moment of complete surrender, that a new path began to reveal itself—one that did not point to a distant God but to the divine spark within life itself.

I will trace a path from profound personal trauma to a moment of spiritual awakening that reframed the very nature of reality. It is a testament to the idea that healing is not about erasing the past but about integrating it into a larger story of connection, love, and the realization that we are all threads in an infinite tapestry. It is a journey toward understanding that the divine is not a concept to be studied, but a living presence to be experienced, moment to moment.

Before healing can begin, we must often confront the depths of our suffering. For nearly a year, I lived with a form of drug-induced mental illness, a persistent and unsettling internal monologue that narrated my life from a detached, third-person perspective. Even three months into sobriety, a milestone that should have brought clarity, this inner voice remained.

“He is driving his car.”
“He is listening to that man.”

Each phrase was noise when I needed quiet and a hammer blow to my sense of self, creating a profound alienation from my experiences. It was as if I were a spectator in my life, my thoughts and actions observed and announced by an invisible commentator. Psychiatrists might label this paranoid schizophrenia, but labels fail to capture the visceral reality of such an experience. This voice was not a command, but a constant, unnerving observation that created a feedback loop of disconnection. It interpreted the body language of others, fed my paranoia, and deepened my despair. I began to fear that this fractured consciousness was a permanent scar, an inescapable reminder of my past.

This internal torment was compounded by physical ailments. My body was wracked with tremors, similar to Parkinson’s disease, a constant physical manifestation of a nervous system ravaged by substance abuse. Sobriety had stopped the poisoning, but the damage felt irreparable. I was adrift, my mind a storm-tossed sea and my body a creaking vessel on the verge of breaking apart. The hope for a life of peace and wholeness seemed distant and unattainable, at least until the previous month’s Mona Lisa vision, which blessed me with a great measure of transcendent love for over a week. But the ebbing of that experience brought self-doubt back into play for me. It was in this state of desperation, on the edge of surrender, that I made a pilgrimage to a place that would forever alter the course of my life.

A Mountain, a Voice, and a Glimpse of the Infinite

On June 22, 1987, I drove to Larch Mountain, a peak once revered and considered sacred by the local indigenous peoples, that overlooked the Columbia River valley. With panoramic views of the great mountains—Rainier, Adams, St. Helens, Hood, and Jefferson—it felt like a natural observatory, a place to witness creation on a grand scale. I was seeking solace, a moment of peace from the relentless inner chatter and physical tremors that defined my existence.

Bypassing the guardrail at the summit, I found a secluded spot, hidden from the world, where I could be alone with my turmoil. I began with a simple act: observing. I let the immense beauty of the landscape fill my awareness, from the winding river below to the snow-capped peaks on the horizon. Then, I turned inward, attempting the difficult work of prayer and meditation. My mind, as always, resisted stillness. The third-person narrator continued its commentary, its hold on me seeming as strong as ever.

But something shifted in that sanctuary of nature. As I sat in contemplation, the rigid boundaries of my “self” began to soften. The feeling of separation that had defined my entire life—from others, from nature, from God—started to dissolve. In its place, an overwhelming sense of unity began to emerge. Suddenly, there was no distinction between me, the mountains, the river, and the sky. It was all one continuous, unbroken field of existence. A profound warmth, an ineffable presence, flowed through me, quieting the mental noise and filling the silence with an unmistakable clarity.

Then, a voice emerged from the depths of my consciousness. It was not the detached, clinical narrator I had come to despise. It was steady, calm, and resonant with an undeniable truth.

“He is having an experience with God.”

These were the final words spoken from that third-person perspective. In that instant, the veil was lifted. The tremors in my body ceased. The relentless chatter in my mind went silent. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, I was enveloped in a profound and total peace. The “he” no longer existed because the separation it implied had vanished. There was only “I am,” intimately and inextricably woven into the fabric of life itself.

This was not an intellectual understanding; it was a deep, experiential knowing. Love, which had always felt conditional and transactional, now radiated from me freely and without reservation. It extended to all of humanity, to the plants and animals, and even to those who had caused me pain. In that moment, I touched the infinite. Healing was no longer about abstaining from substances or managing symptoms; it was about awakening to the fundamental truth of our interconnectedness. It was about learning to live without the hard boundaries that our minds construct, the very boundaries that create our suffering.

I saw that all that I know see, and will ever see, unto eternity, is myself, whether I am pilloried to my human condition or transported to the highest realms of spiritual attainment. The question erupted within my being:

“How will I see myself today?”

Descending from that peak, I was a changed man. I carried not just a memory, but a living transformation. The journey was far from over, but its direction was now clear. It was no longer about escaping the world, but about fully, and lovingly, participating in it.

The experience on Larch Mountain was not an end, but a new beginning. Carrying the imprint of that profound unity, I began the slow and deliberate work of re-engaging with the world. The question that echoed in my mind was no longer one of despair, but of purpose:

“Where are my people?”

My first steps were acts of amends and reconciliation. I returned to the US Postal Service, my former employer, not to reclaim my job, but to apologize for the years I had worked in a state of unhappiness and dysfunction. The encounters were surreal. Colleagues who had known the old me were stunned by the transformation. One former supervisor, John Z., upon hearing my story, expressed a deep wish that his own son, who was struggling with addiction, could find what I had found.

I bumped into my old psychiatrist, Dr. Dan Beavers, whom I found in the metaphysical section of Powell’s bookstore. He barely recognized me. he stated “Bruce, I can’t believe this is you! I feared that you would not survive.”

When I told him I had found a way to live without medication or substances, he simply stated:

“That is the desired outcome for all of my patients.”

These moments were not just about closing old chapters; they were about weaving the threads of my past into a new story, one defined by responsibility, gratitude, and connection.

This journey led me to new communities, like the International New Thought Alliance (INTA). There, I found myself in the presence of others who were also on a path of spiritual discovery. I witnessed a gathering of over a thousand people warmly embrace the musical group Alliance, with Jerry Florence, all gay men living with HIV/AIDS, a stark and healing contrast to the judgment I had encountered in other religious settings. I met in person, Jack Boland, the man who had brought the great spiritual teaching to me in his tape series that helped prepare the spiritual ground for the vision of the Divine Mother. The tenderness and acceptance I felt in that room were a powerful affirmation that the love I had experienced on the mountain was not a solitary phenomenon, but a shared human potential.

This new life, this “upgraded Bruce 2.0,” was filled with a sense of continuous joy and wonder. I spent hours each day in prayer and meditation, not as a chore, but as a way to remain connected to the deep well of peace I had discovered. I was taught on an inner plane about aspects of consciousness that no book could have explained. This was not a Christian God, a Jewish God, or the Buddha Mind. It was the master teacher that lies within each of us, the voice of inner wisdom that is so often ignored. The world I had once wanted to escape so desperately was now paradise on Earth.

One of the greatest challenges after a profound spiritual experience is finding the language to communicate it. For years, I struggled to articulate what had happened on that mountain. The experience was ineffable, beyond the grasp of words and rational thought. As William Blake wrote,

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

My doors had been cleansed, but the world I now saw was difficult to describe to those still looking through the “narrow chinks of their cavern.”

Many who have such experiences fall silent, give up trying to explain, or attempt to fit their understanding into existing religious frameworks. My path was different. I realized my role was not to describe the light, but to help clear away the debris that obscures it for others. My path became one of via transformativa and via negativa—a way of transformation that comes after one has perceived, healed, and cleared the collective field of human misunderstanding.

What is left after the garbage is cleared? It is akin to the metamorphosis of a butterfly. The butterfly, once a caterpillar, would surely rather speak of its newfound freedom to fly than its former life crawling on the ground. Yet, its story originates from that grounded existence. The journey through our own “dirt”—our trauma, our addictions, our conditioning—is what makes the emergence of the butterfly possible.

Spiritual freedom is the letting go of limitations. It is realizing that the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, are not the whole truth. We all need a bigger story, one that encompasses not only our personal struggles but also our connection to the divine fabric of life.

My story is not one of perfection; it is a human story of falling, rising, and learning to sing one’s own song. The miracle is not that others listen, but that we finally begin to listen to ourselves. The journey from the chaos of a fractured mind to the clarity of a unified consciousness is a testament to the healing power that lies dormant within each of us.

The divine is not an external entity to be sought, but an internal reality to be realized. It is the silent presence beneath the noise of our thoughts, the boundless love that connects us all, and the profound peace that awaits when we finally let go of who we think we are and embrace the truth of what we have always been. Healing trauma is not just about recovery; it is about the sacred act of remembering our wholeness and finding our place in the great, unfolding story of life itself. We are all interconnected, and in that connection, we find not only our healing, but our divinity.

Chapter 29:  July 21, 1987 Revisited: Finding Truth Within Yourself: A Journey Beyond the Mind’s Conditioning

The search for truth has captivated humanity since the dawn of consciousness. Yet most seekers look everywhere except the one place where authentic truth resides—within themselves. Like the proverbial bumblebee whose body appears too large for its wings yet still takes flight, we too must transcend the apparent limitations of our conditioned minds to discover the profound reality that lies beneath our constructed identities.

This journey of self-discovery requires more than intellectual understanding or spiritual concepts borrowed from others. It demands a willingness to release everything we think we know about ourselves and enter the unknown territories of consciousness where genuine transformation becomes possible. What awaits those brave enough to undertake this inner expedition is nothing less than a complete revolution of their understanding of reality itself.

The Invisible Self: Recognizing Our Hidden Nature

Before transformation can occur, we must first acknowledge how invisible we’ve become to ourselves. Most of us navigate life wearing masks crafted from societal expectations, family conditioning, and survival mechanisms developed in childhood. These protective layers, while serving a purpose, ultimately obscure our authentic nature and leave us feeling profoundly disconnected from our true essence.

The journey inward often begins with a recognition of this invisibility—the dawning awareness that the person we present to the world, and even to ourselves, represents only a fraction of our complete being. This realization can be both liberating and terrifying. Liberation comes from understanding that our limitations are largely self-imposed; terror arises from contemplating the dissolution of everything we’ve believed ourselves to be.

Consider the moments when you’ve felt most authentic, most alive. These glimpses often occur during experiences that bypass the analytical mind—in meditation, nature, creative expression, or profound silence. These instances point toward the deeper self that exists beyond our mental constructions and social identities.

Genuine spiritual awakening rarely follows a predictable timeline or methodology. It emerges from the depths of consciousness when conditions align—often during moments of profound surrender or crisis. My experience of July 21, 1987, serves as an example of how truth can suddenly illuminate consciousness like lightning illuminating a dark landscape.

During deep meditation, when the familiar mantra “Master Teacher of the Light” repeated internally, an unexpected doorway opened. The experience began with a choice point—continue steering the familiar course of conditioned thinking, or release control entirely and venture into uncharted territory. This decision to “let go of the steering wheel” of mental control created space for an extraordinary journey beyond ordinary awareness.

The subsequent experience involved traveling through what appeared to be the collective consciousness of humanity—a vast matrix of interconnected intelligence and ignorance, wisdom and folly. This passage revealed the extent to which individual consciousness participates in a larger field of shared understanding and misunderstanding. Moving beyond this collective layer, consciousness descended into what felt like the womb of creation itself—a place of complete darkness that paradoxically contained everything.

Within this profound silence, messages emerged with startling clarity: “No teacher shall effect salvation, I must work it out for myself,” “Think no thoughts,” and “Follow new paths of consciousness.” Perhaps most challenging was the declaration “YOU CAN’T BE REAL”—spoken with joyful laughter yet carrying implications that would reshape understanding for years to come.

Releasing the Mind’s Tyranny: Beyond Thought-Based Reality

The mathematical formula revealed during this transformative experience provided a key insight into the nature of reality perception. As the movement of time-based thought approaches zero, direct perception of reality becomes possible. This principle suggests that our ordinary way of processing experience—through constant mental commentary, categorization, and judgment—actually obscures rather than reveals truth.

The ego, understood as the accumulation of all our judgments and conditioning, looks out at the world and perceives separation everywhere. It sees “you” and “me,” “us” and “them,” creating an elaborate network of mental distinctions that have little correspondence to the underlying unity of existence. This habitual way of perceiving becomes so automatic that we rarely question whether our mental images of people and situations bear any resemblance to their actual nature.

To “follow new paths of consciousness” while recognizing that our constructed self “can’t be real” creates a powerful transformative dynamic. Every identity we claim—professional, social, psychological—represents either a new direction for consciousness or reinforcement of worn-out patterns. The statement “I am an electrician” or “I am lonely” or “I am spiritual” each carries the potential to either expand awareness or confine it within familiar limitations.

The Hidden Passengers: Recognizing Unconscious Influences

One of the most revealing aspects of deep self-examination involves discovering the unconscious influences that shape our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. During the transformative experience, two distinct “thought forms” or identity structures became visible within the energy field of consciousness—unwelcome passengers that had been influencing my perception and choice without conscious awareness.

These psychological formations, later understood as internalized trauma responses, represented distorted versions of parental influences that had been unconsciously incorporated during childhood. They appeared as “tricksters”—familiar enough to provide a sense of companionship for the isolated ego, yet ultimately destructive to authentic self-expression and growth.

This discovery illuminates how trauma becomes embedded within consciousness, creating multiple personality-like structures that compete for control of our thoughts and actions. Understanding this phenomenon helps explain the internal conflicts many people experience—the sense of being pulled in different directions by competing inner voices, each claiming to represent our “true” interests.

Recognition of these hidden influences represents a crucial step in reclaiming authentic selfhood. As long as these unconscious patterns remain unexamined, they continue to generate the same limiting thoughts, emotional reactions, and behavioral choices that keep us trapped in cycles of suffering and confusion.

The Illusion of Separation: Understanding Reality’s True Nature

The spiritual journey ultimately leads to a fundamental recognition about the nature of reality itself. The consciousness that observes thoughts, emotions, and sensations remains unchanging regardless of what passes through awareness. This witnessing presence represents our true nature—not the collection of mental contents we typically identify as “self,” but the aware space within which all experience unfolds.

From this perspective, the entire human drama appears as a kind of cosmic joke. The struggles, achievements, relationships, and conflicts that seem so vitally important to the personality reveal themselves as temporary modifications of consciousness—waves arising and subsiding within an ocean of being that remains fundamentally unaffected by surface turbulence.

This realization doesn’t diminish the relative importance of compassionate action or responsible living. Instead, it provides a foundation of inner stability that allows us to engage more skillfully with life’s challenges. When we’re no longer desperately defending a false sense of self, we become free to respond authentically to whatever circumstances arise.

The world’s apparent dysfunction begins to make sense when viewed from this expanded perspective. Most human conflict stems from the mistaken belief in separation—the conviction that we are isolated individuals competing for limited resources rather than interconnected expressions of a single consciousness exploring itself through countless unique perspectives.

Working Out Your Own Salvation: The Path Forward

The most crucial understanding emerging from deep spiritual experience concerns personal responsibility for inner development. No external teacher, technique, or tradition can deliver enlightenment to another person. While guides can point toward helpful directions and share their experiences, each individual must ultimately navigate their own unique path toward truth.

This recognition can feel both empowering and daunting. Empowerment comes from understanding that everything needed for spiritual realization already exists within consciousness. Daunting feelings arise from recognizing that no one else can do the inner work required for authentic transformation.  If the pilgrim is still clinging to concepts of Jesus, Mohammed, or Buddha as their savior, that is the block preventing further progress on the infinite path of spiritual transcendence.

The path forward involves developing the capacity to think no thoughts—not as a permanent state of mental blankness, but as the ability to rest in aware presence without being compulsively driven by mental commentary. This practice creates space for direct perception to emerge, allowing us to respond to life from wisdom rather than conditioned reactivity.

Cultivating new paths of consciousness requires willingness to question every assumption, belief, and identity structure that has previously defined our experience. This doesn’t mean rejecting everything from the past, but rather holding all concepts lightly enough that truth can emerge through direct experience rather than borrowed understanding.

Embracing the Unknown: Living From Truth Rather Than Concepts

The journey toward authentic self-discovery ultimately leads beyond all concepts, techniques, and spiritual identities into the vast unknown where real learning becomes possible. This unknowing isn’t ignorance—it’s the intelligent recognition that truth transcends all mental categories and can only be known through direct experience.

Living from this understanding transforms every aspect of daily life. Relationships become opportunities for mutual recognition rather than ego gratification. Work becomes service rather than mere survival. Challenges become invitations for growth rather than threats to be defended against. Even pain and difficulty find their place within the larger rhythm of consciousness exploring its own infinite nature.

The world needs individuals willing to undertake this journey of authentic self-discovery. As each person awakens to their true nature, they become a source of healing and wisdom for others struggling to find their way beyond the limitations of conditioned thinking.

Your truth—not borrowed from books, teachers, or traditions, but discovered through your own courageous exploration of consciousness—represents your unique gift to the world. The journey may be challenging, but it’s the only path that leads to genuine freedom and lasting fulfillment.

Begin wherever you are, with whatever understanding you currently possess. Trust the intelligence that brought you to this moment to guide your next steps. The truth you seek isn’t hidden in some distant location or future achievement—it’s alive within you right now, waiting patiently for your recognition.

This is the eternal path along the Universe’s infinite bandwidth.

Chapter 29.5:  July 21, 1987, Again – How to Release Control of Your Mind and Follow New Paths of Consciousness

The human mind operates like a relentless driver, gripping the steering wheel of consciousness with white-knuckled determination. We navigate through life believing we must control every thought, direct every experience, and manage every outcome. Yet what if the greatest spiritual transformation requires the most counterintuitive act: releasing that very control?

This guide explores the profound journey of letting go—not as passive surrender, but as active transformation. You’ll discover practical steps to quiet the mind’s chatter, embrace the unknown, and open pathways to consciousness that conventional thinking cannot access. Through mindfulness practices, meditation techniques, and radical acceptance exercises, you’ll learn to step beyond the limitations of ego-driven existence into realms of infinite possibility.

The Foundation of Spiritual Transformation

Spiritual transformation begins with a startling recognition: the version of yourself you’ve constructed through years of conditioning, judgments, and accumulated experiences may not represent your truest nature. Like a driver who has become so focused on the road that they’ve forgotten their destination, we often become trapped within the narrow confines of habitual thinking.

