Part One: Marty, Me, and The Lost Voice
Over the years, I have become deeply disturbed by the developments within our shared world, within my individual consciousness, and destabilized points of connection between self and other. Our dysfunction manifests through the languages, religions, and philosophies that create oppression, repression, and the resultant physical, emotional, and social diseases that characterize much of mankind’s present collective experience. Starting within myself, I have seen how a lifetime of oppression, and repression, had brought about a sequence of serious illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity, lived, moved, and had its being enshrined within my own heart and soul. I also saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions had failed in their understanding of humanity, and it’s basic, innermost needs of being valued and listened to.
Virtually all men and women have experienced oppression, repression, and the resultant diseases of the spirit at some point in their lives, and we have been both the victims, and the conscious and unconscious perpetrators, of this behavior. We have all attempted to manage our symptoms in our own unique, yet all too often broken and dysfunctional ways. I have wanted to help myself, my father and several of my male friends, to develop greater insight into these issues over the years, but I did not find a consistent interest being expressed by others in exploring these issues with me. But my friend Marty did begin to show great interest in my Facebook posts beginning late in 2016, and this opened the door to a different level of sharing between the two of us. Concurrently, by this point in time, most Facebook “friends” had either ceased responding to my posts, save my wife and my friend Jim H., or had stopped following or unfriended me altogether.
Marty and I had shared over twenty years in a couple’s group, which was three couples who were long term friends. We shared many weekend trips, nights out for dinner and entertainment, and an unrelated book club experience that Eddy, Marty, Sharon and I shared together until July of 2017. Marty and I were quite friendly with each other, yet rarely spoke at great length or depth, or showed extraordinary interest in developing a deeper friendship apart from our wives. In 1996, Marty came into Eddy’s life, after successfully answering a 140 question philosophical and spiritual survey that Eddy had created. An uncomfortable truth is that Eddy created this questionnaire with the specific intention of drawing a person most closely resembling myself, of whom Eddy had grown to find various attractive qualities that I expressed that she wanted in a man. Marty and I even had an overall similarity in appearance (see photograph). Marty and I were eventually to find, near the end of his life, that we were linked to each other in deeper and more mysterious ways.
Eddy organized and dominated parts of Marty’ life over the years that I had known him, and she would often speak for, or even verbally run over, him in group meetings. She was not being a bitch, as she was just making sure that Marty was being recognized. It was common knowledge that when Eddy was present, Marty would not consistently reveal himself and his own story, and through his silence he would defer to his wife. My own experience of Eddy was that she was usually quite willing to listen to what I had to say initially, then she would often fill whatever empty space appeared between my sharing periods with herself, rather than wait for me to finish my story and whatever message I might be trying to deliver. Under these conditions, much like Marty, all further talk from me would end, and I would just listen to her, no matter what important items I might have to share with her or the group that we might be attending together.
On January 11th of 2017, I awoke at 2:45 in the morning, and went into my office and sat down. Suddenly, I lost all ability to move, and to even think, though I remained quite aware during this approximately one minute process. I was experiencing a seizure for the first time since early 1987, when I was trapped in my final period of drug addiction and alcohol abuse.
I became aware of my body as both a field of energy, and as a vehicle for my consciousness moving within it, for the second time in my life. The first time, the vision lasted for a very short period of time. This time, it would not go away. It was disorienting, to say the least.
It was then that I became aware of a black mass, almost the size of a golf ball, in the left portion of the brain area of my inner field of body awareness. This was the first time that I had awareness of the energy field of my body since July of 1987, when I had my first, and only, experience of detecting my own life energy field. This was a pretty “woo woo”, or “out there” vision, and I became quite concerned by it, keeping it secret, at least initially. Every subsequent time I looked internally, I could still see the dark mass. In February, I had yet another seizure, this time much milder, and in a public setting, while playing cards at Jim’s, who was a mutual friend of both of us and the third male member of the couple’s group.
I did not talk about the seizures, or the black mass, initially, because I thought that I might be losing my mind. I later began talking about it with my wife, and two friends, and it was theorized that it might be related to something spiritual or psychic in nature. But I came to know it as a harbinger of death, at least in a spiritual sense. I saw that there was no negotiating with it. Prayers, meditations, affirmations, reading, talking with others, nothing seemed to have any impact upon the dark mass. I knew that some sort of death was coming my way, while still feeling little need to discuss it with a doctor. I did tell my family doctor that I feared that my own death might precede my father’s, when I took my ill father to see her about January 4th of 2017..
