So It Begins

“The past is not real, it is only a collection of related assumptions”—-Elisha Scott

We are about to take a creative, whirlwind tour through history, dating back to , perhaps, a million years ago or more.  The last thing I want to do is to create “alternative facts” and implant false memories that were never real, just like the ignorant biblical scholars,  malicious fake news generators and conspiracy theorists of today attempt to do.  The best way to get to new answers to old questions, is to discard the old questions, and ask new questions. So, here we go!

• What was our mental atmosphere like back then, when mankind was first becoming conscious?
• With humanity’s dark history, the survival of the fittest evolutionary imperative, and the fear of dangerous animals (which includes human strangers not of one’s tribe and not prone to collaborative behavior) what can we speculate about the original nature of that consciousness?
• Based upon our present understanding, could one surmise that trauma and suffering has-been with mankind from the beginning?
• Is the Garden of Eden story, and many other myths and legends from other cultures, merely stories created by ancient peoples seeking the same answers?

The previous questions are riddled with assumptions, and the answers that we might supply to questions of this nature are subject to both speculation and revisionist history.  We must apply the tools of historical, anthropological, sociological, psychological, mythological,  cinematic, and spiritual analysis and discernment in any endeavor of this nature.  I will only touch upon the highlights of this epoch of mankind, and you should not believe me, any more than you might believe the scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and biblical writers who have already undertaken their own studies and vain attempts at understanding.

We only need to look within ourselves, and to our pasts, to see how uncertain our memories are, and extrapolate that to our human history, which is also plagued by short term, medium term, and long term memory loss. We can see how impossible it is to accurately recall and recreate memories from times long past, especially of the times when we were babies or children, though the recollections of others, coupled with insight can help in this daunting journey of discovery.  Yet, as the evolution of our biological being can be witnessed through observing the stages of the development of the human embryo through its birth, so might we be able to observe the historical, evolutionary unfoldment of humanity, replicated in a compressed form through our own unfoldment, from an unconscious state as a newborn baby into the consciousness of a personal sense of self, to see if a parallel understanding may be derived.

Without a recorded history, and supersubstantial archeological records, a careless investigation and exploration can become yet another Rorschach test for all inquisitors, and we will only mostly confirm what we already think that we know.  We can attempt to create our best representation for what we think their truths might have been in the earliest iterations of mankind, the times that existed before there were verbal accounts being passed down through the generations. Even though our present history has only about 5000 years of written records, some cultures have historical narratives that appear to have been passed down for at least 30,000 years.  The aborigines of Australia claim a 60,000 year narrative, while Central and South American indigenous peoples and their shamans also claim lineages of tens of thousands of years.

Western European civilization appears to be an outgrowth of the migration of African tribal members at least 13000-30000 years ago.  Cave drawings in Spain and France show sophisticated art capabilities, and, apparently, versions of animal and spirit worship. Many ancient cultures created sculpted objects resembling the human penis, and the pregnant woman, so the need for fertility and the reverence for all associated body parts appears to be a fundamental need for our race. Other caves have been found showing even earlier creative endeavors. in a remarkable recent, though questionable discovery,  a cave was discovered that is purported to possess chiseled storage cubicles dating back one million years ago, according to carbon dating.  The human race has a long history, indeed, though finding a physical, or even spiritual, starting point is probably impossible.

The earliest human creatures spoke primarily with gestures, grunts, and body language, with their evolving vocal chords eventually joining in the conversation  at some unknown point in the distant past. They eventually standardized certain verbal sounds, sounds that became words that were supposed to represent that which they were seeing, doing, using, or eating.  Eventually mankind made the quantum leap to symbolic writing, where animal and plant forms once used to symbolically  represent life were replaced by crude symbols, which eventually evolved into hieroglyphics, and then cuneiform alphabets. It must have seemed like magic to the first humans who realized, and then taught others, that their thoughts could be approximated and shared through words, and then an ever evolving symbolic representation.

It appears that the creation, or formation of a new world had been made possible through words and concepts that were arising in the evolving consciousness.  Formerly, there were mainly biological systems with limited freedom of choice responding to environmental influences, with a more instinctual response to meeting the needs of the body, and of whatever family or community that existed.  We could call that world the “real world”, as it dealt with the harsh realities of a world not yet under the subjugation of the human mind.  With the advent of symbolic representation of the real world, a concurrent, though alternate “reality” was created which only existed in the minds of those entertaining those new concepts and symbols.  To the point that this alternate reality created within the mind, both individually and culturally, matched up with the conditions of the real world, one could say that becoming verbally conscious was an amazing evolutionary leap for humanity.  They now lived in two intimately related and interdependent worlds, that of their biology, and that of their minds.

Once symbology is introduced into the human mind, absolutely remarkable, if not miraculous, phenomenon start appearing.  Consciousness expressing through symbology appears to have a self-organizing principle innate to it, and as it weighs and measures and assigns names to the objects of its awareness, a personal sense of being is also introduced into the biological system entertaining the symbology.  Thus, the “word” or the act of first recognizing that a verbal sound or a specific set of symbols can represent an environmental influence is the initial generative force behind the creation, or the awakening of the personal sense of self.

I began this chapter with a question about when mankind first became “conscious”, and the story of Helen Keller is a remarkable account of that very universal process happening to a handicapped individual.  Helen Keller gives an outstanding narrative of the beginning of her own sense of self, a new self which seemed to arise out of her more instinctual, or even chaotic biological response to life.  Once she recognized that the letters W A T E R represented the substance that she washed with, and drank, her own unique sense of being herself also arose..Literally, understanding the word and its symbolism opened the miraculous door to her self, and  both phenomenon seem to have arisen concurrently.  Helen Keller’s new sense of self arose out of a life-giving and sustaining symbol, and she grew into a creative, profound, and spiritually wise human being, beloved by all who knew her.

It can be argued that once the mind of man finally became conscious of its own individual self, and then that others also might also have a self, it opened the doors to a collective mind that entertained and hosted the symbolic representations of all of the other individual life forms, human or animal, that it was witnessing, as well as it itself. It also opened Pandora’s Box, or the doors to all manners of mistaken judgement of others, and of self, opening the internal windows to illusion and fantasy, and that tragic fact of the unfoldment of consciousness remains not only a historical fact , but a present reality.

When was mankind’s first W A T E R moment?  It could  be said that individual man, and collective man, may have left its Garden Of Eden state with that same evolutionary unfoldment in consciousness.

In the mystical literature of the Bible, as recorded through the words of New Testament scribe John:

“The Word.became flesh, and dwelt among us”.

We cannot be certain as to what the first words taught to each other in the dawning times of human consciousness were, but by historical evidence, it would appear that the language of survival, defense, killing, eating, and sexual activity probably dominated early language building cultures.

With the advent of symbolic representation, our history was no longer totally dependent upon oral transmission, yet oral transmission still, to this very day remains a powerful, and primary, form of communication, especially for those not proficient in their reading ability, and lacking in intellectual and spiritual discernment.  Words spoken in groups of people have infinitely more power in the present moment than words read from a book by an individual in the privacy of the home.  We all have witnessed the remarkable power of the mob mind, and need only look at the insurrection on January 6, 2021 to see the absolutely insane, crazy making energy they can stir up within people disconnected from reality.

There are two or more sides to every story, and the epoch of mankind certainly could have been defined historically  by its nearly infinite number of interactions between members of our worldwide community, past and present, and all of the resultant stories derived through those connections, be they ordered or chaotic in nature.  But, in the interest of brevity and our need to create meaning and bring order out of apparent chaos of the limitless multitudes, we tend to select the stories that appear to not only carry the ethos of the age in which they originated, but also appear to support the perceptual agendas of the writers..

Our present civilization now proudly touts its written “recorded history”. History is created and maintained by the institutionalized powers, and transferred to all members of the community. Our history continues to be written to accommodate the prevailing victorious powers and understandings of the age in which it was first written.

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In the distant past, and even today among the few uncivilized indigenous tribes left, the mother, father, and whatever tribe or supportive community transferred all of their wisdom and knowledge about hunting, weapon construction and use, tool construction and use, gathering, childbirth and rearing, wound care, fire building, and survival to the children, until they were of age, and could join their father, or their mother, in the daily grind, or branch out and seek their own fortune elsewhere.  Today, our parents and our culture continue the same process, transferring their knowledge, sacred or otherwise, to our children.  So, not only do we live in two worlds, we also have two identities to deal with.  Our collective/cultural self and our individual sense of self are rarely one person, though both now travel with us, wherever we might travel.  The civilized being is plagued by schizophrenia, whether we want to face that difficult truth, or not.

We have more than a biological evolution, we also have an ongoing emotional, intellectual, and spiritual evolution.  Our latter history, which is written, shows our ability to philosophize, and to form creative narratives about what the world once was, what it is now, and where it might be going in the future.  Our vision of what the world once was will always be just a best guess, and, just like now, our ancestors writing their own histories, proposed myths and legends to explain that which was pre-existent to  their own lives.  Our myths and legends serve us well in this regard, and many times they complement what we have discovered through all of the sciences, spiritual literature, as well as through our intuitive natures.

Who tells the story?  Many times, the greatest, most courageous and intelligent heroes of our race remain anonymous, though their stories were captured by others..  They died before they could even create a story, thus the survivors, usually less qualified and relatively more uninformed, are the historians, and their story, not the story of the real heroes, are accepted as the narrative.  Religious texts abound with such exposition.  Our American history also has suffered under the need to present the prevailing propaganda of the time, as it looks back and interprets other’s historical accounts of what actually transpired, and molds it into a more self-supporting and self-aggrandizing cultural ethos and narrative.

When we were under the law of “survival of the fittest”, we really had to measure up, and use all of our physical, emotional, and intuitive resources at maximum power, coupled with community and individual knowledge (wisdom) to have any hope of not becoming a meal for a stronger and hungrier predator than we were, or a victim of a hunter/aggressor from another tribe.. Biologically, the men of our species usually were blessed with the greatest physical assets, while the women, through their capacity for becoming impregnated, were the carriers of the species future, plus messengers from a deeper realm of human potential through their heightened intuition and Earth centered wisdom.  Women within many ancient cultures were regarded as healers and carriers of “medicine”.  They were loved, honored, respected, and protected by the community for those very reasons.  Modern anthropological studies continue to confirm that early indigenous women were held in at least as high esteem as the hunter/gatherer/warriors of ancient times, so it can be surmised that in our pre-history the balance of the masculine and the feminine through mutual understanding, acknowledgement, and equality existed and supported the good for all.

The larger the community became, the more the equilibrium between men and women became disturbed,  Size indicates prosperity, and the bigger communities either traded with friendly neighbors, or were attacked by others seeking to help their own tribes.  As our history shows an almost universal, steady progression of conflict and war, cultures took their strongest citizens and made them into defenders, or aggressors, to preserve the tribe’s rights to resources, which were usually scarce.  Biologically, the male warrior  usually was considered as the best choice, and a whole consciousness eventually developed around that difference in biology.  The best male might be considered the one who brings home the most game, gather the most berries, raise the most crops (a more recent development) and/or are most fearless and aggressive, within certain community proscribed limits.  The best female might be considered the one most willing to support the hunter/gatherer and the defenders, through family support, maintenance of the home, meal preparation, healing of wounds, and birthing and raising the family, especially while the men go about their business.

Yet, mankind’s story, when told by the historical progression of women, would be much different than the story told by the history that men might present.  History is rarely described and defined by the ones who were stuck at home caring for the wounded and the children, by the submissive ones, by the artists or sculptors, or  by the losers in any conflict.  Our history is no different, being described, and defined, by those in power, which are predominantly white male influences..

There is an imbalance within the field of the human spirit.  Masculine energy has dominated our specie’s relationship with the universe, the world, the plants and animals, and with each other for most of recorded time, and well before the human race had any capacity to keep records.  Men carried the seed for life, yet they did not have the love, respect, and nurturing ability that the female of the species seemed to naturally possess.  Was this merely an environmental response, or a biological response, or a combination of the two?

In the Hebrew based mythological story of The Garden Of Eden, we even see the beginning of male denial and scapegoating of the female for listening to the voice of the serpent, which now becomes the voice for the development of consciousness itself.  With eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, man, and woman, now may hesitantly approach divine knowledge, yet forever remain outside of their original ignorant unconscious state of being.  The “flamings swords of the cherubim” guard the Garden and keep us out, for eternity.

The serpent in the Garden of Eden remains a fascinating, enlightening archetypal image. The serpent is always in contact with the ground, or with the limbs in the trees, depending upon where it lives, so it serves as a great metaphor for those in continuous contact with our planet. And, mothers have a much more earth centered understanding of life, being the bearers of human life itself, so the snake is also a metaphor for the earth centered and connected woman.  As the Earth gave life to us, so did the woman give life to the human.  Women learned early about the Earth’s capacity to heal us, through judicious application of its plants and herbs, and spiritual awareness and empathy. Women tended to see a more complete picture than did the men, due to the very constitution of their neural networks.  Women tended to see the forests and the trees, while the men remained obsessed about the trees.  And, in a later development, the more earth attuned women were actually persecuted and burned at the stake for being witches.

The serpent is also recognized for the way that it winds around its victims, or coils before it strikes.  It is an obvious reference to the cunning nature of thought itself, winding around its victims, and coiling before it strikes.  Our limited thinking, even with all of its knowledge, attempts to baffle us with its bullshit, while it instinctively strikes out at others when feeling threatened.  The serpent metaphor  does successfully represent our biological and instinctual needs, like our unevolved thinking nature, our natural reflexes, our unenlightened sexual activity and our need for self preservation.  In some early cultures, the serpent was even worshiped as a God, or even feared as the devil, probably because of the pain, suffering, and sometimes death that ensued from failing to follow its edicts, such as avoiding contact with others, or thoughts within ourselves, of a poisonous nature.

Before I enter the portion discussing the Common Knowledge Game in detail, it is beneficial to provide some information about the physiological similarities and differences in the brain between men and women, and how we process information and express ourselves, as a result of those differences and similarities.  I will also post some quotes from the New Testament of the Christian Bible, to show how men have attempted to suppress the nature of the feminine, both within the women in their lives and culture, and within their own “masculine” minds.  Both of these factors have ultimate importance in the Common Knowledge game, providing the basic foundation for perception for our collective consciousness, and unconsciousness.

It’s no secret that men and women are different, biologically, historically, emotionally, and spiritually, and extend beyond what the eye can see. Research reveals major distinctions between male and female brains. Scientists generally study several areas of difference in male and female brains: including structure, activity, processing, and chemistry. The differences between male and female brains in these areas show up all over the world, but scientists also have discovered exceptions to every so-called gender rule. Some men are very sensitive, immensely talkative about their feelings, and naturally eschew the masculine way of doing things. As with all gender differences, no one way of doing things is better or worse. The differences are simply generalized differences in typical brain functioning, and it is important to remember that all differences have advantages and disadvantages.

Scientists have discovered approximately 100 gender differences in the brain, and the importance of these differences cannot be overstated. Understanding gender differences from a neurological perspective not only opens the door to greater appreciation of the different genders, it also calls into question how we parent, educate, and support our children from a young age.  None of us are doomed to remain tethered to a solely male or a female perspective, though our culture and our religions certainly have dedicated much time, historically, to maintain the status quo and the division between the sexes.

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• For man was not made from woman, but woman from man.-—1 Peter 3:1
• Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a world by the conduct of their wives-–1 Corinthians
• The women should keep silent in the churches.  For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.  If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home.  For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church—-1 Timothy 2:12-14
• I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.—-1 Timothy 2:
• To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.  Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.“—–Genesis 3:16

Before I leave this discussion about myths and our origins, and the differences between the sexes, I would like to speculate that if I had a different early childhood, and if the first word that I learned was the unifying, life giving word W A T E R, rather than the conflicted, confused, sometimes abandoned experience that I had around the words M O T H E R and F A T H E R,   I too, might have had a much less fragmented understanding of life, and a more positive experience as a child and young adult.  My early life experience and how consciousness ordered my sense of self was definitely not of the same nature as the beloved Helen Keller’s, though I was at least was loved by my grandparents, parents and pets.

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Once we become conscious, there does not appear to be any obvious way of going back to permanent unconsciousness of our self, except through neurological damage or disease.   Yet, many seekers of truth and knowledge throughout time have claimed that by meditating upon their body, their biology, and their breath, rather than the endless stream of words, thoughts, and concepts that seem to be constantly present, a door may open revealing the possibility of such an experience, however.

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I propose that there is a way to be born again, but it is an unusual path, characterized by much pain and suffering, The aspirant must be absolutely disgusted with the past, willing to be freed from it, and to be open to new possibilities for a refreshed life experience.

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Does anyone really know the way back “home”?

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Would we return to a pre-verbal or non verbal state of being, or would we recognize words for what they are, and use them with more love and care, or perhaps a conscious blend of the two states? Perhaps we will discover that words only have limited, relative value  rather than absolute value, in the search for our real origins.

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Jesus, in the new testament, proclaims:

• “Unless you are born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.“, and
• ““It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”, and, finally
• “My Kingdom is not of this world”.

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So, even prophets and biblical writers understood the difficulty of such an undertaking.

Most of the human race continues to be born into ancient times, using the tools of ancient, unenlightened thought, and they embody a continuation of the same mental and material processes that our ancient ancestors practiced.  There is an exciting alternative to the repetition and continuation of our human and personal history, however, but to be a part of that evolutionary leap, we must be “born again”.

Welcome to the next chapter!

CHAPTER 4

Many of the members of Christian Churches continue to steal candy from the Baby.

I do not have the impramatur from the latest experts on trauma’s impacts upon all of us.  Like most of us, I have had many traumatic personal  events in my life, therefore I have first hand knowledge of its impact upon all of us. Trauma results in the damage to, or loss of, connection to ourselves, to our bodies, to our families, to others, and to the world around us. This disconnection is often hard to recognize because it doesn’t always happen all at once but rather over time.  Sometimes, the damage does not become evident for decades after the original trauma.

I can never forget the dark feelings of abandonment, the pain of a whipping by a belt, the shame and disgrace of being bullied,  the shame and disgrace of being humiliated by my father during a baseball game, watching my first dog get run over by a car, the falling from the top of a seventy foot tree, the witnessing of my great grandfather’s lifeless body, and the endless nights of nightmares, and bed wetting, because of my fear of getting out of bed due to monsters under my bed and in my closet.  Like all others within our society, I have also been traumatized by our culture and religion in both profound and in more subtle ways.

Trauma seems to be a natural outcome of our collisions with life shattering events, and even lesser perceived destabilizing experiences.  Yet, some even claim that there is no greater trauma than our passage through the birth canal, and that the rest of our lives are defined by our response to that expulsion from the safe womb of mother.  Trauma must be understood and dealt with, or we will be limited by our instinctual responses to its experience.

I am sure that there are not many blessed people who had the perfect birth, infancy, and childhood, thus most of our young lives were probably a mixed bag of family love, and various combinations of social, religious, and traumatic influences.. There are a few who were born physically handicapped, leaving us to wonder why the creative energy of Being manifested itself in such a unique way. These handicaps are visible to all who look their way. Those who transcend their physical handicaps are honored for their courage, and for their achievements in life. Yet, what about the rest of us, who may have another type of handicap, an invisible handicap of the human spirit caused by a combination of personal trauma with our dysfunctional cultural consciousness?

We have major issues bubbling up under the surface of our American society, much like the magma within an angry volcano preparing for a cataclysmic blast  Our adjustments to the troubled marriage of our Capitalist economic system with the Christian religion has created the perfect conditions for our population to

traumatize each other and our entire planet and

destroy its plants and animals,and

ignore or minimize the needs of babies and young children,and

practice violence against others through war, oppression, racism, misogyny, and

MAD-or mutual assured destruction with unregulated firearms, and

the practice of violence against the self through repression and addictive cycles, and suicide.

The mainly patriarchal Christian religion is supposed to offer some sort of healing option for the disease that it helped to create, and support, through its continuing allegiance to corrupted misogynistic males and the institution’s own superstitious reasoning, fear of science, historical ignorance and spiritual degradation.  Awakening people, mainly those tired of being burned by the collective ignorance and indifference of our institutions, are finally starting to pay attention.

Many people within our society have lost all freedom of choice. I have much compassion for those who still struggle with the sometimes lifelong effects of trauma with its resultant suffering, and its deadly spawn of fear, mental illness and alcoholism/drug addiction.. It is no mystery to me as to why those who still suffer choose death through suicide or continued dysfunction over an uncertain healing path.  Why would any sane, or insane, individual seek for help from institutions that continue to promote the propagation of the very diseases that they are suffering from, anyway?  Fortunately, we have other places to travel to find our healing, and there already are awakening people to observe and learn from, to gain hints on how to find our way back home to our own innate goodness..

Men establish the rules in our world (no, it was not God through the Ten Commandments), therefore I will be directly addressing our world culture’s dominant male energy, its propensity for creating toxic and traumatic engagement with its world, and the resultant oppressive systems of religious and economic understanding that maintains its status quo.  Women can also be the perpetrators of trauma and suffering, but the statistics are obvious as to which sex is the major perpetrator of crimes against self and other through intentional, and unintentional, traumatic assaults.  Men are the primary vehicles for the delivery of such toxicity, and are impacted by the poisoning within their own spiritual ecosystem that carrying such energy predisposes us to.  Yet, both males and females can both benefit from understanding the effects of trauma in their own lives, and we can both take enormous strides to bring healing to ourselves.

