My Story

Chapter 4: Seeking

Crisis motivates change. It was this crisis that motivated me to seek change and understanding of what the meaning of life was. If it had not been for these crisis then I might never have been motivated to seek out a deeper meaning to life.

I did not start to getting healthy and free from my hell until I had the courage to admit to myself that it was me and not the world that was the problem. I remember reading in a college psychology book that a person does not begin to get mentally or emotionally better until they can honestly admit that they have a problem and that they ARE the problem.

What I did not realize then was that all I wanted was mastery over the human instrument, for I was not operating it very well. I was like the child who makes a mess in their pants because they do not have mastery over their bowels and bladder. I was making a mess of my life because I did not have mastery over my emotions.

I remembered somebody saying that if you continue to do what you have always done then you will get what you have always gotten. I was tired of what I had always gotten so I realized I had to stop doing what I have always done. My life was not working for me so I needed to make changes in my life. Radical changes. I had to change my lifestyle, my ways of thinking, my beliefs, my values, everything.

I pity those who are wealthy or are blessed with a "good" family and their life is simple and easy. I pity those who are not pushed, motivated or challenged to seek mastery over themselves. I sympathize with those who are trapped in mediocrity.

I did not even know what I was looking for. I started my seeking because my life was a crisis. So I started to ask some powerful questions. What is the meaning of life? What am I supposed to do in this life?

I started to seek. I started to look for answers. I started with books. I went to the book store and started in the self help section and started reading. In those books they suggested other books which were in the spiritual sections. One book that I do remember reading was by Shirley MacLaine, "Out on a Limb." It was part of her story of her awaking. It gave me a glimpse of something that I was looking for. It gave me hope. Her book also started to awaken something in me that I will talk about later. But with the hope and a suggestion my attitude started to change.

I was on the path. I did not know where I was going but I felt I was moving again. I no longer felt stuck. I kept reading. Lots of reading...

I did a lot of asking myself "Why?" Why was I the way I was? Why did I want something more?

I read a book about meditation that just talked about how to sit and watch my breath. It did not work. I was too uptight to just sit. I was too impatient to sit for even five minutes. My body was not restful enough for sitting.

The book talked about the yamas and the niyamas.

Yama (in Sanskrit: "restraint"), in the Yoga system, first of the eight stages intended to lead the aspirant to a state of perfect concentration. This is an ethical preparation, meant to purify the individual, yama involves the abstinence from injury to others and from lying, stealing, sex, and avarice, which is the same as obeying the ten commandments.

Lying is something I was very good at. It was a big part of my life. I would lie to people to try to impress them. AND, more importantly, I would lie to myself. This was going to be a problem. For lying to oneself is the most blasphemous thing a person can do.

I did not steal.

I had sex. I liked sex. Giving up sex was not an option. Well, maybe...

Avarice. I had to look this one up in the dictionary. Basically it is greed. I wanted money, lots of money. I wanted the worldly power that money can by.

So much for yamas.

The second stage, niyama (Sanskrit: "discipline"), in its ethical intent similar to yama, consists of practicing: cleanliness, contentment with one's material condition, austerity, study of the teaching relating to liberation, and so on.

One of the niyamas was called pratyahara, which in Sanskrit means "withdrawal of the senses". The goal of pratyahara is to stop reacting to stimuli that the senses detect. The mind is still aware of the stimuli but there is no exercise of will or thoughts. I was particularly interested in this but was having NO success with withdrawing for the senses. The rest of the niyamas did not seem like a challenge to me.

Later I could see that there is a whole process of getting the human instrument ready for stillness. I had to take care of the basics first before trying the more advanced effort of meditation. I had to simplify my life and take care of my general moral life. Later I could see this is what Jesus called obeying the commandments. I came up with a simple way of remembering and looking at this process. I called it the Four Ss, but I am getting ahead of myself.

So I had a long way to go before I could get to meditation.

I believed that there was something better out there and that I could find it. If I did not believe in this then I would not have sought. I remembered the line from Sunday school, Seek and you will find.

It was not good enough for me to believe that Heaven existed. I wanted to find it. I did not want to be a believer, I wanted to be a finder. Before I could find I had to seek. So for now I would be a seeker.

If Jesus or Siddhartha knew what they were talking about then I wanted to find it.

In my seeking I was discovering all the false things I thought I wanted that would get me what I was looking for.

My lifestyle was killing me. At best it was destroying my ability to enjoy life. I had to make some major changes in my life, if only to see which aspects of my lifestyle were causing me the problems. So I had to renounce or eradicate parts of my lifestyle just to see if they were causing me problems. I later realized that the pain or discomfort my lifestyle was causing me also caused me to see the world outside of me as ugly, bad, wrong, evil and a miserable place to live.

I started renouncing various aspects of normal American life when I was in my early twenties. I realized that renouncement is not something you do indifinitely, it is only done so that one can see what it is like to be outside the influence of whatever it is that you are renouncing.

It started when a co-worker suggested that I give up red meat. I do not think I have eaten red meat since. When I started travelling a lot I found that cooking meat was a real challenge so I gave it up all together.

I had a problem with chocolate and sweets in general. I was getting sick from eating too much chocolate. I had to give up chocolate and sugar in general. This was going to be a B I G challenge for me. I was REALLY addicted to sugar and sweets. But they were obviously hurting me and I would have to find a way to free myself from it. I eventually did but it took many years.

At one point, I also renounced my family. I had to get outside the influence of them so I gave up contact with them. I can see that this is something that Jesus suggested (Matthew 19:29), "And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my names sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. " The ignorant Christians think you should only renounce your family if they are not Christians. But Christians are the blind leading the blind. That is why Jesus suggested that you go off to a lonely place (no family, no one at all) to find clarity. "Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while. (Mark 6:31)

We renounce things until we get control over our REACTIONS to the stimuli or situation. Whether it be chocolate, coffee, watching TV to much, shallow conversations, gossip, griping with family members, or anything that can become obsessive and disrupt the peace in your mind. That is all an ascetic is, one who renounces that which destroy the peace and clarity in their mind.

Every spiritual tradition I had studied has some form of fasting to purify the body and the mind.

I used to be a chocoholic but after many years of abstaining from it I no longer have any desire for chocolate. I am offered a piece of chocolate every now and then and I like it but I have no desire to buy any on my own. And I have no desire to go back into the craving of chocolate that I had before.

All abstention is the same thing, you are freeing yourself from desire. To be a renunciate means you renounce the world or die unto the world. It means you are fasting from the world, you are fasting from society until you can handle society. You are getting free from your attachment to the world. Once you are free you can go back into the world and again enjoy what the world has to offer without getting attached to it. When you come back you are free to get more into the world because you no longer have the fear of attachment or being stuck in the world. Even if you did get so back into the world and did get 'stuck' you know in your heart that you can never really be trapped again, death will always release you. So it does not matter what you do.

One of the first steps on the journey back to the light is to seek. If you do not seek you will not find. If you are not open to the possibility that life can be better then you will not seek and you will not find. So the first step is to be open-minded.

Some people would call this hope, but I do not like that word. Hope takes you out of the moment and that is the problem in the first place; people are not in the present moment, they are in their mind in the future or past. If you are into the past or future you are into self-deception. Now is all that is, the past is but a memory and the future is but a figment of our imagination, both are unreal.

With hope we are out of the truth of the present moment and into the false imagines of the future. Jesus tried to warn us about this when he said, "Take therefore no thought for the morrow." (Matthew 6:34)

Hope also has an aspect of some image of what we want for the future. Hope implies little certainty but suggests confidence or assurance in the possibility that what one desires or longs for will happen. This image of what one desires closes our mind to a reality beyond what our mind can imagine. We are not open to a greater truth then what we can possibly hope for.

I see this having a image in our mind is why the Second of the Ten Commandments was created, because the images we have in our minds limits our experience of Goodness.

So hope is not a word I want to use.

I prefer the word open and openness. Being open is without any preconceived ideas of what the future holds. Where hope has the diseases of anticipation and desire, openness has only the innocence of a child. Be like the children to enter the kingdom of heaven.

One of the main things I did before awaking was to blame my behavior on other people or situations that people would create. If I was angry as something then I blame the people I thought were responsible. I had a lot of challenging of authority. So I blamed authority for my anger towards them. I blamed people for the miserable way that I saw life was.

I never blamed myself. I never looked at myself to see if it was my ways of thinking, my attitudes, my values or my beliefs that was causing the problems.

The process of awaking started when I started to question my own judgements, beliefs or reactions to what life offered.

I had been raised to believe that certain aspects of my value systems or beliefs were true and were beyond questioning. When I exposed myself to other people, other cultures and other ways of thinking through travel I saw how weak and flimsy some of my beliefs and values systems were.

Being raised in a Judo-Christian environment where the values systems were not based on premises that were well thought out or developed. So my ways of think were just hand-me-downs from people who also had hand-me-down ways of thinking. There was not foundation or depth in these ways of thinking; it was based on falseness.

In the Judo-Christian world basically all of our assumptions are based on the Bible or portions of the Bible. These assumptions are not questionable; this is a foundation. When somebody does question these premises with an open mind and view them from a bigger perspective of their own culture they start to notice that the values and beliefs do not hold up. Some of our assumptions are not valid. We can see that some of the Bibles teachings are not valid.

But we buy into these beliefs and values if we have never go outside our culture and seen other options for beliefs or values systems.

On the other side of this coin, if we have studied many different spiritual traditions around the world, East and West, we will find that there are aspects of the Bible that are consistent with these other traditions. These consistencies have a must firmer bases. The differences between the traditions tend to only be cultural and reflection of exaggerated self importance of the culture. These differences tend to be false.

1985 and I was 32 years old. In the prime decade of my life, but my life was really screwed up, or so I thought.

I had lots of dreams, desires, wants and wishes and they were all pulling me in different directions. This created a lot of stress for me. With the emotional crisis I had I decided to make a change in my life.

I had to prioritize my desires and work on just one thing. So that meant letting go of the things that were not number one on my priority list. I did not have a lot of possession anyway, either because I was not rich or because I was always moving and had to get rid of things or carry them with me.

I had to let go of my dream of making the software project into a business that would make me rich. That was not as important as my mental and physical health, which were my biggest problem. So I sold my computer, which was quite and investment in those days. I took a big hit financially on selling my computer but I realized that no matter how successful I could be with this project, if I did not have the health to enjoy it then the money would be of no value to me.

I let my girl friend go. She did not seem to have the same priorities that I did nor was she free enough to seek solutions anyway. I thought that maybe once I find what I was looking for I could come back and we could pick up were we left off.

I sold most of my books except the ones that I had recently picked up related to my seeking. I would store this at my parents house. I could also store all my papers and memorabilia with my parents, but at least I did not have to worry about them.

I went to LA, sold my car and found a ticket one my way to India. I realized I was not ready for India yet so I bought a ticket that took me through the South Pacific first and ended up in Australia. I felt I could get a ticket from there to India.

I had simplified my life down to what I could carry in a backpack and I was ready for the adventure of my life.

Celibacy and much more here.

With relationships I realized I had had a lot of emotional drama in my life. When I let go of my girl friend I realized I would have to let go of relationships for a while as I sought clarity. This meant I would have to let go of the physical side of relationships and the lust that came with it.

With celibacy my world changed. Before I used to think of women as sex objects and I just lusted after them. After my attitude change (no longer allowing myself sex) I saw women on a completely different level. I saw them as people (duh!) who had something to offer me other than sex. I could meet and talk to women and discover who they were and what they had to offer without thinking how I was going to get into their pants.

It is amazing to be able to talk to women who I would not have thought attractive, maybe even older women, and come away with a sense of getting something (other than laid.) The population of the world just doubled as did the opportunities for finding wisdom. I also discovered that women in general have something to offer me in their pursuit of wholeness. After all, I am 49% female myself (and 51% male). What women have to offer us men is how to be a woman; softer, gentler and kinder. (Sounds a little like a recent President who wanted to see a gentler, kinder nation.)