On March 5, 2017 Marty suffered a major seizure and was hospitalized at OHSU. , Marty had been in a four year recovery phase from malignant melanoma, a process first diagnosed in late 2012. He appeared to have been successfully treated with Interleukin II therapy, a powerful immunotherapy regimen. Now, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. My wife Sharon and I visited him two days prior to its surgical removal. Marty and I talked about our seizures, and I was struck by the similarity of his seizures with my own, though mine were relatively tame by comparison. I told Marty that my perception was that Death was making itself known to me, through the dark mass that I could see in my own energy field. I was also beginning to see a relationship between our problems, but I was hesitant to tell Marty about it, wanting him, and myself, to remain hopeful, though I told him that I did not know for certain if his brain mass indicated a death for him.
That next day, Wednesday, at noon, I had another episode of such intensity, and duration, that I dared not even attempt to get up from the couch. I had previously arose from the couch, and briefly lost consciousness, so I was all shook up, yet I still had no desire to get a doctor involved. Sharon came home later that afternoon from her creative writing class, and found me quite compromised. She listened to my story, and accepted my decision not to seek further medical attention, since this was perceived as a spiritual crisis, while she offered her own love and care. She monitored my blood pressure, and when she noted when my breathing became shallow, offered to me a paper bag to breathe into, lest I sink into a panic attack.
Whenever I tried to get off the couch, I became quite dizzy. I continued feeling quite physically subdued, and some sort of anxiety reaction was also happening with my body/mind. I was also losing my ability to talk. It took all of the power that I could muster to force words out. It was reminiscent of a time 31 years before, when for two days I had an event that prevented me from speaking during a portion of my trip through the underworld. I lost my voice when confronted with the reality that there were dangerous people who I was associating with, and this fact had finally, and powerfully, struck home.
The present time, I actually felt like my consciousness was trying to escape, and it took all of my resources just to hold myself together. I characterized this present event to Sharon White as losing my mind, while having a neurotoxic component to it. I did not want anything to do with another neurological exam, having been through that horror several years before, when I had experienced excruciating headaches. I tried to go about my normal activities, while being grateful that I did not have to provide care for my disabled father, whose care that week was taken over by others.
Thursday came, and I had not improved much. It also was the day that Marty’s tumor was being removed. I had dual concerns, not only for Marty, but also for myself. I went about my limited daily activities as best I could, but I became quite conscious of my own fear and anxiety around Death, both of self, and of Marty. I continued to listen to the occasional taped spiritual wisdom tapes of some of my past teachers, hoping to hear something that might bring me comfort. I listened to Jack Boland, a nationally renowned speaker and master of the recovery process, and a man who I had known since 1987.. I owned a tape where he referred to me personally, said he knew me, probably better than I knew myself. He then stated that he wished pain, not peace of mind, to all who had not yet fulfilled their interior spiritual obligation to cleanse their hearts, as this is the great precursor to any lasting spiritual progress . Those who understand this statement UNDERSTAND. And here I thought that I had already performed that process!
How wrong I was.
Thursday evening came, and after yet another nearly sleepless night, I got up and sat in the family room, and awaited for Sharon to join me . My life’s message was bubbling up within me, and I felt a compulsion to share it with my world. Yet I also knew that there were few, if any, people presently in my life who had the time, or even the interest, in listening to what Spirit was trying to pour through me. As I lay out on the couch, feeling my own emotional/spiritual death about to overtake me, I cried out in despair to Sharon,
“Please share my message! I don’t believe that I have the capacity to deliver it in a way that others can hear, or understand!”.
Sharon looked at me with acceptance, love, and compassion. Sharon had been listening to my story for close to thirty years, and she had witnessed me sitting on my voice for most of that time. She then stated unequivocally
Your message is your own, and must be spoken through you, or not at all.
Even my tears, and begging, would not change her mind. I was in such pain and agony, that I knew that I could not go on with my life in any kind of healthy way, and I did not know what to do.
I had the lifetime experience of people experiencing me as less of a human being than I am, starting with my own diseased father, followed by a steady progression of angry, sometimes hateful, judgmental male and female power figures, with a few very notable exceptions, and I did not know how to act or feel differently. My voice had been silenced by myself and others, even in many settings where spiritually aware, conscious people gathered to celebrate ‘connection’. Trauma induced ‘tricksters” were still embedded within my body and being, keeping me tethered to their black hole.
This loving act on Sharon’s part by refusing to speak for me was instrumental in the recovery of my ability to speak and to write. I could not let myself die again emotionally and spiritually, so I asked my Spirit how to best deliver my message. A prayer from my past, first created from a dream in 1992, formed in my mind and began with “Grandfather, Great Spirit, Thank You”. All of a sudden I was COMPELLED to write, and I did not stop the process until fifteen pages of a story poured through me. My Spirit chose the format of a parable, perhaps knowing that it would be discarded, without reading, by those who already believed that they knew me. But the curious ones, the ones who had an inner Spirit that had not been yet stymied, would read, and appreciate, this aspect of the message that I now felt compelled to give to my world.