There has been an epidemic of younger, white, middle class men who have been dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast, for the past 30 years. There is a dearth of information on this subject, though there have been several published studies of this phenomenon.  There are many references to the opioid epidemic, painkiller addiction, and the progression to heroin addiction by those participants, and so-called “white man’s despair”. This is only a part of the real story, and I am going to point to the disease of the human spirit that has targeted and used masculinity to victimize everybody since time immemorial.  I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my own being, that disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to disease within the body of mankind.

Poor self-esteem inculcated into boys from birth by our wayward fathers, religions, and cultures, ignoring our own feelings, not communicating honestly with others, excess competitiveness with others while engaging with greed and the “keeping up with the Jones’ “, proving self-worth in environments where self, and others’, worth is disrespected, trying to fit in where we really don’t belong, people pleasing, stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, not speaking up for ourselves or for others that are oppressed for fear of being marginalized, over immersion in entertainment, excessive eating, not exercising, excessive drinking of alcohol, use of recreational drugs to the point of habituation (including marijuana), smoking, chewing tobacco, using sex as a way to manipulate others, workaholism, or a number of other phenomenon represent the choices that most men make in our efforts to cope with an often times distressing and threatening life experience.  Thus, we must defend ourselves against the threats and  assaults from others, seek relief from our own suffering, and work very hard to meet the needs for economic security, establish our place in society, and support family fulfillment, including our own sexual gratification.

Does anybody think that the suicide victim, lone wolf arsonist, abusive alcoholic, mentally ill man shot by a policeman, drug overdose victim, morbidly obese person, corrupted national politician and/or reality TV star, or mass murderer, is a unique being, with no relationship to the rest of the very humanity that spawned him?

I have been asked why I often focus my attention on the damaged American male psyche, and why I don’t instead focus on more pleasant, loving thoughts and activities. The question itself reveals the flaws inherent in living an unexamined life, and the fragmentation already present in our collective understanding of how to bring healing to our self, and to our world. A most difficult concept for the unilluminated mind is that we are all part of the collective experience of mankind, while remaining an individual, and having a personal experience of that collective energy.  Just because we are not now consciously aware of, and viscerally experiencing the damaging effects of, the unhealed American male psyche, does not mean that we remain unaffected by its self-destructive, and other-destructive, energies. Ignorance never leads to bliss, but instead to more suffering by self and others. Before we can proceed into a new world order of better health, increased happiness, peace, and preservation of our sacred planet and our relationships with the totality of life upon it, we must first completely see where we came from, or our self-destructive history will repeat itself.

“The unexamined life is not worth living”—Socrates

“The unexamined life” refers to a life lived by rote under the rules of others without the subject ever examining whether or not he truly wants to live with those routines or rules. According to Socrates, this type of life was not worth living. Rather than living an unexamined life, Socrates chose death, and these words are attributed to the philosopher during one of his last speeches before his suicide.  Yet, the curse of the unexamined life impacts everyone, and even if one does not know the source of their disease and discomfort, they still make self-destructive and other-destructive choices inspired by these unconscious sources. Socrates died from suicide as a conscious protest of and reaction to his diseased society, yet many of us die through suicide, intentional or accidental, remaining unconscious of our own motivations, even unto the grave.

Some men eventually lose their careers, and may not recover from that. Some men had no meaning in their lives, and may not recover from that. Some men become addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and may not recover from that. Some men become addicted to the idea that their only function is to provide for their wives or family, and, having achieved success or failure, they become disillusioned, and may not recover from that. Some men are just waiting for a better day, and when it never appears, they cmay not recover from that. Some men are lonely and depressed, and they may not recover from that. Some men have profound mental illness, and they may not recover from that.

What is the real back story to these men (and the women and children impacted by their disease) and their lives that may not have been told to their families, to their religions, to their culture, to their employer and co-workers, and to their Gods?

Were any of our male victims of society able to listen to themselves, and identify their traumatic wounding and their own unique pain and suffering?

Why weren’t they able to bring their suffering to the light of Love and Reason, to search for, and eventually find a newer path to healing and meaning?

Did they just blindly follow down the well-worn path of premature deterioration and death that unconscious humanity is doomed to trudge upon?

One only needs to look around, and view the effects of toxic masculinity, and its ugly spawn, toxic religion, toxic politics, and toxic capitalism, to see that repression of the feminine, and the Divine, is built right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. The former President Trump is the perfect representation for all of the ills of our culture, and to the extent that the men within our culture practice his unholy principles of engagement with the world, and the women, and men, within it, the men also share in this culturally derived disease of mind, body, and spirit. What happens to a man defeated by dark energy? We don’t need to look too far to see the insanity around us, the mass murders, early deaths, suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, rape and abuse of woman and children, extinction of species, destruction of our ecology, and see the relationships that now continue to a very bleak future, unless the men in this world awaken, and rebel against the prevailing dark attitudes and its traumatic influences upon our dying culture.

Over the course of my development as a growing person, I was trained well as to how to use my culturally and family influenced mind. Society, in combination with our native neuro-linguistic capacity, has provided, ostensibly for our benefit, certain mental software routines, or apps, that enable us to process and act upon information in efficient and culturally acceptable manners.  The problem is that many of these subroutines are now fundamentally defective, being habits of thoughts, or idols, that are not only erronroys, but extraordinarily resistant to change.  They tend to keep us trapped within a limited radius around the whipping post of our own personal ignorance, or unwillingness to change.

There are no affirmations to say or to practice that will make a defective system repair itself. There is no healing teacher just waiting to lead us into our own unique “promised land”.  When affirming a truth, or practicing 3, 5, 7, or 12 steps to achieve a goal, or change a behavior, these practices occur within a corrupted environment, and we are only changing the furniture around in our unique prison cells. We can affirm the truth all we want, but if the conditions for its birth and nurturing have not been honored, then we are only treating symptoms, and not causes. Thus, the cycle of fix and failure becomes built into the very system that we think that we want to repair or improve.

Our culture has a propensity for creating traumatic situations with all of the subsequent self-destructive and other-destructive mental programming adopted by its victims.  Our collective cultural mindset, or ethos, was created through societal, historical and genetic predispositions.  Individual and collective ignorance, and the human male’s propensity for traumatizing vitriolic, bullying, war-mongering behaviors are the unfortunate outcomes for spiritually disfigured minds and hearts.

“It is no measure of good health to be well adapted to a sick society.”-—Jiddhu Krishnamurti

The human race remains a breeding ground for violence of all types, with its traumatic impacts upon all of us.  And we are culturally inclined to ignore the distressing objects of our perception, by often denying our unconscious participation in the very reality that we are witnessing.  Speaking not of the evil that we see or hear results in no healing potential, FOR ANYBODY.

Have you ever painted a house right before it was to be demolished and rebuilt? Have you ever put new tires onto a car whose engine is near failure, and that may need to be junked out? Would you “put lipstick on a pig” ? Remember, pigs are not inherently ugly, especially if another pig is making the assessment. Have you ever put new wine into old wine skins, to use an ancient expression? People, religions, politicians, and writers, who promise you a “quick fix” are a part of the problem, for they make promises in the world of effect, but we must reach back into the source for our consciousness, where the real cause of our problems exists, if we ever expect to make lasting changes

“I have heard that there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”—–Dr. Seuss

“We are not retreating.  We are advancing in another direction.”—General Douglas MacArthur

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you.  They’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”—-Bernice Johnson Reagon

“The underbelly  of the human psyche, what is often referred to as our dark side, is the origin of every act of self-sabotage.  Birthed out of shame, fear, and denial, it misdirects our good intentions and drives us to unthinkable acts of self-destruction and not-so-unbelievable acts of  self-sabotage.-“—-Debbie Ford

“Oh shadow boxer of evil, when will you ever tire?  It is the champion of a lonely dream world to which you aspire!  Stop resuscitating those dead illusions with your mental pugilist blows.  Your healing life will then reveal to you the One that Peace eternally knows!”—-Elisha Scott

Through these five quotes, we can see several options available to us for addressing some of life’s interpersonal complexities, and the threats or attacks against us that we have faced over the course of our life.  We may engage in continuous struggle and confrontation with our problems, run away from them, become paralyzed by them, deny their very existence, or develop insight into them, and thus find a healing peace.. These five options are not mutually exclusive, and through healing intention they may be embraced singly, in several different combinations, or all may become united in a powerful healing synergy..  We can fight our foe, flee from it if we are not yet up to the challenge, become a passive witness to it while waiting for a better day to address it, deny what we are seeing and make believe all is well, or, in a courageous show of spiritual strength,  face it directly with honesty, by seeing our self through the mirror of our relationships with the people who have been perceived as the source of threats to us..

The primary question derived through our reaction to quote #1 may become:

Do I have the physical and emotional capacity to defend myself against the assaults levelled against me by others?

The primary question derived through our reaction to quote #2 may become:

Can I accept that sometimes falling back and reevaluating where I am can make me stronger in the long run?

The primary question inspired by our reaction to quote #3 may become:

Rather than remaining a passive, indifferent, or even paralyzed witness to life, can I find why I have closed down to other proactive possibilities and choices for experiencing life?

The primary question inspired by our reaction to quote #4 may become:

How do I stop myself from burning my spiritual house down again?

The primary question inspired by our reaction to quote #5 may become:

What is my responsibility for the creation, and the continuation, of whatever problems that I am currently facing?

Trauma and its wounding results in extreme contraction of our spirit.  My parents and my culture made their compelling arguments for trying to convince me that their paths and understandings were righteous, and I just needed to be mature enough to understand and find where I fit in this challenging place.  I knew (and, I think, deep down we all know) that the world is a fucked up place. And those who have successfully adapted to this fucked up place sure don’t like to be told the truth that they are also living in a fucked up place, and that their adjustments with and accommodations to this fucked up world keeps the world, as well as their own puny little life, all fucked up.  As a culture, we are predisposed to a spiritual version of the psycho-neurological disease of anosognosia, where we are doomed to live a life of unaware ignorance to other possibilties.  We have either lost the ability to think for ourselves, or we have never had the capacity.  Our thinking nature gets commandeered by the needs of our family, our society, and our religion.  And we wonder why our thoughts race on and on in an endless loop, reaching nowhere.

“Oh mental marathoner, only on a broken treadmill do you stand, your secondhand words and thoughts keep you one of life’s also-rans.  You forever chase, in vain, love’s all-knowing voice, So step off of that dead machine, and run towards a healing in which all may rejoice!”—-Elisha Scott

“The most courageous act is to still think for yourself.  ALOUD!”—–Coco Channel

We remain imprisoned by our own ignorance of and resistance to the truth.  We fail to develop the capacity to move freely through our lives, instead remaining tethered to the pillories of our painful pasts, until we become willing to face ourselves.

The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Questionnaire is a 10-item self-report measure developed for the ACE study to identify childhood experiences of abuse and neglect. The study posits that childhood trauma and stress early in life, apart from potentially impairing social, emotional, and cognitive development, indicates a higher risk of developing health problems in adulthood.  The questionnaire is derived from information gained through an important study in the 1990’s.  The study investigated the relationship between weight gains after the discontinuation of successful diets by people, and their history of abuse, trauma, and poor  self esteem.

Here is the questionnaire.  Prior to your 18th birthday:

1. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
2. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever… Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
4. Did you often or very often feel that … No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
5. Did you often or very often feel that … You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
6. Were your parents ever separated or divorced?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
7. Was your mother or stepmother:
   Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
9. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?                        No___If Yes, enter 1 __
10. Did a household member go to prison?
    No___If Yes, enter 1 __

If you answered more than two questions in the affirmative, you are potentially predisposed to a cluster of poor health choices, the continuing of traumatizing of self and others, suffering within the self and, in general creating a generally troubling life experience. Trauma and suffering are not synonymous, though suffering may arise from failure to directly address traumatic wounding, which only leads to more suffering, and the unconscious predisposition towards creating new traumatic life events..  Many causes of suffering are preventable, however, and they have their origins within broken, unhealed minds unwilling to embrace the possibility of personal change.  And, most of these assaults against our Spirit originate within the family, though environmental influences from a corrupted societal norms and religious malfeasance also play major roles in the origin and proliferation of traumatic wounding.

It is the resistance to change and evolution that becomes the bellows for the fires of suffering and the proliferation of trauma.  Never forget that racism, misogyny, xenophobia, genocide, and war are culturally generated and individually accepted activities that victimize and traumatize innocent populations.  To this day these malevolent attitudes are still being promoted by powerful cultural and religious figures, and we all suffer under its oppressive weight.

Yet, our culture’s inclination for promoting its self-serving lies while supporting powerful proponents of the status quo means that we will encounter resistance as we attempt to move beyond the institutionalized and culturally conforming wounded versions of ourselves.  It is important to keep in mind that the Christian religion has immortalized and institutionalized mankind’s “fallen nature”, while many sects still promote the sad, mistaken idea that we are all byproducts of original sin.  The dysfunctional Patriarchy historically established within the Christian church has traumatized and terrorized innocent victims, nearly since its inception.  And it has the nerve to scapegoat others, and to blame its own wayward attitudes and evil actions on the concept of original sin, rather than manning up, and accepting personal responsibility for all of their errors in judgement.

Franklin Graham, and other self–serving pseudo Christian white evangelical religious zealots showed their true colors with the support of the divisive and toxic Trump administration.  Some of these leaders sexually exploit the members of their congregations. Some of these leaders monetarily exploit the members of their congregations. Some of these leaders debase and demean all female members of their congregation, relegating them to secondary or tertiary leadership roles.  Some of these leaders behave just like any other unhealed toxic person, don’t they?.  Religion is the elevator music playing in the background, while they engage in their moral turpitude.

The psychological term transference and the seemingly religiously inspired stigmata syndrome are philosophically related. The church promotes a variation of psychological transference or the Stigmata syndrome, by emphasizing that we are all byproducts of original sin, that we are sinners, and that our only salvation lies in believing that Jesus Christ died for our sins.  Somehow our dirty slate is cleaned, if we only believe in Jesus and the mythology attributed to him strongly enough. We pin our sins onto Jesus, let his suffering represent our own, and he then carries the load for us as some sort of sacrifice to “God” or the “Father”. Otherwise, we all share in the same shame and guilt that the rest of humanity wallows in while living a “non-Christian” life.  In this understanding, we are required to accept the world’s sins as our own, while also accepting the Christian church’s assumptions, thus traumatizing our self by this act of misanthropic violence against our true nature.

In a therapy context, transference refers to redirection of a patient’s feelings for a significant person to the therapist. . People who have stigmata exhibit wounds that duplicate or represent those that Jesus is said to have endured during his crucifixion. So, the poor stigmatic neurotic transfers his “love” for the story of Jesus, and his wounding, onto himself, thinking that somehow he is also carrying humanity’s sin, and punishment, with Jesus.  The wounds typically appear on the hands and feet (as from crucifixion spikes) and also sometimes on the side (as from a spear) and hairline (as from a crown of thorns).  The medical and scientific community is inclined to believe that these stigmata’s are the result of psychopathic mirroring into self-mutilation.  That is a totally acceptable suggestion to me, as I have witnessed nearly the entirety of the human race mirroring/replicating dysfunctional behavior of those that they love, and their lives reflect, not only their own personal wounds, but the historical wounds of their family and of their culture.

A truth also indicated in the New Testament narrative is that society tends to support the setting free of a Barrabas type criminal (a trauma spreader by nature, being a murderer and an insurrectionist) to wreak havoc upon the world, rather than let a saintly figure have his freedom. Our cultural “mob mind” does not exist to support each individual to aspire to the highest possibility for their self, but instead promotes sharing a low level of consciousness, the least common denominators of our human experience where pain, suffering, and trauma reigns supreme.  In effect, we all become victims of the Stockholm syndrome, a self-protecting psychological response to extreme trauma. It occurs when hostages or abuse victims bond with their captors or abusers, and begin to mirror their attitudes and behavior. This psychological connection develops over the course of the days, weeks, months, or even years of captivity or abuse, and is intended to convince the abusers that the victim has been “rehabilitated”, and is now a willing part of their corrupted family.. 

My first 31 years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed by the conspiracy of silence, a silence created by my misguided need to preserve and protect a limited, damaged image of self, and of all others. My own true nature had been masked over, or silenced, through that process. A lifetime of oppression of myself and the unconscious repression of my feeling, loving nature had brought to me a series of near fatal illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity continued to live, move, and have its being enshrined within my own heart and soul. I saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions remain burdened by their own limitations of understanding and intelligence.. I saw that my own suffering was shared by most of the other people that I knew. I saw that most of my friends died young, from suicide, alcoholism, and medical issues.  I saw that those who still suffer have little energy to provide emotional support for others who still suffer, as well.

Tragically, many of us have experienced great difficulties, traumatic impacts, and suffering through our relationship with our family, our “religion”, and our culture.   Some of the traumas most resistant to healing happened in our early years, or even before we became verbal as young children.  And most victims go through life, never knowing the source of their chronic pain, be it physical and/or emotional, and having a name, or a conscious experience of its original collision with us.

Traumatic experiences and suffering may arise through an action of intentional hostility, or it may arise spontaneously as a reaction to the vicissitudes of life. Suffering may arise from an inability to do what is right, and trauma may result in victims from that mistake. Suffering may arise through incurable diseases of the body, or of the mind, and others may be traumatized by the effects of our distress. Suffering may arise through the trauma of witnessing horrific acts of violence. Suffering may arise from the inability to reconcile the belief in God with one’s own grief and loss. Suffering may arise from becoming addicted to substances that were designed to take our pain away. Suffering may arise from the perceived inability to speak one’s truth and to have one’s voice heard in the face of the oppressive powers of the day. Suffering may also arise from contemplating the continuation of our daily pains into a distant, unknown future.

Most of us did not embark upon the spiritual path because our life was a resounding success.  Even if we had attained material wealth and comfort, we only delay the inevitable distress and chaos of a life lived without healing, spiritual relevance and meaning..  Those not satisfied with their present version of the “status quo” may have already buckled under the oppressive weight of a lifetime of accumulated pain and suffering, have heard their long ignored interior voice crying out for change, or heard others’ voices promising release from troubles through traveling new paths of consciousness.

How do I attempt to bring healing to my broken interior?

First, I needed to hone my powers of insight. Then, I needed to develop the emotional and spiritual fortitude to look at the entirety of my life, and then incorporate that experience of insight for my greater good, which also impacts the whole of life in a more positive manner.

There is no minister or church, no support group, therapist, mother, father, brother, sister, wife, husband, daughter, son, pet dog, or Jesus Christ figurine that can dig into our own unique version of the human soul for us, and remove the thorns, or swords which have been thrust into our side over the years since our first appearance on this planet Earth. We must each dig deep into our hearts and souls, and face the absolute darkest areas of life itself, and from this inward journey, mine our own treasures from our relationship with the dark force, or else our lives just become the continuation of a story of someone else’s second hand/passed down dysfunction, from which we cannot ever completely heal.

Our own living, dynamic story must become forefront in our minds, examined fully to its deepest core(s), we must see where the source of our own discomfort lies, and then the power of our awareness can then bring healing into this new, present moment of experience Some actually call this process “mindfulness:, though I just call it taking personal inventory, a process I first learned in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

We know all too well where we are now, and to those that do not like the present state of awareness, we do have options.  We know that there must be another way to live life, but we do not yet have a clue as to how to live into a new, suffering free future.  We realize that the path that we are presently on only leads to failure, yet we do not know how to enter onto new paths.

We may ask ourselves, or of others:.

What is holding us back?

What is our life’s work?

What gets us all fired up, and will our own internal fire ever burn brightly for us?

Are we too tired to face the truth about our own life, and the life that we share with the rest of humanity?

Will the facts that we have accumulated, and our personal and family interpretations of those facts, provide accurate enough clews/clues for escaping our pain and suffering?

Has someone been able to find freedom from my experience of this HELL before?

Did this someone leave a clue for us as to how to proceed?

Is this path the only one that I can travel to succeed in attaining my own release from this HELL?

If our pilot light is on, but our energy output is tethered to the lowest setting, we are not going to warm up to our highest expression of human kinetic energy. By turning our internal dials to a higher setting, we can accomplish more in our lives.  If the dials are frozen in place due to past traumas and emotional wounding, we cannot adjust with fluidity and grace to an ever changing life situation.  And, our fires burn brightest when we can burn with others in a collaborative  and healing fashion.  If too many in our community are also traumatized, and have “frozen dials”, then community resistance to any change will be high, and our capacity for collective growth and evolution will remain compromised.

Trauma must be recognized for what it is, which is psychological wounding as a result of a single experience, the repetition of similar experiences many times, or a combination of different experiences which have attacked one’s safety and security over an extended period of time.    It is an assault against our innocence, an oppressive act, or series of actions, against our essence, and the unskilled way we have dealt with it becomes the source of much of our repressive tendencies and sufferings.