The mind creates elaborate narratives about who we are, what we believe, and how the world operates. These mental constructs, while serving practical purposes in daily life, can become psychological prisons that prevent us from accessing deeper dimensions of consciousness. The ego—that collection of memories, judgments, and self-concepts—mistakes its limited perspective for absolute reality.

Yet beneath this surface identity lies something far more expansive. When we release our death grip on mental control, we create space for what mystics and consciousness explorers have called “new paths of consciousness” to emerge. These aren’t mere philosophical concepts, but lived experiences that can fundamentally alter our perception of reality.

The Moment of Release: Understanding What It Means to Let Go

Imagine sitting in meditation, repeating a sacred phrase or focusing on your breath, when suddenly you encounter a choice point. You sense that you could continue steering your awareness in familiar directions, or you could release the controls entirely and allow something unknown to unfold.

This moment of release isn’t about becoming passive or losing consciousness. Rather, it’s about transitioning from effortful control to receptive awareness. Like a tightly clenched fist that suddenly opens, the mind stops grasping and begins receiving.

The sensation often begins as a subtle lifting—as if the heavy armor of self-consciousness were being removed piece by piece. Old psychological burdens, the weight of constant self-monitoring, and the exhausting effort of maintaining a particular identity begin to dissolve. What remains isn’t emptiness, but a profound sense of coming home to something essential and eternal.

This release creates what can only be described as an “exhilarating inner rush”—not the temporary high of external stimulation, but the deep satisfaction of alignment with our fundamental nature. The boundaries between observer and observed begin to soften, revealing interconnected structures of consciousness that were always present but previously hidden by mental noise.

Entering New Dimensions of Awareness

When we successfully release mental control, we often discover that consciousness is far more expansive than we previously imagined. Instead of the linear, verbal thinking that dominates ordinary awareness, we encounter what might be called “infinite interconnected energy structures”—webs of meaning and connection that transcend individual identity.

These experiences can be profoundly disorienting at first. The familiar landmarks of ego-based navigation disappear, replaced by a landscape that operates according to different principles. Here, separation dissolves into unity, time-based thinking gives way to eternal presence, and the very notion of a fixed self becomes questionable.

The messages that arise in these states often challenge our most basic assumptions about reality. Phrases like “No teacher shall effect salvation” point to the essential truth that spiritual transformation cannot be imported from external sources—it must be discovered and integrated through direct experience. “Think no thoughts” suggests that our habitual mental activity often obscures rather than reveals truth.

Perhaps most challenging is the recognition that “you can’t be real”—at least not in the way we typically understand ourselves. This isn’t a nihilistic negation of existence, but a joyful recognition that our constructed identities are temporary arrangements rather than ultimate realities. The “you” that worries, judges, and struggles is revealed as a collection of mental habits rather than a solid entity.

Practical Steps to Release Mental Control

Understanding the theory of releasing control is one thing; developing the practical skills to do so consistently is another. The following techniques provide concrete methods for cultivating this profound shift in consciousness.

Mindfulness Meditation: The Art of Witnessing

Mindfulness meditation forms the foundation of mental release by teaching us to observe thoughts and emotions without becoming entangled in them. Begin with short sessions of 10-15 minutes, focusing on your breath as an anchor in the present moment.

As thoughts arise—and they inevitably will—practice viewing them like clouds passing through an open sky. Notice their content without judging them as good or bad, important or trivial. This develops what Buddhist traditions call “choiceless awareness”—the capacity to witness mental activity without compulsively engaging with every thought that appears.

Pay particular attention to the space between thoughts. In those moments of mental stillness, you may glimpse the awareness that underlies all mental activity. This awareness is always present, even when obscured by busy thinking. Regular practice strengthens your ability to rest in this spacious presence rather than being pulled into the drama of mental narratives.

Body Scan Meditation: Releasing Physical Control

The body often holds tension that reflects mental grasping. A systematic body scan meditation helps release both physical and psychological control patterns simultaneously.

Lie comfortably and bring attention to your feet, noticing any sensations without trying to change them. Gradually move your awareness up through your legs, pelvis, abdomen, chest, arms, neck, and head. Where you discover tension, practice breathing into those areas and allowing them to soften naturally.

This practice reveals how much energy we unconsciously invest in maintaining physical and mental rigidity. As the body learns to release unnecessary tension, the mind often follows suit, discovering that it too can function more efficiently with less effortful control.

Open Monitoring Meditation: Expanding Awareness

While focused meditation practices concentrate attention on specific objects like the breath, open monitoring meditation cultivates a more expansive awareness that can hold multiple experiences simultaneously without getting caught by any particular stimulus.

Sit quietly and allow your attention to expand beyond any single focus point. Notice sounds, bodily sensations, emotions, and thoughts as they arise and pass away, maintaining an attitude of curious interest rather than selective attention. This develops the capacity to remain centered amidst changing experiences rather than being overwhelmed by mental or sensory input.

This practice particularly supports the release of mental control by training attention to function more like a clear mirror than a spotlight—reflecting whatever appears without preference or resistance.

Contemplative Inquiry: Questioning Fixed Beliefs

Our sense of needing to control consciousness often stems from unexamined beliefs about who we are and how reality operates. Contemplative inquiry involves asking fundamental questions and remaining open to answers that may challenge our assumptions.

Consider questions like: “Who or what is aware of my thoughts?” “What remains constant through all my changing experiences?” “What would I be without my story about myself?” Allow these questions to work on you over time rather than seeking immediate intellectual answers.

This process gradually undermines the unconscious beliefs that maintain ego-based control patterns. As our fundamental assumptions become more flexible, the mind naturally releases its grip on rigid ways of thinking and perceiving.

Embracing the Paradox: How to Be Unreal

One of the most profound challenges in this journey involves integrating the recognition that our ordinary sense of self isn’t ultimately real while still functioning effectively in daily life. This creates what might be called a “transformational dynamic”—living with the simultaneous knowledge that we both exist and don’t exist in conventional terms.

This paradox initially feels destabilizing because it challenges the either/or thinking that dominates conventional consciousness. We’re conditioned to believe that something either exists or doesn’t, that we’re either real or imaginary. But advanced consciousness reveals a more nuanced understanding where different levels of reality can coexist.

The ego—that collection of memories, preferences, and learned responses—functions like a useful fiction. It provides continuity and enables practical functioning while not representing our deepest nature. Learning to hold this perspective lightly rather than desperately creates tremendous psychological freedom.

Consider how this applies to your daily identifications. When you think “I am angry” or “I am confused,” notice that something is aware of these states without being limited by them. The awareness that recognizes anger isn’t itself angry; the consciousness that observes confusion isn’t itself confused. This awareness represents a more fundamental aspect of your being than any temporary emotional or mental state.

Connecting with Universal Interconnectedness

As individual identity becomes more transparent, the recognition of interconnectedness often emerges spontaneously. This isn’t merely an intellectual understanding but a lived recognition that the boundaries between self and other are far more permeable than commonly assumed.

This shift in perception naturally gives rise to compassion—not as a moral obligation but as a recognition of shared being. When the artificial walls between “me” and “you” become transparent, caring for others feels as natural as caring for yourself because the distinction becomes increasingly meaningless.

Practice extending loving-kindness meditation beyond your immediate circle to include difficult people, strangers, and even those you consider enemies. This gradually dissolves the ego’s tendency to divide the world into categories of acceptable and unacceptable, expanding your capacity to recognize the common essence underlying all apparent differences.

Spend time in natural settings where the interconnectedness of all life becomes more apparent. Observe how trees, animals, weather patterns, and seasonal cycles all participate in larger systems that transcend individual boundaries. Allow this recognition to inform your understanding of human consciousness as equally interconnected.

Integration: Living the Transformation

The ultimate test of spiritual transformation isn’t the profundity of peak experiences but how successfully these insights integrate into ordinary life. This requires developing what might be called “functional enlightenment”—maintaining access to expanded awareness while engaging effectively with practical responsibilities.

Begin incorporating brief moments of release throughout your day. During conversations, practice listening from the spacious awareness you’ve cultivated in meditation rather than from reactive mental patterns. When facing challenges, take a moment to step back from problem-solving mode and connect with the larger perspective that transcends immediate concerns.

Notice how releasing mental control often leads to more effective action rather than less. When we’re not caught in anxious thinking about outcomes, creative solutions often emerge naturally. When we’re not defending rigid positions, genuine communication becomes possible.

Develop a regular practice that supports ongoing transformation rather than seeking dramatic breakthrough experiences. Consistency in meditation, contemplative inquiry, and mindful living creates the stable foundation necessary for sustained spiritual development.

The Invitation to Transform

The journey of releasing mental control and following new paths of consciousness isn’t a destination to reach but a way of living to embody. It requires the courage to question everything you think you know about yourself and reality, combined with the patience to allow new understanding to emerge gradually.

This transformation doesn’t promise to eliminate life’s challenges but offers a fundamentally different relationship to whatever arises. Instead of being victims of circumstances or slaves to reactive patterns, we discover the freedom that comes from resting in awareness itself rather than identification with mental content.

The recognition that “you can’t be real” ultimately becomes liberating rather than threatening because it points to something far more fundamental than ego-based identity. What remains when personal stories dissolve isn’t nothing—it’s the infinite awareness that was always your deepest nature, temporarily obscured by layers of conditioning and belief.

Begin today with simple practices: observe your breath without controlling it, notice thoughts without engaging them, question assumptions without defending positions. Allow these small releases of control to gradually reveal the vast freedom that has always been your birthright. Trust that new paths of consciousness will unfold naturally as old patterns of mental grasping begin to dissolve.

The journey awaits, not in some distant future but in this very moment when you release your grip on the steering wheel of awareness and allow the infinite intelligence of consciousness itself to guide your way forward.

Chapter 28:  How to Embark on a Conscious Journey of Insight and Mindfulness

The pursuit of meaning, clarity, and inner peace is an eternal endeavor, woven into the fabric of human existence. At times, life may seem overwhelming, fragmented by chaos, and distant from our aspirations. Yet, hidden within the quiet moments of stillness, in the practice of mindfulness and the revelations of insight, lies a profound potential for transformation. These practices act as a compass, guiding us toward deeper self-awareness and a renewed connection to the intricate web of life.

True transformation has never been an abstract concept for me—it has wound its way through my own history, dancing between my wounds and my wisdom like shadow and sunlight across the years.

As Eric Hoffer once said,

“Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.” To facilitate awakening and healing, we must reject the precedent that has been established, while aspiring to become our saviors, with awakened powers of understanding and compassion. New thoughts not based upon wounded memories are essential. Otherwise, we continue layering over, or covering our non-examined embedded belief structures with another coat of paint, while our decaying house of consciousness shakes with its ever-eroding foundation.. There are no quick-fix solutions. Our country has been fed on spiritual and religious fast food for much too long. What is next in the queue for us?

• drive through healing?
• five-minute meditations for transformation and prosperity?
• new diets that guarantee weight loss and immortality?
• books that promise that all of your prayers will be answered if you would just pray the one special way offered by the starving author?.
• a magic pill that erases all difficult memories, and creates pleasure where there once was only pain?

Or should we just declare “it is what it is”, throw up one’s hands in surrender, and just accept defeat, or that all is “God’s will”? I have seen firsthand that growth is often born from the crucible of struggle; my most valuable realizations have emerged precisely when I navigated moments of darkness, both within and without. Much of my journey began with the simple act of observing myself—really observing, not just my thoughts swirling like autumn leaves, but the deeper behaviors, ingrained patterns, and ancient beliefs looping through my life. I remember the discomfort and anxiety that would bubble up when I first sat quietly, contemplating the roots of my own pain. In those early days, mindfulness was not a buzzword; it was lifeline and lantern. Insights would sometimes arrive unbidden, illuminating old family wounds or cultural stories I’d internalized. Other times, I pursued them through journaling, meditation, or the raw honesty of a 12-step inventory. I found that these flashes of understanding—these sudden illuminations—could cut through confusion, opening the dense thicket of the mind to new paths and deeper truths. Turning inward with honesty was often terrifying, but ultimately, it freed me from running from pain that seemed too vast to heal. In my own recovery, there were no “five-minute meditations for transformation”—no magic pill or prayer that delivered a shortcut past suffering. There was only the slow, deliberate, courageous work of facing what I had tried for years to avoid. Reflecting on my childhood and the culture I was raised in, I trace how so many of the stories that guided (and misled) me were inherited. For years, I lived out scripts passed down by family, community, and ancestors—scripts of limitation, shame, or expectation that, unchecked, ran my life. My healing began when I dared to examine those stories: to see which belonged to me and which I’d only borrowed out of a desire to fit in.

Insight, Mindfulness, and the Black Holes of Consciousness

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” — Aristotle

What if life’s most profound answers do not reside in the external world but are hidden deep within us, waiting to be discovered on the limitless bandwidth of our own consciousness? Humanity has grappled with this idea for millennia, propelling countless seekers toward introspection and self-discovery. Yet, the path to authentic insight is neither easy nor linear—it requires unflinching courage to confront uncomfortable truths, discipline to separate reality from illusion, and honesty to integrate newfound awareness into daily life.

Many of us unknowingly live secondhand lives, donning societal narratives like straitjackets or burial shrouds rather than mantles that embody higher spiritual aspirations. We are electrical beings, constantly transmitting and receiving signals, but much of what we broadcast is not our own authentic frequency; it is a distorted signal inherited from a culture chasing a mythical, destructive dream. My own life nearly ended under the weight of this cultural conditioning, a multi-generational stranglehold that prioritized patriarchal values and external achievement over personal meaning. By the time I realized what was happening, I was standing in the ruins of a life built on a faulty schematic, my personal circuits fried from running on an overloaded and unsustainable current.

To dismantle these restrictive constructs, attention must be paid to all facets of existence—dreams, personal writings, physical ailments, conversations, and even intuitive hunches. The clues are rarely obvious, yet they are always present, humming just beneath the surface noise of our daily lives. A good starting assumption? Familial or intergenerational trauma has impacted us in childhood or later, especially if joy, love, health, and purpose feel elusive today. The question then becomes, how does one truly begin the search for truth and recalibrate to the universe’s unlimited bandwidth?

It begins with a sacred discontent.

• By becoming tired of the status quo—whether through heartache or exhaustion—and committing to change.
• By examining cultural, familial, and personal narratives and allowing curiosity to explore alternatives.
• By identifying archetypes that unconsciously govern behavior and dismantling those that no longer serve us.
• By listening to inner wisdom via intuition, dreams, and meditation, and following their breadcrumbs toward clarity.

One of my earliest insights arrived in the fourth grade during a science experiment. Our teacher, Mr. Hill, heated a thin metal sheet over a stove until it warped and deformed. Dumbfounded, I watched but couldn’t find the words to describe what I saw. Desperate to “fit in,” I mimicked the descriptions of my classmates. It seemed harmless at the time, but this simple act of borrowing another’s perspective revealed a deeper truth about collective human behavior—our dependence on secondhand narratives. The need to conform often trumps personal interpretation, creating layers of illusion in religious, political, and social institutions. Over time, descriptions become more revered than the events themselves, birthing “truths” that often deviate from the original experience. This realization planted the seeds of a lifelong pursuit of insight, a quest to find my own signal amidst the noise.

The Silence of an Ill-Prepared Mind

By my teenage years, my capacity for introspection remained painfully underdeveloped. A classroom assignment requiring personal reflections brought my inadequacy into sharp focus. Lacking the words to describe my inner world, I copied passages from Hugh Prather’s Notes to Myself just to get by. My honesty—to myself and others—remained elusive. This emotional and verbal disconnect formed a prison, confining me to cycles of anxiety, addiction, and disconnection throughout high school and college. True insight requires rigorous self-honesty—something I lacked at the time. Without words or willingness to describe inner truths, I was incapable of escape. It took years of suffering before I began the work of breaking free.

At 31, desperation became the bedrock for transformation. I sought to untangle the chaos within and explore the cultural and personal conditioning that shaped my fragmented mind. The greatest success of this healing journey was discovering the timeless silence beneath my thoughts—the foundation of all being. Plato and the Oracle at Delphi asserted that through understanding oneself, one finds God and the cosmos. But this requires distinguishing timeless truths from transient narratives, which often entertain the ego rather than dissolve it. This journey is about tapping into the universe’s signal, the unlimited bandwidth of pure consciousness that exists beyond the static of our conditioned minds.

Black Holes of the Psyche: Where Light Cannot Escape

In the cosmos, a black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape. It is the remnant of a dying star, a point of infinite density that warps the fabric of reality around it. This astronomical phenomenon serves as a perfect metaphor for the dark, dense wounds within our own consciousness. These are our internal black holes: traumatic memories, self-negating beliefs, and unresolved pain that exert a powerful gravitational pull on our psyche, distorting our perception of reality and trapping our inner light.

Just as a black hole in space is invisible, its presence detected only by its effect on nearby stars and light, our internal black holes often operate from the subconscious. We cannot see them directly, but we feel their influence in our anxiety, our self-sabotage, our failed relationships, and our inability to experience joy. They are the singularities of our past, sucking the light of the present moment into the abyss of old trauma. We remain tethered to a past that drags us back into darkness through this very process.

I came to realize that two fundamental black holes dominated the internal universe of my consciousness, powerful cores of dysfunction around which my entire sense of self swirled. The first was the belief that my voice would never be heard, and therefore, I had no value. The second was the conviction that I was utterly alone in the universe, with only death awaiting me. These two vortexes were connected, a direct result of a failure to be fully integrated into my family as a complete, healthy human being. They drew all my internal light towards them until, in 1986, their dark magic worked its fullness, and I flirted with ending my own life.

These black holes are not unique to me; they are archetypal wounds of the human condition. When we as a society operate from these unconscious dark places, we create collective black hole events. The mob mind formed around shared grievances—from the rise of Nazi Germany to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol—is a social equivalent of two black holes colliding, their combined darkness creating a catastrophic singularity of hatred and violence. Those who see such events as an expression of light demonstrate how dramatically disfigured their own internal landscapes have become.

To repress or deny these internal forces is to continue to feed them. The journey of insight is not about destroying our black holes but about bringing them into conscious awareness. As we get in touch with our trauma, our fears, and our hatreds, we begin to harness their immense energy. When we do this, these singularities are transformed. They no longer suck our light but instead become points that draw darkness away, transmuting it into the energy of creation. The light within us uses these once-dark forces for the good of ourselves and all humanity.