The parable took less than two days to write, and it was the first story I have ever written. I was never a writer, and before recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, most of the insight that I had was irrelevant to recovery and healing, and certainly was not worth “writing home about”. While hospitalized for a month in 1984 for alcoholism, the journal that I was required to write about my daily insights seemed to be written by our society asking for permission to continue to be dysfunctional, rather than me getting in touch with my pain, and making progress with healing. People pleasing stories may be easier to read and write, but they sure lose their allure when one finally decides to move into the neighborhood of truth and real insight into self.
The dark mass in my body of energy disappeared upon completion of my story, coincidentally at about the same time that Marty’s tumor had been surgically removed. To this day, I remain healed of that darkness, though I am forced out of bed frequently now, to write, and to share with, the One who listens. Yes, I have finally learned that I need to listen to myself, more than just listening to other “authorities”. During the following year, I slept only 3 or 4 hours a night, getting out of bed to write until my wife Sharon awakened at 5 am.
As a result of this process, I had an insight that is extremely difficult to talk with others about, an insight about my relationship with Marty and his disease in the final year of his life. I saw how I had become attuned to Marty, resonating on a psychic level. Some have called this connection radical empathy, some have called it telepathic, some have called it just plain fucking mysterious, and some would call it insane thinking on my part. For me, this is a natural outcome, as I came to understand it after I had a miraculous experience around prayer with a co-worker in 1992.
Somehow, Marty’s structure of consciousness, his ego mind, part of his sense of self had resonated within me, and I “felt his presence” within my own sensitive, susceptible consciousness through my love, compassion, and concern for the man. This is how I was able to sense the dark, golf ball sized mass in my own brain. It was not my cancer, it was Marty’s. And I was also finally able to articulate the forces of oppression and repression within both of us for the first time. I never had the capacity to communicate around the two “black holes” or tricksters, revealed by the teaching from the Master on July 21, 1987, that were embedded within my own field of consciousness before this time. Somehow, a bridge of words was created to describe the vast matrix whose complete description had eluded me since. The light of my own awareness, shown through our shared matrix of consciousness, created the shadows, or words, words that ached to reach from the unknown to the knowing parts of myself.
Part Two: There Is Something Fundamental Here
This message was attributed to the Oracle, and inscribed at the Temple at Delphi, in Greece. Note that wisdom states to first know thyself, and then the knowledge of the Universe and God may become available.
- Does love come to, from, or through us, if it ever comes at all?
- Why does the racing, turbulent, “monkey mind” develop, causing deprivation of peace of mind and the absence of sacred silence?
- Why do many decent, caring people remain unacknowledged for their worth by their communities until their final eulogy?
Do you have any interest in finding the answers to these questions, and do you perceive that they are related to each other?
If your answer is “YES”, then you are already on the path to healing, and the following missive may have value to you..
The empyrean realms of human experience are reserved for those willing to consciously unhitch their spiritual wagon from troubled pasts and skewed understandings of life. In the lifetime journey of self discovery, therefore, some of the hinterlands remain beyond the reach of those not in search of such realms, such as the superficially oriented, indifferent or spiritually antagonistic traveler. There must be a deep desire to see beyond the limited vision of the self, to get to the deeper reality hidden within the soul. There, the potential for an inspired and higher powered human experience lies buried under the detritus of a traumatized history. This can be perceived as being dangerous territory for the uninitiated heart and mind, and often elicits fear and distrust of the process, even though profound healing may result from this interior journey.
My intense desire to “Know Thyself”, coupled with the incredible spiritual strength and wisdom of my life partner, Sharon, helped to guide me back onto a long forgotten, though profoundly influential, internal path of memory. At the path’s starting point, when I first became verbal, began the creation of my own internal tomb for my spiritual potential. A lifetime of not adequately addressing and healing from the disease of my spirit led to two profound insight experiences in 2017.
For the first cathartic event, I was preparing to go to the Pilates class that Sharon and I attended each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at our athletic club. Typically, I get there a little early, so that we can warm up on an exercise bicycle, with a little aerobic activity that I still enjoyed participating in. I no longer ran, having retired the last year after a lifetime of enjoyment, and pain. It was 9:15, and I was fully prepared to leave, while Sharon remained on the telephone, talking with a friend. As it turned 9:19, I spoke to her, in my most innocent of voice,
“Can we go now?”
Sharon had a series of humorous and minimally derisive responses that I won’t repeat, but three things that she said coincided with me entering a “spell”. I felt the presence of something so basic, so fundamental, so raw, so real, so hurt, that I raged for a couple of minutes, declaring several times:
“THERE IS SOMETHING FUNDAMENTAL HERE!”