Becoming passive/aggressive in expression, which is the fight and flight response all mixed into one special accommodation to trauma, was my primary operative response to the challenges of my own life.  Fight, flight, and/or shock and paralysis are all instinctual ways the human animal has learned to respond to attack, and to fearful or misunderstood phenomenon.  It is a behavior that is common to most of the other mammalian species, and we need not judge ourselves for having a natural predisposition towards the use of these tools for dealing with difficult objects of actual and/or perceptual reality.  Higher consciousness adjustments to our understanding, such as learning from the mirror of relationships, are a more recent development within the human species, and will, hopefully, become another instinctual response to all traumas and sufferings in humanity’s future.

In our beginning strides on the spiritual path, we usually start with a motivating assumption, an assumption offered by others, yet probably also informed by our intuition and our long lost innocence:

Though we are not experiencing it now, there must be a better, or even a perfect state of being available to us.  There must be a God, or a Truth, or a Love that can bring transformation to us, and release us from the suffering and sorrow of being a human being.  There must be a cause or reason that we are not experiencing this blissful state.  Is it because of an error in our thought, behavior, upbringing, acculturation, or even a fundamental flaw in our being ?(original sin?).

Where might we find the path back to the original Garden Of Eden?  Are we up to the challenge of facing our own personal minotaur(s) deep in the labyrinth of our minds?  Are we willing to travel back to the dark forges of Mordor, to forever release our self from its dark ring of power?

Virtually all of the interesting characters in history have struggled with, been entombed by, and have overcome, at least to some degree, this dark force, and it is their journey that becomes the stuff of great stories and legends.

And, you and I have the potential to be chiseled out of the same marble that once entombed these heroic souls.

It is extremely difficult in finding a way to reach those who have unconditionally accepted a diseased culture and/or one’s own unique fragmented individual life, while remaining in rigorous denial of those facts. Those who have made a decision to slowly and painfully commit suicide, individually and collectively through their addictive and self-destructive cycles of behavior are becoming part of the new normal in American life. Each mentally ill human being, including all alcoholics and drug addicts must find their own unique “bottom”, where the pain of the disease causes a change, or turning point, in their lives. Insanity, poor physical health, loss of job, loss of family, jail, DUI, threat of death, or near death experiences, and deaths of close friends or family members also suffering from cultural disease and addiction have been known to bring the desire for healing. Personally, it took all the previously mentioned negative addictive cycle outcomes to convince me to deal with my trauma and my suffering, and change my self-image, self-esteem, attitudes and behavior.

I had major resistance to writing this chapter.  The suffering from my past provided the foundational material for this exploration into human suffering and trauma. And, as fundamental aspects of my consciousness are shared by most others within our species, my hops is that together we may eventually co-create a new, healing narrative for our damaged culture.  If our culture is to survive and prosper, a spiritual syncretism derived from our collective healing response must eventually establish a legitimate, healthy religious understanding for our lives and time.  Until that day, we all must address these most challenging issues of being a human being, and find our own unique path for our healing..We might find we need support to face the events of the past, so turning to a trained professional who can offer tools for healing can be a valid choice, and we should feel no shame in seeking such support.

Many days, I am not a proud member of the human race. Sometimes, I am appalled and disgusted by my male peers, and most times I want nothing to do with oversexed and over aggressive men. Men are the serial killers, they are the rapists, they are the ones wielding assault rifles, they are the ones terrorizing innocent people. There was a time when I would have lifted my fists against the aggressors, but a broken hand and broken collarbone proved to me that my structure could not support the war on Patriarchy and its ugly spawn, the damaged male ego and its addiction to its “penis power”. I continue to write about the vile, damaged parts of consciousness of the American male, much to the distress and consternation of some of my male readers. I also know that there is a tender, loving, compassionate component to the male consciousness, and that is the part the I celebrate with all people seeking healing from our sometimes evil world, the world created by dark men and their twisted fantasies of domination and control.

I will no longer remain silent. I confront darkness wherever it lies, even if it is within my own soul. For men, the big problem is not that we get erections, it is that, while young, we unskillfully manage ourselves in self-destructive and other destructive manners. Too many men live in a dark world dominated by their poor self esteem, low opinions of others, excess fascination with their own genitals, fantasies of domination and control entertained in the privacy of their dark minds, and their own unskilled relationship with their own sexuality.

I will not idly stand by while my peers traumatize and abuse their family members, their female friends or acquaintances, or their world, because my heart will not allow it. NOR SHOULD YOU!  Abuse in any form is unacceptable behavior, and the issues behind it must continue to be addressed by our awakening culture. I have left the Christian church because of their complicity with unhealed male domination and the Earth’s destruction, and I have left several male friendships because of spousal abuse or significant other abuse.  Abandoning the church and these friendships were some of the most excruciating, difficult actions that I have undertaken in my life.

The next chapter will cover my own childhood traumatic wounding, a wounding which encased me within a nearly impenetrable block of marble.

Anybody know where Michelangelo is?

CHAPTER  5

There is nothing more crazy making, and schizophrenia producing, than the conflicting messages given to our children.  The most destructive of these messages is the claim by parents that they love their children, all the while presenting and protecting the toxic conditions where love cannot actually flourish.

“I am only doing this because I love you”, or,

“This is for your own good”

are the familiar refrains that help justify the unjustifiable from the abuser.  Subtly, the child might be trained to be someone that they are not, or, in the other extreme, smacked around, verbally abused, and/or sexually exploited.  Damaging our children is the surest way to continue our culture’s disintegrating social structure and deteriorating collective health and well-being..

There is no greater trauma to the human soul, than to have one’s native sense of self esteem and innocence ripped away and replaced by a needy, wounded self image.  The willingness to be in honest relationships, and to show and feel real, unconditioned love becomes a very threatening proposition to the victim, often times for the rest of their lives.  Other potentials for the spreading of traumatic influence upon others appear to originate within this now wounded sense of self that has been accepted and normalized within the victim.  The victim, while unconscious continues to victimize both self and the other, in mostly unintentional, though sometimes tragic ways.

This is my experience, and it appears that this is a  consistent and historical representation of the fact that the propagation and  transmission of trauma is humanity’s primary historical dysfunction.  Even as a young child, I knew something was horribly wrong with the world, and with my response to it.  I had a profound, prophetic dream while only eight years of age, and though the message was clear, my path for how to practice it and successfully implement the new truth  became a lifelong adventure.  My own yearning to become an astronaut was to “get off of this fucking rock”, a refrain that I repeated in many dysfunctional ways for many, many years.

My own spiritual launching pad had to first get constructed, which is what the pain and suffering of my own life helped me to design.  All journeys have to have a starting point, and a decent scribe to record the sights, if others are to be edified by the experience..  All stories of trauma and dysfunction begin in the family and society, and it is up to each of us to face our history, learn and heal from it, and carry the message of hope to others..

It can be an extremely  uncomfortable experience hearing about, contemplating, and then writing about the foundational information about our childhood and all of our family relationships. But creating the narrative, and then measuring our total response to it, especially as we get closer to the sources of our original wounding, can reveal the bodily and psychic damage that has already been internalized and unconditionally accepted.  As we have seen in the previous chapter, we can either fight it, take flight from it, deny its very existence, be paralyzed by it, and/or see where we have been impacted, and have impacted others, through the mirror of our lifetime of relationships, and make appropriate healing adjustments.

I will start by making an extended presentation of my own father’s life, and a brief summary of his parents and siblings, as he was the vehicle for the transmission to me of at least half of our ancestral heritage, much of our society’s values and its apparent and real toxicity.  I will also briefly mention my grandmother Henry’s life, who was  my mother’s mother, as her family history also played a major influential role.

He started college at the University of Portland, studying Psychology, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and other courses, from 1947-1952. He really wanted to understand the human mind at the deepest level, and his curious mind about other issues only left him late in his life. But he had to delay his academic search for the truth about the broken human mind, as his now hyper-busy life got in the way of him finishing his studies of the human condition.  Dad formed a great friendship and relationship with Father Delaney, who taught at the University of Portland, and in whose name the Delaney Institute was named. He struggled a bit with his school work, but he did stay at it over a course of five years, which did not result in a degree.

Note: I was to later pick up my father’s mantle, and I have made my own attempts to finish the job that he had started, which was understanding the human mind. And, like my father, I rebel against the spiritual and philosophical authorities of the day, sometimes sharing with the readers of my blog and Facebook readers my insights.

Dad still had a fire in his heart, and an incredible desire to succeed. He worked harder than anybody around him, the sign of a classic “overachiever”. He endlessly drove himself, and he was going to overcome his upbringing, and prove to the world that he had higher value than the poor self-esteem that his verbally and physically abusive father had inculcated him with. His perfectionism and zealousness for order and efficiency was utilized to its best advantage in his future employment with the US Postal Service. That same attitude tended to, at times, challenge others, especially those that he attempted to help, or manage, as both a general manager with the Postal Service, and as a friend and family member. A person with a passive/aggressive personality, like me, had the most difficulty with him. Those who were self-assured or had found their own voice, and engaged him directly, had the best relationship with him, and he really enjoyed engaging with others in stimulating, challenging discussions. Those who took the time to get to know Dad, also found a way to love him, in spite of his rough edges. But it was hard to get to know him because too many times he would lead with a derogatory remark, or insult, and bad first impressions rarely get changed.

He had several choices in his career, either as a policeman, fireman, or joining with the US Postal Service, of which he ultimately selected. He also began courting my Mother, Corinne Beatrice Henry, who happened to be quite a “looker”, and also quite a hard working young woman, as well. Mom worked at the original Fred Meyer store in downtown Portland, among many other jobs over the course of her own career. Mom’s parents were not impressed with my fathers’ parents for obvious reasons, and Dad had to overcome some real judgements to make inroads into that family. My Grandpa Henry made my father mow his yard before he would even let Dad take Mom out, as part of their desire to prove that Dad really wanted to move forward with her.

He was the type of guy that, had he ever met Jesus Christ in person, if he noted lettuce in the Christ’s teeth, he would tell him about it. He liked to state that “heaven was not ready for him, and that the devil did not want him either, as he would try to take hell over and run it the way it should be run”. Dad lived his life “outside of the lines” so to speak, and he delighted in challenging other people’s assumptions, sensibilities and understandings.

Dad was an accomplished card player, square dancer, stamp collector, avid fisherman, hiker, camper, traveler, scout troop leader, general outdoors man, adventurer, humorist, wise man, and golfer, but retired early in life from hunting. As a young man he hunted with his father, though he grew to be repulsed by the idea of killing innocent creatures. One time while hiking in the Arizona desert with his dog Misty, they were confronted by a rattlesnake, and he had to draw his pistol and shoot the creature. He regretted having killed it, which shows how his love for all life had taken over his soul. He had a challenged understanding of cats, though, and was quick to punish wayward cats that strayed unto his property to assault and kill birds and squirrels.

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 with me)

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.

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, 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

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?

Now I will try putting to words the perceptions and experiences around being a youth, from the current perspective of a nearly 66 year old man.  My intention is not to resort to “revisionist history” when it comes to presenting the memories and experiences of my childhood.   And, I will only resort to editorials where I perceive that it might enhance or develop the story in a way that could not be done so otherwise.

As a child, it appears that I learned that my personal world could be an unsafe place, especially while I slept.  I remember most nights lying awake at least until midnight, fearing sleep and its dreams, until I fell asleep out of exhaustion, even if I was put to bed at 8:00pm.  I remember using that extra time to rehash my entire day, and everything that I said and did.  I would try to see where I could have behaved better, or differently, for a greater advantage.  I intuited that if I were a “better person” by day, my nightmares at night might not be so severe.  Yet, my day time behavior rarely improved, for I was fairly spontaneous, and I tended towards impulsive activity.

I have memories of waking up from sleep, and, with my older sister, walking over to the garage window, and crawling up onto my rocking horse to look out of the window, to see if our parents’ car was in the garage.  Of course, if the car was gone, we were both distressed by the parents’ absence, and, to this day, we both agree that this event did happen, and it happened several times.

Even after I started sleeping by myself, my mother allowed me into her bedroom at night after my typical nightly nightmare terror sessions, as long as dad had already left for work.  I remember how protected from my demons I felt, as I lay in bed with her.   I also know, now, that I unconsciously sought out women, MUCH MORE THAN MEN, to bond with, with the hopes that the relationship would bring a measure of safety and acknowledgement into my life, which seemed to be quite lacking in too many of my male to male connections.  Yes, this was to become an unconscious “center” , yet another locus of energy, in addition to other ‘energy’ centers (such as the fear of being ignored), around which all of my future perceptions were to be influenced by.

There were many moments in the earlier reaches of childhood when I really loved my life.  What I really remember well from my childhood memories are:

My love for my mother, my uncle Wayne, and my maternal grandparents (who provided for me a safe, loving home to stay with them at least one weekend a month for most of my childhood),

My conflicted love for my father,

My love for our pets

My love for exploring  the outdoors,

My love for playing with and studying animals,

My love for running through the forests on trails, or creating my own trails,

My love for building ground forts out of fallen branches,

My love for climbing trees and making tree forts,

My love for exploring islands on the Willamette River near our home, and ,

My love for playing with friends, which were especially hard for me to find, or to make while I was young.

Sometimes, I felt uncomfortable around people my age, especially the boys.  I did not always enjoy playing with the boys, who could be too aggressive.  In first through fourth grades, I usually hung out with the girls, and I played kick ball and other non-contact or reduced violence games with them.   I would become quite attached to one or two girls, and I was already trying to figure out how to incorporate a girl into my life quite prematurely.   I preferred girls to boys, becoming overly attached to girls when I was as young as 8 years old.  The girls, by and large, totally lost interest in me by 5th grade, so I had to stick with the guys for most of my childhood from that point forward.

I usually like my father, but i was often angry with him.  Many times dad was my only friend, and I felt betrayed by him whenever I was over-enthusiastically punished for doing something wrong.    I was always guilty of doing something wrong, whether I admitted it or not.  If I did not admit it, I was lying, which could lead to yet another swat (As the Course in Miracles has stated, these were unrecognized calls for love).

The day after the Columbus Day storm of 1962, when tree branches and fallen trees were everywhere, including our large backyard, my dad was so controlling as to how I was supposed to pick up the branches that I got angry with him, abandoned him, and walked a mile to help Steve Roth (son of owner of Roth BMW) and his family clear the wreckage around their home.  I liked Steve’s mom, anyway, as she was always so friendly to me.  They were comparatively wealthy, and I remember being told by Steve’s mother that my father was not rich, like they were.  This was the first time that I became conscious that there existed people who were better off than we were.

I stole from my father’s wallet sometimes, so that I could go to the store and buy candy.  I did all sorts of things that I knew to be wrong, yet I took some delight in going against authority, and boy did I pay the price!  There were too many beatings with the belt.  Most of the behavior that I was accused of I actually committed, so in Dad’s mind I deserved what I got, though mercy sure would have been a nice charitable gesture, had he offered it to me, or my sister.  Looking back at my childhood, I was confused as to the best way to attract attention, and it may have been a subconscious desire to be recognized that motivated me to ’go against the grain’.

I was taken to Sunday school at a local church, when I was six years old.  I did not like it very much, and I did not nor could not believe that Jesus Christ “died for our sins”.  I knew that I was not a “sinner”, at least not the way that they were trying to explain it to me, and that the language of this church was very harsh and confusing.  When they tried to tell me that my only hope was to believe all of their vague, boring stories, I balked, and in my own unique passive/aggressive fashion, I just ignored what they tried to teach me.  These Sunday School experiences appeared to show me that the church was promoting a bunch of confusing stories with little relevance to my experience.  I tried bible study only two more times in our new Milwaukie neighborhood, but stopped when a girl that I was interested in at the time stopped attending.  Yes, women were the best reason for going to church.  For me, that would prove to be true at least two more times, beginning when I was twenty eight years old.

My father loved dogs, and would always try to have a dog available for our friendship. He instilled into me a great love and appreciation for the canine species, which I still hold onto tightly.    I loved my first dog Nina, who died while running with me while riding my bicycle along a busy road while I was 7 years old, having been hit by a car (my fault for riding too far from home).  I, of course, was devastated, and my dad and mom knew better than making me wrong for her death, but I knew it was my fault anyway.  Our “replacement” dog was promptly run over by our next door neighbor when he got into his truck and backed over our sleeping dog.  Heidi was our third dog, and she was a beautiful Samoyed.  She became, without a doubt, the most wonderful creature that I had ever met up until that era of my life.  I began to recognize the miraculous power that the ‘love’ for another being has on me.  She became the ultimate canine companion for me, as well as for our entire family.

School was not a problem for me in the new neighborhood, as the quality of the North Clackamas School District, at least in the grades schools, was substantially lower than that of the West Linn area from which we had moved from, so I was already a bit ahead of my peers, at least in math and English. And, if the truth be known, I was starting to really get a handle as to how to succeed in school, by watching and imitating the behavior of others who were doing well. I noted at the time that I despised, at times, the competition to get good grades at school. Teachers graded on the curve, meaning that a small percentage of the students got A’s, as well as the same percentage got F’s. Part of me had associated getting good grades with getting love and acknowledgement from my parents, and I hated the idea of having to compete with others to get love at home. It was this experience that led me to sometimes feel good about other student’s failures at school, since it might mean that I would thus have a better opportunity to score some attention points. Collaboration was definitely out of the question for me while living in this scarcity consciousness.

I started to become a bully to some girls around the age of 10 years old. If they were not attractive to me, they were susceptible to gentle, and not so gentle, ribbing and ridicule. I found a behavior where I could get support from other boys, but it was damaging behavior on my part, and was to bring shame to me when confronted at a later time by victims of my abhorrent communication style. One time when I was 15 years old, and waiting for a bus in downtown Portland, a young woman walked up to me, asked my name, and then asked if I knew who she was. I had no idea. She then told me how I victimized her with my poor humor, and made her pee her pants once. I told her that I was sorry, that was not who I was now, but I felt ashamed. I met another of my victims when I was close to 40 years old in an Oak Grove Fred Meyers store, and I sought her out, introduced myself, and apologized for what I had wrought upon her. She had long ago forgave and forgotten, but I had not. It felt good seeing her living a successful life in adulthood, complete with a happy family. Yes, I was part of the oppression and traumatization of the feminine spirit, until I became conscious.

Grandmas heritage and dying experience

Donelle experience needs plus and minus editing

My experience with Donelle through twenty four years of a tragic relationship contains enough information to be a book in and of itself. Her life does not neatly fit into a linear time frame, and her story, just like her life was painfully disjointed, a quality that characterized both of our lives through at least 1987. Mental illness ultimately left her in a permanently broken state, regardless of the multitudes and diversity of medications administered by ‘professionals’, the follow-up care received, OR LACK OF IT, or the rest of the outer circumstances of her life.

Donelle’s life experience as an adult is a direct result of her relationship to traumatic abuse as a child at the hands of a pervert and a beast of a man, as well as the all-pervading aspects of our damaged male dominated culture. Other factors such as poor professional mental health care and few, if any, alternative therapy options, as well as unknown genetic predispositions may be factors that kept her spiritually, emotionally, and physically imprisoned in a life lacking in freedom and good health. Her early years with mental illness had no relationship with recreational and illicit drug use, as she did not use them at all in high school.

Donelle was never able to speak out against the abuse that she
experienced throughout her life. Being born into a socially diseased
family, where her mother’s narcissism and selfishness, and neglect of
her young children were the defining characteristics of their relationship. Her mother’s poor relationship choices with men resulted from her own brokenness, leading to the conditions that promoted sexual abuse and assault against Donelle when she was but 6 years old.

Her mother, Marlene, was a young bride, who married Donald Flick, in 1954. Don owned 2 sections of land in North Dakota, which he managed and leased out, as well as being a full time worker at the Camas Washington Crown Zellerbach paper mill. Don would work so much at the mill, that time at home was quite limited. Marlene would have parties at their home while he was away, and she would invite single men. There was always alcohol being served, and Marlene tended to promiscuity during that time period. While she would be taking leave to the back bedroom with her latest “friend”, she would leave her young children vulnerable to whoever was left without a partner. Donelle, being about 6 years old during this difficult period of time, was selected and abused by Bud Barr, who was a child predator, heavy drinker, and all around bad attitude man. Bud would repeatedly abuse Donelle, and it was also later learned that he abused his other daughter from his previous marriage.

Marlene and Don’s marriage collapsed in 1962, and they were divorced. But Marlene married the abuser Bud, and they moved in together near Five Corners in Vancouver, Washington. Donelle lived with her mother the majority of the time, due to the conditions of the divorce decree.

Donelle had to face the threat of sexual attack from this criminal for
the next ten years of her life, though her brothers told me that Bud was
not allowed to be alone with Donelle, after Marlene and Bud moved in
with each other. Yet, the damage was already done, and Donelle came to know trauma intimately, and she continuously felt the threat of his presence for all of her childhood years.