Eventually, for some, these black holes are transformed into “white holes,” where no darkness can enter, and all of our experience becomes enlightened. But we cannot short-circuit this process by layering pleasant-sounding “spiritual froth” over our unexamined inner universe—a process now known as spiritual bypass. It is only after we do the real, difficult inner work that these black holes can be transformed.

The Windshield Wiper: A Metaphor for Conscious Awareness

I am often asked why I feel compelled to write about the impact of toxic masculinity on my life and on the world. The answer lies in a simple metaphor.

A man got into his car during a driving rainstorm and put on a song, feeling confident. He drove down the road but, not a block later, collided head-on with another vehicle. When the investigating officer questioned him, he discovered the man had neglected to turn on his windshield wipers. The driver responded, “Officer, I did everything right. I trusted I was seeing all I needed to see.”

Our unconscious behaviors cause damage every moment of every day. Like the man driving without his wipers, many of us navigate life with an obstructed view, causing harm without realizing it. Turning on the windshield wipers represents the conscious effort to examine our beliefs and behaviors—the practice of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is meditation with our eyes wide open. It is the rigorous honesty required to take personal inventory and, when we are wrong, promptly admit it. It is the understanding that layering new thoughts over unexamined, decaying belief structures is like applying a fresh coat of paint to a rotting house. It is the recognition that, as a favored AA expression goes, “we are only as sick as our secrets.”

This work demands that we look at the cultural programs running our lives. The evangelical support for a figure like Donald Trump, for example, reveals a deep sickness, a collective ignorance and collusion with anti-Christ principles. When we see this, we are witnessing the formation of a pseudo-Christian Taliban, a descent into the same kind of mass psychosis that enabled Nazism. This is a societal black hole, and to pretend it isn’t there is to drive without wipers in a deluge.

Finding God on the Universal Bandwidth

In this journey of self-discovery, the concept of “God” often arises, carrying with it the baggage of history, culture, and personal trauma. But what if we redefine this term? For me, God is not an external, bearded man in the sky but the self-organizing principle of consciousness within each of us. It is the inherent intelligence that integrates our sense of self and keeps us from dissolving into chaos. We are all electrical beings, and this organizing principle is the fundamental frequency of our existence, the signal on the universal bandwidth.

The Book of Genesis can be read not as a literal creation story, but as a parable for this internal process. “The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep.” This is the state of our unexamined minds—confused, empty, chaotic. Then, the “Spirit of God” moves over the waters, a process of careful, deliberate observation. This is mindfulness. And then comes the declaration: “Let there be light.” This light is insight. It separates light from darkness, brings order to chaos, and allows for creation.

This is the spiritual development each of us must undertake. We are personally responsible for this internal construction project, for directing the flow of energy within our own consciousness. To look to a historical figure for salvation is to engage in idolatry, to remain ignorant of our own divine potential as co-creators on this universal bandwidth. Truth and healing do not require an intermediary. The medium for healing is our own consciousness, right now.

In October 2022, during a 14-hour spiritual retreat, a facilitator asked me why I did not recognize myself as a beautiful person. I replied that while I knew of my interior beauty, my physical body—in my late 60s, with psoriasis, skin cancer, and wrinkles—was anything but beautiful. The facilitator gently challenged this, stating that beauty is of the whole being—body, mind, and spirit—a reflection of our connection to the Universe. To see it as only an interior phenomenon was to still be living in my “head space.”

This was a profound call on me. It brought to the surface a lifetime of feeling rejected for my appearance. It made me question my indifference to a beautiful friend, Marsha, who had rejected me as a lover decades earlier. Was my indifference real, or a mask for deeper self-neglect? Marsha, despite her perfect appearance, was unhappy and battling a suspected autoimmune disease. Her Rabbi gave her profound advice: to find God and healing, she first had to find herself. She had to explore her beliefs, judgments, and the darkest corners of her life.

His message became mine. It took me years, but I finally realized that my own autoimmune disease was a physical manifestation of a spiritual crisis: I was attacking myself. The self-negating beliefs were so close, so normalized, that I had mistaken them for foundational truths. They were the unconscious subroutines, the black holes, warping my self-perception.

A further insight arrived. The same harsh judgment I applied to my body, I also applied to my body of writing. I was trying to give my words a “botox treatment” to make them more palatable, more presentable to others. I was attacking my own creations out of a deep-seated need for validation. The realization was stark: my body and my writings are temporary containers for my infinite spiritual potential. They are not meant to be perfect; they are meant to be truthful, alive, and imperfectly mine. They are channels for the infinite to express itself through the finite.

A Revised Path to Wholeness

The traditional 12 Steps of recovery can be reinterpreted through this spiritual lens, becoming a roadmap for anyone seeking to heal from the addictions of our culture—addiction to substances, toxic relationships, or self-destructive perceptions.

1. We admitted that our unconscious and habituated lives had become unmanageable, causing trauma to ourselves and others.
2. We came to believe that a neglected power within us could restore us to balance.
3. We made a decision to turn our lives over to this higher interior power, letting go of anything that impeded our progress toward wholeness.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory, recognizing that our unfortunate choices stemmed from a scarcity consciousness.
5. We admitted our untruthfulness to ourselves and others, sharing our errors with a trusted person to lift the burden of shame.
6. We became entirely willing to let go of our attachments to unhealthy attitudes, behaviors, and people.
7. We opened our hearts to new possibilities, preparing to give back to the world in a meaningful way.
8. We became willing to make amends for the harm our ignorance had caused, seeing our relationships as mirrors of our true selves.
9. We made direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would cause further injury.
10. We continued to take personal inventory, practicing mindfulness and promptly admitting when we were wrong.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Truth of our being, understanding that our evolving life is a living prayer.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening, we tried to carry this message to our world, accepting full responsibility for our lives and no longer blaming others. We saved the world—from ourselves.

This path is illuminated by ancient wisdom, like the Cherokee story of the two wolves—one of evil, one of good—fighting within us. The one that wins, the elder explains, is the one you feed. Mindfulness is the practice of choosing which wolf to feed, moment by moment.

The journey of insight is a journey into the heart of the universe, which is also the heart of the Self. When we truly know ourselves, all that we see, unto eternity, is our Self. If we are fragmented and chaos-driven, our perception of the world will reflect that inner turbulence. But as we heal, as we bring light to our internal black holes and learn to navigate by the true north of our own being, we begin to see with new eyes. We see that we are the universe looking out from our eyes, and it sees only itself. We are eternally Creators Creating Creation.

And in that realization, we find peace. We are no longer burdened by thoughts of a diseased past. We are free to see the present moment without chasing it with more words. We can look upon our Creation with joy.

My Creation is good.

I am finally at rest.

I Love Myself The Way I Am.

Perfection

Perfection spies from beyond and behind enlightened eyes

Those who look within themself find

The Sublime surprise, of which all of Life does comprise

The Divine Self of all Mankind

We make our healing choice and with One Liberated Voice

Call from our Eternal Source Supreme

We will no longer roam, WE ARE FINALLY COMING HOME

Awakening from all of our suffering dreams

With courage drought from fear and despair made naught

We move from temporal shadow Into Eternal Light

The Kingdom once sought is now the Vision Caught

Whosoever accepts its Truth now sees with unhindered sight

In us, it’s growing, through us its showing

With the Divine, we may walk hand in hand

In us, it’s glowing, through us it’s flowing

Bringing its light to all between space and land

With our hearts entwined and with One Soul Divine

Our worlds become a blessing immense

Though we pass this way but for one mortal lifetime’s day

With this experience, would you dare dispense?

Chapter 29:  Insight and Mindfulness: A Journey Through Dreams

The Wisdom of Dreams: A Journey Through a Lifetime of Visions

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” – Anaïs Nin

My life has been a river flowing with dreams, from the terrifying nightmares of childhood to the profound visions that followed my recovery from addiction. After 1987, my dream world took on a profound quality I could no longer ignore, becoming a source of insight, healing, and prophecy. This collection of dreams is a testament to the mysterious ways consciousness communicates with us, offering glimpses into our past, present, and future, and guiding us toward our truest selves.

Dreams possess an uncanny ability to deliver precisely the medicine our souls require. They can reveal hidden wounds, point toward necessary changes, and provide the encouragement we need to continue growing. By paying attention to these messages and integrating their wisdom into our daily lives, we participate in our own psychological and spiritual evolution.

Ten Spiritually Significant Dream Categories

I am a spiritual and not a religious person, though I have joined with the community of many theologians who believe that dreams are one of God’s (or, a Higher Power’s) primary ways of getting our attention. In the absolute, there is little difference between what we experience through our dreams and through our so-called waking reality. Whether awake or asleep, we respond internally in real-time to what we witness, as if both experiences have equal footing. So, could Truth be trying to tell us something while we are sleeping?

As we navigate the beautifully complex realm of dreams, let us embrace the mysteries that unfold before us. Each dream, each spirit encounter, and each realization serves as a building block in our spiritual journeys. Here are ten spiritually significant categories of dreams that may be more than meets the mind’s eye. Often, our dreams will fit into two or more of these categories at the same time.

1. Visitation Dreams

It’s common to have a visitation dream after a loved one passes. The deceased often appear in bodily form, healthy and luminous, to communicate an important message, such as: “I’m okay,” or “There is nothing to fear about death.” I have had several of these dreams over the years.

2. Prophetic Dreams

Our brains have built-in predictive hardware, so it should be no surprise that we can prophesize in both our waking and sleeping times. Many people have had a “dream that came true.” Our dreams may use our past experiences to produce a probable series of future events, showing us patterns that help us make better choices when we’re awake. I have had several dreams that have predicted events exactly as they were to happen.

3. Warning Dreams

Our bodies can sometimes speak in dreams to warn us about imminent danger, especially regarding health. We may dream of a specific body part or even receive a verbal warning. In a 2015 study of women diagnosed with breast cancer, 83 percent had dreams that were more vivid than normal, and 44 percent reported hearing specific words like “breast cancer” or “tumor.”

4. Healing Dreams

These are internal creations that bring us from an “out of balance” place into “harmony and balance.” They often involve a mystical encounter. I have experienced many healing dreams, including one amazing dream with my deceased grandfather which, to this day, inspires and confounds me.

5. Heavenly Dreams

According to a 1989 study, more than half of healthy young adults who dreamed of death spent a significant amount of time in that dream in heaven. These dreamers sometimes go down a tunnel or pathway and arrive at heavenly destinations, frequently encountering deceased loved ones. I have had dreams where I have heard the songs and sounds of the “angels of heaven,” carrying a message of beauty beyond my ability to describe.

6. Mutual Dreams

A mutual dream is when two people—typically in separate locations—dream of the same thing at the same time. According to a 2017 study, shared dreams are 80 percent identical on average. A profound insight may come to the dreamer: that the collective mind dreams through individuals, and individuals dream through the collective mind. We are one, after all.

7. Remote Viewing Dreams

In early occult literature, remote viewing was known as telesthesia and traveling clairvoyance: seeing remote or hidden objects with the inner eye. This can happen in dreams, where one’s awareness seems to extend beyond the five senses. For this chapter, I will also include dreams of reincarnation within this category, as they represent a form of viewing a remote life.

8. Radical Empathy Dreams

These are some of the most mysterious dreams, where the dreamer may actually witness another person’s life through their eyes. Questions of the porousness of our very identities come to the forefront. Such dreams suggest that empathy might extend beyond mere imagination, hinting at a more visceral and authentic connection with the lives of others.

9. Personal Growth and Teaching Dreams

Dreams can reflect our innermost thoughts, desires, and aspirations to guide or inspire others. Teaching in dreams may indicate a desire to share knowledge or experiences, reflecting a sense of responsibility to pass on what you have learned. These dreams often symbolize personal growth, highlighting leadership qualities and the potential to positively impact those around you.

10. Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams occur when you become aware that you are dreaming while still in the dream state. This awareness can grant a degree of control over the dream’s narrative. Research suggests this state involves high-frequency brain waves associated with conscious thought, similar in some ways to the effects of psychedelic drugs, but with a retained sense of self-awareness and control.

A Lifetime of Visions: Personal Dreams and Their Meanings

Here is an abbreviated listing of the multitudes of important dream experiences that I have been blessed with, and the profound lessons they have offered me.

1. The Priest and the Evil One (1964)

Categories: Personal Growth, Remote Viewing, Teaching

At just eight years old, I had a vivid dream that would define my understanding of the human psyche. I dreamt I was a priest in a pre-technological village who instructed his people to cast their sacred idols into a lake. In his own home, stripped bare, he summoned the darkness that had long terrorized his community. As he exhausted his life force fighting this unseen entity, a face began to materialize in the fog—his own.

Meaning: This dream was a powerful lesson in psychological projection. It revealed that the “evil” we perceive in the world is often a reflection of our own inner shadows. The gods and defenses we create to protect ourselves are born from an ignorance of our own nature. We are all wounded by this process, and until we acknowledge our role in creating our own demons, we remain trapped. We must heal together, or we will perish alone.

2. A Message from a Lost Family Friend (1978)

Category: Visitation Dream

Bob Fero was a close family friend, a man I grew to love and respect. His life ended tragically in a car accident born from a fit of rage. My father was too grief-stricken to attend the funeral, but I went. Two nights later, Bob appeared in my dream. He told me not to fear death, that where he was is beautiful and peaceful, and that death is not the enemy.

Meaning: This visitation dream offered a profound sense of comfort and a perspective that transcends our mortal fears. It was a message of peace, suggesting that consciousness continues beyond physical death. While the message didn’t console my father, it planted a seed of spiritual understanding in me.

3. The Reincarnation of Bobby Clements (1987)

Category: Remote Viewing

A month into my sobriety, I had a sequence of three dreams on three consecutive nights. In them, my name was Bobby Clements. I saw myself as a teenager with my friends, enlisting in WWII, and finally, piloting a bomber that was shot down, knowing we would all die. Decades later, my sister’s research uncovered the story of Robert “Bobby” Kelly Clements from Nova Scotia, a bomber pilot whose life story matched my dreams with uncanny accuracy—he even hand-picked his five friends for his crew.

Meaning: This experience raises profound questions about the nature of consciousness and memory. Are dreams portals to past lives? The parallels between my childhood aspirations (to be a pilot and an electrician, just like Bobby) and his life are too significant to dismiss as mere coincidence. It suggests that our souls may carry echoes of past experiences that shape our present journey.

I shall revisit Robert “Bobby” Clements in the next chapter.

4. A Dream of Healing and Self-Love (1988)

Categories: Healing and Visitation Dream

Shortly after the tragic death of Diane “Di Di” McCloud, a woman I loved deeply, she appeared in a dream. In it, I was disgusted by an aggressive, abusive man and pleaded with a policeman to arrest him. Di Di then took the policeman’s place and told me that for love to reappear in my life, I must first “arrest” those same negative qualities within myself.

Meaning: This healing dream was a direct message from my subconscious—and perhaps from Di Di’s spirit. It taught me that to find love and peace externally, I first had to confront and transform the darkness within. True love begins with self-rehabilitation.

5. The Prophecy of the Eight-Jeweled Ring (1988)

Category: Prophetic Dream

In a dream, I was searching for a ring with eight jewels but could only find seven. A thought came to me that the eighth jewel would be found mounted to the lost ring itself. Years later, my wife Sharon showed me the ring she had bought for our second wedding. It had seven small stones and one large, distinguishing eighth stone. I had never told her about the dream.

Meaning: This prophetic dream was a stunning confirmation of life’s mysterious synchronicities. It showed that our future may already be casting shadows (or light) into our present, and that the answers we seek are often waiting for us to find them at the right moment. Sharon was the final, most important “jewel.”

6. A Farewell to a Friendship (1988)

Categories: Visitation and Prophetic Dream

I dreamt that heaven was singing a beautiful song about Boston and that I was leaving my lifelong friend Randy Olson behind. Soon after, I traveled to Boston, a significant place in my spiritual studies. My relationship with Randy, who was still struggling with alcoholism, grew distant. He eventually passed away, and our friendship on the “outer plane” was over.

Meaning: This dream foretold a painful but necessary divergence of paths. It illustrated that spiritual growth sometimes requires us to move on from relationships that no longer align with our journey. We cannot force another’s path, but we can honor the love we shared while continuing on our own.

7. The Grandfather and the Fire of Love (1992)

Categories: Healing and Visitation Dream

In a powerful dream, a fierce orb of pure light and love—which I knew to be my deceased grandfather—hovered over me. I felt myself being drawn into it, knowing my physical body couldn’t withstand its intensity but not caring, for I had found what I was searching for. My wife woke me, fearing I was having a nightmare.

Meaning: This was a profound spiritual experience, a glimpse of a higher state of consciousness or what some might call the eighth chakra. It taught me that to host the higher vibrations of love, I needed to strengthen my physical and psychological “body.” The journey to spiritual embodiment is one of preparing the vessel to hold the divine fire.

8. A Glimpse into Another’s Reality (2016)

Category: Remote Viewing Dream

I had a strange and realistic dream where I fell in a bathroom and became trapped between the toilet and the wall. That same morning, my wife’s friend June called. She was visiting her sick brother, who, in the middle of the night, had fallen in his bathroom and gotten trapped between the toilet and the wall.

Meaning: This remote viewing experience challenges the conventional boundaries of consciousness. Do we have the capacity to extend our awareness beyond our five senses? This dream provided a clear “yes,” suggesting a shared field of consciousness where we can connect with others’ experiences, regardless of distance.

9. The Two Paths on the Map (2017)

Categories: Teaching and Lucid Dream

After a seminar on mysticism, I had a lucid dream where I entered a room and was offered a cup that would bring a spiritual “intoxication.” On a table lay a map with two types of paths. On the right was a single, solid line. On the left were several intersecting, dotted-line paths that snaked their way forward.

Meaning: This teaching dream was a metaphor for life’s journey. The solid line represents the conditioned mind—the safe, predictable rut of conformity. The dotted lines represent the mystic’s pilgrimage into the unknown, a path created with each new step. True spiritual evolution requires us to wander, embrace uncertainty, and create our own path rather than follow one laid out for us.