The trapped energy of a lifetime was released. I became aware of a pain so deep, and so all-encompassing, resulting in an anger from a source that I had never touched before, at least as a verbally conscious human being.
Sharon and I went our separate ways for a few hours, while we both tried to understand what the hell had just transpired. We had only two arguments or angry exchanges our entire nearly three decade relationship, and this exchange was quite shocking. Leading up to this experience, I had been intensely exploring the entirety of my life experience, having written 70 pages about my early childhood, maturation process, addictive and self-destructive cycles, and glimpses into higher possibilities for living. All of this writing had placed me, without realizing it, into the psychic world of the pain and suffering of a pre- four year old being (I developed the capacity or willingness for speech very late, at nearly four years of age),
After a meditation, I had a realization. My wounded essence had actually cried out for the first time and I actually listened to it, without my ego repressing it as it had for 61 years. And I also saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father. I felt an incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents.
I finally had experienced the most basic nameless suffering of an ignored child, or baby, and I have now given it verbal description:
“MY VOICE/CRIES ARE WORTHLESS, AND I MUST HAVE NO VALUE, AS NO ONE RESPONDS TO ME, THUS I DON’T FEEL LOVE WHEN I NEED IT MOST. I MUST BE ALONE IN THIS WORLD.”
And, a most insidious false assumption about life and love came to me at age 5, a little over a year after I began to talk.
“If there is any love in this world, I have to compete with others for its grace and experience”.,
As a lonely five year old boy, I began to fantasize about saving someone’s life, so that they would feel obligated to love me. I also learned to attack myself by minimizing my own value to others, so that they might take pity upon me, and spare me from their own desire to be punitive. Ultimately, it led to the idea that I would kill myself when life had lost all meaning, and the accompanying pain became too great. . My “tricksters” were already well established, and erroneously informed my perceptions from the very earliest of ages.
Sharon paid the price for a couple of hours, while I witnessed the wounded baby within me, and I paid attention to its long muted cries. Through this process, I had an insight that still informs me daily.
I saw how we, as humans, keep layering ourselves and our ideas upon what somebody else is saying, rather than meeting the being where they are, and responding according to the dictates of our “heart center”, which in most people, ESPECIALLY MEN, has been scabbed over by our own early spiritual wounding. Men typically inflict their own wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not so subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in dominating, or being dominated, by others. Philosophies of oppression, and of the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. Women and children are usually victimized, and/or those with sensitive and/or non-confrontational natures.
“Our unhealed emotional issues and traumas become entombed within our bodily tissues”.
When our personalities have been formed by the layering of our egos upon our own unnamed, unrecognized dark/unconscious energy, we end up with an energy exchange dynamic where we “project” our shadow onto others, and make them wrong for it, not recognizing that we were the source of our misplaced judgement. That judgement may have arisen from one’s own personal experience, and/or drawn from the experiences of others..
We just can’t quiet our minds long enough to listen with our hearts to what is being said, and respond accordingly with our heart. We are much too eager to respond with ego programmed responses, which, typically, are based on incomplete perceptions or someone else’s ‘knowledge’, and it remains our attempt to control other people’s perceptions and experience through linking our own unhealed energy with their own.
In our attempt to be “heard”, we instead try to program people, unconsciously, to behave and react more in accordance with our expectations. When they don’t (they rarely do, unless they are our impressionable young children), we are very disappointed, and feel rejected, and, in the absolute, we feel betrayed by the sum total of exchanges between the parties.
Why do I submit such intensely personal information? I do not want a life that has been lived in vain. I also see a world where the majority of us still suffer from the same, basic issues that I have tried to describe here. Even amongst some people closest to me, denial reigns supreme, and I have only a small measure of hope that the “personal truth” that I am trying to convey here will actually be heard, and applied by others that I care about, which now includes the entirety of our planet Earth.
“There is something fundamental here.”
As a baby, my parents placed a blanket around my baby body, and deposited me in a car in their garage so that my father could get at least 5 hours of sleep a night. My father was “chasing the American Dream”, and worked two jobs at the time.
I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the profoundly damaging effects of denying love and interactive time to a developing human being. What I might need to remind myself at times is that others, no matter what their age, or how much that I think that I know them, deserve my undivided attention, as they attempt to reveal who they are in this moment.
It is funny, sometimes when I share some of my creative work (which, incidentally, just started happening in early March of 2017), I get the very strong impression that some important people in my life just don’t have the time to listen. Oh, how that trickster tries to convince me that nothing has changed with the world’s listening ability since my infancy.