I was to meet and talk with Bud twice, and found him to be an angry, dark, judgmental man, and I learned to hate that man. I could see that he was an extremely oppressive presence, and he practiced intimidation in all of his spare time, apparently. Upon hearing the story of sexual and physical abuses meted out by Bud from Terry-Lynn Barr, Donelle’s step sister, I was to experience the desire to murder human beings for the first and only time in my life. Bud sexually abused both Terry-Lynn’s other sister from another mother, and her step-sister Donelle when they were both young. Don’t ask me what should be done with those people. Life has a way of punishing them, but it is always too late to save the victim. Many of these victims are so traumatized that they never recover, so prevention is really our only hope here, at least for now.

This might be another chapter, or ignored, below.

Traumatization through anxiety, poor self-esteem, drug addiction, and alcoholism.

CHAPTER 6

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes. Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort.

— Fred Rogers

Evolutionary growth happens when the insignificant finally touches the transcendent.

—-Bruce Paullin

I remain deeply concerned with the present developments within our shared world, including both my individual and our collective human consciousness, and the points of connection between the self and other, through our language, religion, and economic philosophies. As I personally witness, read, and hear about the early death syndrome of the white American male, which may yet still capture me, I now know that our spiritual, political, and economic systems are flirting with catastrophic collapse.

Those who do not want to stay grounded in their own unconsciousness, but instead want to understand why they are not soaring upward into the new, unexplored dimensions of love, being and doing, will find value in this work. For in the complete seeing of the old, the damaged, the diseased, the suffering, and the distraught, can the door of true insight be opened to a new way of being in our minds, hearts, and the world. I can no longer keep silent in the face of the injustice, ignorance, oppression, and collective darkness masquerading as the light within our culture.

The epidemic of younger, white, middle class men dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast for the past 25 years continues in earnest. This recent trend of increased rates of white mortality has contributed to an equalizing of death rates among all racial groups,. Death rates broken down by race and ethnicity once were pointers to the imbalances of health care opportunities within our civilization, but that may be no longer the case. White men, like all other American men, are now succumbing to early death and to physical, emotional, and spiritual disease, as a direct result of our cultural disease.

Most of my grade school and high school friends have already suffered, and have become emotionally calloused, disabled, or have died, from diseases of the spirit. I recently visited a cousin who was comatose and near death from delirium tremens in the ICU, and we buried another drug addicted cousin in 2017,. My wife and I continue to witness a son and daughter-in-law who are co-enabling alcoholics ply their self-destructive trade. We have a toxic male nephew who clings to his hatred, disguised as Trump style politics, and his guns, like his life depended upon them. Our own grandson presently sits in a county jail because of poor decisions arising from his use of pot and other substances since he was 11 years old. All of my best friends from high school are deceased. I have already had three close male friends from my adulthood die of brain cancer, and several others from heart disease. I can’t ignore this disease of the Spirit which has taken over our country.

News in recent years has been dominated by references to the opioid epidemic, painkiller addiction, and heroin addiction as causal agents in early deaths.. Alcoholism, murder, mental illness, poor diets and exercise, and suicide are also major contributors to the upswing in mortality rates, These factors are a small part of the real story, and I continue to address the disease of Spirit that has targeted American masculinity, and the people who I have known who have been struck down by it. I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my own being, that disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to disease within the body of mankind. A difficult but essential truth to contemplate and to perceive is that the ills of our society have created many of the conditions for our early demise, be it through poor dietary choices, heart attacks, cancer, alcoholism, addiction, suicide, murder, or by so-called “accidents”.

While being an unconscious man, I have been a contributor to this disease of the spirit, and the overall relationship dysfunction within the world. I have been subjected to the same family and cultural forces of oppression and repression, which contributes to crazy making communication and behavior between all of us. Being a family man, I have also taken note of the mutual blame game that is continuously circulated which serves as justification for each individual holding onto their own version of our cultural disease. And I have found that most people do NOT appreciate feedback about this errant behavior. If I wanted to make more ‘friends” and be accepted by groups of damaged people I certainly would not be offering this material as it presently is written. Instead, I would have presented positive affirmations, four minute meditations for success, or a three step enlightenment technique for transcendence, all to be performed in whatever spare time the practitioner can find. But that is NOT where the truth lies for me, and I now believe the same to be true for the rest of humanity, as well…

In this time when divisiveness seems to rule the United States, and when heartless terrorists and politicians victimize our most innocent of beings, be they human or animal, it can be difficult to feel the miracle of life that is constantly with us. Yet, to not have a more loving, peaceful, and spiritually guided experience is to live a life devoid of much of the greater meaning available to us as human beings. Without a collectively shared intention to honor each other’s dignity, and the dignity of ALL LIFE on our planet, oppression of our spirits and the continued destruction of our planet will remain the guiding forces dominating mankind until our self destructive end.

After the death of my father in 2017, I had the privilege and challenge of reading and sorting through a lifetime worth of writings and papers from my parents, and from myself.  After reading some of my mother’s personal writings, I was struck by the pain and suffering that she experienced remaining married to my father.  He was not a person with the soft touch, when it came to communicating with those that he loved, especially during challenging/difficult periods of life.  He was what those in the field of recovery refer to as a “dry drunk”.  He was a poor listener, and he could be opinionated, judgemental, angry, obnoxious, overly competitive, and hurtful. He was a member of a huge class of human beings now known as toxic males, and his behavior was to become a major influence for my own choices for how I was to present myself to the world.

I have attempted meditation upon my own source of pain and suffering, and what came to me was how most of what I know about myself, and my reactions to the world, was created by my fundamental relationship with my parents. My sense of self in my early years revolved around internalizing many of my parents’ attitudes. I was acutely aware of what my mother and father expected from me, what I could or could not give back to them to attempt to please them, and my defense mechanisms for managing the fallout when I failed to please them. Beginning early in my life, I also developed the desire to protect them and myself from the results of the conflict that arose in our house, either when I made yet another mistake, or when father overreacted to any situation that brought a sense of fear or threat into the home environment. I developed a need to balance whatever energy was being over expressed at any particular moment, and I was very unskilled at those kind of efforts.  I had internalized and normalized two incomplete creations, or tricksters as I now call them, of who I thought my father and mother were, which were to become sources of self-talk and feedback for me as a child, and then as an unconscious adult.

With the death of my father, it ended the era of subservience to his needs, and the need to protect my mother from my perception of his aggression towards her.. It also ended the era of incomplete grieving for my own mother’s death, as I had to immediately support my mentally deteriorating father when mother died, and I had never completely worked through the grieving process. I was finally an “orphan”, and all of the entanglements that kept me wound around their lives were now physically removed. With my fathers’ spirit no longer overshadowing my own life, I was allowed to develop more fully into whatever, or whoever I am.

For me this was an extraordinary release, because the formation of my sense of self was influenced by parental bonding issues just after birth, and through my first 4-5 years. Being placed on “formula” right after birth, and being placed in a chilly car in the garage at night so that my father could sleep better (I was just another “damned crying baby”) left me as a young being feeling abandoned, and lonely, from the beginning. Though I loved my parents, I certainly did not want to grow up and be like them. Yet, I was not able to offer to my developing self a viable alternative to being like my father, being extremely limited creatively, and my resultant dull, though at times insightful, personality reflected that darkness. Coping mechanisms such as passive/aggressive behavior became my normal response to the daily challenges of life. Toxic masculinity, or, more precisely, an unskilled capacity to relate to people in a peaceful and mutually accepting manner, was to become a defining characteristic of my life.

I came to perceive the collective impact of toxic male consciousness upon my individual existence, with some insight into my own father’s sometimes toxic involvement in my own mind’s formation. I saw that the two tricksters roaming through the inner recesses of my heart and soul gave me limited guidance and kept me from being lonely as a young being, yet kept me from developing into my greater good as an independent, free human being.

In our world, there are countless examples of “self organizing systems”, and all creatures, and the minds of those creatures, are examples of that miracle in action. Our bodies appear to be primarily organized through the pattern created by the history of the human species, and it’s interactions with its earthly environment. Our DNA appears to carry that pattern within our very cells.

Our minds also have a self-organizing principle, as it organizes itself into our unique personal sense of being. The uncertainty of self-organization in consciousness is the greatest mystery of life, and a healthy integration revolves around how well the organism feels accepted by, and connected to the environment that our body travels through. Thus, happier senses of self arise, and are supported, by myriads of “successful” interactions with its social and physical environment. First and foremost is the beings’ acceptance and integration into the primary family cell, or group. If we do not get the requisite positive feedback early on, we face tremendous odds against forming a happy, well-adjusted self organizing principle, or ego. My first 31 years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed by the conspiracy of silence created by my subservience to a damaged image of self, and other. My own true nature had been masked over, or silenced, through that process.

I now see how a lifetime of oppression of myself and the unconscious repression of my feeling, loving nature had brought to me a series of near fatal illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity continued to live, move, and have its being enshrined within my own heart and soul. I saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions remain burdened by their own limitations of understanding and intelligence.. I saw that my own suffering was shared by most of the other people that I knew. I saw that those who still suffer have little energy to provide emotional support for others who still suffer, as well.

There is so much suffering in the world, and eventually all members of humanity share in its universally humbling, painful reality. Human suffering and evil are two spiritually destructive forces that humanity has dealt with each moment of its existence. Failure to address these issues directly and consciously only leads to more suffering, and enhances the collective perception of the presence and growth of evil in our world. Many causes of suffering are preventable, however, and they have their origins within broken, unhealed minds of men unwilling to embrace the possibility of change. It is the resistance to change and evolution that is the origin of many forms of suffering and the proliferation of evil.

Suffering may arise through an action of intentional hostility, or it may arise spontaneously as a reaction to the vicissitudes of life. Suffering may arise from an inability to do what is right. Suffering may arise through incurable diseases of the body, or of the mind. Suffering may arise through the trauma of witnessing horrific acts of violence. Suffering may arise from the inability to reconcile the belief in God with one’s own grief and loss. Suffering may arise from becoming addicted to substances that were designed to take our pain away. Suffering may arise from the perceived inability to speak one’s truth and to have one’s voice heard in the face of the oppressive powers of the day. Suffering may also arise from contemplating the continuation of our daily pains into a distant, unknown future.

The suffering from my past provided the foundational material for my exploration into human suffering. The intention behind the documentation of my life experience in this book is to provide an example for others, and to be a representative voice for those who either choose to, or who cannot speak up for themselves. What I have observed is quite subjective, and the population that I have witnessed is fairly small, compared to the whole of the population that has been impacted by our cultural disease. I offer my apologies in advance to any widow or family member who might be offended by what appears to be judgmental or incomplete representation of the facts, but whatever facts are presented are backed up by my real life experiences..

Speaking out against the injustices of the world, and attempting to be inclusive of all those who suffer is an act of compassion, empathy, and spiritual justice. But, finding one’s courage to speak out brings the risk that the speaker with be seen as yet another voice of oppression against those already burdened by their own unique version of suffering, and who have not yet claimed their own personal power and responsibility. Wisdom dictates that I avoid becoming the voice for a resentment, injustice, or grievance of others, unless I have already experienced the difficult truth behind their pain. Because I have lived a life inclusive of intense pain and suffering, I know this path intimately, having nearly sacrificed my life at thirty years of age to the cumulative effects of the disease of toxic masculinity.

There is a direct connection between what unfolded in my personal life while being a suicidal, masculine energy dominated unconscious man and alcoholic, and the patriarchal evil that is unfolding in our world today. Our world remains intoxicated by its masculine hubris, greed, insensitivity, and the continuing domination and subjugation of all feminine energy, including our Mother Earth. And, the world is in the midst of its own collective march towards suicide, should ignorance, greed, and Trump style politics and economics predominate into the future.

Many men have lost their careers, and could not recover from that loss. Some had no meaning in their lives, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and could not recover from that. Some were sexually or physically abused in their youth, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to the idea that their only function was to provide for their wives or family, and, having achieved success or failure, they could not recover from that. Some were traumatized war veterans who suffered immensely, and could not recover from that. Some were just waiting for a better day, and when it never appeared, they could not recover from that. Some were lonely and depressed, and they could not recover from that. Some had profound mental illness, and they could not recover from that. Some had a profound need to speak up around their own pain, and when they could not find a loving ear with the capacity to listen, they could not recover from that.

What happens to a culture dominated by the oppressive effects of toxic men? What happens to a society that remains out of balance within itself? What happens to a civilization when women are oppressed, and their holistic wisdom, is neglected in favor of self serving patriarchal ideology? What happens to a man defeated by the dark energy of unhealed masculinity? As we witness our families, watch the news and read the newspaper, we can see the tragic answer.

Men, and women, tend to clamor for politicians and religious leaders who do not challenge them, and who continue to support them in their ignorance. The election of our POTU$ is the perfect example, and is a symbol for all of the ills of our culture. To the extent that the men within our culture practice his unholy principles of engagement with the world and the women and men within it, they also share in his disease of mind, body, and spirit. Men seek to run in packs with others who also share in their diseases of the spirit, and they remain a most powerful, deadly force to be reckoned with.

And, insanity continues to expand and explode all around us, with lies being propagated by our spiritual and political leaders becoming accepted by the naive. Mass murders, early deaths, suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, abuses of woman and children, extinction of species, destruction of our ecology, and all of the damaged relationships that fail to find healing will continue to predominate within the collective mind of mankind until we make conscious contact with rationality, love, and sanity…

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

—– James Baldwin

The effects of toxic masculinity, and its ugly spawn, toxic religion, toxic politics, and toxic capitalism, is the continued repression of human emotion, the feminine, and the sublime possibilities for existence. Over many centuries, men have built mutual oppression right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. Toxic masculinity values and principles underpin much of the Common Knowledge Game (CKG), which is the modern name for the phenomenon of socialized understanding of self and the other.  The following are guiding energies that tend to shape men’s thoughts and actions created through the CKG of understanding in today’s America.

1. Unconscious, harsh and inaccurate self and other judgement, with resultant poor self-esteem inculcated into boys from birth by our wayward fathers, religions, and cultures.
2. Remaining ignorant or fearful of our own feelings, including anger and grief, or expressing them unskillfully, We have been trained to ignore or to hide from our own feelings
3. Letting stress go on unabated in our lives, without challenging its points of origin
4. Loss of emotional and physical safety in home, school or work environments
5. Not communicating honestly with others, while carrying the painful feeling of not being heard or appreciated,
6. Eschewing deep and meaningful relationships with others,
7. Excessive competitiveness with others while engaging with greed, trying to “keep up with the Jones’ “,
8. Attempting to prove self-worth in environments where self, and others’, worth is disrespected, thus trying to fit in where we really don’t belong,
9. People pleasing, at the expense of our personal integrity and truth.
10. Not speaking up for ourselves or for others that are oppressed for fear of being marginalized,or further victimized
11. Over immersion in entertainment, binge watching of television, obsessive video game playing, and excess reliance upon Snapchat, Facebook, or other social media platforms for social awareness and connection
12. Excessive eating and/or eating excessive sugar, salt, or processed foods
13. Not exercising, not hiking in Nature and thus staying away from its healing balm
14. Excessive drinking of alcohol, use of recreational drugs to the point of habituation (including marijuana),
15. Smoking and chewing tobacco, all the while knowing that behavior is killing us
16. Using sex as a way to emotionally hide or escape, or to control or manipulate others, We are selfish with our sexuality.
17. Workaholic behavior, and forgetting how to laugh and play well with others. Because of our lack of prosperity, employers abuse our work ethic to encourage us to become workaholics, which ends up keeping us out of the connecting, healing currents of friendships and family relationships.

In our efforts to meet the needs for economic security, continue our family line, and meet our sexual needs, we often make sacrifices that diminish our health, our sense of well-being, our community connections, and our personal integrity.

The primary contributor to the continuing cultural disease and dysfunction is men’s unwillingness to make fundamental changes in attitudes and behavior. White male privilege, patriarchy, and toxic masculinity are three useful terms denoting the entrenched, institutionalized nature of our dysfunction, which is a major disease of the human spirit. This disease has its deadly flames fanned by our cultural denial of a deadly truth, which is the foundation for the conspiracy of silence. Our unskilled male behavior collectively remains a national disgrace, as we continue to dishonor each other, our animal brothers and sisters, the environment, and our planet Earth.

Men are still predominantly in control, and continue to skew the narrative away from the truth that MEN’S ATTITUDES ARE THE PROBLEM. Our ideas for addressing the problems of gun violence, addiction, greed, and sexism tend to avoid obvious, rational solutions, because we don’t want to face ourselves. And, failure to face ourselves will lead to the same self-destructive end that eventually happens to all humans and their attempts at maintaining civilization.

A prime example is the NRA and the corrupted politicians who do not act to reduce the proliferation of automatic weapons. These allied forces are sponsors of national terrorism. Just how many automatic weapons does it take to make America’s gun owners feel safe? It is just that many weapons that it takes to make America unhealthy, insane, fearful, and outside of the picture of potential national healing. Gun violence directly stems from a national mental illness, and guns are never the proper medication to alleviate the symptoms. One automatic weapon is too many, and 300,000,000 is never enough, so goes the divided, self-destructive collective mind of America.

There Is Something Fundamental Here

I had an amazing, cathartic experience around the origins of my own toxic masculinity. The following story recounts an experience that I had in 2017. If it weren’t for the incredible spiritual strength, and wisdom, of my life partner, Sharon White, I would not have been able to have, what some people call, the following “cathartic event”.

It was on a Thursday morning in February, and I was preparing to go to the Pilates class that Sharon and I attended each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at our athletic club. Typically, I wanted to get there a little early, so that we could warm up on an exercise bicycle, with a little aerobic activity that I still enjoyed participating in, since I no longer ran, having retired late last year after a lifetime of enjoyment, and pain.

It was 9:15, and I was fully prepared to leave, while Sharon remained on the telephone, talking with a friend. As it turned 9:19, I spoke to her, in my most innocent of voice,

“can we go now?”

Sharon had a series of responses that I won’t repeat here, but three things that she said coincided with me entering a “spell”. I felt the presence of something so basic, so fundamental, so raw, so real, so hurt, that I raged for a couple of minutes, declaring several times:

“There is something fundamental here!”

The trapped energy of a lifetime was released. I became aware of a pain so deep, and so all-encompassing, resulting in an anger from a source that I had never touched before, at least as a verbally conscious human being.

Sharon and I went our separate ways for a few hours, while we both tried to understand what the heck had just transpired. Leading up to this experience, I had been intensely exploring the entirety of my life experience, having written 70 pages about my early childhood, maturation process, addictive and self-destructive cycles, and glimpses into higher possibilities for living. Without me realizing it, all of the personal story writing had placed me into the psychic world of all of my past pain and suffering.

After a meditation, I had a realization. My wounded essence had actually cried out for the first time and I actually listened to it, without my ego repressing it as it had for 61 years. And I also saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father. I felt an incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents.

I finally had experienced the most basic nameless suffering of an ignored child, or baby, and I have now given it verbal description:

MY VOICE IS WORTHLESS, I HAVE NO VALUE. I MUST BE ALONE IN THIS WORLD.

Sharon paid the price for a couple of hours, while I re-birthed the wounded baby within me. But, I had an insight that still informs me daily.

I saw how we, as humans, keep layering ourselves and our ideas upon what somebody else is saying, rather than meeting the being where they are, and responding according to the dictates of our “heart center”, which in most people, ESPECIALLY MEN, has been scabbed over by our own early spiritual wounding. Men typically inflict their own wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not so subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in dominating, or being dominated, by others. Collaboration and cooperation become nasty words for all such practitioners. Philosophies of oppression, and of the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. All oppressed groups remain victimized and marginalized, and are only stick figures in the oppressors dreams of those seeking world domination.

When our personalities have been formed by the integration of our perceptions into an unconscious, unnamed, unrecognized dark energy, we create self-defeating tricksters within our minds, which become our internal advisors for life. We end up creating an energy exchange dynamic where we project our dysfunction onto others, and make them wrong for it, not recognizing that we were the source of our misplaced judgement. I have acknowledged their very presence within my own mind, and that their continued distorting presence can determine how I view reality. The spiritual thorn in my side will forever be that my voice will not be heard before I die, which is the adult version of my infantile suffering and separation from love.

When I am not fully conscious, the unfocused, chaotic energy within my mind makes me a poor listener. If I can quiet my mind long enough to listen with my heart to what is being said, I can respond accordingly with the intelligence of my heart. As a race and a culture, we tend to be too eager to respond with ego programmed responses, which, typically, are based on incomplete perceptions or someone else’s ‘knowledge’, so being mindful is a huge help.

In our attempt to be heard, we instead try to program people, unconsciously, to behave and react more in accordance with our expectations. When they don’t (they rarely do, unless they are our impressionable young children), we are very disappointed, and feel rejected, and, in the absolute, we feel betrayed by the sum total of exchanges between the parties. It is deadly to attempt to control the other’s experience through linking our own unhealed energy with their own.

I do not want a life that has been lived in vain. I also see a world where the majority of us still suffer from the same, basic issues that I have tried to describe here. Even among some people closest to me, denial reigns supreme, and I have only a small measure of hope that the personal truth that I am trying to convey here will actually be heard, and applied by others that I care about, which now includes the entirety of our planet Earth.

“There is something fundamental here.”

As a baby, my parents placed a blanket around my baby body, and deposited me in a car in their garage so that my father could get at least 5 hours of sleep a night. My father was “chasing the American Dream”, and worked two jobs at the time.

