What value is a story, if it is never told? What value is love, if it is never shared? What is the value of speaking, if nobody is even willing to listen? According to the introduction to the movie “Alien”, “In space, no one can hear you scream”. And, if you are a man on earth, because of our culture’s historic “conspiracy of silence”, no one wants to feel your pain, see your tears, or listen to you cry. Many times, an unwillingness to speak or reveal one’s deepest self revolves around issues of shame, and denial, yet it also can originate because of culturally inculcated values.
Over the years, I have become deeply disturbed by the developments within our shared world, within my individual consciousness, and the points of connection between self and other, through language, religion, and philosophy, that have created oppression, repression, and personal and social disease. Starting within myself, I have seen how a lifetime of oppression, and repression, had brought about a series of near fatal 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 to honor and provide for my most basic, innermost needs of being valued for my basic essence, and to have my voice listened to often enough by those who have that capacity of the Heart.
Virtually all men have experienced oppression, repression, and personal and social disease at some point in their lives, and we have been both the victims, and the conscious and unconscious perpetrators, of this broken 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 an interest consistently expressed in exploring these issues with me. But Marty Crouch 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 other men had either ceased responding to my Facebook posts, or had stopped following or unfriended me.
Marty and I, and our wives, and one other couple shared a friendship group for twenty-five years together, and we also shared a book club experience together for the last four years., Marty and I were quite friendly with each other, yet rarely spoke at great length or depth, or showed extraordinary interest in developing a deeper friendship apart from our wives. I noted how his wife organized and dominated his life over the years that I had known him, and how she would all too often speak for him, or even verbally run over him in group meetings. It was common knowledge that when his wife was present, Marty would not consistently reveal himself and his own story, and he would instead defer to Eddy through his silence. 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 the empty space with herself, rather than wait for me and whatever message I might be trying to deliver, and all further communication would end between us.
This brings me to January 11th of 2017, when I had my first ‘seizure’. 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. 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. I became quite concerned by this whole experience, though I kept it to myself initially. Every subsequent time I looked internally, I could still see the dark mass. The next month, I had yet another seizure, this time much milder, and in a public setting, while playing cards at Jim Hussey’s home.
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 some friends, and it was theorized that it might be related to something spiritual or psychic in nature. But I came to know it as “death”, at least in a spiritual sense. I saw that there was no negotiating with it. Prayers, meditations, affirmations, reading, talking with others, nothing seemed to have any impact on the dark mass. I knew that some sort of spiritual death was coming my way, and I felt little need to discuss it with a doctor, though I did tell my family physician that I feared that my own death might precede my father’s, when I took my disabled father to see her on January 17th of 2017..
On March 5, 2017 our friend Marty also suffered a 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 Interleuken II therapy, a powerful immunotherapy regimen. Now, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and Sharon and I visited him two days prior to its surgical removal. Mr. M and I talked about our seizures, and I was struck by the similarity of his seizures with my own. I told Mr. M 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 hoped that Mr M’s mass did not indicate a death for him. Yet, this was to begin the era of “death terrors” for my dear friend Marty, and I was to experience my own peculiar version of the terror, as well.
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, to offer me a paper bag to breathe into, lest I sink into a “panic attack”.
Each time 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 my trip through the underworld..
The present time, I actually felt like my consciousness was trying to escape, and it took all of my resources just to hold it together. I characterized this present event to Sharon White as “losing my mind”, while having an almost 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, for Marty, and 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 other. 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. Well, I listened to Jack Boland, a nationally renowned speaker and master of the recovery process. I owned a tape where he referred to me personally, said he knew me, probably better than I knew myself. He then stated that he wished pain, not peace of mind, to all who had not yet fulfilled their interior spiritual obligation to cleanse their hearts, as this is the great precursor to any lasting spiritual progress . Those who understand this statement UNDERSTAND. And here I thought that I had already performed that process! How wrong I was.
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, to please share my message, since I didn’t believe that I had the capacity to deliver it in a way that others could hear, or understand.
Sharon looked at me with acceptance, love, and compassion. Sharon had been listening to my story for close to thirty years, and she had witnessed me sitting on my voice for most of that time. She then stated unequivocally that my message was my own, and must be spoken through me, or not at all. Even my tears, and begging, would not change her mind. I was in such pain and agony, that I knew that I could not go on with my life in any kind of healthy way as it was presently being expressed to the world.
I had the experience of a lifetime of people experiencing me as less of a human being than I am, starting with my own diseased father, followed by a steady progression of angry, sometimes hateful, judgmental male and female power figures (with a few notable exceptions), and I did not know how to act or feel differently. My voice had been silenced by myself and others, even in many settings where spiritually aware, conscious people gathered to celebrate ‘connection’.
This loving act on her 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 “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, 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 felt Compelled to give to my world.
It took less than two days to write, and it was the first story I have ever written. And, the dark mass in my body of energy disappeared, coincidentally at about the same time that Marty’s tumor was surgically removed. To this day, I remain healed of that darkness, though I am often compelled to write, and to share with, the One who listens.
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