Another clue about our own, or another person’s listening intention, is when we try to share a profound life event, and are immediately run over by another with more knowledge of the subject. Sometimes we, or the other, either have too much book knowledge, we have the certificate, we already have read about it on the internet, we have memorized something from a class that we already took, or we have a friend who has already “been there, done that!”
Trust me on this one. If I do not want to grow anymore, I will stop listening to what others are really trying to say. If i don’t want to be of service to my fellow-man/woman, I can just stop listening to what they are trying to express, and just layer my own ignorance and judgement, over somebody else, and not let them reveal to me who they Really Are in this special moment.
Our religious and political leaders are masters at this, as well as family members who promote their “control dramas” in the place of loving, open communication. Please don’t inflict this same treatment on the ones you love. It is like putting a blanket around our heart and soul, and putting us into the car, so that those with a dehumanizing or monetizing philosophy can continue to oppress others, while keeping themselves spiritually asleep.
We all deserve to be listened to. I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the potential of the damaging impacts to our relationships with others, by merely not taking the time to listen with our hearts, to the other’s deepest meaning. Most of my closest connections already practice this, and do not intentionally ignore the needs of others.
We are all developing human beings, no matter what our age. And, we are all God’s children, and God speaks through us, whether we can hear the “truth”, or not. Sometimes the “truth” is so difficult to hear, that we shut down emotionally, and we either ignore what is said, or substitute our own story for what the “other” is trying to communicate.
What is it within me that causes such a disproportionate reaction to other people’s deafness or indifference towards me?
UNHEALED TRAUMA.
It is in “knowing thyself” that one finally comes into conscious contact of what is the foundation of our own limited sense of self, so that we can mindfully manage and consciously dismiss those lies generated from our own traumas. Our unconscious traumas, many of which have been internalized since birth or before, are guards who stand at the gate preventing our access to our higher possibilities. When we remove those guards, we access the sacred, and secret vault that is within. We are then free to wander upon new paths of consciousness, where spiritual prosperity reigns supreme, and “the Universe and God” may reveal their true nature.
The awareness and the healing of childhood trauma places us squarely on new paths of consciousness, which leads us into sacred realms.. Without such freeing insight, we continue on the older, more familiar paths of painful existence, where replication of errors of perception continue, suffering predominates, and the profane reigns supreme.
Please see into self, and find the willingness to be set free from its pillory, to reveal our Self.
For most people, healing requires perseverance and patience, to bring the us the fullest measure of healing. And, until the final release from ego’s grasp, we must remain vigilant through insight and mindfulness, catching ourselves whenever we stray back upon the old paths. I took several photographs of my baby and early childhood self, and grieved with these images of self my loss of innocence and healthy self-esteem.during the early years. It is heartbreaking work, and the floodgates of tears opened up, threatening to drown me, Yet, this grief, like the unexpressed anger, are the most important contributors to the letting go of the old, familiar lonely path of feeling ignored and unloved by the world.
It is important to acknowledge that we tried to love ourselves since birth, and we also tried to love those who did not appear to return it back to us.
The truth is that our world does not heal, until we do.
“We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are”—Anais Nin
The new name for the guards preventing our entry into our eternal self is Anger and Grief. We must identify their source within us and face them directly, without judgement or condemnation, or we will be prevented from assuming our rightful place in the spiritual universe.
We can’t give to others what we do not feel to be true about our self.
We can save the world . . . from our limited sense of self.
Our anger and our grief are the keys to the door to our lost kingdom.
Once the inhibiting power of trauma is recognized, the desire for freedom erupts, In the seeing of this embedded trauma, the seer is transformed, eventuating in liberation of the heart and mind from the pillories of the past.
When we finally see what is false within our self, the liar loses its voice, and the silence born of oppression and repression is dissipated.
Part Three: Cannon Beach And An Anxious Silence
On the first weekend in October of 2017, we arrived at the Oregon coast, at Cannon Beach, on a partly sunny Monday afternoon. We were quickly greeted by our very long-term dear friend from Arizona, June and her ten-year love interest, Michael (are you ever getting married?). After checking into our hotel rooms, and getting geared up for a walk, we headed out to the beach, to walk northward up the coast, past Haystack Rock. We engaged in our normal conversations, catching up on June and Michael’s activities, as well as giving them a brief download on what has been happening in our own lives.
As the walk progressed, we separated a bit into two groups, the guys and the girls, though we did not create a huge distance between the two groups in our walk. We continued to enjoy the scenery, the clearing blue skies above us, the seagulls swooping and gliding, the watching of and engaging with the other tourists and their dogs, while being continuously soothed by the constant breaking of the waves upon the sandy shore. Small talk continued between both groups, until I had to remove my shoes, due to extreme pain in my right foot.