So letting go of my desire for sex or having woman help me to relax via sex was enabling me to get in touch with my desire to have that softness in my life. And, of course, I was the only one who could really offer that to myself.

I also could see that I as a man have something to offer women in general. I have my courage and my firmness of resolve. As a man I tend to focus outward to a greater reality than myself, my family, my country or even my species. As a man I want to serve that which Jim Freedom will never personally benefit from.

Men can offer women their strength and encouragement. For a woman can be courageous and strong just as a man can become softer, gentler and kinder.

Once, while living in Boulder, Colorado made a choice while driving to Denver. I saw a cop who had pulled over a motorist, probably for speeding. I hated cops and that hate boiled up in me as I saw the cop there on the side of the road. I even moved my car over toward the side of the road to scare him. But then all of a sudden I realized what I was doing, how I was actually hurting myself with my animosity. With this realization, and the realization that I had a choice I could make, I decide to switch from projecting anger and hatred toward the cop to project love and good will.

The sensation was so extreme that I had to stop the car and just cried. The difference between the experience of hatred and love was so extreme, so obvious that I could not contain myself.

I had begun the journey of taking my power back. It was to be a long journey from the fear, hate and negativity that I was so accustom to, to a place of unconditional love, which I was to first experience about three years later.

I remember another profound experience just six month later, in New Zealand where I was travelling on my way to India. I was camping one night next to a big lake. I was cooking my dinner on the fire in a little camping pot. I only had one meal with and it was going to be a very good one. I remember it being just about ready, in fact it was starting to boil over, so I was attempting to get it off the fire when I spilt the entire contents into the fire. My first reaction was to curse and I could feel the rage start to boil up in me. But then I realized I had a choice and I stopped myself.

Again, the profound difference between the experience of hate and love was so overwhelming that I broke down and cried. It was well worth the loss of the meal. I was on my way to understand what love was; self love.

Until these two experiences I really did not know what self love was.

I was choosing to take my power back from the events of my life. I was choosing to NOT react to what life was offering me. I did not want to react with a negative response so I was choosing to not react. I was finding peace WITH the world. It was only a beginning but it was a beginning. I was on the 'path'.

About this time I read the book by Shirley MacLaine, "Out on a Limb." In this book she talked about going to the Himalayas of India. I immediately felt a calling to the Himalayas.

So I started plotting on how to get free enough to go to India. I started saving all my extra money and selling all the things I really did not need. After selling virtually everything that I owned I had about five thousand dollars in cash and a backpack of what I thought I would need on the trip.

Then I started to travel westward with the calling of the Himalayas motivating me. I had one calling and that was to answer some deep questions that I had. My life was simplified and I experienced an immediate increase in the quality of life.

I had no attachments to people, places or things. I was free to follow my heart. Travelling can offer a relaxed stress free life. I could see why Jesus suggested that people sell all their things freeing themselves to travel and live the kind of life that he lived. (Luke 18:22) The simple life is a good life and a traveler does not get attached to the land. I could see why he would say, "And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my names sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." (Matthew 19:29)

For a person who is not attached to a house, family or the land is free to go where the spirit moves him or her. I felt free to go where the weather suits my clothes, passing over the oceans like a storm. (I believe I am lifting that from an old Jimmy Buffet song.)

In the summer of 1985 I was physically ready to leave the country but not emotionally ready to be in such an exotic country as India. So I bought a ticket that would take me through the South Pacific islands to Australia and eventually end up back in LA where I started. I planned to sell the return ticket from Australia and buy another ticket that would get me to India.

When I bought the ticket to Australia I wanted the safety of a return ticket, but by the time I got to Australia I was ready to let go of that safety and go on with one-way tickets.

I traveled through the South Pacific Island, including Fiji, New Zealand before getting to Australia.

Sitting on the beaches of Tahiti and the Society Islands I was relaxing and decompressing for my busy life of America. I was living in a tent on these small islands. Life was very simple, easy and for the first time in a long time enjoyable again. I would just read and think and swim in the beautiful warm ocean waters. I did not realize that I was decompressing for the busy life, that I was relaxing and softening my body. I did not realize that I was allowing the clarity to come into my life again.

I started to look at the question of what is the meaning of life and what is important to me. I asked myself what are my highest priorities or what is the most important thing to focus in on in life. I did not come up with any good answers to these questions but I was starting to ask the questions and look at the answers.

I finally got to India after about six months of playing around in the South Pacific. India was a culture shock. The poverty and filth was almost too much for me when I first got there. I had to change many of my personal habits just to stay healthy.

While in Fiji I stayed at a Hindu ashram for a couple of weeks and read just about everything in their library. The library had a lot of books on yoga, the Vedantic tradition and meditation so I started up again with a concentrated effort at meditating. I started to practice pratyahara again or "withdrawal of the senses" and this time started to see results. But the ashram was in the middle of town and was quite noise at night when I was trying to still myself and meditate. And the insects where a REAL pain in the ass. I would kill the mosquitoes that got into my room.

Then one day during meditation and after reading about the principle of non injury to others I had great doubt about what I was doing to the mosquitoes and to any life that I might accidentally kill. I prayed for clarity on this issue and what I heard was one word, "wontedly." I did not even know this word at the time and it took me quite a while to find it in the dictionary for I did not know even how to spell it. I should not WONTEDLY kill or injury others. It meant that I should not unconsciously just injury or destroy any life. That it was ok if there was a good reason. If I was to kill a vegetable to eat it then it was ok. Or if I was to kill an insect that was attaching me then that was ok. But I should no injury any person, animal or plant just for the fun of it or just out of unconsciousness.

This insight offered great peace to me. Not just in the actual insight but in the process of praying or seeking an answer and finding it from what I would have to consider was beyond my personal knowledge. I could see that the process worked and I was becoming more at peace with where I was at in the process.

Also, when I was in Fiji I had an experience of spontaneous healing after praying for help. I was waiting for a bus that was going to take me on a many hour drive through the mountains. I must have eaten something that did not work for I had a horrendous stomach ache and the thought of getting on a bus and driving through mountain roads was pure terror to me.

I was desperate for a solution particularly when I could see the bus coming. So I went off and for the first time in my life I prayed to Jesus. I do not know why I choose to pray to him, or even why I choose to pray at all, but I was desperate. But within a minute or so after I prayed my stomach ache was gone completely. To me this was quite amazing, if not a miracle.

I would now attribute the 'healing' to the intensity of my desire and not the object of my prayer (Jesus). But at least this, and many others since then, opened my mind to something happening in my body that I could not explain. Because of this experience I opened myself to many other mystical experiences that I might have scoffed at before then.

Years later I read the "Healing Words" by Dr. Larry Dossey that documents the scientific research done that relates to healing. Dr. Dossey's conclusion was that the attitude of a person had more with the quality of the healing than the object or method used.

I have since done many healings on myself and others. When I practice the skills necessary (empathy, compassion, and so on) I find that I can very effective in this area. I actually wish I had more opportunities to practice these skills.

While here in Fiji I thought I wanted to understand how my mind and motivation worked all the way down to the sub-atomic particle level. I was not going to be satisfied with some superficial or shallow explanation. I wanted to understand it down to the physical level. The concepts, ideas, theories or theologies would not be enough for me. I wanted to get the reality out of the head and into the body.

Every since I had started this process I kept asking myself what it was that I wanted. I remember thinking that Buddha and Christ seemed to have something that I wanted but I did not know what it was. I wanted a word or idea for what it was they had or that I wanted.

On my way to India I went through Australia to visit a college friend. I remember walking through the town of Melbourne thinking about this and coming up with the word "pleasure." What I thought I wanted was pleasure. I really did not like the word for it did not hit it yet, but I was on to something.

Around this time I got into words, their meanings and, more importantly, their etymology or the ancient meaning of the word. I looked up with word "God" in my Oxford dictionary (I point out that it is an Oxford dictionary because I feel they are the least prejudiced in favor of the Christian perspective and interpretation of words and life.) In the etymology for the word God they said that it came from the word Good. (Now that was easy to see.) One of the definitions for God was Eternal Goodness.

This concept of goodness really hit it on the head for me. I wanted to experience eternal goodness, meaning I did not want any experience of badness anywhere in my consciousness. I wanted to feel good in my body. I wanted to have good thoughts. I wanted to have good emotional experiences. I wanted to see goodness outside of me. And when I thought or became aware of others I wanted to be able to experience this same goodness. Eternal Goodness, seemingly endless experience of goodness.

When I sought God I was really seeking this seemingly endless experience of goodness. So God is a three letter word that humans created to point at this eternal goodness that we are all motivated or inspired to find. God is the word we use to talk about the spirit or motivation behind our deepest desire: eternal goodness.

I now had a word for what it was that I was looking for, but I was a long way from finding out how to get there or even really understanding this word Goodness.

What I did know a lot about was fear. I could tell you a lot about the experience of fear, which is not goodness. While in Australia somebody showed me a poem written by Saint Frances of Assisi. In it there was a line that said, "Where there is fear let me sow love." So love was the opposite of fear. Since I knew fear I felt that I could observe fear in myself and see what it was in essence, take the opposite of that and I would know what love was.

This person who showed me the poem by Frances was a Christian and when I shared with him my thinking on fear and love he also said that he saw something in the Bible about "perfect love drives out fear." Since I still had a strong animosity toward Christians in general and the Bible in particular I was not interested in wading through the Bible to find this quote. (I later was able to find this quote, 1 John 4:18: There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.)

So I began watching myself to see what I was actually experiencing when I experienced fear. I had lots of opportunities but my ability to watch myself during those experiences of fear was lacking. It took a concentrated effort to observe my reactions to the stimuli that caused my fear.

What I did notice was that I contracted down in fear. I imagined that somebody was attacking me with a club or that my father caught me doing something wrong and was about to hit me with his belt. My natural reaction would be to contract down into a ball to protect myself. Or if the situation was different the 'fight or flight' response would arise and I would tense up to either fight off the aggressor or I would tense up to spring away from the threat.

So tension was associated with fear. As I looked deeper I could see that tension was associated with such subtle fears as anxiety, doubt, shame, stress and guilt. Later I was to see how I created tension in the mind.

I would continue this research for several years. I would probably have to admit that I am still looking to refine my understandings or at least the language I use to express these ideas. I will talk more about his later.

I realized that what spirituality is about is understanding our motivation or that which inspires us. So I would ask myself, why do I want to know this? Why do I want this or that? The eternal question of 'why' but with a twist, what is my motivation for it. I even had to ask what my motivation was for asking what my motivation was.

Why do I want to know this thing called God or whatever it is? What motivates me?

No Honesty

What I wanted from people was their honesty. I wanted their undiluted, unmitigated, straight, hard truth. But people were not able to give it to me for they had been taught or had learned that being honesty offended people, so it was best to lie. When I left this country in 1985 what I was looking for was someone who could be honest with me and tell me what I was doing that was making my life so miserable. I never found that person.

In the beginning I was seeking a teacher, I wanted a guru. Well, maybe I did not want a guru but I thought I did.

I was in Penang, Malaysia looking to buy a ticket to India. I went to all the travel agents in town to find the best deal and each one could get me to India but to a different city to start. I did not know where to start.

I had a lot of anxiety about the decision on where to go in India, for I had heard so many stories of how different India is then the rest of the world. So I went up to my room in the hostel were I was staying and got into my fear and doubt; I prayed to God for help using all the passion and tears an American male can muster. I told God that I did not want any subtle message here, I was too stupid for that. I wanted to be hit over the head and shown where to go. After that I washed my face and went down stairs to the living room where there were about 20 other travelers like myself. As I stood there in the door of the room I felt my head jerked as if somebody had grabbed it and turned it to my right side. I heard a voice in my head say, "Talk to this girl."

So I went up to her and said, "You are suppose to tell me where I am suppose to go in India."

"That is funny. I just got back from visiting my guru in the Kulu Valley of Northern India," she said.

My prayer had been answered perfectly.

She and I spent several days together as she told me about her guru and his method of teaching. I became comfortable with the idea of going to into India.

