My Story

I had been taught to strive to be successful. I went to college to be successful in the material world but at most I was only able to get by easier than if I had not gone to school. I had been taught all this concepts of what success meant and had been encouraged to seek after them with all my effort.

I had been taught or encouraged to be socially successful by conforming to the group and doing what the group was doing. But I had tried that and not been successful. To be honest, I did not do a very good job of conforming, for I had developed the attitude of questioning authority. If you are going to conform you can not question the leadership or question where they are leading the group. In face, questioning is very much discouraged in social situations.

My questioning had developed a certain intelligence in me that was not going to hide easily. I wanted material and social success but I was not willing to compromise my integrity for that success. I had seen politicians and business leaders compromise their integrity for success but I could not do that to myself.

I had a firm image in my mind of the type of success that I wanted. So on one hand I had the desire for success but on the other hand something in me was not going to allow me to have that success. This created a lot of tension in me. This was the root of my crisis.

I had not questioned the premises of the world when it gave me my ideas of success. I was gullible enough to believe and obey as the world programmed me like a robot to be productive and a good citizen. I was gullible enough to buy into other people's ideas of success.

I hated the world that would not allow success without compromise of integrity. This hatred caused me to see the world as very ugly, bad, wrong and evil. I was living in hell.

I guess I was a good student. I learned well from my mother how to be angry. I used to get very angry with people or situations. There was the time I got angry at a pig (that was the contemptuous term I had for police in those days) who was giving somebody a ticket on the side of the road. I hated cops and authorities in general (I am not exactly fond of them today but respect them.) I was driving in my car down the road and as I started to approach the officer I started to drive closer to him to give him a scare. At that moment I realized just how much animosity I had for him and how much hatred I was experiencing at that moment.

From thinking about my anger for some time I realized that I did not want to give myself that experience of anger, animosity and hatred any more so seeing that I was falling back into that behavior I decided to project a loving feeling toward the officer.

The radical between the extreme hatred I was experiencing one moment and the love was such a contrast in quality that I had to stop my car on the side of the road while I cried. I was over whelmed for appreciation for myself of giving myself this experience. This was the first time in my life that I could remember where I actually was loving of myself.

The other time I can remember where I changed my behavior in mid explosion was several months later when I was camping by a lake and cooking my dinner on an open fire. My dinner was just about done and I was stirring the food when I spilt it into the fire. I start to blow up but caught myself in mid explosion and stopped.

Instead of getting angry I was learning to take back my power, my power to experience appreciation, joy and love. I was beginning to stop the habitual abusive behaviors that I had developed over the course of my life and learning how to love myself. I was starting to take responsibility for my reactions to what life offered.

I could see that I was my own worst enemy. Most of the problems I had are ones that I created for myself in my reactions to what life was offering me. It was not the situation that was a problem, it was my reactions to the situation that caused the problem. Of course, I did not see that most of the time, I still would think it would somebody else's fault that I was having these problems. Blaming it on somebody else gave them the responsibility and the power. So I felt powerless, for I was giving my power away. I was lying to myself when I said that it was somebody else's responsibility for how I was reacting to life.

It is a bitch to be powerless, to feel that you have no control over the quality of your life experience. Because of my ignorance I felt trapped in this sense of powerlessness. The trapped feeling added to my misery. It actually made it much worse for there was no sense of hope. There was no sense of a light at the end of the tunnel.

I may have overcome many problems before, but did not take the time to understand what I had actually done. Without the understanding I could no duplicate what I had done and did not see how it could be used in other situation. When I had had problems with various groups, like the John Birch Society or the Communists, and had visited their groups just to acclimate to their ideas, I did not understand what I was doing. I did not see that I WAS acclimating or adapting my mind to their ways of thinking at least enough that I would not abuse myself with my emotional reaction to their words. But by not taking the time to understand this process I could not relate it to other aspects of my life.

I would just continue to create problems for myself.

I was the problem. When I first started seeking I realize that I was the problem. Nobody starts getting healthy until they first realize they are sick.

By late 1984 I was in living hell. I had so much tension and anger in me that the pain of my existences was almost too much for me to handle. With all this crisis and drama emotionally I was in a purgatory of sense. It might not have been pure hell yet, for it did not seem permanent, but it was getting there.

Everything was ugly. I was depressed and moody. I would stay in dark moods for long periods of time. It hurt to be in such a dark place so much but I did not know how not to being moody. I did not like people and they did not like me. I was lonely even when I was with people.

I was always busy, I always had something to do or always keep some distraction around so that I would not have time to feel the pain of my life. I had so much going in my life that there was no room for a breath of fresh air. There was no "just being" in my life, no rest. Only "dis-ease".

My life was filled with several major crises:

I was unemployed and felt unemployable. I was working as an independent consultant so when I worked I made more money than I had ever before, but the work was not consistent. With my pessimism the future did not look good.

My soul mate would not leave her husband. Both of us agreed we were soul mates but she seemed to afraid to commit to me. I also realized that I was not ready or mature enough for a committed relationship, it just sure felt good to be with her.

My father died suddenly without so much as a good bye. He called my sisters and my mother in the hour or so before his death but never even tried to call me. I had not been close to my father for several years but did not feel finished with him. I wished that he had more wisdom and could have shared it with me, but he had his life and his boat and that is all he seemed to care about.

Still, the loss of my father was a great pain to me. There are some things I had never told my father and questions I wanted to ask. I realized right after his death that I was not ready to lose my mother, too. I had not had closure with her yet. Within a month I had visited her and told her everything that I would want to tell her if she died suddenly. In do so I let go of my attachment to my mother. Now, if she were to die, I do not feel that I would experience the pain I would have if I was still attached to her.

I started to lose my physical health. I had an unknown malady and the fear of this further contracted me down.