10. Guidance from a Departed Friend (2018)

Category: Visitation Dream

My friend Marty, who had passed away, appeared in a dream. He told me he would be my secret guide and pointed to a book of therapies. The issue he highlighted was my lifelong struggle with isolation, depression, and anxiety—the very caricature of my spiritual self when it’s not healthy. The dream ended with a sense of peace.

Meaning: This visitation dream provided deep comfort and clarity. It showed that the bonds of love and guidance are not severed by death. Marty’s message was a reminder to continue confronting my core wounds, reinforcing that our journey of healing is supported by forces seen and unseen.

Extended Analysis: Deeper Dives into the Dreamscape

The dreams I’ve shared are not mere curiosities but portals into a deeper understanding of reality. Let us now explore the broader philosophical and psychological implications of these nocturnal messages, with a particular focus on the profound lessons of my 1964 dream.

The Problem of Evil and The Power of Projection

My 1964 dream of the priest confronting the “evil one” serves as a foundational text for understanding one of humanity’s most persistent struggles: the problem of evil. Our societies and stories are built on moral binaries—good and evil, hero and villain. While this black-and-white thinking can be a critical survival mechanism in a dangerous world, its application in times of peace becomes maladaptive, limiting our capacity for healthy relationships and personal growth.

The human story is replete with constructs of evil, from the primordial chaos of Mesopotamian myth to the fallen angels of Christian tradition. But where does this understanding come from? The dream of the priest suggests that evil is not an external, deterministic force but is innately tied to our own interpretations, shaped by familial, social, and cultural frameworks. The face of evil is often a projection of our unhealed trauma, fears, and insecurities. The evil I perceived as an eight-year-old boy was a projection from my own wounded nature. What we commonly perceive as evil in the world often reflects our collective consciousness and its disowned shadows.

For those who have experienced trauma, especially in childhood, the world can seem like a landscape of stark moral extremes. Seeing people as simply “good” or “bad” can feel like a necessary survival strategy. This polarized worldview, however, prevents nuanced understanding and deep connection. To live on an unlimited bandwidth requires us to challenge these rigid constructs. Therapeutic approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can help challenge polarized perceptions, but the work is also communal. We must foster environments that acknowledge the layered complexity of human nature and share new stories that reflect this richness. By recognizing the dangers of polarized thinking, we can begin to dismantle the walls that separate us. While the shadows of trauma may stretch long, they need not define us. By acknowledging life’s shades of gray, we take the first steps towards a more interconnected and healing existence.

The Necessity of Ending Idolatry

The second core lesson from the 1964 dream is the necessity of ending idolatry and facing oneself with honesty. The priest commanded his village to cast their sacred idols into the lake, symbolizing the act of letting go of external dependencies and protections. In our contemporary society, this ritual of idolatry persists, though our idols may now be celebrities, politicians, or social media influencers. We elevate them onto pedestals, obscuring their humanity and, in doing so, hindering our own growth.

Idolatry insulates us from the uncomfortable reality of our own fallibility. We delegate ownership of our aspirations and flaws to those we revere. This externalizes our sense of agency and limits our capacity for meaningful self-improvement. The alternative—a culture rooted in self-honesty—compels us to scrutinize the mirror and confront the truths we often avoid. This turning inward is the crucible in which genuine growth is fostered.

This principle extends to religious and spiritual idolatry. While symbols and doctrines can be powerful tools to connect with the divine, they can also become spiritual crutches. We can become fixated on the finger pointing to the moon, forgetting the moon itself. The ancient Jewish prohibition against crafting idols or even vocalizing the name of God speaks to this wisdom. It urges an undivided focus on the divine presence, an entity without form that cannot be contained in material constructs. This tradition exhorts us to a spiritual minimalism—cutting the clutter and returning to a direct, unmediated connection with the sacred. In the stillness of this austerity, we may find that the sacred, in all its resplendent entirety, has been beckoning to us all along.

Embracing the Mystery of Consciousness

The dreams I’ve shared represent just a fraction of the mysterious communications that have shaped my understanding of consciousness. They suggest that we are far more than isolated individuals navigating a material world—we are interconnected beings with access to wisdom, guidance, and healing through the doorway of dreams.

Your own dream world holds similar treasures. Whether you remember fragments or vivid narratives, mundane or mystical, they carry messages worth receiving. The key is cultivating the patience to listen and the courage to act upon what you discover.

Start or continue your dream journal tonight. Keep it beside your bed and record whatever you remember upon waking. Share your most meaningful dreams with those you trust—often, speaking them aloud helps reveal their deeper significance.

Remember that dreams are not puzzles to be solved but invitations to be explored. They call us toward a deeper understanding of ourselves and our place in the vast mystery of existence. In honoring these nocturnal messages, we honor the profound wisdom that flows through the depths of our consciousness, waiting to guide us toward our truest selves. Dream on, dream until your dreams wake you up.

Chapter 31: The Power of Then: The Process of Reclaiming Disassociated Parts of Ourselves, And Healing Traumas from Present or Past Lives.

Writer’s note:

When we begin the process of healing from our human condition, we never know in advance what direction our path will lead us.

Such continues to be the case for me.

During a meditation on July 21, 1987, I had a profound spiritual teaching, with a most confusing revelation, too. Ever so briefly, in a twice in a lifetime experience, I could see the field of energy that constituted my body/mind awareness. I saw embedded in it two almost complete thought, or identity forms, which I recognized as distinct caricatures, or entities. I had two ‘extras’ attached to my field, and I immediately understood that they were not there for my greater good. I came to regard these two unwelcome components to my life force as tricksters, though I noted that their presence allayed the feelings of loneliness of my ego, perhaps because they seemed vaguely familiar. I sensed that I was supposed to let go of these illusions of self, but I did not know what to do with them, until I revisited them again consciously in recent years.

Little did I know that they were to become the most critical components to understand in my desire to heal from trauma and resulting dissociative processes and any wounding from my current or past lives, while supporting a better ongoing present-moment human/spiritual experience.

Part 1: Unraveling the Wounded Energy Vortices of the Soul

The tapestry of our lives is often far richer and more intricate than it first appears. Lying beneath the surface of a singular human experience may be countless threads spun from human archetypes, historical narratives, past incarnations or disassociated aspects of the present self, each holding the echoes of forgotten traumas, triumphs, and incomplete journeys. To see ourselves merely as products of our present lifetime and what we are currently conscious of as ourselves is to miss the spiritual complexity that has shaped the contours of our energy field.

Two such vortices have shaped mine, mirroring fragments of past lives that resonate powerfully in my present. One seems to emerge from a life as an ancient shaman, a healer tethered to the spiritual forces of the earth. The other, from the life of Bobby Clements, an ill-fated WWII pilot surrounded by camaraderie and sacrifice but plagued by loss. Together, they weave a narrative of wounding, healing, and the reclamation of wholeness.

On July 21, 1987, during a profound meditation, I was granted a unique, though temporary vision where I gazed into the energetic matrix of my existence. For the first time, the substrate of what I’d come to know as “my self” revealed two distinct and potent energy vortices within my human life field, in addition to my witnessing presence.. Each bore the imprint of a past life, not as harmonious integrations, but as unresolved fragments that had remained entangled with my current incarnation.

One vortex belonged to the essence of an ancient shaman. This being held the power of deep spiritual connection, one that flowed seamlessly between realms of the seen and unseen. And yet, this past life had not been immune to trauma. This shaman forced his village to face their shadow without the help of gods and idols, and I feel certain that the village shadow prematurely ended his life for his efforts. The sacrifices and spiritual battles from that incarnation left wounds that persisted in my present consciousness and its supporting field of energy.

The second vortex bore the mark of Bobby Clements, an RAF pilot who had perished in WWII. A life defined by leadership, loyalty, and the anguish of unmet aspirations, this energy was less about warfare and more about the brotherhood and deep loss that echoed far beyond his final moments when his plane, filled with his friends from childhood, was shot out of the sky on a 1940 mission over Germany..

What was once unconscious became visible during that meditation, and although it filled me with clarity, it also left me with profound questions and uncertainty. How could I, immersed in the present, heal from the shadows of lives that had long since extinguished? And in this revelation, what role could these embedded traumas play in my spiritual evolution?

The shamanic vortex was deeply rooted in the archetype of the wounded healer, a paradox I have often lived without fully understanding. My childhood was rife with night terrors, bed wetting, abandonment fears, and a desperate yearning for connection that rarely found its nourishment in peers. Yet, intuitively, I always bridged my inner world with spiritual forces I could barely name. Just as the shaman of old must tear away illusions of their own identity to serve others fully, my past as a shaman called me to release layers of ego and projection.

The priest from my childhood dream, who rejected idolatry, cast golden idols into the lake, and summoned the fog veiling his own deepest fears, feels like an echo of this identity. The lesson was clear yet terrifying—to confront the unresolved energies of my past lives, I had to be vulnerable enough to face their darkness. I also had to let go of all tethers to religious misunderstanding dominating whatever age that I appeared within, including organized religion’s inevitable idolatry, tribalism, abnegation of personal responsibility for healing, and superstitious reasoning. This process began with deep meditation but extended into deliberate acts of reconciliation with my younger self in this incarnation and the neglected parts formed through the unrecognized and unresolved traumas of my childhood.

The name Bobby Clements arose as vividly as if I’d spoken it aloud during a series of three dreams on three consecutive nights in 1987. At first, this vivid narrative felt almost too fantastical to take seriously. Yet, the details were so poignant and consistent. I was shown a young man from Nova Scotia, a person full of hope, companionship, and sense of duty for the protection of others entering into WWII alongside five close friends, only to perish together in the skies.

Thirty four years later, internet research by my sister Pam confirmed nearly every detail of these visions. That past life had carried with it a core wound of unfulfilled dreams. Despite my early aspirations to join the Air Force and the ROTC plans I set into motion in my youth, life circumstances prevented me from stepping into that reality in this incarnation. Fragments of unhealed grief turned inward against myself, manifesting as a suicide attempt in 1986, culminating in the desire to dissolve the self altogether.

Seeking Bobby Clemens wasn’t just an intellectual pursuit. It was a spiritual act of acknowledgment. To this day, his frustrations, loyalties, aversion to fascist leaders, and ultimate sacrifice continue to mirror parts of myself that long for resolution. His unfulfilled potential—to be a leader and experience a professionally productive and unencumbered, joyous life filled with friendship in a land far beyond war—is a dream I now carry forward consciously.

What these vortices have taught me is that healing is rarely bound by the timeline of one life. The wounds we bear today often transcend what we dismiss as “only childhood” or “just this life.” They are echoes reverberating through the chambers of multiple realities, requiring not only personal introspection but a deep spiritual honoring of what brought them into being.

Healing these pains and distortions requires several key steps:

1. Recognition (the act of naming what haunts us): Just as I came to realize the shaman and Bobby Clemens were significant vortices within my energy field, we must honor our inner acknowledgment of dissonance, no matter how irrational it may first appear.

2. Integration (inviting the fragments back home): Both my past lives taught me to claim, rather than reject, the vulnerable parts of my soul. This takes time, trust, and radical honesty with oneself.

3. Awareness Beyond ‘the Now’ (transcending human temporal constraints): Healing extends beyond the narrative of this individual life. To heal from all incarnations means acknowledging that time simply creates the context for understanding the cycles of spiritual growth.

These vortices are no longer my captors; they are companions on my expansive spiritual path. They teach me that while wounding itself may arise from the finite journeys we’ve made, healing belongs to something much larger. Healing does not happen alone, but in communion with the timeless essence of our shared human and spiritual experience.

To those on their own journeys of disassociation, trauma, and shadow work, the message is this: we carry the weight of wounds older than we realize. But within us also lies the light of countless lifetimes, waiting patiently to illuminate pathways to freedom. There is immense power available through “the then”, and, by facing it completely, “the now” comes into greater focus, imbued with healing, wisdom, greater self-acceptance and compassion.

1. The Actual Dream Of The Shaman, in 1964

At eight, I had a most unique, realistic dream. The dream appeared when I slept very little, as I usually got to sleep no earlier than midnight, no matter how early I went to bed. I lay in bed and reviewed the day every night before sleep, seeing where I could have done things better or said something differently.

By this point my dreams had finally evolved beyond the continuous nightmare phase I had been terrified by prior to age 8.

Here is the dream:

Having received his directive from “on high,” the priest returned to his village along the lake in the high mountain region. He gathered all of the villagers together and informed them that they were to take every golden figurine, every sacred symbol that they owned, and they were to throw them all into the lake, and never to think about them again. Then, he told each villager that they must go into their own home and face the “evil one” without any protection or care from their gods or their sacred symbols. The priest then returned to his own home, having tossed all of his own idols and treasures into the deep blue lake. He stripped himself bare of all clothing and then began summoning the dark forces. He became surrounded by a fog, and as he lifted his hands, sparks started flying out of his fingertips at the unknown force of darkness that lay just beyond his visual field, still hidden beyond the boundaries of the fog. The priest refocused his energy into his arms and hands, and the sparks grew into a steady energy field, extending from his body, his heart, and his spirit towards his unknown adversary. He was determined to overcome this force, this dark energy, and he redoubled his efforts. The priest’s heart began to race out of control, sweat profusely, and a growing sense of fear and dread began to take hold of his entire being as he finally understood that his energy could not last forever. To continue this battle, he must sacrifice all of his life force. Yet, he felt that he had no choice but to keep engaging the enemy, to finally see the face of the force that had terrorized his village since time began. He desperately strained and stretched to see the object of his fear and disdain, even as the ebbing energy field flowing from his fingertips continued to cut through the fog. Suddenly, a face began materializing before his faltering gaze. As he collapsed to the floor, almost drained of all life, he could no longer fight an undeniable truth– the face of the evil one might be his own!

The dream of the mountain lake community of people, with the priest (me) fighting the force of darkness, is still quite alive in my mind and remains a significant teaching for me as both a child and now as an adult. Idolatry and psychological projection are the modern names for the phenomena shown to me in the dream world. Being so immature and not too worldly in my knowledge, I did not have the necessary background to know what to think about the dream at the time. I discussed the dream with my older sister, who seemed to have some partial answers to its mysteries (based on her understanding of reincarnation), but so many mysteries remained for me. I waited, watched for further answers, and went on with the important business of being a carefree boy, though at times, I fleetingly experienced “self-awareness.”

2. The Dreams of Bobby Clemens, April 1987

In April of 1987, after I had been sober for about one month after 16 years of hell, I had a series of three dreams, on three consecutive nights.

In the first dream, I was an early teenager, hanging out with 5 other boys, who were my buddies. My name, in the dream, was Bobby Clements.

In the second dream, we are all enlisting, as a group, to enter WWII. We told the recruiter that we all wanted to fly on the same plane, or we would not accept service. We were promised that the Air Force would do everything in their power to make sure that we all were on duty in the same location, and, perhaps, share space on the same military aircraft

In the third dream, I am piloting an aircraft, with all of my buddies assuming support roles. We are flying into anti-aircraft shelling turbulence, and I can no longer keep the aircraft under control. My buddies stay in their positions, but apparently whatever hit us from below, is a fatal blow. I know that we are all going to die. The dream ends.

I researched Bobby Clements substantially for two months (prior to advent of the internet) later in 1987. I had seen a park with the last name that I was researching south of Salem towards the coast, and drove to Philomath, Oregon with my wife Sharon, researching the Clements family there, but I came up short.

Several decades later, my sister took up the search for me. My sister is a STRONG BELIEVER in reincarnation, and she has memories from her own past life experiences.

In her research, she came up with Robert “Bobby” Kelly Clements, of Nova Scotia, Canada.. Robert flew a Lancaster bomber for the RAF out of England, and he was allowed to hand pick his crew, according to the records. He picked his five Nova Scotia friends!

His story was identical to what I saw in the three dream sequence, according to the family reports that she had read about “Bobby”, too.

Part 2: Revisiting the Unraveling of Wounded Energy Vortices and the Path to Wholeness

The human experience is infinitely layered, a mosaic of moments, emotions, and energies that transcend the boundaries of a single lifetime. For those embarking on the profound spiritual endeavor of healing, the path often reveals itself in unexpected and mysterious ways. What lies beneath the surface of our conscious awareness isn’t just the residue of childhood or this life alone. It is an intricate web of energies, stories, and wounds that echo across time, demanding acknowledgment and integration, not dismissal.

This is my exploration of a lesser-discussed concept in spiritual growth and healing: the presence of wounded energy vortices within the soul. These are remnants from past lives, disassociated parts of the present self, unaddressed archetypes, or cultural narratives that reside quietly in our unconscious until they surface, compelling us to reconcile and harmonize our fragmented energies. The way forward is not a battle against these vortices but a dialogue with them, an act of recognition and reintegration on a spiritual plane.

To see ourselves as mere products of our current life experience is to oversimplify an intricate spiritual reality. Human consciousness is not a singular, fixed entity. It comprises fragments and echoes from past lives, ancestral memories, and archetypes of the collective unconscious. The soul houses wounds older than the body it inhabits, wrapped delicately in layers of forgotten incarnations.

There is an infinite power accessible through accessing and becoming lovingly present for” the then”. Yet, many of us live within the confines of “the now,” unable to fathom the depth of these fragments’ influence. Cultural norms and modern-day psychology have conditioned us to frame our challenges within the narrative of our childhoods or current circumstances. While this understanding is significant, it isn’t always the full picture. Healing requires expanding the lens through which we view ourselves, inviting in the complexity and timelessness of the soul.

For me, this realization arose from a vivid spiritual revelation. During a meditation on July 21, 1987, I encountered two distinct energy vortices within my “body/mind awareness.” These were more than the fragments of my psyche; they were entities unto themselves, carrying with them the unresolved energies of past lives. Initially, these “extras” appeared as tricksters in my spiritual field, allaying my ego’s loneliness while obscuring my ability to see the truth clearly. I came to know these beings as the enduring echoes of a spiritual healer from ancient times and a WWII pilot named Bobby Clemens. Together, they were pieces of my fragmented energy field demanding acknowledgment. But the question loomed large: How do we heal what seems beyond this lifetime?

Recognition is the first step in any healing process. These energy vortices do not emerge as straightforward figures. Instead, they manifest as patterns in your energy field, recurring dreams, vivid meditations, or deeply embedded emotions that feel larger than this life alone.