I also started to become more comfortable with this process of seeking and getting myself open to answers. I started to trust the powers that be that are greater than me. That was no subtle little "still small voice" within. That answer to my prayer was a baseball bat across the head. It was just what I needed to hear and just what I had asked for. Seek and yea shall find.

While this woman and I were hanging out I discovered that she knew how to play chess and I was just learning the game. So we played a couple of games. One time, after we had just had a very long and good endgame (which I won) I wanted to meditate. So I cleared my mind and was just getting into my practice of emptying listening to my body. But the image of the chess endgame kept coming into my mind. Only this image was not from my perspective but from this woman's perspective. I realized that she was still trying to figure out how she got snookered. But I wanted to meditate and her thinking was bothering me so I asked her to quit thinking about the game.

She was astounded that I knew what was going on in her mind. Quite frankly, so was I, for I had never had such an experience. In her own way, this woman had shown me things that all the words in the world would not have. I was now more than ever open to the possibility that my mind was not just my mind. I started to open up to the idea of "one mind" that we are all really just one being that we only sometime are open to. Just as "wontedly" had opened me to knowledge beyond my own mind this had opened me to other people communicating with me outside of language, a direct communication.

Ah, the joys of waking up...

In Kulu I met her guru Swami Shyam and he taught me about his form of meditation. He talked about the color of what he called "Shyam space", the color of the space between our thoughts. He said most people will see that same color. He said I should go and try to discover the color of the space between my thoughts.

Days later he asked me during satsang { Satsang literally means in the presents of truth. It is just when a bunch of people sit down and start talking about real things. } what I had found and I told him. The rest of the people there all applauded in agreement. I had found the space between the thoughts. (I will not prejudice you here. I will let you find out what color it is for yourself.)

The Swami offered me a mantra but I already knew that was not for me. I never had a mantra and did not like all that noise in my head. I could understand the value of a mantra but also recognize that people are not taught that a mantra is only a beginning step in the process, that sooner or later you will have to let go of your mantra. For doing a mantra is noisy and an exercise of will. You will have to go beyond the noise and will to get deeper beyond thoughts. Some of those people who did mantras did them for years and they did not seem to be finding much peace. I remember one guy telling me that he had been doing it so long, twenty years, that it now happened in his sleep.

It might not be hundred percent correct to say that I have never really used a mantra or that I do not have one now. While here in India I did feel in an unfamiliar territory. I would sometimes long for that sense of home. I would think that home is where the heart is and the heart is where God is. So I would sometimes use home as my mantra. I noticed that in the word home is the word OM, which is a sound, something like amen, that means God or is for reverence. When I chanted the word home I could feel the comfort that home present. I really did not like the noise of the word so I quickly got into the feeling that it invoked.

One day while sitting in satsang out doors in the sun and kind of meditating I felt myself leave my body. It was the strangest feeling. I could still 'feel' my body but I was about twenty feet above the body and looking down on the scene. There was the cord between me and my body. I remember thinking that this cord was like the control lines I used to control the body and get data from it. I was so interested in this experience that I got up and started walking into town. All the while I was floating about the body and looking down. I also remember have a much better view of the surrounding are from twenty feet up in the air. As I started to get closer to town I notice that I started to come down and back into the body. I was real disappointed to be back in the body and to lose my fantastic view.

I realized later that most of my life had been an out of body experience. I had been living in my head, in the past and future and in the non-realness of my beliefs and other thoughts. I noticed that I would see something and then start reacting to what that something meant to me or something that I believed about that something. This happened a lot with people. I would meet somebody and form an opinion of them immediately based on my beliefs of who they are and what they were about. Then whenever I would meet them again I would react to my beliefs about them, not what was actually happening with them.

For instance, this one guy I met I immediately felt that he was dangerous or evil. I had no real reason to believe this only something he referred to in our conversation. The next time I met him I was afraid of him and very defensive toward him. This created conflict with him and manifested my belief. Our conflicting relationship did not change until somebody pointed out to me that it was my attitude that caused the problem with him. After meditating about how I had reacted to him I realized this was true.

So after this I started to try to get back into my body and not allow my beliefs to cloud my perceptions of reality. I did not want my whole life to be an out of body experience.

Another time I was sitting in the satsang hall meditating with a lot of other people. It was snowing outside and the hall had no heat except our bodies and the candles we used for light. I was trying a new meditating idea I had of thinking in my mind "I AM" over and over. It was kind of a mantra that somebody had suggested I try and I was interested in what would happen. After a while of repeating this phrase I started to notice some energy movement in the base of my spine. For what I had learned so far while there at Kulu this was called kundalini energy. There seemed to be two energy forces moving upward and kind of spiraling up around my spine. As they came up I started feeling as if the room was going around and around and I was get dizzy, but I keep at the mantra. Eventually I got so hot and dizzy that I passed out briefly. When I came too I crawled out of the room and into the cool winter air where I recovered. That experience was not fun and offered me anything but how to get hot and dizzy. I guess I had had enough of kundalini energy for I never intentionally played with it again. Kind of shallow and boring actually.

These experiences did not have much lasting affect on me for I was not interested in spiritual experiences. What I really wanted was clarity and wisdom. Yet they were interesting.

After being in Kulu for about a month I started to get comfortable and attached to the place and the guru. Although, I did not like the way the other people, some of whom had been there for over fifteen years, were worshiping the guru. They seemed to hang on every word he uttered. He was just a guy who had found some level of clarity and they were only basking in his light. They were not finding the light in themselves. I also did not like the way the Swami would talk about how important it was to have a guru. I was doing quite a bit of marketing or promotion for his own services. I felt something wrong with this but could not say what it was. I also felt something wrong with the esoteric language that was being used. I felt that if somebody truly knew what they were talking about they would not need the esoteric language. It seemed like they were trying to purposely keep people in the dark about something, that they were afraid of something. I knew enough about fear to not want a guru to teach me how to fear but was still interested in learning.

One day the guru was teaching that it was absolutely necessary to have a guru to get to enlightenment. This felt false and just a marketing tactic. I did not know then why it felt false (I do now; see below) but it discerned me. I decided to stay for a while anyway. Yet the powers that be thought otherwise. One day I got a letter from the Swami saying that it was time for me to go, for my questions and attitude (of not worshiping him) were upsetting others.

I had heard about Sai Baba in Southern India. It was also winter and cold up here in northern India so I headed south.

Sai Baba's was a warm place to stay but there was not much intelligence there. It got old watching all the thousands of people just waiting to kiss Baba's feet everyday. It seemed the more they put him up on a pedestal the more they pushed themselves down. And Sai Baba did not seem to care about them.

I soon realized that this is part of the Hindu condition, for compassion is not much a part of that tradition. They do not care about one another. They just seem to care about getting their own enlightenment and then everybody should worship them. The enlightened ones only teach if it suits them and you give them enough money and glory.

Later I realized that is what the Buddha was trying to correct when he introduced the concept of compassion and the bodhisattva {a being who compassionately waits to entering nirvana in order to save others.} to the people of India.

Sai Baba never confronted those who worshipped him. He did not seem to be able to feel the pain they were creating in their hearts as they made him so great and themselves so powerless. They more somebody worshipped the guru the duller they seemed. They called Sai Baba "Bhagwan", which means God. (I could see how this same thing happened to Jesus, the lessor ones around him would revere him so much as eventually call him God.) I did read in one of Sai Baba books that he taught that we are all God, that all of us are equal. I pointed this out to one of his senior disciples who totally denied it. He insisted that Bhagwan was God alone. It sounded so Christian to me. This disciple, who had been around Sai Baba for thirty years, seemed so dumb that to me. He had no understanding of what Sai Baba was about.

I did realize that the Vedic, yogic or Hindu tradition had something to offer me but I did not want to get caught up in worship of people (as I had already realized with Jesus.) The yogic tradition has pretty good skills and understanding about quieting your mind and gaining clarity. The yogic idea of the highest level samadhi or enlightenment is what today I call the halfway point. The Buddha pointed at something higher and Jesus tried to show the way. Still there seems to be little or no understanding of what is possible.

It was time to practice what I had learned so I found a mud hut in the Himalayas and there I sat for three and a half months just meditating. When I was in that mud hut I had a teacher in a lizard who was living in the walls of the hut. He would sometimes come down and look at me as I was sitting there. I would ask him questions and listen for the answers. Of course he did not speak to me but I could still hear the answers in my head. He did help me start to open up to the 'satguru' or true guru, the inner guru or still quiet voice within. But I still had doubts about what I heard within.

I realized at one point that most of my life was an out of body experience. I was totally in my head. I had almost no connection with what was really happening to me, I was only thinking about what I believed, wanted and imagined. I was focusing my attention on the activity in my brain and almost none on my body (except maybe during sex).

I would call this unconsciousness. I was unconscious of what my body was actually experiencing. My experience was mostly of my mind and its images and desires. I was unaware of what the effect of my thoughts on the body until the discomfort got to be so bad that I could not ignore it any more. I see this as why I had so much pain in my body, because I had been ignoring what it was telling me for so long and only paying attention to what the mind was telling me.

My task them came to be getting out of my head into my body.

When I would listen to gurus and other people talk I started to notice that was listening less with my mind or head and more with my heart. This meant that I was watching my chest area and feeling what was happening there more than trying to think about what was being said. I started to notice that when something did not feel right I could tell by the reaction in my body.

I would listen to people speak and then I would go off by myself and feel how it felt. If it did not feel right I would question it thoroughly. I did this with both the spoken and written words. I would ask myself, how does this sentence, phrase or word feel to me. If it did not feel 'right' then I would reject it.

Later, I realized that truth liberates, so that which does not speak of freedom is not of the truth. If what I was reading or hearing was limiting in someway then it was not leading me to freedom and did not 'feel' right.

I was developing my ability to listen to my inner voice or gaining sensitivity to that still, quiet voice within. I saw myself getting more conscious of my body and out of my head. The body seems to have an intelligence far beyond the ability of the head, brain, mind, knowledge or whatever. The body can sense falseness. I was expanding my consciousness beyond my knee jerk reactions of my mind.

I also had a vision here that really opened me up to the inner teacher.

One night while I was sitting quietly in my mud hut. I was not really meditating just thinking. It was absolutely dark in my mud hut because there were no windows only shutters that where closed to keep out the wind. All of the sudden I saw an image in front of me. It was round and white and kind of looked like one of those ancient Mexican calendars only with a face in the middle. But this face was talking to me. I do not remember now what it said but I was fascinated by it. I remember thinking that George Lucas (think Star Wars here) would love this.

I watched this for a while until I noticed another image appeared to the left of it and off in the distance. It was of a woman who seemed to be coming out of hot bubbling mud. She kind of looked like Mary Taylor Moore and had devils horns and a devils pitchfork in her hand. Now things were getting interesting. I also noticed that as soon as I moved my attention from the calendar image to Mary that she moved to front and center and the other image disappeared.

I will remind you that I have NEVER taken any drugs. I was not on any drugs at this time, not even any pharmaceutical drugs or even aspirin. I do admit that around my mud hut there were lots of marijuana plants but I had no use for them.

Anyway, Mary entertained me for a couple of minutes then another image appeared in the distance and I became more interested in that than her. I do not remember what the next image was (I lost my journal that had all this written down in. I even had a mini tape recorder and was recording my description of this stuff as it happened.) Each time a new image would come into view I would give in attention and it would move front and center to me. I sometimes tried to reach out and touch them because they seemed so real.

One image was of a hairy furious face that was becoming frightening. I noticed that if I closed my eyes the image was still there but that it got more frightening. If I opened my eyes again the image would soften and become less frightening. I realized that I had some control over these images.

I started to become more interested in where the images where coming from then the images themselves. I started to look past the images to where they were coming. As I did this they seemed to be coming at me quicker and quicker until they were just a blur going by. Kind of like the images in the Star Wars movies when they go to hyper speed in their space ships. I could not tell if the images were coming at me or I was moving through them since there was no reference point to tell which was moving.

Eventually the images stopped coming and I became aware of the "Source" of the images. I could feel the presents of this source but there was no image. So I asked a question and got no answer.