I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the profoundly damaging effects of denying love and interactive time to a developing human being. What I might need to remind myself at times is that others, no matter what their age, or how much that I think that I know them, continue to be developing human beings, and they deserve my undivided attention, while they attempt to reveal who they are in this moment.

When I shared some of my creative work, which began in early March of 2017, I got the very strong impression that some of the important people in my life just didn’t have the time or the inclination to listen. I am NOT asking that anybody agree with what I have to say. I am asking that people listen with the heart, and allow my deepest meaning to sink in, and finally reveal itself to the listener.

If I do not want to grow anymore, I will stop listening to what others are really trying to say. If i don’t want to be of service to my fellow-man/woman, I can just stop listening to what they are trying to express, and just layer my own ignorance and judgement, over somebody else, and not let them reveal to me who they Really Are in this special moment.

Another clue about our own, or the others’ listening intention, is when we try to share a profound life event, and then are immediately “run over” by another with more knowledge on the subject. Sometimes we, or the other, either have “too much book knowledge”, we have the “certificate”, we already have read about it on the internet, we have memorized something from a class that we already took, or we have a friend who has already “been there, done that!”  What about that “friend” or “family member” who checks their phone, and Googles information, perhaps to confirm their own biases or (mis)understandings, instead of accepting the validity of the energy that we are attempting to share in this new, unique moment?

Our President, and many of our politicians, are masters at this. Please don’t inflict this same treatment on the ones you love. It is like putting a blanket around our heart and soul, and putting us into the car, so that those with a dehumanizing or monetizing philosophy can continue to oppress others, while keeping themselves spiritually asleep.

Whether any of us can accept it, or even want to try to believe that it is possible, there is a unique truth, which some call divine inspiration, which reveals Itself moment to moment. In my ignorance, disguised as “knowledge”, I throw a ‘blanket” around IT, and throw IT in a car, so that I can continue to sleep.

We all have a secret that needs to be told

We all have secrets from others that need to be told to us.

We all need to be more willing to listen for the deeper meanings of each other.

Be careful, oh Mankind, the secrets that we keep,

For by our stories we may awaken, or all die asleep.

There is something fundamental here.

I choose Compassion today, with its loving, listening ear..

We are all developing human beings, no matter what our age. And, we are all God’s children, and God speaks through us, whether we can hear the “truth”, or not. Sometimes the “truth” is so difficult to hear, that we shut down emotionally, and we either ignore what is said, or substitute our own story for what the “other” is trying to communicate.

Please, listen to your self. Please, listen to the other.

Far too many men engage in our cultural conspiracy of silence daily, which is a most deadly component of the CKG.  These include the following admonitions:

• don’t talk
• don’t tell
• don’t touch
• don’t feel
• don’t engage
• don’t listen
• don’t change
• don’t heal

My male heritage and my experiences as both a son to a often times toxic father, and working with many damaged men in the electrical trades and in general employment, provided the background for most of my writing . Patriarchy, as expressed through men as a collective consciousness, is responsible for creating the present day conditions of our diseased world. Men in power would rather have our neighbors, wives and children assaulted, raped, overdosed through drug use, or murdered through gun violence, than to promote and enforce healing changes. We need more women in positions of power and influence, and men need to get in touch with their potential for toxic behavior and attitudes, and begin to make necessary course changes in their hearts and souls.

The abhorrent behavior of Donald Trump, the poster boy and face for toxic male stupidity and darkness, as well as his supporting cast of damaged characters, has become the de-facto leader of the energy of toxic masculinity.. If we as a culture, and me as an individual, don’t speak out, and affirm to ourselves, and to others, what the truth really is to us, then eventually the hypnosis and propaganda of others may become our own collective reality, and continue to overtly influence our personal integrity, community relationships and overall spirituality.

The historical legacy of the American white man’s ignorance and evil, and his support network of unconscious, disempowered, fearful and/or cowardly family and community members, continues even up till today.  Subservient women, often times religiously inculcated to be that way, continue to follow their husband’s lead, and as a group remain one of the leading populations of unconscious support for continued unhealthy male dominance. There always comes the day when the family of the woman under the husband’s domination needed for her to speak up the most, and the whole family is further damaged because of her own silence and continued powerlessness.

Women remain the number one oppressed group of humanity, though the blacks/African Americans, native American Indians, and other racial and ethnic groups have not escaped the grasp of white male privilege, masquerading as American Christianity inspired capitalism and politics.

Here are some principles of toxic masculinity that I found live in our collective consciousness, and which also lived in unconscious domains of my own mind and heart. I have exaggerated them, and linked them with common monetary, sexual, and personal power dynamics. And yes, these principles, or variations of these themes, are part of the Common Knowledge Game (CKG) fundamentals for erroneous understanding of self and other. If they appear to mimic some of the values and principle’s underlying Donald Trump’s abhorrent behavior, then you are already paying close attention to our collective consciousness, and its dangerous and sometimes catastrophic influence on the affairs of humanity throughout our history.

1. I am the center of the Universe. The rest of humanity is here either for my pleasure, for my profit, or for my disdain. I may attend a church occasionally, so that I can create the impression that I worship a higher power than myself. But, I already know that there is no higher power but me. HUMILITY IS NOT AN OPTION FOR ME, and is only for the poor and weak among us.
2. Truly loving another human being is a sign of weakness, and thus I must continue to suppress all such impulses so that I can achieve my selfish goals. I will carry on a campaign of hatred, judgement, and condemnation of all people unlike myself, all the while claiming to represent their interests at the highest level of my being (with subtlety, if one is of the passive/aggressive nature) . The ignorant people populating my world will hopefully associate my hateful behavior with their understanding of what love is, thus damaging the hearts and souls of all who may fear, respect, and/or follow me. My schizophrenia will be confusing to others, but may still be normalized, as others that I have influenced model and support my behavior.::
3. People, and Mother Nature itself, are most valuable if they can be monetized. If I can’t make money from my relationship with people or our natural surroundings, then I don’t necessarily need them. They will have to prove that they belong in my life in some other selfish, self-serving ways. I choose to neglect the long term effects of my short sighted thinking, because now is the only moment to profit from others, and from the Earth.
4. Never admit that I am wrong. Always blame somebody else for my problems. The admission of guilt is a sign of weakness, and only for those who do not have sufficient monetary and legal power. I don’t need your forgiveness for my mistakes, because, as far as you should be concerned, I do not ever make mistakes.
5. I have a right to choose how much drugs and alcohol that I consume.  I do not need feedback from others telling me that I am abusing my medicine and/or alcohol.  I have earned the right to drink as much as I feel like, because I have so much stress in my life, and  I make so many sacrifices that I deserve an extra break and release through excessive alcohol and;/or drug consumption.  I do not have a problem, and if you think that I have a problem with my chemicals, then it is your misunderstanding, and not my own.
6. Never spend any time in self-reflection or meditation. Developing insight is difficult and time-consuming, and I have more important things to do  I am already perfect, I always have been perfect, and everybody else needs to change to accommodate my needs. If I am not “perfect” today, I always have someone, or something, else to blame.
7. I have a right to use my strong emotions to intimidate and threaten anybody that I need to in order to get my way.  My anger is a weapon, to be wielded whenever necessary, and its expression is my first selection from my arsenal of control tools in manipulating and controlling my world.
8. If I can’t get my way with another human being, then I will cajole or bully them into submission, or attack their name and character, and/or impugn their dignity, until they either submit, or are discredited by my allies.
9. Everybody unlike me  should be distrusted. Relationships built through mutual trust and collaboration can be threatening to my short-term goals, and should not be cultivated, as only alliances of hate and distrust are capable of bringing me to my goals.
10. The women in our lives are more suited to be our personal possessions than self-sufficient, independent people, and are not to be treated as equals, and are better suited for exploitation for family support, sexual purposes and/or economic gain.
11. If I can’t get my way through truth-telling, then the telling of lies becomes my most potent weapon. If I am caught in a lie, then it is only your misunderstanding of my point, and not what I said, that is wrong. If I tell the same lie often enough, then people will start to accept the lie as the truth.
12. If there is no conflict currently in progress, then I must start creating the conditions for the next one, and socially position myself so that I can maximize emotional profits and visibility for myself.
13. I never will obtain enough money, power, sex, or attention to keep me happy. I must continue to pursue these needs to extremes in order to keep me from becoming depressed and losing my sense of personal value in this world. If I achieve my goals, and I am still unhappy, I must set new goals to attempt to fill that big hole in my heart and soul.
14. The powers of my penis reigns supreme. When it is erect, it always points me in the right direction, regardless of the people who may be hurt by my wayward sexual desires. My self-esteem is dependent on how many women that I can convince to make love to me, and nobody is immune from my advances. One is too many, and a thousand is not enough, when it comes to sexual conquests.
15. I am the king of my home. I have created my kingdom to serve my selfish needs. If my rules are not honored, and my intentions for the family do not hold up, and family members start to stray, I will coerce, cajole, or threaten all wayward members with violence, if necessary. The family must stay together under my control, no matter what the cost to others might be.
16. Perfectionism and full control of others should not be mutually exclusive propositions. I will judge, criticize, and condemn others, and myself, as needed, to bring all of my world into alignment with how I think that it should be. I will compare and contrast my wealth and success with others to establish the best baseline for my expectations and behavior. My wife and my children are first and foremost my possessions. I will direct and control as necessary, and nobody else has any right to criticize my choices in how I provide and care for them.  My whole sense of self-esteem is derived by how deeply they honor and obey me, without argument or back talk. I do not want or need alternate points of view, as my view is the only view that is relevant.
17. If those closest to me engage in betrayal, and destroy my sacred relationship with my family, I must avenge myself, and destroy all who have threatened my life and values. My wife is my property, and my property alone.  If she should ever have an affair with another man, I reserve the right to punish her and my family, up to, and including, murdering them. If I must die in the process, it is a good death for me.
18. Self sabotage is my unconscious need, as I fail to achieve my goals.  It is my right to destroy my creations even as I destroy myself, so murder-suicide is an acceptable option in the extreme, when my needs have been dishonored, and I feel that I have no more options to achieve my goals, and improve my life situation.
19. I have been a failure since I never measured up to my father’s, my church’s, or my society’s standards. I will continue to self-sabotage my success at ever bend in life’s road, and I will see life as a self-fulfilling prophesy of incompleteness and loss. I will not even question that my life has other possibilities for it, and I will resign myself to my depressing fate.
20. I reserve the right to murder anybody, when it suits my needs to protect myself. I will justify my possession and use of firearms through quoting the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution, as well as pointing to the fear and threats in our world, and our country as my own justification for stockpiling weapons. I will not listen to reason, as my mind is made up, and you can have my weapons after “prying them from my cold, dead hands” (thanks NRA, and the late mega-asshole Charlton Heston).

This list is the abbreviated list, as aspects of our collective selfishness covers the entire range of human darkness.  Men burdened by toxicity tend towards sexism, racism, isolation, poor judgement against all others unlike themselves, and low self-esteem, while men moving towards spiritual healing tend to unite with others in peace and mutual acceptance, and a willingness to share an improving sense of their self with the world.

While living a toxic male life, I created some of my own writings on “pain”, which originated while I was hidden in the  Care Unit for Alcoholic Rehabilitation, in 1984.  These poems are from the hand, and heart, of a toxic man who was in the initial stages of awakening. The following are two different iterations for Pain that I penned in 1984

PAIN

Though the dark cloud looms on the horizon, it is also hidden within myself.

It appears to hover in the distance, just beyond my reach, and it patiently waits my most vulnerable moment.

I then feel the initial mist from its clouds, suspecting that I am its intentional target.

A piercing wind picks up, hugging me with its frozen arms, and I vainly look for protection

As the torrential downpour begins, I feel my tenuous sense of peace and safety eroding beneath my feet.

As it strips back, layer, upon layer, upon layer, upon layer, of my consciousness, exposing a bedrock bereft of sanity.

Exposing long forgotten mental relics, threatening old, unhealed memories, and dangerous old habits,

Stinging, piercing, hurting me at my core, obscuring visions of glorious, yet impossibly distant futures,

Washing away all tenuously held possessions of sanity, and hope.

Uprooting the feeble foundation of a life desperately, but futilely, attempting to, yet again, reconstruct itself,

Carrying a powerless, helpless, desperate soul back into toxic chemical valleys, amid a dark, swirling depression,

Ravaging, drowning, then decaying.

Part II

Yes, growing without roots, with a will that won’t bend,

Weathering life’s storms, which never seem to end.

No longer waiting for the sun that was once promised to arise,

How could truth’s light possibly shine in dimmed eyes?

Having reached with futility for all the high goals of life,

With no spiritual growth, while consumed by inner strife.

Devoid of healing affection, and a stranger to real love,

Unrealistic hope was what my failed dreams were all made of.

Despair meets each day, summer has now changed into fall,

Looking at life, I am totally disgusted by it all.

Dying of loneliness, and holding life by only a thread,

With me rotting inside, hopefully, I soon will be dead.

Pain,

Why?

There is no mystery to me as to why some people choose suicide, continued ignorance, or continued addictions over recovery. In 1986, my choice was for continued addictions and, ultimately, suicide, until I awoke to the potential for healing in my life in 1987. The potential for recovery is only that, a potential, unless one develops a conscious intention to break free from the tight grip of grief, loss, and heartbreak. Pain, and suffering, without any hope for healing, brings anger, despair, depression, loneliness, and suicidal ideation.

As the wise ones advise:  To change my world, I first change myself. There is terrorist, a Nazi, that lives deep down within all of us.  Once we have addressed our darkness, and healed it through bringing our light to it (insight), it loses its power to unconsciously control us.  Then, when we go out into the world to subdue the evil that sometimes erupts in dank, dark places, we can fight the actual enemies, and not waste energy fighting projections of our unhealed self.The fundamental oppressive force in the human universe is not our wayward political or social agendas, it is the human mind itself.

Be careful in there!

‘Being male is a matter of birth. Being a man is a matter of age. But being a gentleman is a matter of choice

—–Vin Diesel

The following information, though not quite up to date, carries some painful truths about toxic masculinity, entrenched power, the #metoo movement, and gun violence.

Nov 4, 2017 – The rate of gun deaths in the United States rose in 2016 to about 12 per 100,000 people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released on Friday. That was up from a rate of about 11 for every 100,000 people in 2015, and it reflected the second consecutive year that the mortality rate increased. The age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2015 (16.3 per 100,000) was more than 2.5 times the rate in 1999 (6.1).

Sexual violence is a problem that is deeply rooted in our culture. Presently, the CDC does not have any statistics about sexual abuse against women in general, but i have read that one in four women have experienced sexual abuse at the hands of the diseased American male. The following statistics should be of interest (from RAINN):

• 17,700,000—The estimated number of women who have been the victims of rape since 1998.
• 99—The percentage of perpetrators of sexual violence that will walk free.
• 13—The percentage of female rape survivors who will attempt suicide.
• 64—-The percentage of trans people who will experience sexual assault in their lifetimes.
• 127,000,000,000—-The total amount of money rape costs victims every year in the U.S., excluding child sexual abuse.
• 16-19—-The age range that women are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. Female college students ages 18-24 are three times more likely than women in the general population to experience sexual violence.
• 1 in 6—-The fraction of American women who have survived an attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes.
• 1.8—-The amount of times trans people of color are more likely to experience sexual violence than the general population.
• 3—-The percentage of men who will be raped in their lifetime.
• 90—-The percentage of adult rape victims that are female.
• 321,500—-The average number of victims of rape and sexual assault per year in the U.S.
• 80,600—-The estimated number of inmates who experience sexual violence in prison or jail every year.
• 60—-The percentage of instances of sexual violence experienced by inmates that are perpetrated by jail or prison staff.
• 2—–The number of times a person with a disability is more likely to be a victim of sexual assault or rape than a person without a disability.

A rational human being would posit that ALL VIOLENCE is unacceptable, and that the American culture needs to treat ALL conditions seriously and equally. Why are we so self-destructive and irrational as a culture that we allow gun violence, sexual violence, and drug additive violence to continue against our fellow citizens? You already know the answer, and it continues to propagate in the genitals, and the damaged minds, of far too many men in power.

If enough people do rise up and rebel against the prevailing order (disorder) of the day, dramatic and positive change can be made. This is, in fact, how all evolutionary change is to be successfully made in a diseased, structured society like our own. When a living system becomes infected with toxins, it must rid itself of the offenders, lest the disease spread, and destroy the entire system. The compromised system must fight back with love’s most powerful antibodies

Domestic violence, sexual abuse, and patriarchal attitudes are a set of learned behaviors with the emphasis on exerting unhealthy power and control over others, and can be unlearned — but it takes consistent work on the part of the person who caused harm well beyond the immediate crisis.  Complex ideas about gender roles and expectations are often at the root of abusive behavior, many times having been instilled from childhood.

Gentle confrontation with the offending person is a first step towards healing.  The person may be unaware of his negative influence over others, or may feel powerless to do anything about it.  Counseling can be the next step towards healing,  though it would take the mutual accountability through the controls exerted by the common knowledge game for the rest of our population to move towards change.  It takes ongoing attention and progress checks from the community, family members, and friends to ensure a true change of behavior.   And, people who harm others should allow justice to be determined by the survivor. The perpetrators should publicly own up to their behavior, apologize, and describe how they’re trying to change. This is how we change norms around the conspiracy of silence that permeates domestic violence — by showing others using harm that accountability is necessary and healing is possible.

Creating the basic conditions that support emotional and spiritual growth might be beneficial to the entirety of our human race. Men, and women have basic needs regarding personal safety, security, and placement within the society. Here are some simple, and not so simple, human needs coupled with spiritual intention:

• To belong, to feel safe while belonging, including the desire to help and protect others while helping oneself,
• To speak up, and feel like we really were heard, and not have our spirit layered over with others’ errors in reasoning and judgement,
• To be able to listen to another at the deepest level possible, and be present in the spirit of understanding, cooperation, and collaboration.
• To feel whole, and to be able to recognize that wholeness, not only within ourselves, but within all others, even those living in alternative realities.
• To love all others, as well as to be accepted, and loved, with as few conditions attached as possible. Unconditional love was never meant to be reserved just for a mothers’ love for her child, so it is a great evolutionary objective to attempt to be a channel for it.
• To evolve, for if we do not, we become subject to the forces of friction and chaos inherent within a closed mind, and system, resulting in higher physical and mental disease and dysfunction.

FAILURE TO HONOR THESE NEEDS WILL RESULT IN THE CONTINUATION OF OUR PRESENT DAY CULTURAL CHAOS AND DYSFUNCTION, WITH LITTLE POTENTIAL FOR OUR NATIONAL HEALING.

Make America Great Again? Normalize that which should never have been acceptable? Get real, and start healing, American male. Greatness only comes after we, as a society, face our collective darkness and see how we have institutionalized ignorance, acknowledge its damaging impacts on others, makes amends to ALL we have harmed, and find integrity, and stay on a more humane path in the future.

The Buddha had his own ideas about what constitutes mental health, and by his definition anyone who isn’t well on the way to Enlightenment is insane. Quite how literally he meant it when he said “All humans are mad” is hard to say, but when he looked at ordinary people like us going about their daily business he saw a world out of balance — and a world that by necessity is out of balance, because it is composed of those same off-kilter individuals.  He viewed this imbalance as a form of perversion, inversion, and/or derangement  He understood that we, collectively, misunderstand the world that we live in, misunderstand ourselves, thus we all end up living in a virtual reality of delusion, confusion, and distortion.  What’s more, we largely share the same delusions, which mean that we don’t even realize that our minds are disturbed

As Krishnamurti suggests, it’s possible to think that we’re spiritually and mentally healthy because we share our mistaken values and understandings with those around us. Collectively, our ill minds create social circles, or society that is itself ill, and we consider ourselves healthy because we see our values reflected in our spiritually sick fellow travelers.

Jesus of Nazareth stated quite clearly that “My kingdom is not of this world”. Also he stated “Be in this world, yet do not be of it”. And, “Do not attempt to remove the sliver from each other’s eye, before first removing the log from your own eye”. Finally, he also stated “Straight is the way, and narrow is the gate, and very few there are who will enter in”. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus also said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The Buddha, Jesus Christ, Krishnamurti, and even Fred Rogers are dead, yet we all can still become a hero for healing and transcendence.

THE FOOLS

You know who we are, there is no need for our names

We may be outwardly different, but inside we are the same

We vacation on ego trips, and with the world play strange mind games

While striving for material success, and its dubious fame

We remain graceless souls trying to blend into life’s masses

Some affirming our uniqueness, though we remain stuck in the same class

With  our delusions of grandeur, while appearing just like an ass

And steering clear of self-awareness, Oh our transparency of glass!

At times spewing words of wisdom, but with only another dogs’ bark

Seeking to make a good life, but on life’s script still leaving just a dirty mark

Believing we may have seen light, but, if so, why is our life always so dark?

Needing more purifying inner flames, while snuffing every divine spark

Though we think that we have blossomed, we do not possess Love’s flower,

We hope for a life carried by the river of sweetness, while we still wade through the sour

Never realizing that, over life, we hold very little power

We can only avoid the reality of our lives, while living in our ivory tower

We tend to bring up life’s rear, though we think that we should be first

And from life we want all of the best, somebody else deserves the worst!