For me, the presence of these fragments first unfolded in dreams and meditative insights. The shaman within my energy field carried with him the duality of immense spiritual power and profound spiritual sacrifice. He represented the archetype of the “wounded healer,” asking me as his modern counterpart to confront the parts of myself that were tangled in ego and projection. His echo rippled through my childhood experiences, marked by abandonment fears and night terrors, yet also by inexplicable spiritual connections to unseen realms.

The second vortex, Bobby Clemens, emerged in a series of three hauntingly vivid dreams. He was an RAF pilot from WWII, a leader bound by loyalty and camaraderie to his friends, whose life was cut short in battle. Decades later, my sister’s research into past life connections confirmed the details of these dreams, validating my inner knowing. Bobby carried with him the ache of unfinished potential, as his life ended abruptly amidst the storms of war. But his presence taught me something profound: our unfulfilled aspirations and buried grief do not dissolve when a lifetime ends; they carry forward into the present, waiting for us to meet them with compassion.

These vortices are not enemies to be defeated nor flaws to be eradicated. They are parts of ourselves asking for a seat at the table of integration. To heal, we must invite these fragments into dialogue and listen earnestly to the stories they hold.

Acknowledging the presence of these energies is the doorway to healing. For me, it began with naming Bobby Clemens and the shaman as integral but fragmented parts of my consciousness. Their stories became clearer when I chose to pay attention to recurring dreams, emotional triggers, and moments of profound déjà vu.

Integration requires radical honesty and patience. My work with the shaman required confronting my ego and illusions of self. It also meant remaining vulnerable to the parts of my energy field that harbored woundedness. For Bobby Clemens, integration meant grieving not just for his life, but for the parts of myself that carried his unfulfilled dreams. Counseling, spiritual meditation, and even acts of symbolic recognition (like honoring the sacrifices made in war) became pivotal to this integration.

Healing cannot be confined to the narrative of this life. Modern psychology, while invaluable, often stops short of addressing the larger arc of the soul. Spiritual teachings suggest that our wounds may originate from lifetimes beyond this one, weaving a continuity that binds past, present, and future into a single tapestry. Awareness of this continuum expands our capacity to integrate and release what no longer serves us.

Healing is neither linear nor bound by time. It is a spiral, an ongoing process that demands courage and deep self-awareness. By unraveling the wounded energy vortices of the soul, we begin to see that healing extends beyond the individual self. If each of us is truly, as Krishnamurti suggests, “the entirety of humanity,” then personal healing is a radical act of collective liberation.

We must study ourselves, however uncomfortable or uncertain the process may feel. Through introspection, dream interpretation, and deliberate acts of self-discovery, we expand our understanding of who we are and where we’ve come from. Healing wounded energies isn’t just a spiritual task; it’s a commitment to rediscover the love and compassion clouded by layers of trauma and separation.

What might it look like to truly face the wounded vortices within your energy field? Beyond techniques, it requires a willingness to live inside the tension of these questions without rushing to resolve them. Healing asks us to bear witness to the fragments of ourselves, to invite them home, and to honor their lessons as gifts rather than burdens.

The invitation is a challenging one, but the rewards are infinite. To heal the wounds of the soul is to reclaim your wholeness. It is to reach beyond the present and tether yourself to the expansive mystery of existence. It is to build a life rooted in love—not just for yourself, but for the entirety of humanity.

Start by asking the questions your soul yearns to answer. What parts of yourself need acknowledgment? What energies or stories are ready to come home? And how might their healing illuminate the potential of your greater wholeness?

To those ready to take the first step, consider therapy, meditation, and spiritual practices that align with your inner quest. Understanding the layers of the human energy field requires more than intellectual curiosity. It requires courage. Start small. Begin today. The path to wholeness is less about arriving at an endpoint and more about becoming reacquainted with who you’ve always been.

Part 3: Reinterpreting Present Incarnations to Deepen Clarity

Life isn’t just a straight path. It’s a complex, interwoven tapestry of past energies, present decisions, and the futures we shape. Through the lens of my own experiences, I’ve uncovered how past-life archetypes and unresolved spiritual wounds have shaped my struggles and growth in this life.

By examining the echoes of lives such as an ancient shaman or a World War II pilot like Bobby Clements, I’ve gained clarity on deep recurring themes of wounding, healing, and transcendence. This isn’t about dwelling on the past but using its lessons as a springboard for transformation. Below, I’ll share three major themes from my past lives and how they continue to affect and evolve my present.

1. The Wounded Healer Archetype

At the core of my spiritual experiences lies the archetype of the “wounded healer.” This is someone whose ability to heal and guide others is shaped by facing their own pain. A previous life as an ancient shaman exemplifies this paradox.

Endowed with the power to reveal hidden truths, I challenged sacred idols in a village, encouraging the community to confront their fears and illusions. This brought awakening—but also exile. My efforts were silenced by the very shadows I sought to heal. These wounds resonate in this life through night terrors, feelings of abandonment, and a search for meaningful connection.

A pivotal dream in 1964 mirrored this narrative. A priest casting golden idols into a mountain lake symbolized the shaman’s story, reminding me to confront inner fears rather than externalizing them. True healing, I’ve learned, begins within; it stems from the courage to face our internal adversaries.

Despite my efforts to write and share spiritual insights, I am often ignored, much like that forgotten shaman. However, this has illuminated a profound lesson about transforming suffering into light and finding fulfillment without external validation.

2. Unfulfilled Potential and the Story of Bobby Clements

Bobby Clements, my past incarnation as a World War II pilot, embodies the theme of unfulfilled potential. His life was a lesson in fraternity, loyalty, and dreams cut short. Vivid dreams in 1987 replayed his story with unmistakable clarity, allowing me to confront unresolved wounds.

Bobby’s frustration with his aircraft’s fatal plummet symbolized deeper lessons about failure and persistence. These echoes carried over into this life as challenges with self-doubt, depression, and recurring cycles of falling short of ambitious aspirations. His longing for completion mirrored my struggles to align personal desires with an inherited sense of duty.

Instead of trying to fulfill Bobby’s unfinished dreams, I came to balance his influence by honoring my own direction. His energy serves as a compass, guiding me to integrate loyalty without sacrificing my individuality.

3. Signs of Past-Life Influences in Everyday Life

Clues of past-life dynamics often appear through dreams, emotions, and interactions. For example:

• Dreams and Déjà Vu: Frequent dreams and moments of familiarity point to unresolved energies or unresolved archetypes. These are not random; they serve as invitations to look deeper.

• Patterns and Behaviors: From night terrors to compulsion-driven decisions, certain behaviors become metaphors for past-life lessons. I’ve come to see self-criticism and impulsive tendencies as echoes of energies far bigger than the present.

• Relationships: Rivalries and deep connections hint at karmic energies shared across lifetimes. A childhood rivalry with my sister, Pam, carried undertones of unresolved competition from previous cycles.

These signs aren’t mere obstacles but opportunities. They act as signals urging transformation and reconciliation.

Understanding past-life themes isn’t about being stuck in the past. It’s about using those lessons to gain clarity and transcend the limitations they impose. Through introspection, I’ve developed a three-step process:

1. Recognition

Notice recurring patterns or archetypal behaviors. These emotional undercurrents often carry hidden insights.

2. Integration

Employ tools like meditation, therapy, or journaling to honor these energies without clinging to their influence. The goal isn’t to erase the past but to honor and transform it.

3. Transcendence

View these echoes not as burdens, but as teachers. By reframing past-life influences, I’ve been able to transform them into avenues of growth and alignment.

Exploring past lives isn’t just mystical musing. It’s a path to understanding, healing, and empowerment. Life’s tapestry of past, present, and future becomes clearer when viewed through this lens. By unraveling these influences, we’re better equipped to make conscious choices, align with our potential, and enrich our spiritual journeys. For me, acknowledging these connections has illuminated a path toward greater self-discovery and purpose.

Are certain moments or feelings resonating with you in new or profound ways?

Honor them.

They may just carry the key to unlocking a fuller, more aligned version of yourself.

Chapter 32:  2017 – Marty C. and A New Sunrise

Over the years, I have become deeply disturbed by the developments within our shared world, within my individual consciousness, and the points of connection between self and other, through language, religion, and philosophy, that have created oppression, repression, and the resultant physical, emotional, and social disease. 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 its basic, innermost needs of a safe belonging, of being loved, 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.

Together, Marty and I shared over twenty years in a couple’s group, many weekend trips, nights out for dinner and entertainment, and then the book club that we also shared together for the last several years. 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. I noted how his wife organized and dominated his life over the years that I had known him, and how she would all too often speak for him, or even verbally run over him in group meetings. It was common knowledge that when his wife was present, Marty would not consistently reveal himself and his own story, and he would instead defer to his wife through his silence. My own experience of his wife 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 with herself, rather than wait for me to finish my story. At this point, much like Marty, all further talk from me would end, and I would just listen to her.

This brings me to January 11th of 2017, when I had my first ‘seizure’. I awoke at 2:45 in the morning, 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. 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”. I became quite concerned by this whole experience, though I kept it to myself 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.

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 “death”, at least in a spiritual sense. I saw that there was no negotiating with it. Prayers, meditations, affirmations, nothing seemed to have any impact upon the dark mass. I knew that some sort of death was coming my way, though I felt 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. He 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 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.

That next day, Wednesday, at noon, I had another episode of such intensity that I dared not even attempt to get up from the couch. I had previously arisen 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 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. Each time I tried to get off the couch, I became quite dizzy. 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.

I actually felt like my consciousness was trying to escape, and it took all of my resources just to hold it together. I characterized this present event to Sharon as almost losing my mind, while having an almost neurotoxic component to it.

Thursday came, and I had not improved much. It also was the day that Marty’s tumor was being removed. I had dual concerns, for Marty, and for myself. I continued to listen to the occasional taped “spiritual wisdom” tapes, hoping to hear something that might bring me comfort. I listened to Jack Boland, a master of the recovery process. 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. 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. 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. As I lay out on the couch, feeling my own emotional/spiritual death about to overtake me, I cried out in despair to Sharon, to please share my message, since I didn’t believe that I had the capacity to deliver it in a way that others could hear.

Sharon looked at me with acceptance, love, and compassion. She 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.

I had the experience of a lifetime 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 power figures. 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 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 by those who already believed that they knew me. But the curious ones would read, and appreciate, this aspect of the message.

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.

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. I saw how I had become attuned to Marty on a psychic level. Some have called this connection radical empathy, some have called it telepathic, some have called it just plain fucking mysterious. Somehow, Marty’s structure of consciousness, his ego mind, had been transmitted to me, and I “felt his presence” within my own sensitive, susceptible consciousness through my love and concern for the man. 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. The light of my own awareness, shown through Marty’s matrix of consciousness, created the shadows, or words, that ached to reach from the unknown to the knowing parts of myself.

During this period, in April 2017, Sharon and I attended Matthew Fox’s Cosmic Christ Workshop in Tacoma. After Friday evening’s seminar, I had that most interesting, powerful dream referred to in the section on dreams.

We met with Marty and his wife the week following the workshop. Marty’s recovery was going well. I continued to carry a sense of the Transcendence; my powers of insight, awareness, understanding, love, and compassion were at their peak. Sensing his own death may be close, Marty wanted to engage in activity that he had delayed. He wanted to prepare to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.

Yet, we also came to discuss the Cosmic Christ workshop. I wanted to speak from the energy that was uplifting me, but Marty’s wife made sure to dominate the discussion. Even when I tried to share, she grabbed her phone and started Googling the very information that was being delivered from me. It was typical of her, and it was offensive. I understood at a very deep level what Marty experienced with this woman, and my heart opened at a much deeper level for him.

On a late April couple’s group meeting at Marty’s home, I was able to talk about my experience of “transcendent energy” with Marty and Jim. Marty’s wife had disappeared, so we were able to talk at length. Marty was genuinely interested in what I had to say, as well as the potential for spiritual healing. His own father had a spiritual experience prior to his death, and Marty wanted to have a taste of the divine. I promised Marty a copy of a meditation that I had prepared, based on the spiritual experience I had on July 21, 1987. I text messaged it to him the following day.

In the message, I included the meditation, a “thought experiment” designed to be a verbal bridge from the non-verbal part of myself to my conscious mind. It was based upon the spiritual experience of July 21, 1987. It was a guided journey to let go of controls, to be carried into an unexplored realm of experience, to find a place of absolute stillness where a teaching could emerge. It spoke of eliminating time-based thoughts, of recognizing forces attached to our energy fields, and of the gap between self and other as the source of all illusion. It was a technique for shaking the mind free from its certainties.

Then, I shared a dream I had that morning, of being in a noisy industrial plant where an electrical system needed reconditioning. I was working on an electrical panel, and Marty’s security lock needed to be removed. I interpreted this for him:

“Marty, you have a resistance to your own healing. You must remove the self-protective mechanisms and controls that you, and perhaps your wife, have layered over your consciousness for many years. These controls lock you out of your own greater good. The very state of consciousness that made the melanoma possible is still embedded within your mind and heart. Infusions and medications, though potentially helpful, alone will not get the job done.”

I expressed my ultimate confidence in him, in his beauty and his potential, and planned on living into this dream with him for a long time to come.

Marty was able to maintain good health for only a few more weeks. My meditation had little positive impact. My intention was to help him release his understanding of who he was and experience his divine nature. Marty was a man of highest intellect and character, yet he had not ever experienced the release of his great creation, his ego, into the great Unknown, though he certainly desired to.

Three weeks later, Marty, Sharon, and I hiked Dog Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge. He had just started a new targeted drug therapy. We took our time, and Marty persevered with great spirits, encouraged by his performance. We began preparing for a Pacific Crest Trail hike to fulfill one of his dreams. Two days later, he began losing all use of his left leg and arm, and then became wheelchair bound. It was postulated that he was experiencing a reaction to the new medication, Keytruda. The potential metastases to his brain had already caused concern that it would impinge on his sense of self, and on his competent, highly intelligent mind.

Dying, death, and transformation now took on a special urgency for Marty. Because of the complications, he lost much of his treasured independence and the desire to even scan Facebook. All of his energy became devoted to just getting through the day. He was prescribed anti-inflammatory medicine, and he continued on anti-seizure medicine.

Marty communicated to me his sense of being inarticulate in relation to these new experiences. His life was transitioning from one that was highly engaged, physically active, spiritually stimulating, and socially interactive, to one that was physically inactive, threatened with the loss of intellectual competence, humiliating, depressing, and devoid of normal joy and physical intimacy.

A story came to my mind, which I sent to him in a text message. I wrote to him about life as a lifelong adventure hike, with the beauty of nature on one side and a wicked forest fire on the other, burning away our past, our hidings, and all the knowledge we hold so dear. I listed the losses he was experiencing: independence, mobility, intimacy, control over his body, and the desire to keep living on dying’s terms.

A story came to my mind after our morning’s meditation, of which I sent to Marty in text message form, and I include parts of it here as a small record of our journey together.  The message is as follows:

“Marty, all of your descriptors are perfect, and they will change, as you change. While in meditation, the following images came to my mind:

Life can be like a lifelong adventure hike (perhaps the Pacific Crest Trail of everyday life?). On one side of the trail we are witnessing 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 and mystery of the unknown. Yet, on the other side of the trail, a wicked forest fire has erupted, obscuring our view, threatening our safety and freedom, and taking us out of the beauty and wonder of the new moment. Its flames are now, more than gently, lapping 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 cling to, and hold so dear.. When you search for names to characterize this process, I understand at the deepest level why it is hard giving it a new name, or calling it “good” or perfect while still being so painfully “burned” by one aspect of it. Losing independence in life and in decision making is a most difficult proposition.

Losing the ability to get out of bed and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night by oneself can be demoralizing.

Losing the ability to plan for the day to day exigencies of life can make one feel less than empowered.

Losing the sense of intimacy with one’s partner, who is now more or less the primary caregiver, and not the lover, feels a bit like love has abandoned us for now.

Losing strength and mobility, and being dependent on another for all movement around the house, and now, around all of life, feels like life is almost stripping us of our dignity.

Losing control of one’s bladder and bowels, and wearing supplemental underwear, and the insertion of pads onto our beds to trap our incontinence, can feel like adding insult to injury.

Losing the use of the left arm and leg, and then not having others respect one’s sense of loss, feels like the world has become insensitive to all suffering individuals.

Losing the desire to keep living on dying’s terms, while all of the other losses kept accumulating and accelerating, can make the thought and actions related to Death With Dignity an attractive option.

Yet, your journey, with this measure of suffering becoming folded into it, is part of humanity’s unbroken wholeness, of which we all remain a most treasured, though challenged, part of. Can you begin to trust that Love itself is always guiding, and coming out in its many new, challenging forms? Love is soon to become your new and only garment, and any holding back will only increase your pain.

Marty, our hike along the path goes on, and the “forest fire” keeps burning for all of us. Hope and anticipation push us forward, knowing the “view ahead is always changing.” Yet, the past keeps burning away in ways that are uncertain and often stir up anxiety. Around the next bend lies only the unknown, ready to bring whatever comes. And at that same bend, the “fire” will have burned away everything unlike your true nature, revealing who you were “in the beginning, before the world was.” Naming it is a challenge unique to each of us. Some articulate souls write great books and draw attention to their words. You don’t need that.

I shared how my unwillingness to talk or write much stemmed from being shut down for most of my life. I spoke of Toxic Masculinity, Toxic Religion, and Toxic Capitalism as the cause of so much suffering, and how we had both been victimized by this type of male energy. I thanked him for caring, for listening, and for how our hearts had merged at this most troubling of times. I wrote, “

I will walk with you, in freedom, to whatever extent we can. I walk with you, in pain, while we must. I will walk with you into the unknown… I will walk with you into death, each in our own time, and in our own way. I will integrate part of my individual destiny with your own, and, ultimately, join with Destiny itself.”

At the end of the letter, I quoted the title of my wife Sharon’s book:

“Whose Death Is It, Anyway?”

It is all of ours.

In late June, I began to accompany Marty to his Men’s Cancer Survivor Support creative writing group at OHSU. During our weekly drives, he communicated that he and his wife were having insurmountable issues. They were no longer intimate, and Marty struggled to feel love for his wife anymore. He wanted a divorce, yet was powerless. He believed his wife was insane, and I found it hard to disagree. Marty was also starting to have hallucinations. He and his son wanted him to be relocated to a neutral care facility, but his wife insisted that if he moved, she would move with him, sleeping on the ground next to him if necessary. Marty felt trapped. He believed the cancer treatment would have no positive outcomes, so he needed to plan for his own assisted suicide through the Death with Dignity process.