For several months before this I had been playing with the idea of having a spiritual friend in my mind that I could talk to about some of things that was happening to me. My conversations with this imaginary spiritual friend were usually just light but illuminating and seemed to help me find peace with some of the lessor questions I had. I became aware that this friend was there and off to the right of the Source, so I just asked him what was happening here. He answered in his usually light verbal way, but his answer really did not do much for me so I dismissed him and was done with him for good.

I then became aware of another entity or being who was closer to the Source but not the Source. For lack of a better name I called this entity or being Jesus. When I asked Jesus some questions about what was happening or what I needed to do now on my spiritual journey he answered but not with words as my spiritual friend had. He seemed to be answering me telepathically. His answers were better than my spiritual friends but still not good enough for me. Therefore, I dismissed him.

All that was left was the Source or what I would now call God. I asked God a question about what was happening or what should I do now. His answers came to me not as Jesus' answers, telepathically, but more intuitively or at a deeper level of communication than words and telepathic communication. His answers were better than Jesus' but they still did not seem to hit the mark that I was looking for. As I seemed a little disappointed in God's answers he seemed to be pulling away from me and leaving. I was desperate here and wanted to know what I was supposed to do now on my journey. So I persisted in my question but he kept pulling away. They I blurted out, "You leave me with nothing but sil..." In mid word everything changed. I "realized" that the answer to my question was that I needed to allow for the silence.

At the instant that I realized this I was aware of all four of us beings or entities present and the others seemed to merge into me. We became one. No longer was I a divided being with separate aspects. I was now all these sources of wisdom. I no longer recognized separate disincarnated spirits as being something other than myself.

The realization was a deeper, more profound source of information or whatever you call it then all they other forms of spiritual communications that were out there. In that instant I realized that the true source of all true knowledge was realization; nothing a guru, messiah, scripture or anyone or anything outside of me could ever match the clarity that realization could offer me.

That was the lesson I got from this vision and that was how I came to trust my inner voice, the satguru or true spiritual teacher.

I also saw that there are more ways to communicate than written and spoken language. I saw how we can better communicate with telepathy. Telepathy will eventually give way to intuition and intuition will eventually give way to direct perception. But we humans, as a species, are not ready for that. I would like to find some people who are ready for that.

This may not be important, but it did happen and I want to talk about it.

Soon after getting to India I had two related visions that I was only curious about. The first one was of a steep hill with many caves at various levels of the hill. There were pathways to the caves. When looking at this hill I 'remembered' living in one of the cave near the top of the hill. The feeling from this vision was as if it was a memory, not a dream. I was remembering the place I had lived long ago. I could see the other monks, sadhus, holy men or whatever you want to call us there at the hill. We were all practicing some spiritual traditions or other but all seekers.

The other related vision was of coming up the trail to the base of the hill. The part of the hill that had the caves was steep but it was still possible to walk up. To the left of the cave part of the hill was a cliff with some sharp rocks at the base of the cliff. I was walking up the trail with my father as we came to the rocks below the cliff. At the top of the cliff was a sadhu in deep trance. We stood and watch for a few minutes until he suddenly rose and chanted something aloud. Then, without any fanfare, he fell forward tumbling off the cliff and landed on the sharp rocks in front of me. I can still remember the sound of his body hitting the rocks. I was so close that I was hit with some blood.

What did this vision mean? At first I thought that maybe it was a memory of a past life. After all, I was in India where they believed in reincarnation. I remember feeling very 'at home' in the first vision. I belonged at the hill of holy men. This vision made me feel more at home with what I was doing and with India.

I had mixed views of 'memories' of past lives. I could see that the human brain worked like a television set works, it picks up electromagnetic images and projects them onto the screen of our mind. If we adjust our mind we can tune into just about any types of thoughts we want, just as we can adjust our televisions to many channels. If we like what we are seeing then we can sit down and watch the show. If we like the images we receive in our visions or dreams then we can sit down and enjoy them. We can give them meaning or we can just enjoy them. If we are emotionally needy then we give them meaning, but meaning is not real just relative to our emotional need.

With these visions I guess I needed to feel at home in India. It is a very strange place to someone who has never visited a Third World country before. I 'needed' to feel at home so I gave the meaning to the visions that these were from a past life. I belonged here.

I also wanted to know what I was doing here and in my life in general. The feeling of belonging at the holy man hill helped me understand who or what I was; I was a holy man, a sadhu, a monk, a mystic, and an ascetic. I was comfortable with this meaning to my life. It fit and made sense to me. It worked for the mean time.

While sitting in my mud hut I realized that there were three things I needed to focus on to get my life in order: my diet, which only offered me cravings and an upset stomach, controlling my fantasizing and learn to focus my mind more.

Diet, a great challenge

I could see that we experience life through the body, and the body is made up of what we eat. If I eat crap then my life experience would be crappy. It not only made sense, it proved out to be true.

I had tried to get a handle on my diet for some time. Many years before a friend started me on this direction by telling me about vegetarianism. Being in India it is easy to be a vegetarian but I still had lots of dietary problems. The cravings were killing me and lead me to binge eating when I could not resist any more.

My body needed certain things and it was my job to get those things for it. Yet, I had no real idea as to what my body really needed (other than chocolate J ).

As a kid I had learned the average American diet: meat and potatoes with some peas to piss me off. Spinach was for Popeye the sailor, not me. the only spinach I had ever had was canned. Yuck! Green things? Well, there was iceberg lettuce, which I used to eat by putting white sugar on it. I eat casseroles my mom used to make.

If I wanted to be a football player I would eat meat and potatoes. If I wanted to be a long distance runner I would eat lots of carbohydrates. If I wanted to be God I would fast (God is very skinny, so skinny that I can even see him). If I wanted to be a Buddha or Christ I would eat Ding Dongs. Ok, I am kidding. Oreo's are much better that Ding Dongs. Ok, ok, so I do not know what I need to eat to be God or even happy. I had some studying to do.

I also had to let go of some of things that I like to eat. I could see that it was things that I liked that caused me problems. It did not matter much what it was that I like, but if I did it too much then it caused me problems. I could see how addictions start. We start doing something we like and find pleasure in it. Then we find no way to have pleasure without the addiction.

I would eventually get a grip on my diet, but it took several years. I will talk more about this later.

In my ignorance of wholeness I would not allow my body to have the nutrients that it needed. I would fast from foods that my body was craving so I was obsessed with food and cravings.

Fantasizing

I had a problem with my fantasizing or daydreaming so much. I would fantasize that I was courageous or rich or something that I was not. I was living in a fantasy world most of the time. I could function most of the time but life was not fulfilling. The fantasies were empty and usually only offered and expression of my anger or outright rage. I was not a daydream believer, but a wishful thinker. Pure escapism. I was escaping from a life that was boring.

But in my meditations I looked at what was happening to me and with me in my fantasizing. I could see that fantasizing is using the imagination to better understand myself. It is also the same as going to a movie, reading a book or watching television, except that I am the creator and not just a member of the audience watching from the sidelines. Since I was the creator I could see what I was creating and then look to the motivation for that creation. If I was feeling powerless then I would imagine I was powerful. Seeing this I could look at why I was feeling powerless. If I was imagining I was popular then I could see why I wanted (or did not have) people in my life. I was probably lonely. Why? I noticed that I often imagined that I was courageous and some sort of hero. This showed me that I did not want to be the coward I was. Why was I so afraid?

Fantasizing is just waking dreams, they can tell us a lot about ourselves. So I did not stop fantasizing, I came to peace with the process of fantasizing. I accepted myself as I was. Wow, what a radical concept.

Focusing my mind.

My mind was a pain in the head (not ass). It would go wherever it wanted to go and I had little to no choice but follow. I read about concentration methods but I was having little to know success with them. What a bitch. Then I read this story of a guru who told a rich guy to focus his mind on what he loved. He happen to love diamonds so he focused his mind on his biggest diamond and it worked.

Then the question become, what do I love? What could hold my attention? I could not think of anything in the world that I really could say I loved. Maybe nature. Nah! That was too big to focus on.

Ok, so I did not have something to focus my mind on. I really did, but it was too obvious for me to see it. It was more obvious then my nose, but I can not see that either. It would take some time for me to see that I did have something I loved, something that would hold my attention and help me focus my mind.

I did see that clarity would be a result of having a focused mind. Without clarity I could see nothing. Without clarity I was nothing but confused and intimidated. Clarity was everything. But as long as my mind was jumping around and not focused I would not have clarity.

I read this parable about clarity that indicated it was like trying to see the bottom of a lake while the wind was whipping up the waves. It was impossible to see until the waves calmed down and the water was still. My mind had to be still (focused) before I would be able to see anything.

I had to let go of all non essential behaviors. I could have no distractions. I had to focus my mind on the essential behaviors that would serve me in the long run.

The vagueness of the language of religion and spirituality did not help me gain the clarity or focus that I was seeking. There had to be another way.

I was a liar. I lied to myself and I lied to others. I was always trying to impress people with some lie. It was probably not as much as some people but it was too much for me. I am not sure today whether something things really happened or whether I just imagined them to have happened. This showed me that I lied to myself.

How could I expect other to be honest with me if I was not honest with myself. My lying was so habitual that I did not even notice it most of the time. I would meet somebody and make some assumptions about them then believe those assumptions to be true. Pure self deception.

If I had a problem some place then I would imagine what caused the problem and believe what I imagined. It was a lie but I thought of it as normal and natural. In fact, when I asked others about this they all said that they did it too. We make assumptions and believe them to be true.

If somebody told me something and I wanted it to be true then I believed it. The truth was I did not know if it was true, but because of my emotional need I wanted it to be true so I believed it. I was lying to myself.

I realized that these lies to myself were the most damning thing I could do to myself. I had to change my attitude about self deception. Yet, I was so comfortable in my lies that changing was very difficult. Admitting to myself something that I believed was false was VERY difficult. The most difficult was admitting to myself that something I believed as true I really did not know to be true. The ambiguity was terrifying. How could I accept that I did not know something and leave it at that?

Talk about somebody who had fully taken of the "tree of knowledge of good and evil", I took the cake. I knew what was right for everybody and I knew what was wrong.

Of course, I was no where near courageous enough to admit to others that I might be wrong or that I did not know something. I would argue for my beliefs until I was blue in the face. The more I argued for my beliefs the more I believed them and the more I was lying to myself.

Innocence and humbleness was not something I had any concept of. I knew everything. I was a know-it-all. I would have to admit that because I was so insecure in myself, probably a produce of all my self deception, that I would go out of my way to argue for my beliefs.

This became a critical issue. I realized that I had to push myself to look very hard at where I was lying to myself. I had to develop the integrity to admit to myself when I did not know something. I had to let go of ways of thinking that I really valued or where very important to me. Some of them I identified with, there where who I was. Letting go of them meant not knowing who I was. But if I was going to get free I would have to be honest with myself. There was no other way around it.

As I was traveling and listening to various gurus or reading various book I would really like something I read so I would believe it. I was cling to this or that concept because I my emotionally neediness, not because I had proved it for myself or even intellectually seen the truth in it. I was just clinging to hopeful concepts and ideas. I was lying to myself.

I had to have to courage to relax and let things go. To hear them but not believe them, even if I liked or agreed with them. I had to accept that I did not know. This process of letting go of my beliefs took a lot of emotional energy and a lot of commitment to being honest with myself. It took a lot of passion and caring about myself to do this. This integrity crap was very difficult.

Radical integrity required the courage to confront myself beliefs. When I could see those beliefs were based on a falseness then letting go of those beliefs.

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. It takes a lot of integrity to admit to ourselves that we do not know something. We may want something to be true, but that is only our emotions speaking.

So in the pursuit of truth, honesty or integrity I had to look at all my beliefs or self deceptions and admit what I do know and what I do not know. I would only accept something if I had personal experience of it. I was not ready to admit that I could only know what is now and not what was of the past or might be in the future.