The pain in my foot was accompanied by another unidentified discomfort, deep within my heart, which continued to trouble me. I looked at Michael, and I began to relate the experience of my friend’s very recent death, and how the notice of my own father’s death coincidentally occurred at the moment that I was helping to place my friend’s body into the hearse. I wanted to talk about the disturbing appearance of insanity in the marriage of my deceased friend, and it’s impact on my friend’s final days, and its impact upon my own being.
Michael looked up at the nearby mountains, appearing not too interested in what I was trying to say. He attempted to redirect my attention away from myself, and the view away from the ocean. Suddenly, a strangely uncomfortable, unidentified feeling came over me, and I also felt like my heart was starting to beat harder. The skin on my face, and on the front of my body started to tingle, and I felt light-headed. I attempted to breathe deeper and slower, thinking that I had somehow lost my breathing cycle rhythm, yet a deepening, sickening feeling continued to creep through my mind, and through my body.
I sped up my pace, so that I could join up with my wife, who was ahead of us with June. I started to shudder a bit, and shake as if I was cold (there was a breeze, though it was sixty-five degrees, and not extraordinarily chilly). My condition continued to deteriorate, yet all that I felt comfortable with sharing with the group was about my sore foot, which was aching horribly. This foot would eventually need surgery, and I had delayed such surgery for quite a while, but it was not the only source for the pain that I was presently experiencing. Yet, in this group, it was the only pain that I could safely talk about.
We neared our hotel room, and the anxiety reaction that I was experiencing (yes, I finally named it ANXIETY) was threatening to overwhelm me. It was dinner time, so we walked over to the Mo’s restaurant that was connected to our hotel, and ordered dinner. Sharon was very light, and happy, and introduced a “spinner” to the dinner table, to try to keep lightness going, and bring humor and delight to our group. Yet I had lost my sense of delight, and humor, and my appetite, and I knew that I could not even eat dinner, even though I had already ordered a meal with the rest of the group. June commented that I looked like I had turned a gray color, and that I looked ill, and ill I was. I had to leave the table immediately.
I went back to our hotel room, took off my clothes, and lay down in our bed. The world felt like it was spinning around me, and my heart beat so loudly that it sounded like a drum was being bashed in my ears. I continued to try controlled breathing patterns, thinking that this was an anxiety reaction, but I really felt extremely ill, and I felt like a visit to the hospital may be in order. I became so concerned that I got my tablet and went to a medical portal to ask a doctor some questions about what was happening, and ask if I should be hospitalized. I was not sure if I was having an adverse neurological response to something toxic, preparing for a stroke or seizure, having the beginning of a migraine headache, or if I was losing my mind.
The response from the doctor brought some temporary relief to me, when he stated that I was having a stress induced anxiety reaction. OK, that sounded like something I might be able to manage, so I prepared myself to go back to dinner, and finish the evening with our friends. I felt much better, and looked forward to eating, as my appetite had returned from the dead, as well.
Everyone had already finished their meal, so I shared dessert with everybody. I felt good for a while, as we finished our evening together, and headed back to our individual units. But something was still active in my mind, and I began to again feel nauseous, with my heart beating wildly again, and, now, my body started shuddering like I was frozen. Sharon crawled into bed and held me close, I was shaking so violently, and her warmth, and presence, brought some comfort to me. Yet my foot ached like I had never experienced pain before, and I was definitely anxious about that pain, as well as something a bit more undefined, up to that point.
After two hours of holding me, Sharon had fallen asleep, yet I was so wired by my anxiety that I could not sleep, so I left the bed to lay on the couch, and listen to some meditation music. I felt like I might still be “losing my mind”, whatever that meant, or that I was having some sort of nervous breakdown. While meditating on what was happening to me, I came to realize that I really needed to communicate around the absolute insanity of the family activity revolving around the life and death of my dear friend, and, to a lesser extent, that of my father, as well. Michael had shut me down at the moment that I needed to talk most, thinking that by redirecting me away from talking about death, he was doing me a favor. Instead, by not communicating with him and the group what was troubling me, the anxiety reaction launched me off of the pad into outer space, and brought upon me a sickness, and a pain, that I had never experienced before in my life. Oh, that blessed pain and suffering, for it would lead me further down the path to my own ‘liberation’.