Near the end of August, Marty related to me how it would be better to die quickly, so that more money would be available for his wife. I was shocked by his lack of self-worth. I told him he was worth every penny he spent on himself, but he could not accept that. He had already spent $840 on his end-of-life drugs and felt it was a burden. He stated that he had to die, so that she could live. I was distressed, a helpless witness to a self-imposed crucifixion.

His wife considered herself a minister and a teacher. She was studious and had a rigid understanding of “facts,” which became her idols. She had little sense of humor and no capacity to embrace the unknown. When her husband began his dying process, I became actively involved. She would rattle on endlessly about how to best care for him, even though I was successfully navigating the difficulties. Her husband became unhappy with her care, considering her incompetent and uncaring.

Yet, she would not stop her irritating teaching mode. I finally confronted her. “Please stop trying to teach me about stuff that I don’t need to know. Can’t you trust that your husband and I are successfully navigating these difficult times together?”

“Oh, Bruce, you are just going to have to treat this like it is an AA meeting,” she replied. “I have to give you this teaching. Just continue to listen until I am complete.”

“Actually, I don’t want or need any of your teaching. You teach fear, and distrust of me, as well as the Unknown. Please get into your car, and leave for a while, so that we can all breathe a little easier.”

It only took me 23 years to speak my truth to this knowledge dominatrix. My love for her husband took precedence over my own feelings of inadequacy. Confronting a difficult reality takes energy, yet not doing so diminishes our own standing in Truth, Life, and Love. So I spoke out, and she actually listened.

I continued to help with small tasks and attend the writing group with him until two weeks before his assisted suicide. I came to deeply miss the only man who responded to my philosophically challenging Facebook posts. Somehow the disease in our shared lives led to another form of death, the end to our friendship. Love goes before all of us, but while chaos’s clouds obscure the view, it is hard to see the path. It remains a mystery to me how to plan for and successfully navigate the rivers of life that carry us into death. Death really sucks for those with much life left to live. I am not fooled by the promises of a “reward in the afterlife.” That thought is more addictive than opiates. The fear of death can be conquered without it being masked by illusions. That is the path of today’s spiritual warrior.

Marty chose to exercise his right to the Death With Dignity process on September 10, 2017, without ever informing me of his decision. What he had informed us was that there was to be a party at their home on Saturday, Sept 10, as a celebration of life. I was stunned and hurt by his decision. I saw that he had regained full use of his left arm and was starting to regain feeling in his left leg. His main fear, however, was that future metastatic lesions in his brain would take away his sense of self.

We attended the Michael Franti concert that evening, after making an early exit from Marty’s “celebration.” I cried almost the whole way through Franti’s song, “Life is Better With You.” Life was better with Marty in it.

Marty took nearly twenty hours to die, ultimately dying on September 11, 2017 (yes, 911). We were not included in any preparation, planning, execution, or support. Sharon, a hospice nurse and expert on Death and Dying, was almost totally shunned by his wife during the last three months. The only reason I was present was due to a direct demand from Marty.

My father died on the day of Marty’s funeral. 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 was now dealing with the care for, and eventual death of my father; the protracted dying process and death of my good friend Marty; and the insanity of the wife of my now deceased friend. Facing this two-fold challenge placed me in a position for “accelerated understanding and spiritual growth” and generated unexpected anxiety. I used to say “growth is highly overrated” in a humorous manner. Now, I looked for real humor in the face of adversity and kept coming up short. Apparently, the teacher was Death Itself.

In a eulogy I wrote but was not used, I said:

“2017 was the year when I finally learned how closely two male human beings could connect, and ultimately become ‘one’ on a journey of exploration… You introduced me to Death in a way that has changed me forever… Through your death, I have been Destroyed, and I am now Renewed. Rest in Peace, Marty.”

Marty’s final creative effort from the writing group was a story about visiting his green burial plot in Riverview Cemetery. He wrote:

“I looked up the hillside and remarked to Doyle, ‘Look, a coyote loping through the midst of the people and their pets with such obvious self-confidence… Yes, I recognized my sign, the age-old sign of the trickster, the shape-shifting presence of the coyote. May he safely inhabit this place forever.’”

Marty, though I miss you, you are now safe, healed, and whole.

I began to experience the “BIG THREE” of depression, anxiety, and the occasional panic attack two weeks following the deaths of Marty and my father, and it plagued me several times over the next three months.

We arrived at the Oregon coast, at Cannon Beach on October 2, 2017.  We met our dear friend from Arizona, June, and her love interest, Michael. As we walked on the beach, I tried to relate to Michael the experience of my friend’s recent death, my father’s death, and the disturbing appearance of insanity in my friend’s marriage. Michael looked up at the nearby mountains, appearing not too interested. He attempted to redirect my attention.

Suddenly, a strangely uncomfortable feeling came over me. My heart started to beat harder, my skin tingled, and I felt light-headed. My condition continued to deteriorate, yet all that I felt comfortable sharing was about my sore foot. We neared our hotel, and the anxiety reaction was threatening to overwhelm me. At dinner, I had lost my appetite. June commented that I looked gray. I had to leave the table immediately.

I went back to our room and lay down. The world felt like it was spinning. My heart sounded like a drum. I became so concerned that I went to a medical portal to ask a doctor if I should be hospitalized. The response brought some temporary relief: a stress-induced anxiety reaction. I returned to dinner feeling better, but later that night, I began to feel nauseous again. My heart beat wildly, and my body started shuddering as if I was frozen. Sharon crawled into bed and held me close. Her warmth brought some comfort, yet my foot ached like I had never experienced pain before.

I was awake all night, meditating on my suffering. I came to realize that I really needed to communicate around the absolute insanity of the family activity surrounding the death of my dear friend and my father. Michael had shut me down at the moment I needed to talk most. By not communicating, the anxiety reaction launched me into outer space and brought upon me a sickness I had never experienced before. Oh, that blessed pain, for it would lead me further down the path to my own ‘liberation’.

As I meditated, I realized how much of what I know about myself was created by my fundamental relationship to my parents. I had never developed a complete sense of self. My sense of self revolved around internalizing their expectations and my defense mechanisms for managing the fallout. I felt a need to “balance” whatever energy was being over-expressed, adding to my passive-aggressive component. It was as if two extra self-organizing personalities—my creations of who I thought my father and mother were—occupied my ego mind, crowding out the “real me.”

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. I was finally an “orphan,” and all the entanglements were now physically removed. My father’s spirit no longer needed to overshadow my own life. For me, this is an extraordinary release. Being placed on “formula” right after birth and in a chilly car in the garage at night left me as a young being feeling abandoned. Though I loved my parents, I did not want to be like them.

Up to this point, I have perceived the collective impact of toxic male consciousness upon my individual existence. I saw that I had two Tricksters roaming through my heart and soul, and their continued presence, though they kept me from being lonely, kept me from developing into my greater good. 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.

Who, or what, am I now? I am a mystery, even to myself. The transition times from what I thought I was to who I am predestined to become create intense anxiety. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment.

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. The beauty of the ocean, our friendships, the taste of our food, even the continuing pain in my foot, all felt like lyrics of a heavenly song connected by the rhythm of Love.

The conspiracy of silence has to be broken, again and again. The silencing of my true identity through adherence to old, worn out patterns has to end for this healing to have any hope of transforming the heart and soul.

In this moment, I am no longer anxious. I am free. “I” will not be denied.

The amygdala in our brains under duress from trauma creates new paths, leading in unhealthy directions. For me, my number one intention for healing is to avoid situations or people where poor communication and suppression of emotions has become ‘normalized’. I now have intimate knowledge of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. It is inappropriate to keep these issues secret.

I have found help through professional therapy, exercise like yoga, immersion in nature, meditation, rest, and honest communication with friends and family. Insight, prayer, service to others, and medication can also be helpful. It is also important to avoid anxiety-producing behaviors like excess coffee, and to allow feelings to arise without judgment. Writing can be helpful, but it is best to have friends who respond directly, in person, where our humanity shines brightest. Facebook just cannot get the job done.

For those who still suffer, please heal your self.

Chapter 34:  My Father Beryl and My Search For Truth

My search for Truth, a journey I embarked upon in the 1980s, would ultimately lead me on a long, unexpected detour through the complex terrain of my relationship with my father. For years, I felt little desire to document this quest, let alone the often-isolated and seemingly irrelevant details of my personal history. Why would I choose to expose the intimate, sometimes painful, elements of my family life to the world? The simple answer is that, for the longest time, I wouldn’t. That resolve held firm until around 2014, when an early retirement from my career as an electrician became necessary to provide intensive care for my ailing father. This new chapter afforded me the time to reflect—to take stock of where I was, where I had been, and where I might wish to go in the finite time I have left.

It was in this period of stillness and service that I began to see the foundational structures of my own life with new clarity. My entire existence was built upon a framework established by the works, processes, and histories of my family, stretching back through generations of fathers. The patterns of my life were not mine alone; they were echoes of a much larger, ancestral story.

The Burdens of a Patriarch

My sister has always served as our family’s dedicated historian, and I had long been content to let her piece together the most interesting and important elements of our lineage. Yet, for all her meticulous research, she could never fully excavate the emotional heritage of our ancestors. The letters were too few, the oral histories lost to time and death. But my father, in his final years, was a living archive, though with the ravages of dementia overtaking him, the memories were rapidly disappearing. As I became his near-constant companion, I took advantage of this direct engagement with him, supplementing them with family records, to begin constructing the first part of my own story—a story inextricably linked with his.

My father, Beryl Donald Paullin, born in 1927, was a product of the Great Depression. His own father, also named Beryl but known as Bruce, was a community-respected Fire Chief who cast a shadow of fear within his own home through his abusive nature and alcoholism. This was the first link in a chain of trauma I would later come to understand. I know little else about Grandpa Beryl, other than his service in World War I and his final resting place in Willamette National Cemetery, where my father now also lies.

The weight of his presence was so oppressive that my father shielded my sister Pam and me from him until our teenage years. I recall only two visits to Grandpa Beryl’s home and one to the VA hospital before his death. In his sober later years, he seemed pleasant enough, and it was not obvious that he had been a man who had inflicted so much pain.

Dad’s mother, Elsie, was the classic abused wife, her life marred by physical and emotional suffering at the hands of “that Brute,” as my father called him. Her story, too, is a fragmented narrative of pain: kidney disease, one of Oregon’s first kidney transplants, and a death that occurred shortly after my own birth. The family history is riddled with such sorrow. Dad’s older brother, John Edward (known as Ed), was removed from the home at age six after a near-fatal beating from their father. It was only much later that we learned Elsie had secretly given birth to a daughter at fifteen, a sister my father and uncle never knew until late in their lives. The family tree was shrouded in secrets and sorrow, its branches heavy with unspoken grief.

His younger sister, Gloria (or Susie), suffered alongside my father under these abusive conditions. Both bore the invisible scars of PTSD for most of their lives, their personalities shaped by the era and the trauma they endured. My father, through sheer force of will, managed to build a more successful life than his sister. Yet, Susie carried a particularly venomous story to the end of my father’s life: that a four-year-old Beryl, having accidentally broken a lamp, was the cause of Edward’s near-fatal beating. This narrative, a poisoned arrow of blame, illustrates the insidious ways trauma contorts memory and perpetuates suffering across generations. It was a burden my father carried, perhaps even a wound that never fully healed.

Despite the darkness of his upbringing, my father possessed a formidable will to succeed. He was a classic overachiever, relentlessly driving himself to overcome the poor self-esteem his abusive father had instilled in him. He worked harder than anyone, his perfectionism and zeal for order finding a perfect outlet in his eventual career with the US Postal Service. This same intensity, however, could be challenging for those around him, particularly for someone with a passive-aggressive personality like my own. He thrived on direct engagement, enjoying stimulating, challenging discussions. (While with my father I usually receded into the background, rarely raising my head, or my voice, to counter his sometimes-obnoxious expression of self). Those who took the time to see past his rough edges found a man they could love, but his tendency to lead with a derogatory remark often created a barrier that was difficult to overcome.

At sixteen, desperate to escape his family and convinced he was a “dummy” with no future, he enlisted in the Marines. His mother promptly had him discharged, but he re-enlisted in the Navy at eighteen, serving on the USS West Virginia and the USS Wisconsin. Upon his return in 1947, he confronted his father, threatening him with death if he ever laid a hand on his mother again. With that, he drew a line, stepping away from the toxicity of his parents’ relationship for a long time.

He enrolled at the University of Portland, driven by a deep curiosity to understand the human mind. He studied Psychology, Logic, and Philosophy, but the demands of a hyper-busy life prevented him from finishing his degree. (This unfulfilled quest was a legacy he passed to me. I would later pick up his mantle, attempting to finish the job he started—understanding the fractured human psyche.)

Dad married my mother, Corinne Beatrice Henry, in 1950. Her parents were understandably wary, and my father had to prove his worthiness, even mowing my grandfather’s lawn before being allowed to take my mother on a date. When my sister Pam was born in 1954, my father experienced a love he had never known. Pam was a precious prize. I arrived in late1955, and my early years were fraught with health issues, causing disruption and making it difficult for him to embrace me. The truth, I now see, is that he struggled to understand my innate value as a son, a reflection of his own unhealed wounds.

He was my hero, albeit a broken one. He loved my mother deeply, though often unskillfully. He never raised a hand to her, but their communication was a tapestry of traded barbs—part humor, part veiled aggression. He carried his father’s harsh disciplinary methods into his own parenting, and the sting of his belt is a memory both my sister and I carry. Yet, through it all, my love for him never wavered.

The Cycle Repeats

My father’s relationship with alcohol was another inherited pattern. He was a top-flight shuffleboard player and beer drinker in the local taverns in the early 1950’s.  My own fascination with the suds began early. He told the story of how, at five years old, I drank an entire beer he had left unattended, falling off the couch in a drunken stupor. It was a moment of shared, dangerous recognition. From then on, I would steal sips, then whole beers, following a path he had unknowingly laid for me. The shadow of his father’s alcoholism loomed, casting a long, dark projection into the next generation.

This cycle of trauma was not merely behavioral; it was deeply psychological. The anger, the need for control, the emotional distance—these were the tools he had been given to navigate the world. As his son, I absorbed them unconsciously. It took me sixty-one years to fully confront the internalized image of masculinity I had inherited from him and, by extension, from his father. It was a rigid, judgmental structure that permeated my own unconscious mind, shaping my interactions and limiting my own expression. My personality became a direct, albeit unconscious, response to his flamboyance—less colorful, more repressed.

A Path to Healing: The Search for Truth

My journey of healing began in earnest in 1987, after the near suicide in 1986 and the subsequent search for truth. It was a path of spiritual awakening, a conscious effort to dismantle the inherited structures of my psyche. The critical turning point, however, came with my father’s decline. After my mother’s death in 2009, his grief, anxiety, and cognitive deterioration were profound. Caring for him became my full-time responsibility, a labor that pushed me to my limits.

When his doctor confirmed he could no longer drive safely in 2012, my life as I knew it ended. I became responsible for every aspect of his existence—his meals, his health, his finances, his home. The loss of his independence became my own. It was in this crucible of caregiving that the real work of healing began. I was forced to confront my own expectations of how he should be, of how our relationship should look. I had to let go of my resentments, my anger, and my own pain to simply be present with him in his suffering.

This was not a passive process. It required constant awareness, a mindful observation of my own reactions. I had to see the hurt little boy in him, the product of unimaginable abuse, to find the compassion to care for the difficult, demanding man he had become. Every day was a practice in letting go—letting go of the past, letting go of my desire for him to be different, letting go of my own ego.

His final years were a labor of love that nearly broke me. But in that breaking, something new was born. I learned to love another human being unconditionally and completely. The last conversation we had, just hours before he died on September 15, 2017, was a simple, loving exchange that ended with “I love you, son,” and “I love you too, Dad.” I left his room, not knowing it would be our last.

The discovery of his death at 90 years of age was itself a traumatic event, compounded by a grueling six-hour police investigation that treated his natural death in his bedroom as if it were a crime scene. It was a brutal reminder of the world’s insensitivity, a final, painful stamp of his chaotic legacy on my life. But even that could not erase the profound healing that had taken place.

The Alchemy of Reconciliation: Healing Generational Wounds

The contemplation of whether to extend myself to his care was one of the most difficult spiritual challenges I had ever faced. Every fiber of my being that had been shaped by past hurts wanted to respond with the same indifference he had often shown to my emotional needs. Yet something deeper—a voice of wisdom that had been cultivated through years of recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction—whispered of a different possibility.

After extensive consultation with my wife, we discussed at length the potential risks and rewards of extending our hearts and lives to the man who had caused such pain in my formative years. The decision that emerged from these conversations was not based on obligation or guilt, but on a recognition of spiritual opportunity—the chance to break generational cycles of emotional abandonment and to demonstrate a different way of being human.

In the spirit of fairness and as a tribute to my newfound sense of spiritual integrity, I felt compelled to extend the hand of love to my father in his final stretch of days. This was not forgiveness in the traditional sense—it was something far more radical. It was the recognition that every human being, regardless of their past failures or cruelties, deserves to die surrounded by love rather than isolation.

The experience of caring for my father became a masterclass in the transformative power of compassion. He would walk out into our beautiful yard that adjoined a creek, where he delighted and felt somehow completed and made whole by being surrounded by the natural world. In these moments, watching his face light up at the sight of flowers and feeling the warm sun on his skin, I saw past the role he had played in my life to the essential being that resided within him.

Something miraculous occurred during this process: for the first time in my life, I felt a complete and total unconditional love for the man who was now appearing as my father. This was not the love of a son for a father, burdened by history and expectation, but the love of one soul recognizing another soul in its journey toward the ultimate mystery.

I knew inside, with the complete authority of the spirit that resided within me, that my father was so much more than the role he had played in life. The limitations, the emotional unavailability, the wounds he had inflicted—these were not his essence but the accumulated debris of his own unhealed trauma, passed down through generations of men who had never learned to express vulnerability or genuine emotion.