Self Deception

Beliefs are lies to myself. I realized that I was lying to myself. My beliefs were my lies. Someone even pointed out to me that the word 'belief' even has the word 'lie' in it. It means to be lying to myself or to be in the lie.

I could see that I was deceiving myself a lot. Because of my emotional immaturity I was letting my emotions motivate me to believe something that I wanted to be true. I could not accept the truth that I did not know. I NEEDED to know so I lied to myself and believed. I would jump to a conclusion or make an assumptions about something because I wanted it to be that way. It was the emotional charge and the resulting lack of clarity that created this self deception.

I was not comfortable with the ambiguity of not knowing the truth. I realized I had to get comfortable with the ambiguity of my ignorance. I realized that before I could get the clarity I wanted I would have to be ok with ambiguity.

When ones emotions are so unstable they seek lies over the truth then they will chose to believe something that will satisfy their current emotional state.

I realized that I was not practical about anything. Ok, so I was practical about some things but not on the essential things. My ways of thinking were not practical. It was all theoretical, it was not honest. I was always thinking about the past and the future. I was almost never in the present moment.

I heard and read the teachings of many teachers and they all said that the past if but a memory and the future is but our imagination. Neither are real. One book talked about Jesus' line, "Be not concerned with tomorrow. Instead concern yourself with today and let tomorrow concern for itself." (Matthew 6:34)

I realized that the only thing that is real is the present moment. All else is fiction or false. Yet all my thoughts were about the past or future. With thoughts of past and future I would get very uptight.

Being practical means looking at what actually works and not what is theoretical, ideal or based upon some belief or assumption. I realized that all beliefs are just lies we tell ourselves, they are self-deception. I was lying to myself. It was normal to lie to myself. I had always done it and we all always do it. It is probably the most normal thing we all do.

So I started to meditate on the present moment. I would watch as thoughts of past or future would arise and say to myself, that is the past or that is the future and it is not real. I would breathe into these thoughts until I could let them go. At first I would get angry at myself when I gave these thoughts attention and energy. Eventually I realized that getting angry was not helping things so I stopped. I would just acknowledge the thought and go back to feeling what else I was feeling (besides the thought.)

Eventually I started to smile when I realized I was giving these thoughts energy and I noticed that this sense of appreciation would relax me even further. So I started to appreciate or even laugh at myself when I gave this silly thoughts energy. This really lightened me up and relaxed the tension.

This practice was bringing the reality of the present moment down into my body. I felt that I was communicating with the very cells of the body. They were beginning to 'get it' too. This was getting practical. The theory was behind me, at least in concept if not in practice. Of course, when I was not meditating I would get back into my mind and the past or future.

I really started to see the power of my breath. I was watching the breath and seeing how whenever I was tense or experiencing negativity or discomfort that if I breathed into it then I would relax and let it go. With each out breath I could feel the tension flowing out of my body.

I started to bring this practice more and more into my daily activities. Whenever I would stop of a minute I would become aware of my breath and would allow the tension to flow out with the out breaths. The practice became practical, a 24 hour a day thing.

I also began to notice the qualities of my meditations depending on the direction in which I was facing. I noticed a certain consistency there that I could have certain qualitative differences in my meditations. Later, I read that this is something that was well understood my the yogis and mystics of the world. Even Christian churches used to be built facing certain directions always because of the perceived advantages of the energies or effect they had on people.

Shallow breath, shallow mind, shallow heart.

As I have matured I have learned to balance the practical with ideal. We can not live in our head with our ideals nor can we live in our bodies with the practical without out hearts. There must be a balance between the two.

While traveling through India I had one of my most telling experiences in Calcutta.

I was walking down a street past the people living on the sidewalks in burlap shelters. Many of these people were sick with such diseases as leprosy. The streets were very crowded so when I came to one individual laying in the way I started to step over him/her. I say him/her because their leprosy was so advanced that I could not tell what the persons sex was. They had no hands left, only stubs. Their open wounds had flies and maggots crawling in and out. I was sure that the person was dead when I stepped over him/her. Just then the person moved and looked up at me, raising their stub of a hand begging for a hand out.

I was paralyzed in fear as the hand almost touched me. The absolute terror that I felt must have been reflected in my face for the leper responded with what I would call pity. That is pity for me, a very healthy and rich (at least by their standards) American who had all the opportunity in the world to live and long, happy and prosperous life. But I had the inner experience of extreme fear, outright terror, at the prospect of just being touched by this leper.

The leper had found peace with his or her situation while I had found no peace with the situation. I was in living hell.

That pity for me was very profound. The contrast between my healthy and wealth and their utter poverty and disease was dramatic just as the contrast between my inner experience of terror and their inner peace. That experience showed me that in many ways that leper was better off than I was.

I had much inner angst about this situation after that. I actually prayed for understanding so that I could find peace with all the suffering I saw there in India. I prayed very hard and eventually did get the peace I was looking for. The peace only came when I opened my mind to the greater truth the situation offered.

I saw that I was very attached to my body. I saw that the body is weak, fragile and that any moment I too could be laying there dying. I saw that it made little to no sense to be so attached to the body.

I also saw that the ability to be content with what life offers is a GREAT advantage in life. For no matter how rich and/or healthy we are today we will all die. If we can not accept this then we are truly diseased.

I was done with India and ready to return to America. I came to find a guru and found him. He was I. Not the little I that had left America almost a year ago, but the I that was no longer limited my boxes in his mind or the ideas in his head. I now realized that I was a lot more than I thought I was. I did not realize how big I was but I was open to finding out more about me, or more accurately, about the I.

I was very tired of the filth and challenge that India and third world travel offered. In fact, I was tired of travel.

When I left America I was sick of America, but when I came back after seeing the way that most of the rest of the world lived I was very happy to be back here. The air is not exactly clean here but I understood the language and the money. It was where I could integrate with society easily and earn some more money to continue my search for understanding.

I remember thinking that a vacation in Calcutta for two weeks would do wonders for all the people who complained about America. After two weeks in Calcutta working with the homeless people on the streets you would be overjoyed to come back to America. The next fifty weeks of the year would seem like a vacation after that experience.

I no longer was interested in any complex, high stress and high paying jobs. I was willing to work for less just for the quality of life that the stress free or minimal stress job offered. I wanted a job that I could let go of at night and work on my inner world.

While in Europe on my way back to America I found one book that stimulated a lot of thinking on my part. "As A Man Thinkth" by James Allen really got me to realize that my mind leads me toward the experiences that I have in life. As a person thinks so they become.

I had to learn to watch not just the thoughts I had during meditation, but I had to watch the TYPE of thoughts I was having ALL THE TIME. If I spent my days in judgement of others then the quality of my meditations was going to be lower than if I let go of judgement.

Being back in America I was back in the same environment that had produced my living hell before I left. The same stimulus that was there before was there again. But this time I had skills to deal with it, or at least the awareness of mind to watch how I reacted to that stimulus.

I did get back into my judgements and the walls that judgement creates, but at night I now could relax and let go of those judgement or at least the tension they created. The source of the judgement, the beliefs or fears that motivated me to judge those around me was still there.

Being back 'in the world' or at least the world that came from, help me see just where I was on my journey toward the peace I was looking for. I was not in hell anymore, but I sure was not anywhere near heaven yet. I suspect this is where most people are; life is tolerable and has its ups and down with more downs then ups. They do not think of suicide nor do they ever see that life is beautiful and perfect.

I could have gotten off the train of awakening here but a year or so of seeking had built some habits in me that would not have allowed me to stop seeking clarity. I was driven to find out more about myself. I was even a bit obsessed about this process.

I got back into the dramas of life and at times I got caught up with the normal desires that life offers. One time my fears and desires motivated me to be kind of gullible enough to agree to a business deal that I later realized was less than ethical. This helped my inner peace for the short run but caused moral and financial problems for me in the future. It was a good lesson on being alert to my motivations and not letting them get the best of me.

In fact, I was thinking of this very topic or how I had got all caught up in my desires and the troubles that caused me when I had another reinforcing experience. One day I was driving down a country road following a truck. I wanted to make a right turn at the next road and so did this truck. We were passing a farm house on the left and I was close behind the truck as we slowed to make the turn. Then out of the corner of my eye or vision I saw this cat with a mouse in its mouth. It seemed so excited with catching this mouse that it did not seem to be paying much attention to where it was going. After the truck passed it darted across the street toward the house. But I was right behind and hidden by the truck. I was too close and did not have time to swerve or stop. All I heard was the thump, thump of my tires as I ran over the cat.

The pain of this was numbing. And there was nothing I could do for the cat. But the lesson was clear for me. If I get too excited about what I am doing I will not pay attention and can hurt or kill myself. Getting too excited only happens when I am ignoring something else and that something else may run me over.

After returning to America I started to study the Buddhist tradition. Since I lived in Boulder, Colorado where the Karma Dzong Buddhist community was I had lots of opportunities. I also got into ready Buddhist Zen philosophy and meditated with a community of practitioners for a while. I studied Sufism, Taoism and other traditions at this time. I eventual even started to read some Christian mysticism at this time.

Reading all these traditions I started to see the sameness of the traditions. I started to see the patterns of what they were all about. They all seemed to be trying to help us get to a place that was good, really good or what I call today Goodness. I started to see the commonness of the traditions. They had different esoteric languages and methods, but they were all trying to help us to improve the quality of our life experience.

I recognized that I am very intellectual. The word intellect means the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will. But for me the intellect was the ability to 'feel' the origins of our thoughts and desires. When I felt intellectual I was feeling more than just the thoughts in my head, I was feeling the origins of the thoughts in my head. That is deeper.

For instance, if I was thinking about lunch I would look at the motivation for the thoughts of lunch and see that there was discomfort in my stomach. I could see that the digestive juices in the stomach were getting bored without anything to digest so they were working on the lining of the stomach. That hurt and that hurt was what I called hunger.

I started to see that the darkness within me was very mental. In fact, it was almost all mental. Mental is ideas, concepts, beliefs and the like. It is grasping to the world around us and trying to hold on to it. It is a method of remembering. It is very limited.

I could see how complex philosophies, theologies, beliefs and mental activity can get us caught in the unreal world. We start to think of the complexity itself is real and not just our grasping to hold on to it. I was a grasper. I wanted to grasp on to what I saw or thought I knew and hold on to it. I wanted to conceptualize it so that I could keep it for future use. I wanted to share it with others. Yet, the complexity itself was killing me. It was information overload. I had seen how my sister had gotten caught up in the complexity of faithless Christian philosophy and theology which had caused her to lose the simplicity that Jesus had offered. I could feel the tension and confusing starting to enter me.

I needed to break free of my need to grasp what I was finding.

To get free I would have to look at my ways of thinking and feel the origins of my thoughts and desires. If I was not willing to see through the thoughts, ideas, desires, beliefs and ways of thinking then I would not be able to get through the darkness that was within me. Believing trapped me in my various delusions and intellect would set me from them.

Once free from the delusions I would need the skill of the intellect to keep myself from falling back into the beliefs that trap me that society offers. I needed to feel the origins of my thoughts and desires to discern between what is real (actually happening now to me) and the unreal (what I believe will happen or did happen to me.)

I also realized that I was not a very practical person. I was very ideological. I lived fully in my ideals, beliefs, assumptions and the values they created. I could only see life through those ideals, beliefs and assumptions. If the world did not meet one of them then if was the worlds failure, it was wrong, bad, evil or ugly.

It never occurred to me to actually question my own assumptions or beliefs. That thought never entered my head.

Eventually I discovered spiritual teachings, which seem to deal with some more profound problems or issues than psychology. I remembered from childhood going to church and learning about Jesus, and I had some affinity for him, but I did not like the Christians for they seems to be so full of hypocrisy. So I wanted to go outside the Christian teachings and I looked to eastern philosophy.

Eventually I discovered Hinduism and Buddhism. Buddhism is to Hinduism and Christianity is to Judaism, each is an outgrowth or reform of the original tradition.