As I was awake all night, I attempted meditation upon my own source of pain and suffering, and what came to me was how most of what I know about myself, and my reactions to the world, was created by my fundamental relationship to my parents. I had never developed a complete sense of self in my early years (I will not call it Asperger’s Syndrome, or Autism, though it manifested similarly to ADHD) and my sense of self revolved around internalizing what my mother and father expected from me, what I could or could not give back to them to attempt to please them, and my defense mechanisms for managing the fallout when I failed to either please them, or protect them, or myself, from the results of the conflict that arose in our house when I either made yet another mistake, or when father overreacted to any situation that brought a sense of fear or threat into the home environment. There was also that aspect where I felt a need to “balance” whatever energy was being over expressed at any particular moment, which certainly added to my “passive-aggressive component” of self-expression. It was as if I had two extra self-organizing personalities occupying my ego mind, my creations of who I thought my father and mother were, which was crowding out the “real me”, whoever or whatever that might be (if anyone, maybe there was never a real “me” present, only some sort of complex verbal construct?).
With the death of my father, it ended the era of subservience to his needs, and the need to “protect” my mother from my perception of his aggression towards her.. It also ended the era of incomplete grieving for my own mother’s death, as I had to immediately support my mentally deteriorating father when mother died, and I never completely worked through my own grieving process. I was finally an “orphan”, and all of the entanglements that kept me wound around their lives were now physically removed. My fathers’ spirit no longer needed to overshadow my own life, and now I was allowed to live fully into whatever, or whoever I am, or was supposed to be.
For me this is an extraordinary release, because my “ego” formed much differently that most of the rest of humanity due to unusual parental bonding issues just after birth, and through my first 4-5 years. Being placed on “formula” right after birth, and being placed in a chilly car in the garage at night so that my father could sleep better (I was just another “damned crying baby”) left me as a young being feeling abandoned, and lonely, from the beginning. Though I loved my parents, I certainly did not want to grow up and be like them. Yet, I was not able to offer to my developing self a viable alternative to being like my father, being extremely limited creatively, and my resultant dull, though at times insightful, personality reflected that darkness.
Up to this most recent point in my life, I have perceived the collective impact of toxic male consciousness upon my individual existence, with some insight into my own father’s sometimes toxic involvement in my own mind’s formation. I saw that I had two Tricksters roaming through the inner recesses of my heart and soul, and their continued presence, though they kept me from being lonely as a young being, kept me from developing into my greater good as an independent, free human being. In our world, there are countless examples of “self organizing systems”, and all creatures, and the minds of those creatures, are examples of that miracle in action. The bodies appear to be primarily organized through the pattern created by the history of that species, and it’s interactions with its earthly environment. DNA appears to carry that pattern within our very cells.
Yet the mind appears to have an extra self-organizing principle attached to it, as it organizes itself into a personal sense of being. That little mystery revolves around how well the organism feels accepted by, and connected to the environment that the body travels through. Thus, healthier senses of self arise, and are supported, by myriads of “successful” interactions with its social and physical environment. First and foremost is the beings’ acceptance and integration into the primary family cell, or group. If the young being does not get the requisite positive feedback early on, it faces tremendous odds against forming a happy, well-adjusted self organizing principle, or ego. My first 31 years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed by the “conspiracy of silence” created by my subservience to a damaged image of self, and other. My own true nature had been masked over, or silenced, through that process.
Who, or what, am I now? I am a mystery, even to myself. I need not be anxious, though the transition times from what I thought I was to who I am predestined to become does create intense anxiety. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment. Living into the Truth of what that is now is the new story of my life. There is but One Mind, but it is only experienced in the Unknown.
That next day at the beach, on Tuesday, I experienced the most beautiful perfect peace, and sense of wholeness, that I can recall. The rest of our shared day was characterized by a strong sense of the sacred, and I felt a deepening connection with everybody, and everything. The beauty of the ocean and it’s scenery, the beauty of our friendships, the taste of our food, even the continuing pain in my foot, all felt to me like lyrics of a heavenly song that was connected together by the rhythm of Love.
The conspiracy of silence has to be broken, again and again if necessary, and the silencing of my true identity through adherence to old, worn out patterns of behavior inculcated into me by our culture, our religions, our so-called teachers and teachings, and our misunderstandings of our parents, our God and creator, and our outdated sense of self have to end, for this present moment healing event to have any hope of transforming the heart and soul.
In this moment, I am no longer anxious, I am free. I will find a way to manage future moments, if they bring anxiousness back to me.
“I” will not be denied. I will not deny your own excellence, and your own potential for greatness. Our shared sense of self, and our stories will support and highlight the rest of our continued existence on this plane of being.
May all sentient beings remain free from suffering.
May my own sentience guide me away from all temptations to bring suffering to self, and other.
Please, save yourself.
Depression, Anxiety, and Panic Attacks
I never chose this uneven life path of recovery from trauma, life chose it for me. I choose how to deal with the sights along the way, however.
The amygdala in our brains under duress from trauma creates new paths, leading in unhealthy directions, when these issues that arise through trauma are not promptly dealt with honestly and openly. For me, my number one intention for facilitating healing of myself is to avoid situations or people where poor communication and suppression of human emotions has become ‘normalized’. There are guaranteed negative outcomes associated with those interactions which have resulted in secondary damage and the potential for profound anxiety attacks.