We think that our life should be more blessed, why on earth do we feel cursed?

Our lives just become overblown bubbles, just waiting to be burst!

This is a pretty clear message, for those who have “ears to hear”.

There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness;….and, to know, rather consists in opening out a way where the imprisoned splendor may escape, then in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.”

—–Robert Browning

How did I attempt to bring healing to my broken interior?  I first acknowledged that, of myself and my old ways, I was heading nowhere, and that I was doomed to repeat the same potentially fatal mistakes over and over again   I did not have any childhood training in, nor did I spontaneously develop capacities for insight, positive change and growth.  I first needed to develop the emotional and spiritual fortitude to look at the entirety of my life, and then incorporate the experience for my greater good, which also impacts the whole of life in a more positive manner.  By developing the power of insight, I brought a new level of healing and awareness into this new, present moment of experience.  Some call this process “mindfulness:, though I just call it ‘taking personal inventory’, and improving my “conscious contact with my higher power” as I learned through practicing the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I have come to believe that there is a “power greater than myself” that lives within my internal reach that restores me to sanity, no matter how often I might fall. My willingness to change IS my greatest asset, and opens the door to the highest power.  Part of maintaining sanity is to allow for a continuous evolution of understanding and experience of what “God” or “Higher Power” is, apart from religious dogma, ignorance, politics, and superstition. We don’t need to believe in any concept of God at all, but we do need to access our willingness to change, for that openness will point to our own unique higher powered life experience.

There was no minister, church, support group, therapist, Care Unit counselor, Indian guru, psychiatrist, mother, father,  sister, wife, friend, daughter, son, pet dog, or Jesus Christ figure that could dig into my unique version of the human soul, and remove the thorns/swords that had been thrust into my side since my birth.  My internal wounding and the resultant unsustainable suffering became the impetus to begin my inward journey, to face the absolute darkest areas of life itself, and then mine the treasure from my unique relationship with the dark force or shadow.  To not face myself would mean to continue living the second-hand/passed down story of dysfunction that I inherited from our culture and from my ancestors, from which we cannot ever completely heal, without first becoming aware of our internalized, unconscious subservience to those controlling agendas.

Since I have been in recovery, I have been involved in the exploration of some of the more fundamental aspects of my consciousness, and, thus, of all human consciousness.  Virtually all of the interesting characters in history have struggled with, and have overcome, at least to some degree, a dark internal force, and it is their journey that becomes the stuff of great stories and legends.   I am trying to give a context to this distress that I share with the rest of humanity.  For, the one is the many, and the many are the one.  The author and scholar Joseph Campbell refers to the “Hero’s Journey” that we all must take to find our true self.

I have been quite resistant to many aspects of life, and to change itself, an extreme resistance that may have begun in my mothers’ womb, or, maybe, it extends all the way back to the beginning of human consciousness, but, the start date is unimportant.  What is important is the intention to bring healing to a darkened situation.

It is extremely difficult in finding a way to reach an individual, or a society, that has unconsciously made a decision to slowly and painfully commit suicide through toxicity and addictive cycles, while all remain in rigorous denial of that fact. Each toxic human being, be they an unconscious power hungry man or woman, alcoholic, drug addict, or mentally ill person must find their own unique “bottom”, where the pain of the disease causes a change, or turning point, in their lives. Insanity, loss of job, loss of family, admission to a mental health or addiction recovery facility, jail, DUI, threat of death, or near death experiences, and deaths of close friends or family members also suffering have been known to bring the desire for healing to many of us. A confrontation from those we may have harmed can have rather dramatic effects on our desire to change, as well. It took all of the negative life cycle outcomes to convince me to change behavior. Living in hell for an extended period of time brought me to death’s doorstep, yet I did survive, and the process helped me to seek for a deeper light.

American society has created the perfect conditions for our population to practice insanity, mutual control dramas, and addictive behaviors, but it remains up to us as individuals to create our own conditions for recovery.  Self-awareness, personal inventory, making amends to all that we have harmed, working a strong spiritual program, mindfulness, meditation, eating healthier and exercising wisely, and hanging around like-minded people took me to the outskirts of my own “promised land”.  Life isn’t always pretty, but I remain personally responsible for my attitudes and behaviors, and I retain freedom of choice in most of my affairs. But, many have lost all such freedom of choice.   I have much compassion for those who still struggle with mental illness and alcoholism/drug addiction.

Collective consciousness is comprised of all of the answers that our culture, our families, and all of our individual selves have dreamed up to some of the great questions of life.  The answers have become part of our philosophy, our history, our religion, the substance of our hopes and dreams, and the foundation for all of our nightmares.  I have addressed the seed consciousness behind the development of my sense of self, where my own answers to the important questions of life gave rise to my fragmented interpretation of life, and of the universe.  My incomplete and inaccurate answers became the unstable foundation for my journey through collective consciousness, but I was not alone in my ignorance and misunderstanding.

It is this very matrix of misunderstanding that we all must eventually embrace within ourselves, see it for what it really is, and isn’t, and then move through the illusions of self to the very foundation of our timeless soul, where peace and healing eternally resides.

Do we know what new questions to ask of ourselves, questions that will place us on a new, healthier path of consciousness?

Questions that I have pondered:

• Why does suffering exist, and why does it visit me so often?
• Who and what am I?
• Is happiness, joy, and freedom possible in my life?
• What am I really looking for, and will I ever find it?
• What really is prayer?
• Does religion have relevance anymore?
• Can there be any truth. love, or justice to be found in the 21st century version of American Christianity?
• What happened to the moral and ethical authority once touted as being endemic to Christianity?
• Does religion hinder or help a modern-day seeker of God?
• What is a “well lived life” and how do I achieve it?
• What is good mental health, or what does it mean to be normal?
• Who are my “people”, and where are they located?
• Why do people cling to certain groups of people, and reject all others, and why do I feel rejected so often?
• Why don’t people get along better with each other, and why have I become so isolated?
• Will I ever fit in?  Will anyone ever notice me?
• Why don’t I feel peace of mind?
• What is death, and what does it mean to die to myself?
• Why does our society and much of the world’s population continue to not experience peace of mind, with beauty, wonder, and the innate internal integrity of our (potentially) divine nature, and what might I do to attain these qualities?
• Why is history defined predominantly by male energy, and why does my own life story spin so tightly around the male gender and its destructive byproducts?
• Why do some men become spiritually and emotionally disfigured by their desire for sex?
• What is the role of objectifying people in ignorance, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and sexism?
• Can men ever completely overcome objectifying women in their relationships with them?
• Why do some men exercise excessive emotional control over their partners?
• Why do I not feel satisfaction when I achieve the goals that I have set up for myself?
• Why do I not feel joy when others achieve greatness, or accomplish great things for themselves?
• Why do I sometimes feel threatened by others’ successes?
• Why do I internally try to hold others back from success and positive social acknowledgement?
• Why do I always seem to “self-destruct” right at the moment when I am about to achieve great success?
• Will I ever completely understand myself, and others?
• What is oppression, and what is my relationship to it?
• What is repression, and why do I participate in it?
• Why is expressing real human emotions such a double-edged sword, and why are my feelings so hard to identify sometimes?
• Why are some people always so angry, indifferent, detached, or depressed, and can these people ever see me for who I am?
• Why is anxiety the defining feeling of this age, and why is it so hard to heal from it?
• Where is the love that I feel is missing from my life?
• Why don’t I feel more love for myself or for others?
• Why do I continue to experience poor self-esteem?
• Why is our culture so focused on youth and physical appearance?
• Why am I so self-conscious, and will I ever be accepted for who I am?
• Why do I feel that I have to always be competitive, or “better than the others” just to fit in?
• Why is competition and greed, as presently coupled with Capitalism, the predominant economic system in our world?
• Why does shame and guilt control so much of my life’s experience?
• Is it possible to speak or live a lie long enough that we no longer can accept or believe the truth?
• Is a person’s silence because of an absence of opinion, or from a fear of speaking the truth?
• Why can’t some people be more emotionally and spiritually present for others?
• Why do people feel that they need to engage in mutual “control dramas”?
• Why do people endlessly pursue entertainment and/or use drugs and alcohol to excess, and ignore their own personal transformation and healing?
• Why is just more knowledge so much more important than intuition, wisdom and insight to most men and left brained dominated women?
• Why is collaboration such a dirty word for a national political process?
• Why do I have no desire to contribute to society in a more generous and meaningful way?
• Will America Ever Fully Awaken?

To answer all of these questions successfully would require a 5000 page book. My intention is not to provide a universal answer, but to stimulate interest and curiosity within the reader to pursue their own answers. My story will indicate a path for a more holistic approach to the answer for some of these questions, and my answers may have a more universal application than just my limited life experience.

The answers to these questions point to foundational facts that most men encounter or employ in our efforts to meet the needs for economic security, establish our place in society, relieve stress and keep ourselves at least marginally happy, and pursue family fulfillment, including ones sexual gratification.

Statements of personal well-being, such as those listed below, were anything but “facts of life” for most men.

• I am worthy,
• I am safe,
• I am whole,
• I am loving and lovable,
• I have something worthwhile to say

What do we really want and need, as human beings, and what might we need, that we have yet to be able to express clearly to others?  I have listed a few possibilities below, please add your own to the list.

• To be able to express our thoughts and feelings authentically, without bringing unnecessary harm to ourselves or to others
• To belong, to feel safe while belonging, including the desire to help and protect others while helping oneself,
• To speak up, and feel like we really were heard, and not have our spirit layered over with errors in reasoning and judgement from others.
• To be able to listen to another at the deepest level possible, and be present in the spirit of understanding, cooperation, and collaboration.
• To feel whole, and to be able to recognize that wholeness, not only within ourselves, but within all others, even those living in alternative realities.
• To love all others, as well as to be accepted, and loved, by others, with as few conditions attached as possible.
• To evolve, for if we do not, we become subject to the forces of friction and chaos inherent within a closed mind, and system, resulting in higher physical and mental disease and dysfunction.

ANGER AND AWARENESS

A most important issue of the emotions is our willingness and ability to skillfully express our anger  All too many of us have been victimized by family members, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, or strangers who have aggressively and maliciously used this emotion in an attempt to control or abuse others.  Anger gets a really bad name from those who are of a sensitive nature, whose being does not respond well to strong emotions, and from those who have fear of anger itself.  I know that when I did something wrong as a child, and my father either witnessed it or heard about it, he got angry, and my ass got whipped by his belt, so anger sure had a bad association in my mind between its expression and a belt whipping my sore ass!

Anger is appropriate in these times, but constructively using this energy for the good of the people requires understanding, however. We are beings of energy, GREAT ENERGY, but that energy gets pushed away every time we fail to recognize that anger may be one of our most important spiritual assets available. There is a vast difference between anger and hatred, and those who confuse the two, in the name of their own dis-empowered belief systems, have given themselves permission to not rise up publicly, and to speak out against those who are attempting to oppress, dominate, and control us.

Anger can inform our Passion, and give us access to that extra energy needed to rise up, and speak out. Sitting back on our hands, and developing spiritual philosophies that allow us to ignore what we are viewing is tantamount to creating more FAKE NEWS, and normalizing that which is insanity.

We can’t dismiss what is going on, and deny our hearts and spirits, when there are millions of dis-empowered citizens who cannot defend themselves, or speak out against the oppression, ESPECIALLY when they have their religious and spiritual leaders continuing to foist disempowering beliefs and philosophies upon unsuspecting followers. Though their hearts may be in the right place, this is not the time for more dis-empowering agendas from those who have already given themselves permission not to stand up and be counted .Righteous indignation and anger may not be for everybody, but those who have been inspired by these powerful energies can harness them for the greater good of mankind, and, for themselves.

An appropriate response to the needless suffering of others IS ANGER, especially when we are witnessing the same ignorant oppressors repeating the same antagonistic actions over and over again. Speaking out in loud voices is a powerful way to let the oppressors know that WE ARE NOT SHEEP willing to be led to our slaughter, but instead we are warriors willing to stand up and defend our self, our families, our neighbors, and our world. The Liars and Thieves that many times takes the form of politicians and national leaders need to be able to hear our voices. The feeble, baying voices of the multitudes of oppressed sheep of this world will continue to be persecuted, oppressed, and their dignity and human values will continue to be systematically trod upon. The AWAKENED AMERICAN has renounced membership within that dis-empowered flock, however.

Anger is a natural, normal response, in any particular new moment, to any assault on our being, on those that we love, or on our inner sensibilities. Anger, among all other emotions, and in balance with those aspects of our self, help us to manage our response to the outer world, which is, at times, quite the aggressive, distressed, ugly, oppressive environment. Anger is not positive or negative energy, it is HUMAN ENERGY ITSELF, and like all aspects of our humanity, it needs to be understood in the context from which it arises, and when and how it expresses itself.

Anger can bring fear to the unaware among us, because of an incomplete or unhealed response to its expression in their past. We have all been persecuted, at one time or another (or many times), by the angry parent, boss, co-worker, or stranger driving next to us in a car. Or, how about the rapist, or child molester, who tries to attack us, or our children?

According to classic psychology, humans engage in “fight or flight” behavior, when they experience fear and/or perceive that they are being attacked. Whether we choose one or the other depends on any number of circumstances, and ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL. When we are backed into a corner, and there is no way out, where is our energy to come from, when the attacker makes his final lunge at us?

Anecdotally, we hear of those rare few who have successfully mitigated these circumstances, through some fortunate “intervention” through prayer, or luck, where those who are attacking us somehow are diverted, and move their aggression elsewhere. We only need watch the news, or read the paper, to see that these anecdotal stories do not embrace the collective reality that most of humanity experiences through the actions of those possessed by their own ignorance and evil. Murder, rape, child molesting, intimidation, oppression, misogyny, road rage, terrorism, paternal violence in ALL OF ITS FORMS, keeps manifesting itself, and has throughout all of history.

We all feel a need to be in control, even while attempting to conform to social norms, especially those “norms” expressed in the common knowledge game that dominates the unaware human consciousness. Philosophies and theologies that stress the need to repress aspects of our human nature need to be examined in their fullness, and not accepted at face value. By their very nature, any umbrella philosophy and theology devalues the “intelligence of the moment”, and intentionally and/or unwittingly contribute to the suppression, and repression, of sacred human values and emotions. When our human energy is not repressed and oppressed, we can find the balance that enables us to access and express the wholeness of our being. Emotionally intelligent actions appropriate to each new moment is no longer just a theory, and becomes an ever present healing activity of the awakening life.

True religion is a revolutionary force: it is an inveterate enemy of oppression, privilege, and injustice.

—Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

There is a Wisdom deep inside us all, waiting to inform all of our thoughts and actions in this world. And, this world requires Ultimate Intelligence to navigate through it successfully, without bringing harm to ourselves and others needlessly. Anger and fear are not to be repressed by any healthy human being, but instead are to be witnessed, and studied, and utilized intelligently for wise action in this troubled world.

The liars and thieves that currently portray themselves as politicians, religious and other national leaders need to be able to hear our voices. The feeble, baying voices of the multitudes of oppressed sheep of this world will continue to be persecuted, oppressed, and their human values will continue to be systematically trod upon. The AWAKENED AMERICAN has disavowed membership within that disempowered flock, and continues to point to the life far away from the ignorant shepherd.

Stand up, stand up, stand up for your rights!

But, make sure that the anger is appropriate to the moment, and not some formulaic response that the “non-healed, unbalanced” nature within your own self offers up under many questionable circumstances. An “institutionalized expression of anger” becomes hatred in disguise, and that characterizes the oppressive nature of far too many male originated, and dominated, philosophies. When anger becomes an automatic response to all situations where threat is perceived, then the intelligence of the moment is denied, and we are susceptible to bringing needless harm to our bodies, and to our minds, as well as to the “other”.

To respond successfully in anger, we need to measure how mindfully we can engage these threats, and successfully group our own thoughts and actions, with others also engaged in the situation, to either fight the oppressors, or to speak our truth, and be heard. We do not engage in mass protests because we want to go for a walk with a bunch of strangers, we engage in protests because we want our voices heard. Channeled anger is an effective, time-tested method for standing up to those who would keep us silent.

One only needs to review history to see how well the silent sheep held back the Nazi oppressors. If you want to conform to the spiritual philosophies of those Tibetan or Hindu avatars who did not grow up in our country, and did not share in our American Experience, good luck to you. You are straying too far from home, and you risk becoming lost for this incarnation..

I cannot and I will not be led unconsciously to my own spiritual slaughter, and to the slaughter of my values, integrity, morality, and ethics that world patriarchy continues to threaten all of us with on a daily basis. The Demon must be recognized by all, and challenged by all, or prepare for the darkened ending of all that is important to us as an American culture, and a world civilization

I choose to wisely tend to my own “flock”, and not to become just another follower in someone else’s herd. I am now a shepherd of my own thoughts and feelings, and not just someone else’s lamb.

Please, tend to your own flock of thoughts and feelings. Some call this process “mindfulness”. You will learn to listen to your voice, and and your wisdom and emotional intelligence will be more accessible according to your own level of spiritual empowerment.

Keep in mind, some members within the Christian faith, and self-destructive men in general, just want to watch their worlds burn. We need to be ever-present with spiritual fire extinguishers.

My heart breaks for the innocent, yet somehow, miraculously, love still lives.   And I want to give the reader some hope, after so much description of the down side of the American male consciousness.   My philosophical background predisposes me to the discussion of the blocks to love’s awareness and experience, for by seeing completely the shades pulled over Truth, ultimately we will see through them, to where the mystery of the unknown, and Love itself, actually resides. The capacity for insight brings change, in the actual seeing IS AWAKENED THE CAPACITY FOR LASTING INTERNAL CHANGE.  The  Kingdom of Love is where fragmented, broken thinking can be healed, as it has its own unique intelligence and understanding.

Healing through a heightened awareness must be individually experienced, and then the fruits of the experience can be collectively shared with other interested parties, such as in AA meetings, friendship circles. Here we can create the strongest atmosphere for healing of self and others. We don’t need an edifice for this, yet our own home can become the foundation for community healing. If we belong to an enlightened group of people who attend church, there is also an immense potential for mutual support. Our own intention must start the process, though the healing intentions of others for us, and for themselves, can bring us together into a “healing formation”, where the miracle of the collective/shared mind of a love inspired mankind can really work its wonders. Here we may actually share in the real Master Mind that has attempted to guide the human race since the beginning, since well before our present day diseased world mind took over. The right group of people, sharing love and healing together, creates a palpable energy, and this can characterize some recovery groups, depending on the quality of recovery present, and being expressed, in those groups.

Individuals who are toxic men, addicts/alcoholics, and/or who are mentally ill, and the cultures that breed and support that behavior, and who are not yet ready to face their shame, guilt, fears, and insecurities consciously will not have an easy time of it in recovery and in the search for greater meaning in their lives. There are many healing and/or religious paths to take,  methodologies for achieving and maintaining sobriety, and therapeutic modalities and medications available for mental illness, and the technique chosen should be wisely considered based on personal needs and philosophies-or lack of them. For those who just want to treat the body, and not the mind or Spirit, there are injections available to reduce alcohol and/or drug cravings, and medications to temporarily treat the illnesses of the mind, which may be all that the sufferer needs for now, especially if they have little inclination towards personal awareness, insight, and spiritual evolution.

Each of my toxic male, mentally ill or substance abusing family members knows of my own toxic background, and so far has had little use for my experience, strength, and hope in sobriety, showing that my “process for recovery” has debatable value for a diseased mind that has no desire to change. A common statement uttered by a practicing alcoholic/addict or toxic male in denial is “I don’t have a problem”, or, “he/she is the one with the problem, not me!” Denial of the facts of addiction and/or toxic attitudes, and justification for continuing unhealthy behaviors, results in the creation of the “fake news” that they don’t have a problem with drugs and alcohol and our underlying consciousness, and this sad fact remains a constant for most sufferers of addiction and Toxic Masculinity and Toxic Religion.  Our culture is insane, and the insanity has crept into all of our families, and all of our individual lives, whether we want to face it, or not.

One of my problems with religion in general, their prophets, messengers, and associated religious texts, is the institutionalized ignorance that is passed for wisdom and spiritual knowledge. And, they tend to take the scatter-gun approach to delivering their message.  Most of their “truths” are hard to digest, and they tend to speak AT the listener or student, rather than speaking TO the student or practitioner.  There are those blessed few who are attuned to the inner value or meaning of the truth being delivered, and the message speaks TO the listener.  It has been said that those are the ones who were either born with or somehow learned how to develop and practice spiritual discernment.  In the hearing of Love, or Truth,  hope for change is stimulated, and the internal motivation to make necessary changes in the course of one’s life begins.

There is one more step, however, with religious attainment, or attunement.  Only a few in recorded history have developed the capacity to have their religion, their God, their Buddha Mind, their Christ Consciousness speak THROUGH them.  In Christian mystical terms, this is the word made flesh, and dwelling among us.  Ministers and politicians ever so rarely qualify for this exalted state, as experts and practitioners of the law  have limited access to the spirit behind it.  Watch out for television preachers and evangelicals, as they are ministers of propaganda, and are money accumulating propagators of illusion, delusion, deception, and fear, while preying on the ignorant, and the innocent.