As I read about Siddhartha of Sakya, who they called Gautama Buddha, I was reminded of Jesus of Nazareth, who was called Christ. Both of the people seemed to have what I was looking for. They both had the deep inner peace with life. They talked about profoundly different ways of thinking that upset a great many people, but offered a but way of life. Siddhartha and Jesus both had the courage to be honest; with themselves and with the world.

Of course, in the beginning I did not even now what it was that they had that I wanted. I only know they had it. I went looking for what they had, I wanted to understand it.

Jesus and Siddhartha inspired me to develop courage. Years ago I saw that they had something and I did not even know what it was but I wanted it. They were just people who had to the courage to be who they really were, the courage to be honest.

Siddhartha was able to become the Buddha because he broke from the pack of his fellow ascetics and drank the milk offered to him by the woman. To the rest of his group of ascetics who fasted and thought that women were evil this was a great violation of their code and they rejected him. It was because of his breaking this code that he was able to gain his enlightenment and become the Buddha. It was because of this violation of the code that he saw that extremism was not the way, but that the middle way was better.

A Christ is a more advanced individual than a Buddha. Siddhartha talked about compassion but Jesus demonstrated the passion in compassion. Siddhartha had more peace then he had passion. Jesus had more passion then he had peace. I want to have a better balance than either of them.

I realized that my attachment to possessions was hurting me. I did not have a lot of things but I still had all the books I had bought since I started seeking. I had a whole library of books that had offered me a lot of wisdom. I clung to the books thinking they were important. I realized just how heavy those books where when I kept having to moving them around. That 'heaviness' was really weighing me down, both physically and emotionally.

I remembering looking up with word 'sin' in the small Oxford dictionary that I had purchased in India. Part of the definition of the word sin was the phrase "Seven Deadly Sins" which I had heard of but did not know what they were. One of those sins is Gluttony and one of the definitions of gluttony is reading too much.

I realized that I was reading too much and that it was not healthy for me. (Just as eating too much is not healthy.) So I started letting go of my books and of reading in general. I still felt a strong attachment to books but I no longer had a strong need to OWN them. I would read them and let them go. And I was looking for books that had fewer words and more depth.

Scriptures offered a lot to me as did any book who used the sutra concept to present ideas. Sutras are treads of ideas that we can explore. They are the seeds that Jesus talked about in the parable of the sowing of seeds. The sutra was not designed to answer all the question but there to point at the answers. A sutra in designed to motivate us to seek the answer within ourselves. I was still looking for others to give me the answers or to save me from myself. But no body can ever save me from myself I have to learn how to operate the human instrument better. I had to know myself and become a master over myself.

So books were not going to offer that to me. They could only point in that direction. So I had to cut back on my reading books and increasing my reading of myself.

Fiction books were just another form of entertainment that distracted me from my pursuit of inner attainment. Books can offer a lot of value but too much reading will take away more than it offers. With books we are trapped in our minds and out of our bodies. The more we read the more our whole life is an out-of-body experience.

My spiritual life started when I started to look at what was motivating me, what was I looking for. I started to question the programmed or artificially engrained ideas of what I was looking for (American dream, success, salvation, enlightenment, and so on) and asked myself why I wanted these.

I wanted to know what was the human body's motivation and to understand the physiology of spirituality.

I recognized that the need to understand was partially a need to control and partially a desire to help others get free by finding a better way of getting to were we all want to go.

I wanted to know what made me tick. I wanted to know what motivated me. I wanted to know what I was looking for. As I got to know myself I started to appreciate myself more. When I got honest with myself I realize that I was doing the best job I could. With that awareness I started to appreciate humanity more as I realized they were doing the best job they could.

If I did not know what I was looking for how could I know it when I found it? How can anybody find something if they do not know what they are looking for?

Once you know yourself you know humanity. For in essence we are all the same. We are as different as snowflakes are different, but still just they/we are the same.

I also realized that part of knowing myself was to question my ways of thinking. I started to ask judge all my beliefs or ways of thinking and asked myself, Does this belief or way of thinking add to the quality of my life experience? Does it liberate me to appreciate, enjoy and love all that life offers?

It was my way of belief or way of thinking limits me then it is just based on lies and I need to look deeper.

Questions, many questions arose when I went looking. How could I know the world if I do not know the knower? Who am I? Is not my experience of life colored by my experiences and my culture? What was beyond the colored perception of reality? Who am I? Who am I? Not the personality or soul, not the memories, not the beliefs, not the conditioning. This is the false self. I want to know me without the coloring.

It seemed enough to question why I had these question. Why did Jim Freedom want to know the answers to these questions and others did not? Why did I long for truth and understanding and others were content with mediocrity? Yet, these relative questions did not answer my real questions. I wanted to who was asking the questions.

It did seem so simple, too simple for even me to accept. This piece of meat that I call me wants peace. Not peace in the world, for that is not ever going to happen as long as the meat is alive. It wants peace WITH the world. It wants peace of mind. Too simple for the mind to accept.

I realized that I did not want answers to my questions; I wanted peace from the questions. But the questions kept coming. I could find no peace until death.

Jesus is reported to have said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me." (John 14:6) Of course, Jesus did not say this. He did not speak English. This is what the writer of John (and only John) remembered it to be. He probably wrote it down in Coptic language where it was then translated into Greek. From there it was translated into English. None of those people, from the original writer to all those who translated it really understood what Jesus was say.

I can see that what Jesus probably said was, the I is the way, the truth and the life. No one goes to the Father except by knowing the I. In other words, no one can get to know God except through knowing thyself. To know God is not to know some concept or idea we call God. To know God is to know the spirit or that which inspires us to want to know God.

But this does not make much sense to the mystical ignorant. Nor does it fit with the idolatry that the writer of the book of John seemed to practice. So it was rewritten to work more in favor for idolatry.

I never had many friends. I had to accept that about myself. I would probably never have many friends. I enjoyed people, but people did not enjoy me. A long time ago I saw that I had to make a decision: do I want friends or do I want to be honest. I choose honesty.

People will try to tell me that I can be honest and still have friends, but I have never experienced that. Particularly if you look at deep subjects. I can see that if you do not look at deep subjects and that you do not feel deeply about anything, but not if you are a deep person.

So I do not win many friends. That is not my purpose in life. My purpose is to be honest with myself first then with the rest of the world.

In the fall of 1987 I drove my motorcycle to Massachusetts to take some classes at the Kripalu Yoga and Health center in Lennex. I took classes on body reading, yoga and a weekend inner quest intensive. I then stayed just to live what they call the "spiritual lifestyle".

One day, in the body reading class I had a very illuminating experience. I was the first to class and the instructor was there getting ready for the class. I guess he noticed that I was pretty tense because he came up behind me and started to rub my shoulders.

I immediately jumped away and said that he did not have to do that. (I was not used to being touched by anyone. In fact, I had become very afraid of being touched by anyone.)

He slapped me on my head and said, "Never turn away love."

WOW! I did not realize I really was turning away love. I, of course, yielded and allowed him to touch me.

This experience made me realize just how afraid of receiving love I was and how much I had to open myself up.

During the body reading class we were taught how our mental and emotional states manifest into our body as either disease or body form. The left side of the body is feminine and the right is masculine. And one part of the body that I remember was the knees, they represent our needs and/or power issues.

About this time I was experiencing a lot of pain in my right knee so I looked at what was going on mentally and emotionally for me. I had been thinking a lot about or challenging the authority of the guru of Kripalu. Since that correlates to the right knee I realized that my emotional (fearful) reaction to his authority was manifesting in my knee. As soon as I realized this I laughed at myself and let go of my thoughts of challenging the gurus authority. Immediately the tension and pain in my knee went away. This was very illuminating for me and later really helped me both understand the consequences of my thoughts and showed me where I was causing pain for myself.

One night I was meditating in the satsang hall before satsang. I was sitting close to the front of the hall and go very deep into my meditation. I was aware that the hall was filling up and that people were moving around me, but I was detached enough to no care. When the hall was very full with people sitting all around me a woman came up and told me that I was sitting in the reserved area for special people only. After she told me this I watched my physiological reactions to her words. There first arose a desire within me, which started at the base of my spine and moved upwards, to comply with her request. Then I noticed a parallel desire, one also moving upwards along my spine, to resist moving and stay where I was. The second desire was not as strong as the first one so did not rise as far as the first desire. Both desires felt like an energy pulse but that was slow in movement. I was fascinate by what I was observing and just allowed it to be there without reacting. Each time the woman made the request I watched as the energy would rise and then subside. Each time the energy would rise to a lower level then the time before. Finally the guru came in and the satsang began. The woman whispered to me that I had won. I remember distinctly thinking that I had not won. I was not there. I was just the witness.

I was doing my laundry one day and talking to this woman who was also doing her laundry. I had the notion to be very appreciative of her and find all the things I could about her that I could appreciate and tell her them. Her response was overwhelming; she really began to shine. I realized that we all just want to be appreciated. This may seem pretty obvious to most people but it was a revelation to me at that time. Since I had had very little social experience as a kid I did not understand this until now.

Another day I was meditating in a room full of others meditators. I was busy just sitting there watching my body when all of the sudden it felt like somebody had come up behind me and slapped my on the top of the head. I heard no one either walk up to me or walk away from me. My head was buzzing with the kind of sensation you would feel if somebody had hit you pretty hard. It was not painful just stimulating. I later realized that this was what the eastern traditions call the awaking of my crown chakra. I do not remember what the significance of this crown chakra opening is but one could say that it was a precursor to what would happen in the next few months.

While at Kripalu I looked at the science of yoga trying to understand what it was really about. I could see that when I stretched out my body and then returned to a place of rest that I was more relaxed then I was before. I had read Patanjali's yoga sutras and had seen they were trying to move us in a certain direction. I now realized that yoga, a all spiritual efforts, were just directed at helping us relax the tension in our bodies and minds. In yoga we first work with the body, then breath, then the mind in concentration and meditation. It was all about releasing the tension. First the muscles then the nerves of the body. It was that simple, at least in concept if not in practice.

But I did not feel the eastern tradition of yoga was going to get at my tension. And it seemed such a slow method. I was impatient and wanted something more, now. Something was missing in the yogic tradition and I did not know what it was.

Part of the practice of being at Kripalu was to sit almost every night in the main hall for what is called satsang, or in the presents of truth, which meant the guru would talk on some subject and then allow questions. He would usually invite a person to come up and sit with him while he they just talked about what was on the persons mind. Some of these interactions with the guru were interesting and some were boring. But I finally got my chance after being there for almost three months.

I had three questions on my mind that I had been looking at within myself for some time. I felt pretty good about my own answers to the questions but wanted to check with the guru. After asking him the questions and getting his responses I realized that my answers were better than his were.

That made me realize that I did not need a physical guru anymore. I had the confidence in my inner guru to leave Kripalu and go forth. Winter was also coming and I only had a motorcycle to travel on. If it snowed I would be trapped for the winter. I also had been feeling a real strong desire for solitude, something that was not available there at Kripalu.

It was once again time to change, time to move. I really did not know where to go but some people there at Kripalu offered me some suggestions. I was looking for a monastery, a Christian monastery where I could be alone with myself and also get exposure to Christianity.

So I headed south and west (to avoid the snow that was coming) and headed toward Arizona where there was a Catholic monastery that I had heard of. I wanted to confront my Christian background and study Christian mystical teachings. I had heard that the Catholics were the only Christians that allowed mystical teaching or mystical pursuits.

When I got there the monastery was closed to the public. So I wandered for some weeks trying to find a place of solitude.

In my wandering I camped in the steep canyon next to a wilderness area. Winter was coming and I knew that I could not stay where I was, but I did not know where to go. I was getting frightened. I felt lost. I had no direction to go and did not know what to do. The emotions of the predicament consumed me. one day I was down at the river washing my dishes and it started to snow. The snow was twirling around in the steep canyon's winds. Fear engulfed me and I cried out to God for help.

Then I heard these words as if they were echoing off the canyon walls, "Love is not a struggle. Love is letting go." I did not hear them with my ears but it sure did not seem to come from within me. Yet, I knew it had.