There are some who thought that my father was a horse’s ass, but that is the view one sometimes gets when in second place, having been passed by his race horse of a mind. A man like my father, who lived a full life, could have his own book written about him, and not scratch the surface of all the people that he impacted, positively or negatively, and all of the experiences that he had, all of the humor that he shared, and all of the wisdom that he developed. 

My sister, my wife, and I wrote several pages of “Beryl-isms”, which are quotes directly from my father about life in general.  I have presented a few of his “top 50” statements, which he repeated many times over the last few years of his life.  In parenthesis, I have included a few of my replies to his common statements that I used to give back to dad as part of our “conversation”..

1). Don’t wait too long to retire. People think they need to work those extra years, they work that extra one or two years, thinking they need the money, and death takes over, and they never make it to retirement (well, Dad, I retired early, but we will have to wait and see if that has any beneficial effect on my longevity.  Right now, my main goal is to try to outlive you, oh immortal one!).

2). Oh those rich people, all of that money, and they still have to die anyway! (and the rest of us, we have to die too, darn it!)

3). Why do you need to know, are you writing a book? (well, as a matter of fact I am!)

4). I really took the system, didn’t I? (after being retired and on pension for 35 years, contributing $22,742 to your pension, and getting over one million dollars back, I would say that you did!)

5). Come back again when you can’t stay so long (well, I am working on that one!)

6). Don’t you have something better to be doing? (yes, but you are the priority of the moment, so try to enjoy it while I try not to suffer too much)

7). Sure am glad that I am retired, or is it retarded? (um, I won’t touch that one)

8). I might be here, but I am not all here (then where is the rest of you?)

9). You know, having a dog like Rocky adds 7 years to my life (yes, but your dog took 7 years off of mine!)

10). (to any waitress) Say, you sure are looking good this evening. Would you like to come home with me and serve me my favorite meal? (argh! So embarrassing!)

11). I am not trying to be pretty, and I never will win any beauty contests (I can’t argue with you on that one)

12). The doctor needed a urine, stool, and semen sample, so I just left him my underwear (oh, boy, what a bad joke!)

13). You couldn’t hit a beach ball with a banjo! You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn! (comments made to me both as a youth when pitching or batting on little league baseball teams, and while playing golf with him as a child and as an adult)

14). When I get to Heaven, I am going to have a talk with the “Old Man” about my wife dying before me.  Wives are supposed to outlive the husbands.  Either I should have died first or we should have died at the same time (Maybe mom finished her work before you did.  In what form would you have wanted a simultaneous death, like in a murder/suicide, or in a car wreck?)

15). Son will we all meet again in heaven? (are you sure that you really want to hang out with the same crowd for eternity?)

16). Heaven is not ready for me yet, and Hell is afraid that I will take it over, so that is why I am still here (maybe you are still here to provide a few more lessons for the living.  I know that I sure am getting a crash course!).

17).  I am in no hurry to die.  Nobody I know has ever come back from the dead and told me what a great time that they are having after death. (yes, and wayward religions continue to capitalize on that mortal fear, ignore the fact that heaven is here and now, and do not effectively teach us how to die to ourselves and our fears and suffering to experience heaven in advance of bodily death)

18). I provided care for you all of those years when you were young, now its your turn to take care of this old man (I should have read the contract more carefully before my birth!)

19).  You should always be best friends with your sister.  Never let anything get in the way of that friendship, because she will find a way to love you to your death, as you should love her as well (Well, Dad, you sure have shown commitment to both your brother and your sister, especially over the last twenty years.  Somehow you all endeared yourselves to each other.  Thank you for being a success in that aspect of family love, and overcoming the chaos created by your parent’s relationship.  I think that Pam and I are on a good course right now)

And on and on it could go. My dad was a great story teller, and fountainhead of wisdom, one-liners, humor, self and other deprecation, and sarcasm.  My personality was so much less colorful than my father’s, yet, it is easy to see that I truly am my father’s son.  I have many of his same attitudes, and I replicated many of some of the same deficiencies in my own life that my father also experienced.

It was tough watching my father deteriorate, which began in earnest after his radiation treatment for prostate cancer in 2005. After mom died in 2009, Sharon and I had him over for dinner every evening. He was anxious, and suffered horribly from grief, and deteriorating cognitive health. I took him to the doctor’s office for treatment for depression in late 2009, and the doctor ending up prescribing anti-depressants for me instead. He continued to threaten to kill himself, and I had to locate all of his guns, and empty them. In the process of emptying his rifle, I almost shot myself in the foot, sending a bullet through his bedroom floor.

Within three more years, late in 2012, Sharon insisted that Dad have his driving competency evaluated, as he appeared to no longer be capable of driving safely. When the doctor confirmed that Dad should no longer drive, my life as I knew it came to an end. The loss of his independence also became my own loss, as well. I became responsible for 100 percent of Dad’s life, health, nutrition, meals, baths, finances, home and lawn care, and spiritual support. Dad no longer managed his life, other than dressing himself, going to the bathroom (mostly), smoking his cigars, and eating the food placed in front of him

I found a way to love that man on deeper and more profound levels, as I continued to release my own expectations of how he should be, and how he should live. His sole concerns became his love for his dog, Rocky, and maintaining residence in his own home until his own death. He had lost all short term memory, and was basically unteachable the last 5 years of his life, though he maintained his dignity, his sense of self, his recognition of his family, and his love for his children, including my wife Sharon. At the beginning of 2016, I finally hired a support person to help me with Dad’s care, a loving young woman by the name of Madison. She helped for about 15 hours per week, which went a long way to take some of the burden off of Sharon and me.

When Rocky died in June of 2016, ten days after our own dog Ginger’s death, Dad’s final thread of love and companionship with his past was snapped. He asked me over 5000 times where Rocky had disappeared to, after his dog’s death. I watch my father call out 30 times or more, Every Day, to his deceased dog, Rocky. We made up a sign for him, so that he can see, in writing, that his dog is dead, that it died of old age, and that he is ‘in heaven’. But, he never truly got it, because his short term memory was gone. At times, I felt compelled to set him straight, and tell him he is neglecting this moment, where Sharon White and i lived, and instead he was worshiping the dead,, where all of his grief and losses reside, but of course he quickly lost that. My heart broke for him, and for all of us

Our presences were just not quite enough to make all OK with Dad. But, we made him as comfortable as we could until his last days. He never took one medication, nor was I about to force one onto him. Dad’s final four years were a real labor of love for me, forcing me into early retirement from work, and the experience almost tanked me. But I learned how to love another human being unconditionally and completely, though the lesson plan exacted a price from me. I am only just now coming out from under the spells of anxiety and stress around the experience of care giving for my Dad, as well as being fully present for my friend Marty for the several months prior to his own death, which occurred five days prior to Dad’s death.

The last conversation that I had with my father was 6 hours before his death.

This is what we exchanged with each other:

Dad, you are still in bed, and its 2:30 in the afternoon, what’s up, it’s such a beautiful day outside.

You know son, I am always tired now, but I am about to get up.

Well, Dad, this might be the last sunny day in a long time, so why don’t you get up, and go out on the porch and have a cigar? I’ll put a chocolate bar on your table, and a drink for you.

I’ll get right up son. By the way, who is caring for me this evening?

Well, Dad, Madison is caring for you this evening.

Oh, poor Madison!

Dad, Madison benefits by being with you, as you do with her.

I will be with you beginning this Sunday morning, and I will be with you for the next three weeks as usual. You know we are planning one final trip to Hawaii with you, right?

Oh son, I am happy just staying at home. I have everything that I need here.

Well, OK dad. I am going to leave now, as I need to prepare for Marty’s funeral tomorrow.

When will I see you again, son?

Dad, it will be Sunday morning, OK?

OK, son, you know that I am dependent on you. Please take care of yourself.

Oh, dad, you know that I am dependent on you, too. You be careful too!

I love you, son.

I love you too, Dad.

I leave his room, not knowing this is to be our last exchange.

The next day, at 10:58am, as I stand in back of the hearse, as a pall bearer in Marty Crouch’s funeral, I prepare to receive Marty’s body to place into the hearse. I receive a call from Madison, which I cannot take, so I hand the phone to Sharon. Sharon is informed that my father is deceased. Sharon has to leave the service for our friend, and tend to my fathers’ body.

Oh, father, you really knew how to place your unique stamp on my life, didn’t you?

Through my relationship with my parents, I witnessed very early in life how women are oppressed, and how ignorant men try to dominate and control anyone or anything, including those that appear “unlike themselves and their own expectations”.

It took many years before my mother was able to stand up to my sometimes loud- mouthed, judgmental, aggressive, harsh, and insensitive father. It took me 61 years to face down completely my own internalized image of what a man is, as well. To finally see how completely that negative ‘male’ internal structure permeates human consciousness in general, and in my own unconscious mind, in all of its diverse, obvious and subtle forms, finally transformed me. My own repressed nature found the ability to communicate its message to me, and rather remarkably it has revealed itself in the form of the “divine feminine” and I refer to that activity as my “second birth” as a human being.

My father died on September 15, 2017. Dad died in his own bedroom on a Friday evening, and had the look of awe and wonder in his eyes and face. He had found his promised land, where loneliness, depression, and dementia disappears, and where ‘bums’ are converted back into the saints and angels that they always were, but were rarely recognized by others as being so. It took nearly my entire life to release my own misunderstanding and judgement towards my father, and allow for him to express himself in the only way that he knew how to, while still providing a loving protection for him in his time of greatest need.

I know all too well the effects of getting the “bum’s rush”, which is the cultural response to my own social insecurities. I now try to celebrate the saint and angel that lives within me, and within all of humanity’s children, which continues to be released from within me as I release my past, looking for its own unique new expression in this strange new world. I thought that my life’s work was over when I became sober and had a series of spiritual healing experiences beginning in 1987, and continuing for six years afterward. Now I know that my real life’s work has only just begun.

Note:  The Clackamas Country Police and Medical Examiner made life hell for Sharon and I, upon viewing my father’s death bed.  Sharon had cleaned up the bed sheets because father emptied his bowels after death.  Because Dad had a slight wound on the back of his head from a fall earlier in the week (he fell off of a chair when the leg broke) the police treated his bedroom like it was a crime scene.  We were forced to sit through SIX HOURS of investigation and interrogation, all because Sharon wanted to make dad’s death bed a more sacred setting for all of us.  Sharon wanted to make sure that I did not have to witness the fecal mess upon arrival, since I was already traumatized by having to leave a funeral, where I was a pallbearer for a best friend, to attend to my father’s body.  I don’t think that I have ever been more traumatized by any combination of events in my life.  The second injury caused by the ignorance and insensitivity of the police department is understandable, yet very painful.

We who knew and loved you in all phases of your lives miss you both, Mom and Dad. Now being an “orphan” with no children of my own has opened new vistas of understanding for me. The self that I fashioned as a response to my upbringing has no value now. I unconsciously chose a less colorful persona as a direct response to my fathers’ flamboyance, and now I release that choice, to open the door to a new, more conscious way of being in this world.  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 anxiety. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment. Living into the Truth of that which is now is the new story of my life. If there is only One Mind, it can only be experienced by a journey through the Unknown.

In retrospect, My father only appeared to cast a shadow over my life. It was up to me to find my own unique voice, in my search for my own truth, so that I could arise from my own self-imposed shadows, and be with him as a partner on love’s endless journey. Those who did not learn to love my father, missed out on one of my life’s most precious gifts, yet there are many other opportunities to bring light into our own lives. The healing journey that I had with my father could be considered miraculous by some, yet it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Yes, that healing will die with me, as I have no heirs. Yet, the love that we shared, as a family, will live forever in the mind and heart, of God. 

Dad, I will love you until the final day.

The Gifts of a Healed Relationship: Finding the Truth

Through my relationship with my father, I witnessed firsthand how intergenerational trauma operates—how ignorant men, wounded themselves, try to dominate and control those around them. My father’s healing, and my own, was not about him changing his ways. It was about me changing my perception. It was about finding my own voice, stepping out of the shadows I had imposed upon myself as a reaction to him, and meeting him as an equal partner on love’s endless journey.

What were the gifts of this arduous path? What was the Truth I finally found?

It is the understanding that we are all products of our history, but we are not prisoners of it. The cycle of trauma is not an unbreakable chain. It can be interrupted, link by painful link, through awareness, insight, mindfulness, and compassion.

It is the realization that healing is not about fixing the other person. It is about healing the relationship within oneself. I could not change my father, but I could change my response to him. In doing so, I freed not only myself but also the memory of him from the prison of my judgment.

It is the discovery of unconditional love, a love that exists beyond personality, beyond behavior, beyond the wounds of the past. It is a love that sees the divine essence in another, no matter how obscured by their human brokenness.

Finally, the Truth is that this healing journey is the very purpose of our existence. We are here to mend the fractured connections, both within ourselves and with others. The healing I experienced with my father was not just for me; it was a mending of a tear in the fabric of my lineage, a gift to the ancestors I never knew and the generations that will never be. The love we shared, redeemed from the ashes of trauma, now lives forever in the mind and heart of God.

My father is gone. I am now an orphan with no children of my own. The self I fashioned in response to my upbringing has dissolved.

Who am I now?

I am a mystery, even to myself.

I am walking into the unknowable present moment, living into the Truth of what is.

My life’s real work has only just begun. 

Chapter 35:  Final Thoughts On Final Thoughts.

The Mystery of Psychic Connection: Love as a Bridge Between Souls

Throughout Marty’s illness and decline, I continued to experience phenomena that challenged my understanding of the boundaries between self and other. Through some mysterious mechanism of consciousness, I felt Marty’s presence within my own sensitive, susceptible awareness. This was not imagination or wishful thinking—it was a tangible experience of shared consciousness that arose from the depths of love, compassion, and concern for his wellbeing.

This psychic attunement carried both gifts and burdens. On one hand, it allowed me to understand his experience with an intimacy that transcended ordinary communication. I could sense his fear, his sadness, his moments of peace, and his desperate longing to somehow make sense of what was happening to him. On the other hand, this connection meant carrying the weight of his suffering within my own consciousness, experiencing a kind of vicarious dying that tested the very limits of my emotional resilience.

The experience taught me that true empathy is not merely an intellectual exercise—it is a form of conscious participation in another’s reality. When we truly open our hearts to someone else’s pain, we risk being transformed by that pain. We risk discovering that the boundaries we imagine exist between ourselves and others are far more permeable than we had ever realized.

Throughout this period of heightened sensitivity, I continued to carry a sense of transcendence, as if a higher vibration of being was carrying me forward. My powers of insight, awareness, understanding, love, and compassion seemed to operate at their peak, as though Marty’s approaching death had somehow activated dormant capacities within my own consciousness.

This state of heightened awareness revealed the profound interconnectedness of all suffering and all healing. Every act of compassion, every moment of genuine presence, every choice to remain open-hearted in the face of pain contributed to a larger process of collective healing that extends far beyond our individual lives and relationships.

The Spirituality of Witnessing: Finding Sacred Purpose in Presence

As I reflect on these experiences years later, I have come to understand that one of the most sacred roles we can play in each other’s lives is that of witness—the one who sees, who remembers, who holds space for the full spectrum of human experience without trying to fix, change, or escape from what is unfolding.

Being present with Marty during his dying process required a kind of spiritual courage that I had never before been called upon to demonstrate. It meant sitting with the reality of impermanence, allowing the full weight of mortality to penetrate my consciousness without retreating into denial or distraction. It meant facing my own terror of death while simultaneously holding space for his terror, his sadness, his rage, and his moments of unexpected peace.

The witnessing role is not passive—it is an active engagement with the mystery of existence itself. Every moment of authentic presence becomes a form of prayer, a recognition of the sacred nature of life even in its most difficult expressions. When we truly witness another person’s journey through suffering, we participate in something far larger than our individual lives—we become agents of healing in a world desperate for genuine connection and understanding.

This understanding fundamentally altered my relationship with my own suffering. Instead of viewing pain as something to be avoided or quickly overcome, I began to see it as a teacher, a initiator into deeper levels of compassion and wisdom. Every experience of loss, every moment of heartbreak, every encounter with the harsh realities of human existence became an opportunity to develop the kind of empathy that can truly serve others in their darkest hours.

The Alchemy of Trauma: How Suffering Becomes Service

One of the most profound realizations to emerge from this period of intense loss was the understanding that our deepest wounds, when consciously engaged and allowed to heal, become our greatest sources of strength and service to others. The very experiences that once threatened to destroy me ultimately became the foundation for a more authentic and effective capacity to support others in their own journeys through trauma and loss.

The trauma of watching both Marty and my father die within a week of each other initially felt like more than my psyche could bear. The convergence of grief, the overwhelming practical demands, and the surreal nature of such concentrated loss created a state of consciousness that felt both dangerous and sacred—dangerous because it threatened the stable structures of my identity, sacred because it opened doorways to deeper truths about the nature of existence.

I as to experience several panic attacks in the subsequent three-month period which added a profound layer of psychological suffering to me. Yet, in the months that followed, I slowly integrated my life experiences and began to recognize patterns of healing that had previously been invisible to me. The same openness of heart that had made me vulnerable to such profound grief also made me capable of accessing levels of compassion and understanding that had been previously beyond my reach.

This process taught me that healing trauma is not about returning to some previous state of innocence or invulnerability—it is about transforming our wounds into wisdom, our pain into compassion, our personal suffering into universal service. Every scar becomes a place where light can enter, every broken place becomes a source of strength for others who are breaking in similar ways.

The recognition that trauma, when consciously engaged, becomes a form of initiation into deeper service fundamentally changed my relationship with my own difficult experiences. Instead of viewing them as unfortunate accidents or cosmic punishments, I began to see them as sacred preparations for the work I was being called to do in the world.

The Language of the Heart: Communication Beyond Words

One of the most challenging aspects of supporting both Marty and my father through their dying processes was learning to communicate on levels that transcended ordinary language. Both men struggled with articulation—not just the physical difficulty of forming words, but the existential challenge of finding language adequate to express the magnitude of their experiences.

How does one communicate the terror of approaching death to someone who still believes in the illusion of permanence? How does one share the strange beauty and unexpected gifts that emerge in the shadow of mortality? How does one express gratitude for a life well-lived while simultaneously grieving all the experiences that will never be?