One day the pain was so bad that I went to the emergency room of the hospital to have a doctor look at it for me. After a brief examination and lots of questions he concluded that the problem was my nerves. I can still recall how I responded. I angrily said, "IT IS NOT MY NERVES." (I wish you could see they way I tell this story to people as I scream, it is not my nerves. It is obvious that it was my nerves. It is funny now but it was not funny or obvious to me then.)

I knew that something had to change. I knew in my heart that there was something really wrong and that what was wrong was not with the world but with my way of looking at the world. Yet, I also knew that I did not know where to start. I did not even know what I wanted, only that I did not want what I had.

"If you always do what you have always done you will get what you have always gotten."

It was time for a change; a radical change. I needed to get away from this world that I lived in. I needed to go away to some place exotic, some place where I could raise above it all and see the big picture.

I was finally realizing that the business idea I had been working on for two years, that I had sunk my every extra dollar into and all my extra time in, was not going to make it. The idea was a computer software product. My heart was not in it so I was not motivated to finish it. I also realized that the current level of technology was not up to supporting this kind product idea yet.

Emotionally, this filled me with anger at the world for not helping me become successful. I had fear as I looked to my future and guilt, shame and frustration at my failure. I had big dreams, had worked hard and nothing to show for it.

I can see now that motivation comes with pain. To get off my lazy and cowardly ass and do something major about my situation I needed a lot of motivation. To break through my resistance I had to really care about what I was doing. That takes a lot of pain. If I had been financially successful I would have been able to buy distractions, physical comfort and emotional security to ease my pain. Money, if we have it, depletes motivation. I see why Jesus would say that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle then for a rich man to go to heaven. (Matthew 19:24) Wealth is a hindrance to spiritual evolution or to getting free. For wealth enables you to stay relatively comfortable in your misery.

I hated America. I hated humanity. I harbored nothing but hatred, ill will and contempt for humanity by this time, and I was only in my early thirties. I had seen how humanity was destroying the planet and itself with such abandon that I thought of humanity as a cancer upon this planet, a cancer that I wanted to destroy.

I guess that if I had been a religious person I would have seen humanity as fundamentally evil, bad or wrong. I would have been convinced that nothing good could come from humanity except its eventually destruction. If I had been a religious person I would have gotten into what I see today most fundamentalist religious people seem to feel, seeing that everything as ugly and evil. I would probably have gotten into the religious philosophy of the evilness of humanity and that philosophy would have trapped me in this perspective.

But I was not religious. I was not a joiner of groups. So I did not get into a philosophy that would trap me in this perspective. Since I had already soured on religion I did not join that group think. I had the same kind of thoughts; I was filled with darkness and negativity and I wanted out of that darkness. I sought to escape this world that I thought was so ugly. I wanted to escape by whatever means became necessary, including death.

Sometimes I would get so angry about oppression and repression that I saw that I was killing myself with anger and doing nothing good for anyone. This anger and animosity had to manifest as disease in my body. The unknown malady came and would not go away.

I was a very uptight person. The tension in my body was immense. I was a very intense person and everybody who met me would have said so. I was miserable living in this body. A definite type A person. My ideas were rigid and I was very reactive to what life offered me. I was a reactionary for I reacted to almost everything by wanting to get control of it. My desire to control the world was very strong for I had no control of myself. (Later, when I gained some control of myself I no longer needed to control others or the world.)

Any little thing could anger me or put my in a dark mood. People would say that I was very moody. I could appreciate very little in life. I did not see much of anything I like, except maybe nature, but almost nothing about humanity. It was only when I was in nature that I could feel at least at ease. I did not experience appreciation but I felt more at ease. When I was in nature I usually was thinking about humanity and how ugly it was or thinking about the past or future.

My hatred of humanity was motivated by what I saw as the abuse of humanity and nature. As I had been very angry at the political world for being so oppressive and otherwise abusive, I was also angry at religion for being so oppressive and abusive. I would also get angry with people for being so dumb and abusive to themselves and others around them.

If it had not been for these crisis's I would not have been willing to change. My ego was invested in my ways of doing things. My will was committed to doing things in my way. It was my will, my ego, my desire that had gotten me into this eternal hell that I was experiencing. I needed to change or I was going to die.

I learned later when I read about Jesus' teaching that he said, "For whoever would save his life will lose it." (Matthew 16:25) And another, "For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?" (Matthew 16:26)

I was fighting to save my life and was losing it. I was fighting to create a better life for myself and in doing so I was losing the quality of life that I was really seeking.

I later also learned that crisis was the way to wake up. I needed this crisis before I would be open to questioning my ways of thinking. I needed a crisis before I would question my beliefs.

I can see now why Jesus said that he came to bring crisis to the world, "I came to cast fire upon the earth ; and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." (Luke 12:51) He wanted to bring crisis.

We need crisis in order for us to be motivated to change. I brought my own crisis up myself and I was in the depths of hell for it. I wish I could have read, although I probably would not have understood, Jesus' statement, "Not my will, but thine, be done." (Luke 22:42)

I was right on the edge of committing suicide, but I did not have the courage to do that. And I felt deep in my heart that there must be someway to get free from all this negativity. I wanted out of the pain by what ever means I could find. I was not there yet but I could feel it coming.

I owned guns at this time and I would some times imagine myself putting the gun to my head and ending it all. I would even practice putting the gun to my head.

I was miserable in life and I saw no way out of it. Life was Hell and death was the only solution to it. Live could not have gotten worse. Or at least I thought. I had no hope. Something had to change and I did not even know what it was.

I came up with the phrase, "Death is my destiny and my desire" to express my interest in going at death. I was afraid of death and in my heart I knew that I had to confront my fear of death. This became my mantra and my goal, but at the time I did not know that.