In that moment I let go of all my emotional reactions to the situation. I let go of needing to know what was going to happen to me. For the moment I had peace. I realized that I was not loving what life was offering, I was fighting what life offered.

So I got on my motorcycle and headed for town where I asked a priest if he knew of any monasteries. He directed me to one in southern Arizona. I was off again.

The next morning, while riding my motorcycle west through the southern New Mexico desert the sun was rising and shinning on the red rock columns as they jutted out of the desert floor. There were puffy white clouds in the background. The view was absolutely beautiful and for the first time in a long time I was actually able to appreciate the beauty.

It was so beautiful that I started to cry. In fact, I could not stop crying for hours. I started to think that I was going crazy, crying over nothing. I kept crying until I got to the monastery in Arizona. When I got there I talked to a priest and told him my story including the most recent experience of crying unfoundedly. He told me that it was the Gift of Tears, a common mystical experience the Desert Fathers (of the Catholic tradition) had talked about. It was nothing to worry about. This relieved me considerable and I accepted my new ability to cry at almost anything, and sometimes at nothing.

While at this monastery I learned about a group of Christian mystics living in a Catholic house of prayer in south Texas. It was a hermitic community with a priest and several nuns living in separate cabins on their large property. The priest had published several books on Christian mysticism so I thought he could help me.

The community turned out to have a very good library and for the first time I started to read Christian teaching on mysticism. I read St. Teresa of Avila and her disciple, St. John of the Cross's teachings on mysticism and the stages of spiritual evolution.

Then I read the story of the nun who got stuck in what St. Therese called the Dark Night of the Soul for twenty years. I could see how people would get attached to the drama of feeling sorry for themselves. I could see how people could become deluded by all the thoughts in their head. But since I had studied some Zen that teaches that it was all in my mind, I could see that the Dark Night of the Soul was not real. This made it easier for me to go through the Dark Night in just days, but it was a very tough few days.

My days were very passionate, my nights very peaceful. During the day I would read and challenge the concepts or teaching in my mind. I was confronted with my limiting beliefs that I was very attached to and realize I would have no choice but to let them good. Remember, I was VERY attached to my beliefs and concepts so letting them go was no easy task.

When I took my daily walks I would let my mind wander until it came upon my resistance to what I was reading. Then, using an active imagination, I would have conversations with the various spiritual teachers that I had explored. They were always wiser than I was and challenged me to go beyond my limiting beliefs, to be open to a reality that I could not have imagined before. Between the challenges of the imaginary conversations and my readings my pain and passion was very intense. At the end of most days I was emotionally exhausted.

By night I would be quiet, meditate or just look and listen to what was happening to my inner world. This would usually either enhance the passion within me or illuminate for me a greater understanding of what they were talking about.

The passion would exhaust me so much that the nights offered great peace for me as I prayed or meditated. I would pray for peace and clarity so that I could see the truth that would set me from the turmoil. I always got that peace if I wanted it bad enough.

I credit this contrast between motion and repose, day and night, passion and peace that lead to a quicker awakening for me. Now I can see that the extreme contrast of passion and peace was softening me, opening me to a reality that was far beyond my wildest imaginations.

Around this time I recognized that I did not have the will to go forward, to go where I could feel I need to go. I felt a wall between me and what I was seeking, and I still did not even know what it was that I was seeking.

So I prayed for help. I prayed not just for help for me but for all of humanity. I bared my soul to God in my pursuit of wisdom. I was not doing this just for myself. I was doing this because I felt an obligation towards and connection with humanity.

To find peace in my body I fasted from all foods that were rich, processed or impure. Most of this time I only eat fruits, vegetables and grains. There were periods that I eat even less or nothing at all. I had read and found for myself that when I fasted completely I had my higher quality experiences of clarity. But the highest quality experience of clarity did not happen when I was completely fasting. It happened AFTER I had just come off a complete fast and was only eating the purest foods.

I remember this happened to Siddhartha. He had been fasting for years and found himself one day too weak to get out of the river were he was bathing. He accepted the help of a young woman and then accept some food from here, which was strictly against the creed of his fellow ascetics. But it was after this that he gained his full enlightenment. I also remember Jesus going to the desert and fasting for forty day just before his enlightenment.

Fasting and passion are a good mix for exhaustion, for I did not have the energy to fight anymore. This made the meditations and periods of peace deeper and more profound.

I learn a trick here that really worked. If I had some belief or habit that I realized was not working for me, I would offer it to God or the Universe as a gift. I might say to God or myself, If you want this to go then take it, otherwise leave it with me. In doing this it took the burden off my hands and relieved me of the stress of changing myself. Later, I used this technique on some of my more obnoxious behaviors that people kept telling me had to go. I was not sure they had to go so I gave them up to the Universe and if they stayed then they were suppose to stay and if they left then that was what it should be.

Part of my battle with the demons was to get really angry with God. I would look at all the places I saw that he was screwing up and confront him for that. Why would he allow evil to exist? He is suppose to know all that is and be all powerful, so why does he let bad things happen to innocent people? What a screwed up God?

I would challenge God to show me the truth that would set me free. Jesus had said that if you ask you will be given, if you seek you will find, so I was challenging Jesus and God to show me. I was not going to be happy with some vague concepts of the scriptures or clergy. I wanted and demanded that they show me the truth. I had to experience the truth for myself, believing would not do it for me.

I would call this my rage against God. I was raging against the evil I perceived that God allowed.

This battle with God created a lot of passion in me. During the day I would get so passionate that by evening I would be exhausted emotionally so I then just sit and watch the subtle activity in my awareness.

I wanted Got to show me were I was wrong. I DEMANDED that God show me where I was wrong. Then at night I would wait for the answer. I was working very hard at being open to the truth that would set me free to love the creator of this world. I prayed for that truth. I pleaded for that truth. I begged for that truth. I cried for that truth. I was willing to die for that truth.

The rage was necessary to get the fight out of me so that I would be open to being shown the truth.

As a teenager I got into quotations. I bought a book of quotations, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, which was about two and a half inches thick. I loved to just read this book like any other book. I started to notice that there were a lot of quotes in it from the Bible. AND, I started to notice that a lot of those quotes from others sources were older, sometime thousands of years older than the Bible. I started to think that the Bible was plagiarized.

So I did not buy into the Christian practice of idolizing the Bible as the word of God or even inspired by God. The Christians have made the Bible into a paper god that they worship as an idol. The paper god is written by the faithless for the faithless for their hard hearts.

The Bible is just a book, like any other book, written by people, edited by people, translated by people and published by people. Those people are just like you and me (unless you are woman for apparently the whole Bible is written by men.) Those people who wrote or edited or translated the Bible make mistakes just like the rest of us. They all may have been inspired by love of other to write but their level of clarity varies as does everyone's.

Therefore, when I started to read the Bible again I did not do it with reverence. Quite the contrary, I came at the Bible to challenge it.

I read the Gospels to learn what they had to offer me but most of the rest of the Bible I read to find out why the Christians missed the mark that Jesus had set for them.

I knew that I had to confront Christianity or that I had to confront my ideas about the Christianity. I had a lot of animosity in my around Christians and their teachings and I wanted to get rid of that. I needed to understand them and their way.

I also wanted to better understand Jesus and his way. I knew that he had something to offer me that the Hindu or Buddhist ways could not, but I was not sure what it was.

Somebody had given me a small copy of the New Testament so that is where I started. I liked a lot of what Jesus taught but the language was primitive and seemed to be more confusing (darkening) than helpful at time.

I did really like Jesus' saying, "You shall come to know the truth and the truth will set you free." (Mat 8:32) Since my name was Freedom and freedom was what I thought I wanted I wanted to know anything truth. But I did not know what truth was.

I could see that those who wrote the Bible were lacking in some sort of clarity or faith. I could see that when they would say that something is an abomination to God. It was really their lack of clarity that caused them to see what they thought would be and abomination to God. This is because the writers were storing their treasures here in earth or making some thing of mammon important. Anything that has a beginning and end or that is limited is mammon. This includes ideas.

This is where they turn their back on the God of love and serve the god of fear.

I do not believe in the Bible. I do find that there is a lot of good stuff in it, but there is also a lot of really stupid stuff in it. There are a lot of things said in the Bible that relate to my experience and a lot that are totally opposite of my experience. There is great wisdom there and there is a lot of absurdity.

It is by reading the Bible and challenging it that I developed the ability to discern between the wisdom and the absurdity.

I wanted to know Jesus, not as a Messiah, but as a person like me. I was not interested in being "saved," I wanted to find what Jesus found. I wanted his peace and his courage to be honest.

In order to do this I had to bring him down off of his pedestal that humanity had put him on in the last two thousand years. I wanted to make Jesus human again so that he was accessible to me. I was not interested in worshiping him or anybody, I wanted an example of somebody who got free and found peace.

My discovery of the Nag Hammadi library really helped me see Jesus as a human being. In the Gospel of Phillip he complained that Jesus should not be kissing Mary (who was called Magdalene) on the lips in public. I remember being in India and seeing how this primitive and closed culture so frowned on that kind of behavior. So I could see how a more closed and conservative people like the disciples would have problems with a more liberated or liberal person like Jesus.

I can see why the church wanted to keep these type of thoughts or idea hidden. They wanted to deify Jesus and make him out of the reach of normal people. After all, Jesus questioned and challenged the church's (or religious) authority. Why would they wanted you to think you could be like him. So they tried to get rid of the writings of the various disciples who actually knew Jesus and who might have challenged in a way that made him human. This does not add to the image or mythology that they church wanted to create of Jesus.

It is hard to worship somebody who has sex out of wedlock. It is hard to worship somebody who acts like a human and makes mistakes now and then.

But this made Jesus human to me. I started to think of him in human terms.

I could see that the not so bright people were making an idol of Jesus. They did not understand the spirit of the second of the Ten Commandments: to make no thing (including an idea) more important than God or Love. When we make any form more important then love then we will lose that which we want the most, love.

So I wanted to see Jesus as a human just like me but somebody who had found something that I could find. They are still worshipping an image and they still do not get it.

It is that idolatry of Jesus or Siddhartha or gurus of any sort that keeps us separate for the goodness that is called God. Those that do that are trapped in the dark side, those still asleep. They will never find the way out of the darkness and to heaven or nirvana until they kill Jesus or Siddhartha or whatever it is that they worship.

So when I saw what was going on here with Jesus and Siddhartha I started to take them off the pedestal that I had in my mind for them and started to see them as examples of what I could be or find.

To bring Jesus off his pedestal I had to think of him as human, with human wants, needs and requirement. I remember the day that the thought came to me, "Jesus never used toilet paper." I wondered if he masturbated with his left hand or his right hand. This revelation and the thoughts of how he solved this problem made him real to me.

From then on I could read the Biblical story of him and expunge all the obviously exaggerated aspects of his story and focus on his teachings, way of thinking and way of life. I disregard Jesus' "miracles" and all the rationalization around the meaning of his death. I could see that Jesus was killed because he pissed off some very conservative and hateful people, which anybody could do then or now. (I tried to learn from his death that I do not want to enrage conservative religious people too much.)

I also recognized that Jesus never wrote anything himself so all that we have of him or about him is through the eyes of those who did not understand him. I say they did not understand him because if they did understand him they would not be Christians, they would be Christs or equal to him. Then there is the issue of all the translations by even lessor people and all the edits of the records by l less than honorable people (like church authorities.)

When I made Jesus human for me he became an archetype or model for how I could be. But once I brought him off his pedestal I was also able to see his flaws. I started to question some of his life choices, attitudes, teachings and ways of thinking. I started to see where I did not want to make the same mistakes that his made. (But more on that later.)

I could also see that we put gurus, clergy and teachers of all kind up on a pedestal. AND, more importantly I can see that some of these gurus, clergy and teachers ENCOURAGE this kind of thinking. This kind of upset me. These heartless teachers really did not care about those who came to them for help on the path but were only get hindrances.