If this book finds that its readers feel like this work only speaks AT them, then the work has little lasting value.  If the reader feels that this work speaks TO them in some way, however, then a true connection has been made, and human energy has been exchanged, for the betterment of the reader and the writer.  This is a fundamental form of energy exchange, or prayer.  But if a reader somehow finds a truth within this work that resonates within their mind and heart, to the point of dislodging some repressed or oppressed divine energy, an enlightenment or liberation is attained that the whole human race has the potential to benefit from.  If healing, wholeness, or divinity subsequently speaks THROUGH the reader, then this becomes a form of universal prayer that genuinely has the chance to help in the healing of the planet.  To this point, nothing I have ever said or written has led anybody into the “promised land”, so I would be happy if this story somehow finds a way to speak TO a few readers.  We can then share in a prayer with the potential to bring healing, wholeness, and divinity to us and the consciousness that we presently share.  I will leave liberation and enlightenment to the spiritual savants, and to their students that insist on hanging onto their every word.

There is a unique path that each one of us must take, to find our greatest good.  Those who continue to follow other people’s routes, at the exclusion of the route that their own internal GPS system is generating, risk losing all, including their freedom and their unique life expression.  Trying to fit in with and adapt to insanity, and the continuing attempts to normalize it, is the foundation for mental illness, our national schizophrenia, and its spawn, our present day corrupted economic, political, and religious systems.

Even though we as individuals did not create this disease of the human mind, and we appear to have little control over its wayward actions in others, or our society in general, we still have access to a cure.  The development of personal insight is a mechanism that points to the cure.  As we heal as individuals, and join with others who have also chosen to heal, we can create a new culture of healing, and awakening, and reduce the destructive effects of social oppression and the repression of our inner, truest natures.

Built right into the very fabric of life, is death itself.  There are up to fifty trillion cells within our human bodies which are constantly dying off, and being replaced by others so that we can continue to live, and even evolve (or regress as the situation may dictate).  So also should all of our old thoughts die off, to be replaced by newer, more vibrant creations, if we are to continue to live, and grow, and even evolve.  Those who do not do the work to shed the old ways, the old thoughts, the incomplete and inaccurate ways of seeing life, and being in life, will remain the “poor among us”, and more susceptible to the ravages of disease, aging and deterioration of the mind and body.  Yet, even though the disease and despair wrought by toxic male energy is woven throughout the collective garment that now covers our humanity, there are many threads of hope interwoven within it, as well, and these threads are our hope for transcendence.

I continue to feel that A New Story Needs To Be Told by our teachers and leaders, and by ourselves.  The fatal flaw with all philosophies touting the coming of a new age of peace and enlightenment is that they fail to embrace a fundamental flaw in the human mind, its character and reasoning.  And, this flaw typically arises in the male dominated mind, with a few notable exceptions.  Those who continue to promote the “light”, without first addressing the required walk through our personal and collective “darkness”, are offering up shallow containers for those who need to drink deeply from the waters of the Spirit.  We are left thirsty, and confused, as to why we do not reach the “promised land” as offered by others who are supposedly “in the know”.

Men use their philosophies to justify greed and selfishness, and to give themselves permission not to feel for others less fortunate than themselves, nor to even fully feel their own human emotions.  Male energy in general, and all patriarchal cultures are out of balance, having repressed so much of our basic, human (feminine) nature that we can no longer access our innermost divine/human nature, where all love and healing bubbles up from.  Men who can’t access their feelings, can’t access their higher natures, period.  The path to the Spirit goes directly through the flooding streams of human emotions.  Those who bypass this step live mostly from their “heads” rather than through their “hearts”.

I Looked For My Soul (by William Blake)

I looked for my soul,

But my soul I could not see.

I looked for my God,

But my God eluded me.

I looked for a friend,

And then I found all three.

May we all become friends of the Spirit, because love and insight is bigger than anything in its way.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

Anais Nin

We all must find a way to blossom and to release our “imprisoned splendor”. Emotionally dishonest, hiding, shame based behavior, hateful, misogynistic, racist, irrational, anti-earth and anti-animal, and immoral agendas promoted by the existing POTUS, and tragically practiced by millions of our fellow Americans, will not lead to recovery and healing, period. We are all negatively impacted by the continued resistance of others to the unfoldment of healing, and love.

Pockets of conscious, self-aware, healthy people have been sprouting up among the weeds of American misunderstanding since the beginning of our time together as a people and nation. Perhaps these pockets will someday be woven into  a national garment of spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical well-being, to be worn by all. This is not happening while I am still alive, however, and may not ever be realized in our time, or any time for that matter. Changes must happen within consciousness itself, and the “common knowledge game” that we all unconsciously play must be examined, and re-examined again and again, until we are no longer subjugated to its darker sides of oppression and repression of human spirit.

While some believe that our collective emotional and spiritual IQ appears to be declining, there are those who continue to grow, evolve, transform, and become aware. which brings me a measure of optimism for the future. Women, who tend to think more holistically, are the hope for the future, as men’s fragmented thinking and selfish reasoning will only continue to lead us all down the path of chaos and brokenness. Men will never lead anybody into the “promised land”, because the “promised land” does not exist for persons living a life devoid of spiritual discernment, no matter how much they claim to read the bible, or attend church. Unhealed men are not capable of seeing everything as extending from an unbroken whole, of which everything emanates from and which we are eternally united with. Men do not automatically assign the highest value to life, instead opting for philosophical agendas that minimize other life’s value, so that they can achieve their selfish desires with less guilt.

There just are not enough recovering men in this country right now who have undertaken the practice of self-awareness and healing, and applied spirituality, devoid of the trappings of religious dogma and misplaced judgement. Men will not evolve, unless backed into a corner, and threatened with the loss of everything, and even then they will try to hold a discussion with you about why they don’t need to heal, just everybody else needs to. There are far too many men who pretend to be Christian, playing that music in the background while going about their typically anti-Christ unconscious, unhealed male behaviors, negatively impacting all those who make contact with that irrational, yet all too common, wounded American male soul. Most men will not change, unless faced with the certainty of death itself. And, the road that our country is now set upon, is defined by death’s very boundaries. There will be healing for the American male in our future, but by what impetus, and at what cost to the rest of our world?

Insight, enlightenment and healing do not come to the “fat and happy” people of our world. Transformation is NOT a gentle process, merely attained through reading books, practicing a few affirmations, talking with friendly therapists under our emotional control, and/or attending a few workshops and conferences. To find true enlightenment, a path through personal, and our collective, insanity is REQUIRED. Watch how the so-called ‘professionals’ of our culture continue to try to oppress this movement, and repress those impulses within themselves, and others under their ‘spell’ or control.

I can quote from the Bible, Koran, Talmud, Bhagavad Gita, or the sayings of the “enlightened masters” such as the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, or more recently Krishnamurti, the Dalai Lama, OR ALL OTHERS, for the rest of eternity, but until I face myself directly and honestly, NO TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE WILL OCCUR. The same is true for our country, and for our world.

The greatest life lesson that life has given me revolves around my relationship with my father. My grandfather’s alcoholism seemed to have had an Impact on the way dad drank as a young man. He enjoyed drinking, and was quite the social person, as well. But, his memory of his father’s behavior probably served as a good deterrent to abusive drinking. But dad still wrestled with his own self-esteem . The legacy that my grandfather tried to leave with his kids tragically revolved around diminishing the value of his children’s lives in his, and in their own, developing minds. My dad was, at times, troubled by his upbringing, though he rarely spoke of it until very late in life. Unconsciously, dad had impressed his own lack of a healthy mental self concept upon his children.

To this day, depending on how conscious I can or can’t be, I can be dramatically impacted by the wounds, or I can soar high above it all through maintaining the principles of an open heart and a quiet(er) mind, which neutralizes the unhealthy illusions of self that can be so troubling. But my lack of a healthy self-esteem did take me into hell very early in life. I was not to find recovery from this until I was 31 years of age. And, for me, my only hope was to find the Truth that underlies the whole of life, and attempt to derive a new sense of self through re-connection with this lost essence. A new openness to life and all of the possibilities that shared love can create, and a resurgence in the respect that I now give my body through enhanced physical activity, diet, and placement in healthier outdoor settings and social situations, helped to guide me in ways my father could not have embraced, nor given me any mentoring with, as he was too unconscious.

Awe, wonder, love, connection, healing, wholeness, collaboration, good mental health, all lie within the realm of possibilities for all men, and for humanity. With the acceptance of personal responsibility one human being at a time, for all of our negative perceptions, we can transmute their dark energy into a lighter, healthier energy through insight, mindfulness, and meditation. We will then find the perfect peace and goodness that some claim that we have always been looking for, since Mankind first arrived on this planet.

I did not write this book for fame, fortune, or cultural acceptance. This writing is based upon my entire life experience, which has been complemented by thousands of hours of meditation and mindfulness. This writing reflects my lifelong search for truth, wherever it may lead, and I found that it leads to all of us.. It even leads to YOU.

Dead men tell no tales, but the near dead, and fully alive, MUST continue to tell their stories, with respect for themselves and others, until our civilization finally wakes up. To not express ourselves honestly and openly results in our own early demise, Spiritually as well as physically. My innate response would be to keep silent, as I have nothing of value to share with the world, and/or the world could give a shit about what I have to say anyway. Extrapolate that response to life, and we can perceive the isolating framework that imprisons much of the American male psyche.

I grieve with the rest of humanity for the early deaths of all damaged souls, and for the loss of human potential to the rest of humanity. Please, America, listen to, and retell their stories, so that we can all heal, grow, and love together in a new, transformative environment that can celebrate wholeness, and our individual contributions to it, from both the male and female perspectives.

The compulsion to hide from ourselves can be lifted. We can know love and forgiveness of ourselves, and others, like we thought would never be possible. We can become a light unto ourselves and others, and that light can sustain us for the rest of our days. We can be at peace, and understand, perhaps for the first time in our life, how to live life on life’s terms. We can finally find what we were looking for our entire life, so please do not give up before the real miracle of our life reveals itself. Finding our real healthier, saner self is the greatest challenge of life.

Those who find what they are looking for, find the secret of spirituality, and the secret of a successfully lived life. Happiness, joy, and freedom become our life’s most enduring companions on our life’s journey. Difficulties, sorrows, heart breaks, deaths, depressions, anxieties, and even relapses may still arise, but we now have healthier tools for dealing with the adversity of life. We no longer hide from life, but instead remain engaged with it. We ride Life’s occasional Tsunami waves, rather than be drowned by them. We learn that it was not Life’s loads that broke us, but instead it was the unconscious and unskilled ways that we carried them. Now we have the developed spiritual skills to successfully manage Life’s unavoidable burdens, while creating the conditions for new opportunities in life and for prosperity in its many forms, including enhancing our relationships to each other!

We did not cause or create this disease, We cannot control this disease, and We cannot cure this disease. I have had many, many years of sobriety, but I have also had three major relapses over the past 34 years, as well. I can continue to treat myself consciously and with love for this disease, and show the benefits of recovery from this disease to those who still suffer, and have interest in their own recovery process. Relapse is a painful, but necessary, part of recovery, as we learn from our mistakes, and grow from them. The point remains to lift ourselves up in recovery, even though we might have descended the ladder into the hell of toxicity yet again. If we fall seven times, we lift ourselves up eight times.

Those who are still toxic are not without choices. We all have the internal power to change, we only need to learn how to consciously access that power which is greater than our resistance to change and bad habits, and express its infinite healing potential. For me, the choice became between living a an inspired life, or leading a self-destructive life. For those that continue to embrace toxicity to their own detriment, and the detriment of others, there are healthier, more life affirming choices to be made..

I continue to have contact with toxic people, practicing alcoholics and/or drug addicts, as well as the family and friend “enablers” that consciously or unconsciously continue to support them in their dysfunction. Enablers are not bad people, we just do not know what to say, or how to say it, to those who continue to abuse their chemical of choice, or attack love’s sensibilities. We might be hesitant to give feedback, for fear of being rejected and/or seen as being overly judgmental, or we may have become fatalistic in our appraisal of the situation, and given up hope. For some of us, we have remained silent in the face of direct threats against the continuing health and safety of our beloved family members or friends, and our own emotional well-being while attempting to remain an active part of the diseased family structure.

To some of us who continue to enable bad/self-destructive behavior of others, just remember that even though we did not cause the disease for others, we cannot control the disease for others, and we cannot cure the disease for others, by our remaining silent on the sidelines, we remain part of the denial system of the diseased culture. At some point, it WILL BECOME NECESSARY to confront the toxic attitudes and behavior, and speak our truth. Then we will need to set our boundaries, and hold fast to them. This can include eschewing all conversations and/or physical connection with the offending family member until they start to make the necessary changes in course, and MAKING SURE THAT THE OFFENDING PARTY KNOWS EXACTLY WHY WE ARE KEEPING AWAY FROM THEM.

Our own mental health and personal safety become most important, for without that, we remain a powerless part of the social and family toxicity. There are many who have found the way to use their disease to control their family, their friends, their employers, and all of the people in their lives like they were marionettes on a string. We must not remain a functioning part of their diseased control dramas, lest we lose control over our own destiny, and sanity.

I remain well acquainted with anonymity, which is one of the supporting spiritual principles. My headlights shine brightly for my own “vehicle of consciousness” on my own new path of consciousness, yet they often provide little illumination for others on their own unique path. This is as it should be, as “no teacher can effect the salvation of others, as we each must work it out for ourselves”. Yet, we must be willing to share our experience, strength, and hope, so that others might benefit from our journey.

We are all as sick as the secrets that we keep from each other, and from ourselves.

Choose wisely, oh mankind, the secrets that we keep,

for by our choices, we all may awaken, or stay asleep.

May all sentient beings be released from suffering.

May all spiritually and emotionally damaged men be released from the cultural conspiracy of silence, which contributes to personal, and collective, suffering.

Please, my fellow men, save yourself.

LOVE’S REUNION (poem by Bruce Paullin)

I stumbled over the frozen wilderness for oh, so long!

With a hole in my heart that life could just not fill

Until I stopped to rest, and heard a gentle voice singing a long forgotten song

That promised of my release from this winter world of painful chill

Her lyrics spoke of the return of Life to freedom

And the release of shivering minds from darkness’ frozen, fearful hands

She drew me closer without any further verbal tethers

And prepared me for the walk back to Love’s now awakening lands

Her warming presence melted the icy hardness that I used to know

Inspiring within me the courage, to myself and my world, to say

That, to all of my past memories’ barren trees of lifeless knowledge, I now refuse to go

I will now accept only the lessons learned along Love’s Infinite Way

Yes, she met me while I was with the dark companion

But it was to her pleasure to take me home to share her loving lights

And give me the shelter of Love’s never setting summer sun

She changed my cold mourning into happier, heavenly nights!

By freely offering of herself and all of her sacred charms

She moves me through life’s clamorous valleys unto its silent peaks

I can now retire from a life of fruitless wanderings

To live in the Source of Peace of which mankind forever seeks

Her life is resplendent with Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty

For these are the robes with which she clothes her being

The gift of Love now unwraps before my inviting eyes

To reveal her ecstatic vision, which is now all-seeing

My search for Truth and Love Sublime has finally ended

For, I now fill my empty cup from her joyous running streams

I have reunited with my eternally fulfilling lover

And, her healing waters dissolve all of my painful dreams

I only seek to remain within her all-embracing arms

While through all life she extends her ever unfolding surprise

My first waking breath each morning brings the certainty

That, from my bed, joined as one, we again shall arise

My broken heart and shattered life is finally mending

And, wedded to her life, I now call her my faithful bride

Life no longer has a fearful road ahead to travel

For, One with God, on Love’s lighted path, I now gratefully stride

CHAPTER 5

This is where I need to talk about my own development as a dysfunctional lad, garaging, etc.

PICTURE OF ME STANDING ON ONE LEG, AND TWO LEGS.

I have always loved my mother.  I have always taken for granted my mother.  She was like the air I breathed, I rarely saw her for who she was, yet I would not have survived without her.

My grandmother, Beatrice Henry, was the greatest woman I had ever known, next to my own mother, even after I reached adulthood.

May 24, 1987

Beginning on May 24th, and extending through July 21st, 1987, I had a series of three spiritual “events” which, to this day, guide and direct the consciousness presently unfolding within me. On May 24, 1987. I had a deeply personal, spiritual event.. To not share it would be an act of hiding on my part..  Sometimes, the Conspiracy of Silence manifests itself by keeping quiet about the activities of miracles and healing, and my unwillingness to share my voice and my experience with others.

I had resumed attendance at Hinson Baptist Church, upon my reentry into sobriety in March of 1987.  In my earnestness to follow the right path through this religion, I accepted a baptism, scheduled for May 28, 1987.  On the weekend prior to my baptism, I received my first ever conscious “visitation of the spirit”.  It manifested in my experience, for lack of a better description, as having the feeling of being held in the loving arms of an infinite motherly presence, and I felt like I was being reborn as a person as a result. When I described my experience to the Minister, he requested that I attend a training to get my “beliefs” more in alignment with the structure that the American Baptist church accepts. Really? The minister misunderstood my experience, as it represented a direct connection with the God of my spiritual understanding, and not his.

During this period of time, I also needed to get tested for AIDS, since I had relations with women who had sex with bi-sexual men as well as intravenous drug activity, during my darker days. I was looking for some support during this time, as the threat of a death by AIDS was quite real to many of us in those days. I found that there was NO SUPPORT TO BE FOUND, at the Baptist Church, where all people with the potential for having AIDS were regarded as outcasts from GOD, and undeserving of support or respect from the good Christian folks. This helped to cement my understanding that our religious institutions exist to support something other than just our “spiritual natures”, and their ignorance of such things causes the injection of some really unhealthy outlooks on life and love into the collective mindsets of their parishioners.

The last straw for me was when the lead minister claimed that of all of God’s creatures, only man has a soul, and that all of earth’s creatures have no basic spiritual essence, I was aghast.  A religion that makes such a claim for man by uplifting its own standing in God’s universe by reducing the spiritual standing of his animal brothers and sisters is Ptolemaic, self-centered and egotistical to the absolute extreme, and another supporting reason as to why our earth is under such attack right now.  As an individual searching for the “Truth Of Being” I thought it was best to steer clear of organized religion, where truth is not so much a sacred value, but instead more a medium for ignorance and a marketable commodity that also is used to help keep people philosophically controlled, and united in one particular way of looking at life.  Historically, religion in general remains the primary avenue for the proliferation of ignorance among the people who don’t have the insight or take the time to think for themselves.

I was educated by a new teacher, a recovering alcoholic by the name of Jack Boland, who had released to the world many series of tapes on recovery and spirituality. I was given one of his tape series of recovery by a co-worker at the Fred Meyer warehouse, John Johnson, of whom I will be eternally grateful to, on May18, 1987. I then listened to these tapes over and over, during the Memorial Day weekend, and something miraculous happened afterwards, probably as a result of my openness to the experience brought about by listening to these tapes, and practicing some simple steps.

On May 24, I drove towards Beaverton to visit with Randy Olson. Randy was a lifelong friend, fellow party monster, and rent sharing partner in 1986 when I contemplated, and then took the active steps towards committing suicide on January 28, 1986 and beyond. As I drove over the West Hills, a wonderful vision came to me, accompanied by a feeling that I had not had since I was twelve years old. It was the vision of a loving mother (actually, the Mona Lisa), holding a baby, and I felt the love of this wonderful UNIVERSE for the first time in my lifetime (later, I was 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 horripilations.

Mysterious Image of divine Mother’s love?

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.

The image of the Mona Lisa holding a baby is a fascinating, enlightening image.  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.  My own consciousness chose this as a healing image for myself, and I also 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 pictorially represented that new birth to perfection.

Jesus, in his teachings of 2000 years ago, repeatedly referred to God as “the Father within”.  That characterization does little for many of us, who instead see a more balanced understanding of the divine intention.  It is no wonder that the Christian faith became so highly patriarchal, and even to this day there is an imbalance within the spiritual world as a direct result of these errors in understanding.  To bring healing to me, “God” suplanted the “father within”, be it vestiges of my own father’s wayward teachings, or even Jesus’s, and healed the imbalance with a sense of unconditional motherly love.  And, I was that love, go figure!

I found that I was to be attracted to women teachers, as well as enlightened male teachers.  T

In August of 1987, I met Marie Schmidt, a practitioner of Joel Goldsmith’s The Infinite Way, which is a movement involved with mysticism and spiritual healing..  She was a woman about 87 years old, who taught every Sunday at the old YWCA on 10th Avenue in downtown Portland.  I had seen a simple advertisement for her tape group, while attending the International New Thought Alliance conference in Portland in August of 1987.  The tape group was a combination meditation group, and a forum for listening to the taped teachings of Joel Goldsmith, a spiritual healer and mystic who first began his healing practice shortly after the Great Depression began.