I learned that in these sacred spaces of transition, the most important communication happens through presence itself—through the quality of attention we bring, through our willingness to sit with discomfort, through the love we radiate simply by choosing to remain open-hearted in the face of the ultimate mystery.

The eyes became our primary language. In the final exchanges with both my father and Marty, words were often inadequate to carry the full weight of what was being communicated. It was through sustained eye contact that we shared our deepest recognitions—the acknowledgment of love that transcends role and history, the recognition of shared humanity in the face of mortality, the gratitude for having been able to touch each other’s lives in meaningful ways.

This experience taught me that the most profound healing often happens in the spaces between words, in the silence that holds all possibilities, in the presence that says without speaking: “You are not alone in this. You are seen, you are loved, and your life has mattered.”

The Community of Grief: Healing in Relationship

While grief is ultimately a deeply personal journey, I learned that it is not meant to be traveled in isolation. The community that formed around both Marty’s and my father’s deaths became a crucial part of the healing process—not just for me, but for everyone touched by these losses.

Sharon, my wife, became not just a witness to my grief but a partner in the deeper transformation that these deaths made possible. Her willingness to support my care for my father demonstrated the kind of love that makes genuine healing possible. Her presence during the most difficult moments provided the stability and grounding that allowed me to remain open to the full intensity of the experience without losing myself in it.

Perhaps most importantly, I learned that healing grief requires both solitude and community—quiet spaces for personal integration and processing, as well as opportunities to share the story and be witnessed by others who care. The balance between these two needs is delicate and constantly shifting, but both are essential for moving through loss in a way that promotes genuine transformation rather than mere survival.

The Inheritance of Wisdom: What Death Teaches About Life

Each death that we witness closely becomes a teacher, offering lessons that can only be learned through direct encounter with the ultimate mystery. From Marty’s journey, I learned about the courage required to face our fate as human beings—the willingness to stare directly into the abyss of our own mortality without flinching or retreating into denial.

His decision to engage with Death with Dignity, while initially feeling like a betrayal, ultimately taught me about the sacred nature of personal autonomy and the importance of honoring each person’s right to determine the terms of their own existence. Even when those choices cause pain for those who love them, they represent a fundamental expression of human dignity that must be respected.

From my father’s death, I learned about the transformative power of forgiveness—not as a moral obligation or spiritual practice, but as a recognition of the divine essence that exists within every human being, regardless of the roles they have played or the wounds they have inflicted.

Both deaths taught me about the preciousness of time and the importance of expressing love while it can still be received. They taught me about the illusion of permanence that governs so much of our ordinary consciousness and the liberation that comes from truly accepting the temporary nature of all earthly relationships.

Most importantly, they taught me that death is not the opposite of life but its completion—the final movement in a symphony that gives meaning and poignancy to every note that came before. Without the reality of ending, nothing would have weight or significance. It is the temporary nature of our existence that makes every moment sacred, every connection precious, every opportunity for love and service urgent and meaningful.

The Practice of Presence: Cultivating Sacred Attention

The experiences of 2017 fundamentally altered my understanding of what it means to be truly present with another human being. I learned that presence is not a passive state but an active practice that requires tremendous courage, commitment, and skill.

True presence means being willing to feel what the other person is feeling without trying to change or fix their experience. It means sitting with discomfort without reaching for distractions. It means holding space for the full spectrum of human emotion—fear, anger, sadness, joy, despair, hope—without judgment or the need to push toward resolution.

This kind of presence is rare in our culture, which tends to prioritize problem-solving and emotional avoidance over genuine witnessing and support. We are taught to offer advice, to find silver linings, to help people “move on” or “get over” difficult experiences as quickly as possible. But what I learned through supporting both Marty and my father is that the greatest gift we can offer someone in crisis is simply our undivided, loving attention.

The practice of sacred attention requires us to develop tremendous tolerance for uncertainty and discomfort. We must learn to resist the impulse to fill silence with words, to provide false reassurance, or to project our own fears and anxieties onto the person we are trying to support.

Instead, we must learn to trust the intelligence of the heart—both our own and that of the person we are serving. We must believe that healing happens not through our interventions but through our willingness to create safe, loving space where natural processes of integration and transformation can unfold.

The Ripple Effects: How Individual Healing Serves the Collective

One of the most profound realizations to emerge from this period of intense loss and transformation was the understanding that individual healing is never merely personal—it always serves the larger web of relationships and community of which we are part.

When I chose to extend compassion to my father despite our difficult history, I was not just healing my own wounds—I was breaking generational patterns of emotional abandonment that had been passed down through family lineages for decades or perhaps centuries. This single act of conscious choice created ripples that extended far beyond my own experience.

My son witnessed this process and learned something about the possibility of choosing love over resentment, healing over perpetual woundedness. Future generations of our family will inherit the benefits of this healing work, even if they never know the specific story of how it began.

Similarly, the way I chose to support Marty through his dying process, despite the pain and challenges involved, contributed to a larger cultural conversation about how we as a society can better support people who are facing terminal illness. Every act of authentic presence, every moment of genuine compassion, every choice to remain open-hearted in the face of suffering adds to the collective wisdom about how to navigate these universal human experiences.

This understanding fundamentally changed my motivation for engaging in healing work. It was no longer about fixing my own problems or achieving some state of personal peace—it was about contributing to the larger project of reducing suffering and increasing love in the world.

When we heal ourselves, we heal our relationships. When we heal our relationships, we heal our communities. When we heal our communities, we heal the world. This is not metaphor or wishful thinking—it is the practical reality of how transformation actually works in the interconnected web of existence.

The Art of Letting Go: Release as Sacred Practice

Perhaps the most difficult and ultimately most liberating lesson from this period was learning the art of letting go—releasing attachment to outcomes, to timelines, to the way we think things should unfold. Both Marty’s and my father’s deaths required me to surrender any illusion of control over the process and learn to trust something far greater than my own will or understanding.

Letting go does not mean becoming passive or indifferent—it means engaging fully while holding lightly, caring deeply while remaining unattached to specific results. This paradoxical stance requires tremendous spiritual maturity and practice to develop.

With Marty, letting go meant accepting his decision to pursue Death with Dignity even though it felt like abandonment. It meant supporting his choice even when I disagreed with it, honoring his autonomy even when it caused me pain. It meant releasing my attachment to being included in every aspect of his journey and trusting that his decisions were emerging from a wisdom deeper than my own understanding.

With my father, letting go meant releasing decades of accumulated resentment and disappointment, choosing to see him through the eyes of love rather than the lens of historical hurt. It meant surrendering my attachment to receiving the acknowledgment or apology that I had always hoped for, and instead offering the gift of unconditional presence without expecting anything in return.

The practice of letting go is ultimately about recognizing that we are not in control of life’s fundamental processes—birth, death, love, loss, healing, transformation. Our role is to participate consciously and compassionately in these processes, but not to direct them according to our personal preferences or timelines.

This recognition is initially terrifying because it strips away the illusion of control that we use to manage our anxiety about existence. But ultimately it is profoundly liberating because it frees us from the exhausting burden of trying to manage outcomes that are fundamentally beyond our influence.

The Integration: Living the Lessons Daily

Years have passed since that transformative period of 2017, and the question that remains is how to integrate these profound lessons into the texture of daily life. How do we carry the wisdom gained through such intense experiences of loss into our ordinary interactions and responsibilities?

The answer, I have discovered, lies in understanding that every moment offers an opportunity to practice the same qualities of presence, compassion, and courage that were called forth during those peak experiences of transformation. Every conversation becomes a chance to truly listen, every encounter with difficulty becomes an opportunity to choose love over fear, every day becomes a practice in living with full awareness of life’s preciousness and impermanence.

The empathy developed through witnessing death up close translates into greater sensitivity to the ordinary sufferings of daily life—the coworker struggling with divorce, the neighbor dealing with chronic illness, the stranger whose rudeness might mask deep pain. The capacity to remain present with extreme discomfort makes it possible to stay open-hearted during smaller conflicts and disappointments.

The understanding of mortality’s reality makes every moment more vivid, every relationship more precious, every opportunity for kindness more urgent. When we truly accept that nothing lasts forever, we stop waiting for the “right” moment to express love, to offer forgiveness, to extend ourselves in service to others.

Perhaps most importantly, the recognition that individual healing serves the collective good transforms every choice we make into an opportunity for service. Every time we choose consciousness over reactivity, love over fear, healing over perpetual woundedness, we contribute to the larger project of reducing suffering in the world.

The Continuing Journey: Healing as Lifelong Practice

The experiences of 2017 were not the end of the healing journey but a profound deepening of it. They revealed that healing is not a destination but a way of traveling—a continuous practice of opening our hearts more fully, extending our compassion more widely, and allowing ourselves to be transformed by every encounter with love and loss.

The specific traumas that shaped those months—watching friends die, caring for a deteriorating father, navigating the complex emotions of grief and forgiveness—were unique to my personal story. But the universal themes they illuminated—the power of presence, the healing potential of forgiveness, the transformative nature of conscious suffering, the interconnectedness of all healing—offer guidance for anyone willing to engage their own wounds as gateways to wisdom and service.

This is the fundamental truth I have come to understand: our greatest wounds, when consciously engaged with love and support, become our greatest sources of strength and service to others. The very experiences that once threatened to destroy us can become the foundation for our most authentic and effective contributions to healing the world.

The journey continues. Each day brings new opportunities to practice presence, to extend compassion, to choose love over fear. Each encounter with suffering—whether our own or that of others—offers the chance to deepen our capacity for empathy and service. Each moment of conscious choice contributes to the larger healing of our communities, our families, and our world.

A Living Testament: The Ongoing Call to Compassion

As I conclude this reflection on one of the most transformative periods of my life, I am struck by the ongoing nature of the call to compassion that these experiences revealed. The lessons learned through witnessing death, practicing forgiveness, and choosing love in the face of profound loss are not meant to be stored as memories but lived as daily practices.

Every person we encounter is fighting battles we cannot see, carrying wounds we may never understand, longing for the same recognition and love that sustained me through my darkest hours. The capacity for empathy developed through conscious engagement with trauma becomes a gift we offer to the world simply by showing up with an open heart.

The willingness to remain present with suffering—whether our own or that of others—becomes a form of service to the collective healing our world desperately needs. In a culture that often promotes emotional avoidance and superficial solutions to deep problems, choosing to develop genuine capacity for witnessing and supporting others in their pain becomes a radical act of love.

The understanding that individual healing serves the collective good transforms every choice we make into an opportunity to contribute to something far greater than our personal wellbeing. When we heal ourselves, we heal our lineages. When we extend compassion despite our own wounds, we model a different way of being human for everyone in our sphere of influence.

This is the testament I offer: that healing from trauma is not only possible but can become the foundation for extraordinary service to others. That forgiveness, even in the most difficult circumstances, opens doorways to love we never knew existed. That presence—the simple gift of conscious, loving attention—may be the most powerful healing force available to us as human beings.

That death, far from being the enemy of life, can become our greatest teacher about what truly matters. That grief, when consciously engaged, can break our hearts open in ways that make us capable of loving more fully than we ever imagined possible.

And finally, that every moment of conscious choice to remain open-hearted in the face of pain, to extend empathy beyond our own experience, to choose love over fear, contributes to the healing of our world in ways we may never fully understand but can trust are absolutely real and infinitely meaningful.

The journey continues. The call to compassion remains. May we all find the courage to answer that call, not just in moments of crisis but in the sacred ordinary moments of every day, transforming our own healing into service to the healing of all beings.

Chapter 11:  Just Say NO to Trauma: Why Our Collective Denial and its Conspiracy of Silence is the Greatest Barrier to Healing

What if I told you that the very act of saying “I’m fine” when you’re not is perpetuating a cycle of suffering that extends far beyond your individual experience? What if our cultural obsession with resilience, our rush to “move on,” and our discomfort with pain are actually the mechanisms by which trauma reproduces itself across generations?

We live in a society where part of our common knowledge is that we must remain unaware of or silent about the negative impacts of cultural, religious, and family trauma, for as individuals we are helpless to do anything about it. We live in a society that has mastered the art of looking away. We’ve created entire industries built on distraction, entire philosophies centered on positive thinking, and entire therapeutic modalities focused on quick fixes. Yet trauma rates continue to climb, mental health crises deepen, and we find ourselves more disconnected from ourselves and each other than ever before.

The uncomfortable truth is this: our refusal to face trauma—both personal and collective—is not protecting us. It’s imprisoning us.

The Anatomy of Avoidance

Trauma, at its core, is not the event itself but our body’s response to an overwhelming experience that cannot be integrated in real-time. When we experience something beyond our capacity to process, our nervous system makes a brilliant choice: it fragments the experience, storing pieces in our bodies, our psyches, and our cellular memory to be dealt with when we have greater resources.

The problem arises when “later” never comes.

Our culture has taught us that healing should be quick, clean, and preferably invisible. We’ve been conditioned to believe that strength means carrying on as if nothing happened, that wisdom means not dwelling on the past, and that health means appearing functional regardless of our inner landscape.

This is not strength. This is spiritual bypass masquerading as resilience.

The Personal Cost of Denial

When we refuse to acknowledge trauma’s impact, several predictable patterns emerge:

• Somatic symptoms manifest as our bodies hold what our minds won’t face
• Relational patterns repeat as we unconsciously recreate familiar dynamics
• Emotional numbing becomes our default, cutting us off from both pain and joy
• Hypervigilance exhausts our nervous systems while masquerading as preparedness
• Self-medication through substances, behaviors, or endless busyness becomes our survival strategy

These are not character flaws or moral failings. They are intelligent adaptations to impossible circumstances that have outlived their usefulness.

The Intergenerational Web

Perhaps even more challenging to face is the reality that trauma doesn’t begin and end with us. The unprocessed pain of our ancestors lives in our bodies, expresses itself in our family dynamics, and influences our choices in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

Epigenetic research has shown us that trauma literally changes gene expression, passing survival patterns to subsequent generations. The Holocaust survivor’s child who develops anxiety disorders, the descendants of enslaved peoples carrying patterns of hypervigilance, the great-grandchild of an alcoholic developing addiction despite never touching a drink—these are not coincidences.

They are invitations to healing.

When we say no to examining intergenerational trauma, we’re not protecting our families or honoring our ancestors. We’re ensuring that their unresolved pain continues to shape the lives of those we love most.

The Cultural Conspiracy of Silence

Our individual denial of trauma exists within a larger cultural context that actively discourages deep feeling and authentic expression. We live in systems that profit from our disconnection, that require our compliance, and that cannot function if we’re too healthy to participate in unhealthy patterns.

Consider these uncomfortable questions:

• How does an economic system that requires endless consumption benefit from people who are deeply satisfied with what they have?
• How do political structures that depend on division and fear maintain power when people are secure and connected?
• How do industries built on treating symptoms survive when people address root causes?

The answer is simple: they don’t.

Our collective trauma serves systems that profit from our pain. When we refuse to heal, we remain consumers of solutions that don’t solve, participants in dynamics that don’t serve, and perpetuators of cycles that destroy.

The Courage to Feel

Saying no to trauma isn’t about positive thinking or spiritual bypassing. It’s about developing the courage to feel what we’ve been trained not to feel, to remember what we’ve been encouraged to forget, and to honor the intelligence of our bodies and psyches even when—especially when—they’re pointing us toward discomfort.

This requires a fundamental shift in how we understand healing. True healing is not the absence of symptoms or the return to previous functioning. True healing is the integration of our experiences in a way that allows us to be more fully ourselves, more deeply connected, and more courageously authentic.

What Integration Actually Looks Like:

• Somatic awareness: Learning to read the wisdom of our bodies rather than overriding their signals
• Emotional literacy: Developing the capacity to feel the full spectrum of human experience without being overwhelmed by it
• Narrative coherence: Creating meaning from our experiences rather than fragmenting them
• Relational repair: Healing not just individually but in connection with others
• Systemic understanding: Recognizing how personal trauma intersects with collective wounds

The Ripple Effects of Authentic Healing

When we stop running from trauma and begin the sacred work of integration, something remarkable happens. Not only do we heal, but our healing creates conditions for others to heal. Our authenticity gives others permission to be authentic. Our willingness to feel gives others courage to feel.

This is not abstract theory. Research on collective healing shows that when one person in a family system begins to heal intergenerational trauma, it affects the entire family constellation—both backward and forward in time. When communities create spaces for authentic expression and healing, rates of violence, addiction, and mental illness decline.

Our healing is never just personal. It’s a gift to everyone whose life we touch and everyone who comes after us.

While personal healing is essential, it’s not sufficient. We must also examine and challenge the systems and structures that create and perpetuate trauma. This means:

• Questioning narratives that normalize suffering or pathologize natural responses to unnatural situations
• Creating containers for collective processing rather than forcing people to heal in isolation
• Redistributing resources so that healing isn’t a luxury available only to the privileged
• Reimagining institutions around principles of connection, safety, and authentic expression rather than control and compliance

We stand at a threshold. The old ways of managing trauma—denial, suppression, medication without integration, individual solutions to collective problems—are proving inadequate to the challenges we face. Mental health crises, social fragmentation, and collective anxiety are symptoms of our refusal to address root causes.

But crisis also means opportunity. Never before have we had such sophisticated understanding of trauma’s impact or such powerful tools for healing. Never before have so many people been ready to do the hard work of integration. Never before has the cost of avoidance been so clear.

This is not another call to be more resilient or to practice more self-care. This is an invitation to something far more radical: the courage to stop pretending you’re fine when you’re not, to stop carrying alone what was never meant to be carried alone, and to stop participating in a culture that profits from your pain.

The healing journey is not comfortable, convenient, or quick. But it is the most important work you will ever do—not just for yourself, but for everyone whose life you touch and everyone who will come after you.

Do not turn away from the impact trauma is having upon society, and upon yourself. The world needs people who are willing to feel deeply, to heal courageously, and to create conditions where others can do the same.

Your pain matters. Your healing matters. And your willingness to face what you’ve been taught to avoid might just be the key to breaking cycles that have persisted for generations.

The question is not whether you have trauma to heal—we all do. The question is whether you have the courage to stop running and begin the sacred work of integration.

The time for denial is over. The time for healing is now.

To have a life, love, and death on the universe’s unlimited bandwidth requires it.