I began to experience the “BIG THREE” of depression, anxiety, and the occasional panic attack, in the latter part of 2017, beginning about two weeks after the death of my father, and three weeks after the death of my friend Marty.
I grapple with (and sometimes continue to contemplate):
1). (from 2010-2017) The care for, and eventual death of my father, and the difficulties in the management of his estate,
2). (from 2017) The challenges in supporting the protracted dying process, and the eventual death of my good friend Marty in the week prior to my fathers’ death
3). (from 2017) dealing with the insanity of the wife of my deceased friend, and her ongoing spiritual dementia,
4). a crippling foot problem characterized by the highest possible pain intensity,
5). cancelling a lifetime “friendship” with a high school best friend who had become physically, spiritually, and emotionally unavailable through the past 40 years,
6). becoming alienated in 2016 from an alcoholic/bipolar nephew, and his family which we had been spending much time with, and not being able to talk to them about the issues, after a vicious divorce cycle,
7). an ongoing issue of dealing with and managing the health and safety of my elderly aunt (dad’s sister) who is disabled, and abandoned by the rest of her family, including her own daughter, and
8) (from 2016-2021) TREASON (Trump Related Extreme Anxiety Striking Our Nation)
I now have intimate knowledge of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and I now consider myself a personal expert in these matters, albeit a reluctant one. It is inappropriate to keep these issues “secret”, as I tend to be as sick as the secrets that I attempt to keep. Remaining unconscious and victimized by these conditions is not a helpful option for me now, or anytime.
The following have been found to be helpful for me:
1). Seeking “professional help” from therapists or physicians/surgeons as required,
2). exercise (such as yoga, with emphasis on proper breathing techniques),
3). immersion in Nature (walks through parks, forests, deserts, etc. as available),
4). meditation (listening to relaxing music is useful, if the mind will not quiet on its own),
5). getting plenty of rest/sleep (not automatic or easy when in anxious states. Use of melatonin and non-caffeinated relaxation tea prior to bed is helpful),
6). honest and open communication with friends and family (hanging around people with positive, loving attitudes and behaviors is important),
7). insight (and taking my inventory, to use the parlance of 12 step groups),
8). prayer (focused intention/thought energy for personal and collective change, for those so inclined),
9). service to others who are less fortunate, and
10). medication (if necessary) can be helpful. Ibuprofen is effective for anxiety, as well as (in the short term) some “heavier hitters” such as Ativan and Xanax, or anti-depressants (FYI, I can’t stand Xanax).
11). avoiding obvious anxiety producing behaviors, like excess coffee consumption, eating sugar or high carbohydrate mix foods excessively, or over booking my day-to-day life,
12). continue to allow feelings to naturally arise, with no judgement.
13). continue without shame and guilt any unfinished emotional business, such as grieving for the loss of loved ones.
14). watch a few good comedies, or go see a good comedian (lighten up!)
15). Go to live music performances, and enjoy the presence of powerful positive group energy.
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a name given to one powerful variation of related symptoms, and therapy and techniques developed for its healing may be appropriate, as well (a form of acupressure called the “tapping” technique is quite helpful).
Writing into a personal journal or blog can be helpful. Posting to Facebook, with the hope or expectation that somebody who cares might read a posting and give meaningful feedback, is unrealistic, and can potentially be dangerous, depending on the state of mind of the writer at the time of posting. It is best to have friends and connections who respond directly, preferably in person, where our humanity shines the brightest and has the most healing potential. Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, or whatever other media vehicle that one may employ for communication in isolation just cannot get the job done, PERIOD. Just passing time without helping myself would never have allowed for sufficient healing either.
It really is distressing to experience the fear of losing my mind and sanity, the light-headed spacy-ness, extra fear around health issues, and the all around sense of discomfort and disease of being in a disturbed state of mind, and being. It comes to me in cycles now, with about two to three weeks of reprieve, followed by two or three troubling days. This coming from a man who knew perfect peace and harmony for most of the last 30 years of my life.
As I move toward healing, compassion towards myself and others is one of the intended outcomes. The absence of this only perpetuates the anxiety cycle.
For those who still suffer, please save yourself.
The Universe and God preexisted our civilization and our religious and philosophical misinterpretations. Our unique self preexisted our family and our culture’s misinterpretation of who we really are.
The journey of a thousand lifetimes culminates in the union of the Universe and God, and our unique Self.
Look out from our new eyes. As far as we can see, unto eternity, is our Self.
How we see our self today determines the quality of our life, our relationships, and the love and its miraculous healing that we experience.