She had been holding weekly meditations and tape recorded playbacks of Joel’s actual messages since 1962. Marie would sit in the front of the room, and lead a 15 minute meditation, followed by the playing of a cassette tape of one hour length.  She had a collection of at least 300 tapes, of which I eventually copied virtually all of them, and committed them to memory as best that I could. Marie had over 1000 hours of his recorded messages, which she ended up giving to me, and which I converted to digital format.. Some of the tapes were the old style reel-to-reel, and I was not able to convert those tapes to the more modern digital format.

I was captured by this group, which had mostly older people who attended.  I believe that I was the youngest person there, for the period from 1987-1991, while I remain involved with her group.  Initially, I kept my distance from most of the people, not really being sure what the whole business was about.  I eventually drew Joan Madsen and Marcus Jones into the group, who I knew from the International New Thought Alliance convention of 1987, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous, and the Living Enrichment Center.

One day in February of 1989, after I had just broken off an engagement to be married to Laurie H, and I was devastated.  The sweet old woman, Marie, offered me a “healing session”.  Well, I had my doubts, and nothing to lose, and I was a little curious about this “healing business”.  I went up to her apartment, still devastated, and meditated with her for 15 minutes. At the end, Marie spoke the “message” that she heard from Spirit, in regards to me.

“More perfect than you are, you could never be”,

with

“All that is human, is illusion”.

Well, OK, but how can I possibly apply that spiritual salve?

As I thanked her for her time, I then noticed I was totally at peace, and I was “healed” of all of my emotional disturbances around the ending of my engagement to Laurie.  It was as if the winds of Spirit had blown away everything from my mind, except peace and joy.

As I look at my life’s history, I have been healed by its Loving Mystery.

I later tried to have her heal my mentally sick ex-wife, Donelle,  with no success.  So there were limits to her ability, though she always stated that God  heals, not herself . I can almost now hear Marie’s voice, telling me, in regards to all of us:

“More Perfect than you are, you could never be.”

How that manifests in all of our lives remains an unraveled mystery, to be experienced by us each day that we have the privilege to wake up.  She would tell me that we are all blessed by each other’s continued walk through life.    Love goes before us, to make all of  “the crooked places straight”. We are Loved, and, in fact are Love Itself.    The body goes where it must, but also, so does our Hearts.  Go in Peace and Love, and always be willing to bring healing to any situation, for that is our mission, and who we are always to be.

In 1994, Marie was placed in the St. Andrews home near Mt. Tabor, when her nephew noted her deteriorating health, and he was concerned about her decline.  Marie continued to practice healing with the other patients, even while under care of the attending professionals.  My last visit to her, prior to her death, was characterized by her still restating to Sharon and me of our perfection in the eyes of God.

“More Perfect than you are, you could never be.”

Believe in yourself. Believe in your potential. Be in your UNIQUE PRESENCE.

BE NOW, AND BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT “I AM” IS THE DOOR TO THE ONLY GOD THAT WE CAN EXPERIENCE AS HUMAN BEINGS. I dedicate this chapter to my wife, Sharon White. 

The lessons of love learned while with my wife Sharon could encompass an entire book of its own.. On July 4, 1989  I met Sharon, and her daughter Hayley while attending a Course In Miracles discussion group in the basement of the Unity Church in southeast Portland.  Right off the bat I was struck by what a genuine human being that she was,  appearing real, honest, deep, and personal. Her daughter exhibited some unusual behavior, and I could tell that Sharon was dealing with troubling mental health issues with family members.

I eventually joined in relationship with Sharon, after being reintroduced to her at a Living Enrichment Center gathering around the Twelve Steps of Recovery, a several week presentation by Mary Boggs, the minister of LEC.  We both scheduled our attendance at a Course In Miracles weekend retreat that LEC was sponsoring over the weekend of August 4, 1989.  When the retreat was cancelled, I offered to Sharon that we create a retreat of our own.  I chose Cultus Lake, a mountain lake in Central Oregon, which my family had camped at several times when I was a young person.  We proceeded to hit it off so good together that weekend, that we knew we were right for each for now, and for a long, long time to come.

LEC Course In Miracles Weekend handout

Come September, though, I could see that I was becoming quite involved in Sharon’s life, and if I did not travel to Boston soon, and research a powerful dream that I had, I would have no opportunity to do so in the future.  So I arranged a week trip to Boston, not knowing what in the heck I was going to find there.  I knew that the Mother Church of the Church Of Christian Science was located there.  Joel Goldsmith’s teachings had some of their origins from Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings, so maybe I  was supposed to go there to see or hear something Ms. Eddy related.  I did go by the church, and sat in on a few sessions.  I was asked by one of the ministers what I was doing there, just visiting, or did I have a desire to learn more about Christian  Science?  I told her that I was a student of Joel Goldsmith, and that I had also read some of Mary’s works.  She immediately escorted me to Mary’s private study, which nobody had access to, save a special few individuals.  She told me that I probably would like to sit and pray and meditate there, and for me to take as much time as I like.  So, that is what I did.  I found my sense of the sacred and profound, and felt blessed by this exposure to the Church, and to Mary Baker Eddy’s private study.  I will never know for sure if this is what the dream wanted for me to do, but that is what I did.  I wanted to make sure to honor the energy, and its revelations, as best as I could.

I moved in permanently with Sharon later that year, and her daughter Hayley lived with us until July of 1990, when she struck out on her own, to find her own truth and healing.  I was having some difficulty communicating with Hayley.  Sharon and her daughter had some unique mutual control dynamics that were not healthy or satisfying to witness, or to participate with.  Sharon ended up signing up for a class from Diana Martha Clark, who was teaching a twelve step recovery course on co-dependency, which Sharon ended up benefiting greatly from.  Hayley had a lot of growing up to do, and I became disturbed by her need for chaos, need to hold her mother as an emotional hostage, and her lack of respect for my need for peace and honest, loving expression in communication.  She could be particularly harsh, angry, and insensitive, and I felt like I was always walking on eggshells with her. One weekend in July of 1990, I went to my grandma Henry’s home to stay while she was out-of-town.  I spent literally the whole weekend in prayer and meditation around my troubles with Hayley.  Then a most unusual thing happened.  I “heard” that my issues around Hayley had been resolved, and that she was not to be an issue any further.  I went back to our apartment that Sunday evening, and upon my re-entry, I was informed that Hayley had decided to move out, and live with Martha Cannon, a former patient of Sharon’s. Remarkably, the only problems that arose with my early relationship with Sharon, other than daughter related, revolved around Sharon assuming that I knew what her needs were before she expressed them to me, but that misunderstanding quickly worked itself out.

As I look at my history, I see the workings of the Mystery.

EPSON MFP image

Sharon and I shared a common passion of finding and expressing the joy and truth in life, and we meditated and prayed together for many hundreds of hours together, especially early on in our relationship.  The fruitage of one of our shared meditations is the following “poem”.  I had a particularly deep, profound connection during a meditation around 1990, where I had once again entered into Truth’s domain.  There was no apparent message, that is, until I returned to my conscious mind.  The silence then used the words in my memory to create the following message.  The first stanza I wrote in 1985, prior to any real spiritual unfolding, and I could never finish it until this meditation in 1990 filled in the body of it:

THE VOICE OF AWAKENING

Though the slowly shifting sands of time,

Create ever taller hills for this lost soul to climb,

It must be in my selfish, hateful world of no reason or rhyme,

I must begin the search for Truth, to find the Love that is sublime.

“Oh seeker of Truth, God’s high mount you would climb,

Though you now stumble through the valley’s shifting sands of time.

Stop confusing your mind with worn out rhyme and reason,

For they are forever charged by Truth with treason!”

“Oh mental marathoner , only on Life’s treadmill you now stand,

Just re-using the same words and thoughts keeps you life’s ‘also ran’

You’ll forever chase in vain Love’s all-knowing voice,

So be still, for with your run’s end, is the Cause to rejoice!”

“Oh marionette’s dancing image of the screen of the world’s mind,

With all of those conditioned beliefs in control, what freedom could you find?

Release yourself from all of those memories’ materialistic strings

To prepare for the inner Wisdom that only my Intelligence brings!”

“Oh shadow boxer of evil, when will you ever tire?

Tis only champion of a dream world to which you aspire!

Cease giving energy to your illusions with those mental pugilist blows,

And reveal the peaceful mind of the One who now knows!”

“So please wake up to Love’s voice sweet somnambulator,

And realize the eternal truth that “I” within “you” is greater,

Than any mental image you could ever form or learn,

And then your World will reflect the One for whom you now yearn!”

And then the real “punch line” to the search for Truth:

“To be in realization of Truth, is to find God’s high mount another illusion to climb,

Created by fearful, desirous minds caught on the merry-go-round of time”

The dark, restless mind remains forever bereft of Love’s Rhyme and Truth’s Reason,

And only chases after mirages, until it sees all of its movements are guilty of treason!”

While continuing in a loving relationship with Sharon, I joined with many communities of like-minded people, or continued my present participation in them, such as Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics, the Course In Miracles support groups, the Infinite Way, The Living Enrichment Center (LEC), with a very important men’s group experience that arose through my relationship with LEC, and The Empowerment Community with its many offshoot core groups.  Sharon and I became part of a “couple’s group” with two other couples, which became a 20 year affair, lasting all the way until August of 2017 (ending with the death of our dear friend, Marty).

One of our backpacking trips was to become quite a memorable experience for both Sharon and me.  I awoke one morning during the summer of 1992, and finished preparing to leave on a weekend hiking and camping trip with Sharon, up to the Mt. Adams Wilderness Area.  My senses were somehow heightened, and I felt as though I could see and hear better than I was accustomed to.  Food tasted better, the air carried many more scents, and my entire body felt alive with vitality, and sensation, well beyond what I was accustomed to experiencing in my day-to-day life.  I had to work that day, so I ignored my “extra sensory perception” for most of the work day, and I remained excited about joining with my beloved partner on a hike to Lookinglass Lake, which would end up becoming around a 10 mile hike, in one direction.

Our drive took longer than expected, and we arrived in the Wilderness area too late to reach the developed campground, so we parked for the night in a snow park area, and set up our tent to shelter for the evening.  We sat outside of the tent, and I began to experience, in its fullness, that “extrasensory perception” yet again, but much more profoundly this time. It was as if I had sensory receptors in the dirt, the sky, and the trees.  It was as if I had grown roots, so to speak. I not only could see the ground all around us, and the beautiful trees, and the sky, I could FEEL the ground, and it was as if I extended all the way through everywhere that I could see.  It was the experience, in a new form, of “all that I can see is myself”.  It was like I was “hearing” and “seeing” and “feeling” for all of nature that surrounded us, and it was a mystical, transcendental event.  My new body was the earth, the sky, the trees, the wind, the insects, and my human shell.

We finally lay down for the evening in our tent, and though I was still quite profoundly experiencing this event, I was able to fall asleep beside my beloved.  Shortly afterward, I awoke to a great light enveloping our tent, and I arose to go outside to see what was happening.  In the sky appeared a Great Light, and the entire surrounding area was bathed in a light that totally eliminated all shadows, even though it was near midnight!  I awoke Sharon, who rose to witness the light.  To this day, I have no clue if the light is associated with my “heightened mystic awareness”, or if it was just a coincidence that a UFO would awaken us to bathe us in its radiance.  After we returned home, I told my mother about the light, and she reported that the week before, a mysterious light in the Mt Adams wilderness area was also reported, so who knows what was happening there?

Looking back at my life’s history, I remain immersed in the light of its Mystery.

In 1992, I was still in communication with my ex-wife, Donelle.  At this point, she was in the mental hospital at Fort Steilacoom, Washington.  She was committed yet again in 1990, and was languishing in there when I visited her.  This was the 3rd time I had visited her there.  She always had a shopping list for me to fill, invariably with some types of makeup.  She still liked to make herself look as pretty as possible, but the effects of the medication over the years on her had taken a horrible toll.  She was twice her normal weight, and she could not keep her food down consistently.

The most beautiful woman who I had known from my youth was no longer that, and I was quite saddened, once again, to have to connect with her while she was so diseased.  The medication was quite the “double edged sword”, and had been for all of her adult life.    I don’t know what drug cocktails they were giving her this time, but they had the same conflicted end results.  (I now have little respect for the drug industry, or for a system that prescribes these drugs to people, rather than treating people in a more holistic manner).

This particular weekend, my wife Sharon was running in the annual Hood to Coast relay race.  At this point in my life, I was not a runner, having hung up my running shoes in high school, and also having retired from recreational basketball in 1985 due to back problems. My only responsibility was to drive to Seaside to pick Sharon up at the end of her adventure, after my visit with Donelle.  I was quite down after my visit, and the drive to Seaside from Ft. Steilacoom was very dark, and subdued.

When I started to enter the outskirts of Seaside, without even seeing one H2C (Hood To Coast) participant, I picked up on a new energy that just started “vibrating in the ethers”.  The collective self was informing me that my individual self would further evolve with the acceptance of this energy.   I came to name this energy “TEAMWORK” after the fact, not knowing what else to call it.  It was the energy of collective support, love, companionship, and goal achieving, and I had never known that as a youth, as I had never experienced that on grade or high school sports teams, of which I never qualified for.   It was like a beautiful “spell” had come over me, and I was totally captured by it!

Running through my life’s history, I seem to have stumbled over a greater Mystery.

I had my first experience of crowd energy when I attended my first rock concert in 1971.  There were well over 12,000 people attending, and the MIND BLOWING experience was a unitive event where my presence was distributed over the entirety of the crowd.  If you have never experienced this, you cannot understand this.  Over the many years from 1971, through the present moment,  I have found that I am sensitive to crowd energy (a palpable form of collective consciousness), and I can “feel” the collective energy of several types of groups of people, and actually draw from it, and add to it if I am receptive to what is going on.  And, unfocused groups put off such diffuse energy that there is nothing special to tune in to, and I find little to attract me to such energy.

Since there were over 12,000 runners and many more support people at the event, it is no wonder that a field was created in and around Seaside, the destination of the great world-famous event.  I became so impressed with the energy of the experience that I committed to running with Sharon, and I began to run with her several months later, so that the next year I could join her Hood To Coast team, the Sole Mates.

(note:  This experience led me to become one of the top local older runners in our area, culminating in way too many awards, and injuries, but also leading me into a deeper understanding of two of the darker forces predominant in male collective consciousness, which are excess competition and greed)

It was the summer of 1993, and I had scheduled a 5-day retreat with Eileen Bowden and 20 other followers of the Infinite Way, a mystical healing path originated by Joel Goldsmith (died in 1964).  The retreat took place in Federal Way, Washington, at the Pacific Palisades retreat center overlooking the Puget Sound.  I spent the four days in silent contemplation and meditation, with several group talks given by Eileen over the course of the time period.

Eileen Bowden Retreat

Eileen Bowden, who lived in British Columbia, Canada, was a student of Joel Goldsmith, the originator of the Infinite Way.  Joel was a non-practicing Jew, and was led into Christian Science in the 20’s, while his father was on his death-bed.  Joel watched a Christian Science practitioner heal his father, and Joel caught fire with the possibilities for bringing spiritual healing to all of life (life that is receptive to healing, that is) because of this.  She was hand-picked by Joel to continue teaching the Infinite Way, as she “had the message”, meaning that she had achieved, or attained, the “Presence”.   She would enter into the sacred energy, and then give her unprepared talks (she spoke extemporaneously for at least 1 hour for each talk given).  Our role as “listeners” was to be in a sacred, meditative space, as well, so as to contribute to the total energy of the experience.   The result for me from this experience was that I was totally “involved” in the sacred energy of the Spirit, with the total quietness/stillness of my mind complemented by perfect peace, and joy.  I carried this energy for a full week after the experience.  Some call this experience samadhi, bliss, enlightenment, heaven, or whatever points to that state beyond the normal human, verbally intoxicated state.

Awakening Part 4

(written in 1992-1993 time period)

Perfection lies, behind all eyes,

We, who would look within ourselves, will find,

The Sublime Surprise, of which all Life does comprise,

The Divine Self of all Mankind.

We, who have made our choice, with one free voice,

Call to our Eternal Source Supreme,

We will no longer roam, we are coming Home,

We are awakening from the “human” dream!

With courage draught, from fear made naught,

We move from temporal shadow to Eternal Light,

The Kingdom sought becomes the Vision caught,

Whosoever overcomes, now sees with unhindered sight!

The Love All-Knowing, the Truth now showing,

With Divinity, We walk hand in hand.

In us its growing, through us its flowing,

Embracing all between space and land.

With Hearts entwined, One Soul Divine,

To this world, We are a blessing immense.

Though we pass this way for but a day,

With Divine experience, who would dare dispense?

The experience was somewhat perplexing to Sharon, as she wondered why I was having this profound experience, and why it continued on for so long.  She had many questions, but the perfect peace that I was experiencing was not ebbing, at least initially.  I had to return to work, as I worked for a living as an electrician.  At work, the energy continued to flow in its own unique way, but well into the work week I started to question the value of “enlightenment” when I still had to continue to work.  My co-workers were so out of touch with these things that I considered important, special, or sacred, and I could not quite get a handle on how this spiritual experience would have any value in the workplace.  I dared not speak about it, or show any type of behavior that would distinguish me from anybody else, and the dominating attitude for me was to “just blend in” as best I could.

I had already cut way back on meditation with the beginning of my running career in 1993, and when the spiritual “energy” finally ebbed, I despaired a bit, and I felt a little awkward pursuing any deeper connection. I needed a powerful ego to support my intentions to make a successful career, and I knew that I needed a healthy sense of self esteem, beyond just having my “secret connection”.  I had started questioning that commitment to the connection, and to the value of a process that I was uncertain as to how to integrate into the rest of my life.  I needed an empowered self, a self that could promote and defend itself from the often times threatening world of toxic male dominated construction trades.  Ever so gradually, my  commitment to my spiritual unfoldment began to ebb, and I wrapped my spirit baby in a blanket, and placed it into a garage so that I could sleep, just like my parents did to me as a youngster.  But my love for my partner, Sharon, and for all of our shared friendships and family did not ebb, but continued to increase and enhance the quality of my life.

July 30, 1994, Sharon and I had a “commitment ceremony” in our backyard.  We had over 75 people attend, including most of our immediate family, and many, many friends.  I had solidified in my own mind and heart the absolute value of my relationship with Sharon.  She came to represent to me integrity, honesty in communication, speaking from the heart, empowered divine feminine energy, compassion, service to others, and the celebration of our shared humanity at the highest level, of any person that I have ever met, even up to this very day.  I have made many mistakes in my life, but I celebrate every moment of every day my relationship with Sharon.  She is truly made in the image of the highest power in our universe.

Giving our vows, July 30, 1994 Eddy Brame (Crouch) officiating

Life Is Better With You, by Michael Franti https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XEOVl875d0

The years 1995-2005 were dominated by employment for both Sharon and I.  Sharon, who is a nurse, became a manager for Legacy, and eventually became a hospice nurse for Providence.  I continued on my career as an electrician, occasionally accepting management roles.  This  also was the period that I focused on improving my running ability, as well as increasing my participation in our family environment.  Gradually, our huge circle of friends diminished during this period of time, and death started creeping into our awareness as important family members and friends starting passing away.  Losing my grandmother in 1995, and Victor Thomas in 1996 were two most troubling losses. In late 1987, I had a dream where I saw a ring with seven jewels on it, but it was missing its major stone, though the ring had a setting just waiting for the jewel to be inserted.  The missing jewel was much, much bigger than the seven stones.  What could this dream possibly mean?  I was engaged to be married to “woman number seven”, Laurie Hartmann, at the time, so to have this dream was disconcerting.  More was to be revealed at a much later time, when my future wife, Sharon, was to choose a ring for our second wedding in Las Vegas, in 2004.  Without any knowledge of my dream, Sharon proceeded to pick a ring at the original Mother Goose store with SEVEN SMALL STONES and ONE LARGE CENTRAL STONE.  She had picked out, without me being present or having ever told her about my dream, the EXACT ring from my dream.  I had forgotten about the dream, until I located a journal in August of 2018 that I had in storage since 1988.

As I look at my history, I am surrounded by the “rings” of its Mystery.. Sharon retired from her career as a hospice nurse in early 2009, and wrote her first book, Whose Death is It Anyway, A Hospice Nurse Remembers Sharon helped me with the care of my father, Beryl, over the period of time after the death of my mother in 2009, though Dad’s death in September of 2017.  Sharon took over care of my aunt Susie, Dad’s sister, after the death of  her daughter, Sharyn, in August 2017.  Sharon continues to be an invaluable guide and aide for me as I walk down the challenging roads of being present for dying friends and family members, including pets.

Sharon, Penny, Evey at Sharon’s 70th birthday Parachuting Experience

Sharon remains an inspiration to me.  She appears to get younger every year, and her outlook on life tends towards optimism, and she remains upbeat.  She is a “connector” to this day, and she reaches out to everybody that she can, in her attempt to be the voice for healing, love, and friendship in her world.  She continues to draw miracles into her life, and she has a special intuition, or inner knowledge, that allows for her to make connections with people who the “normal folk” of the world would never get to experience.  Sharon continues to be the “gem of greatest value” in my life, and her spirit sparkles with a brilliance unmatched by anyone that I have ever met.