When we push somebody up on a pedestal we are actually pushing ourselves down. We create an image in our minds of some ideal and then compare ourselves with this image. If we put them image really far up on a pedestal then we become discouraged. To advance ourselves images help but not if they are impossibly beyond us. The more a guru, clergy member or teacher emphasizes their importance the more distant they become. If the guru or teacher was really awake they would feel the pain of doubt in the hearts of others and not allow this kind of false thinking.

When I saw gurus, clergy members or teachers promoting this kind of thinking I could not help but think they were just promoting themselves (or their gurus or messiahs) as a business.

When I would take long walks I would imagine talking with dead people who were the great mystics of human history. I would talk with Jesus or Siddhartha or some of the Christian saints that I was reading about or reading their writing. I knew this was fantasy and not real but this process helped me access my creative imagination that would help me see outside the boxes of my mind. These conversation were not meant to be about reality they were meant to show me my limited ways of thinking.

Fantasizing would help me also get into my feelings and emotions. After all, I was very closed down like most Americans and particularly most men. So I would allow my fantasies flow and would watch where they would take me. Many times they took me in the direction that my reading was taking me and I could see a practical application to what I was reading about.

Fantasizing is like working with waking dreams. You can watch them and they will show you a lot about yourself and the world. I could see that books like Revelations of John in the Bible were nothing but fantasizing on paper. In reading Revelations I learned a lot about the dark side of Christianity and it's belief systems. I could clearly see that is not where I wanted to go. But my compassion for those trapped into believing Revelations grew and I wanted to get free myself so that I could help others get free.

When I imagine talking to teachers of all sort I would imagine what their responses where as I would confront them. Each time this process, these fantasies would take me to a place of greater clarity and greater truth. So each day I was finding more peace with this clarity. Each day I was getting freer and freer and opening up to more of the light that life offers.

Today I see that mythology is just the written fantasies of people. They are not real but that can tell us a lot about ourselves if we are attracted to this myths. They can tell us a lot about where we feel trapped. If the myth or fantasy is working for us then we are growing in our ability to appreciate, enjoy and love what life offers. If it is not then we are growing in our darkness; our fear, doubt, guilt, shame or the ugliness that we see in life.

This process of passion and peace felt like I was doing battle with my demons. I was really in battle with myself but I can see how people would describe this experience as battling demons. My doubts and fears had a grip on me. The voices in my mind offered me many reason to support and follow my fears. Yet there were other voices in my mind that said to question those reason for fear.

My heart was crying out for love, but my mind was screaming the justifications for fear. This is the age old battle between light and dark lived out in my personal theater.

As I would read the Christian books at this house of prayer I started to realize how stuck the Christians were in the primitive language they had. I could see that they were on to something with their insights but the language they used was very undeveloped and trapped in ancient times. So it was very poor in describing the awaking process.

I could see that battling demons was just the normal conflict we have between the honesty of the present moment and our beliefs of the past or future. it seemed to me at the time that my clarity on this and other such issues was what was helping me to get through this process quicker and with less confusion.

This is partly why I wanted to write this book, to help clear up some of the confusion that seems to exist around the language of antiquity and the understanding that is available today.

This is not to say that I did not have real demons to battle with. I did. I even had one bite my leg one night. I was meditating in my cabin with all the doors and shutters closed (there were no glass windows, only screens and shutters on the windows.) There was no way into the cabin without unlocking the doors.

During my meditation I became aware of what can only be called a demon, a hideous looking monster that started to attack me. I knew that it was only in my mind but it sure looked real. In this 'vision' he attacked me and bite my leg. My experience of pain was real but I knew that it was all in my mind so I never reacted to it. Eventually he left me but the pain lingered.

The next morning when I took a showed there were marks where he bite me. It did not break the skin but there were red marks right there. I realized that the mind is VERY powerful. I could then understand how people can experience the stigmata. If we believe something strong enough we will communicate that with every cell in our bodies and they will react that way. I can see that is how we can make ourselves sick or healthy just by our thoughts and beliefs.

Some time later I had two other events that made me wonder just how powerful my mind had gotten. I was sitting on the front step in the sun meditating when a lizard came up near me, within two feet, and just sat there looking at me. He had apparently just been challenged because he was missing his tail. I watched him for about an hour as he sat there. I started to realize that he was very still. So I reached out and touched him. He was dead. He had died while sitting right there in front of me.

A couple of days later I was again sitting on this step in the sun and a large rat came by. This time he was about twenty feet from me but he stopped and looked at me. I stared at him for several minutes and then went back to meditating. Later, when I opened my eyes again he was still there. So when I was done meditating I went over to him and found him also dead as a door nail.

I wondered if I had looked so hard at them that I might have caused these animals to die. Lots of weird things were happening at this time, like the demon above, so I was not sure of anything. Jesus cursed the fig tree and it withered. I looked at lizards and rats and they died. Weird, really weird!

I could see how I had gotten trapped in my thoughts thinking they were real. Zen had taught me this was not real but I only understood that in my mind, not in my body. The body still reacted to the thoughts as if they were real. I had to bring this truth down into my body.

The memories are just the past. Memories are faulty. The future is but imagination. They are just thoughts, they are not real. Our interpretation of what is happening in this moment or what happened or could happen are only thoughts, they are not real. What happened in the past is not real so there is no need to respond to the memories of the past. There is no need to abuse ourselves emotionally around these thoughts. We do abuse ourselves with our memories so that we can wake ourselves us to the lesson that was not learned in the past.

It can be entertaining, it can be fun. It is nice sometimes to remember a good event in the past and reminisce with the good feelings that brings up. It might even be dramatic and give us a deeper, richer experience of sadness of something that happened in the past. It is adds to the richness of the moment then it is a gift.

During this period of intense seeking I was sleeping about four hours a day. My waking hours consisted of daily maintenance duties (like bathing, cooking, and so on), reading, exercise in the form of long walks and sitting, pondering or meditation. I had very little desire to actually sleep. I was ALWAYS watching my mind to see what it was doing.

Not all the time was I trying to control the minds activity. I would let it go and just watch where it went. I learned a lot about myself here. More of the Know Thyself stuff.

In my meditation I wanted to get out of my mind and quite giving energy to my thoughts. I noticed that when I was watching mind that I would focus my attention on some 'thing'. When I was thinking my I noticed that my attention was focus on my brain and the activity in it. The center of my being was up in my head someplace.

A way that I used to get out of my head (and stop the thoughts) was to become aware of the rest of my body. Trying to be aware of the whole body at one time is a method of doing that. I also tried being aware of the center of my body, or the heart. This is not the physical heart that actually beats. This is the center of our being. Just as the center of the city is the heart of the city, so too the center of our being is the heart of our being.

I tried to feel this center or heart of my being. From the center I became aware of ALL the sensations I was experiencing, not just focused on the sensations in the head (thoughts.) I would try to feel the whole body with my mind focused on the heart and not moving to any other location. From here I was aware of the sensation in the brain as well as the sensation in my legs, arms, toes, fingers, and so on. Once I had was able to feel the whole body without movement in the mind I was ready to look deeper at the mind. I was ready to feel the source of the I or self.

I was reading the Gospels of the New Testament and one idea that I got from Jesus which related to what I read of the Siddhartha's story was about denying myself. The Siddhartha had said that he realized that his self was not real and Jesus said that we should deny our self.

This made me very interested in this thing called self.

Many times I have thought I was going to die. I could feel the tension in my body with this belief. The tension was very deep, at the core of my body or my being. Deep down in my heart I could feel this tension and discomfort there. All this because of a thought or belief.

This was not the thought that eventually I was going to die. It was a belief that death was going to happen within a couple of days or so.

For days this thought or belief would be there. I would wake up in the morning and it would still be there. After a while I just watched the sensation and actually enjoyed it. Then one morning I would wake up and it was gone. When it was gone I would actually miss it. Not at first, for I was genuinely afraid of the thought, but eventually I recognized it as just a thought or belief.

Every night when I sat and listen and looked at myself I would go deeper and deeper into my consciousness. I would start with watching my breath or the space between my breaths. Eventually this space would get so large, the time between the breaths so long, that I got bored with the watching the breath.

I then started to watch the cycles of the heart. The heart would go plup plump, pause. Plup plump, pause. So I started to watch the space in the pause. (Pardon my phrase plup plump, I could not think of any other way to describe the sound or feel of the heart.) Again, I got bored with the heart as it slowed way down. The space between the beats was very large or long.

I then started to look to other motions in the body. I noticed a motion that seemed like an energy moving up and down the spine. But it too had a cycle to it and that cycle included a rest period. So I watched the rest period until it became so large that I could not find the motions any more.

I remember thinking that if somebody could have hooked me up to one of those EKG machines. Or a machine that also watched our mental activity. They would have thought I was dead or just about dead. I was just about dead. I do not know how long my breath and heart would stop but it seemed a very long time.

I then started to go into the different levels of thoughts. By this time the discursive thoughts had stopped. Thoughts were now more like intentions or desires. They were acts of will. I could see subtler and subtler thoughts to watch.

Then I became aware of the watcher. I had been told about the watcher or the witness before and had tried to watch the watcher, but did not keep us with it. Now the watcher or witness was what started to engross me. I was the witness, the watcher. I was watching the thoughts and motions of the body. I was experiencing the feelings. What was this thing called "I"? What was the watcher? I would just sit there and meditate on the "I" or self. I would just sit there and feel the "I" or self. I was not thinking about what self was, I was trying to directly experience just the "I-ness" or just the self without looking at what the I was experiencing. I could feel the pain of "I-ness". It was always there. Even if there seemed to be no will or desire there still seemed to be "I". So I started to look beyond "I" yet I could not feel anything beyond.

It was like being at a theater watching a movie and then trying to just see the screen without being distracted by the lights flicking on the screen. What is the nature of the screen itself? What would be there if there were no lights? What is behind the screen? What a challenge!

We get so caught up in the drama of the movie. That is why we go to movies, to get caught up in the drama or comedy. But to see that the movie is just flicking lights, that we create the drama or comedy from the flicking lights and that we are the real screen takes real skill. I wanted to know what "we" are.

The effort continued...

The thought of death weighed heavily on my mind a lot of the time. I feared death and I was tired of fearing death. One day I thought, "Death is my destiny, why not make it my desire?" If I desire death then I would not be afraid of it. I have no choice but to die someday. What would a few hours, days, weeks, months or even years of time on this earth matter. Why not be ready to die now.

Death is just stillness, the absence of motion. God is stillness. "Be still, and know that I am God." (Psalms 46:11) Is God death? In desiring God am I not desire death?

The pain of life is so much why not die? If we are all going to die anyway then why not desire death as a way of getting out of the misery of life?

I did not have an answer to these questions. The more I thought about them the more death made sense to me.

Then I realized that in meditation it is the conscious effort to approach death. It is pushing at stillness. When we die they give us a plague that commemorates our accomplishment. They call this plaque a tombstone, and it reads across the top, "Rest in Peace." Death is perfect peace. Death is world peace, for we have finally found peace in this world.

I started to notice myself as getting comfortable with the idea of death. I was approaching death and getting comfortable with that. I started to see myself as dying. This was the dying process. I was going to die here in southern Texas all alone without anyone know or caring. This is the end of my story. This is the end of me. This is what it is like in the end. Nobody can really be here with me when I die. Dying is a very lonely thing. I would have to give up all my dreams, all my wants and all my desires. I would have to give up my attachment to humanity. I would have to give up my attachment to this planet and all that would ever happen on it. I had to give up tomorrow.

"Freedom (dying) is just another word for nothing left to lose." To paraphrase a song. I also like the words of the song in the movie, M.A.S.H. that go something like this, "Suicide is pain less, it brings about many changes."

I was dying. I was going to commit suicide and it was not going to change anything except my status as a living being. What a waste! But I had no where else to go.

I again started to think, "Death is my destiny and my desire."

This became a kind of mantra for me.

I was losing my faith in the ability of reason. Death made sense. It made complete sense. I could see no argument against it. I was losing faith in my ability to argue. It did not seem to add up. Something seemed to be missing. I did not know what it was. But life was utterly Hell. I wanted out.

The doubt in my logic created a deeper fear in my heart. I guess I was too cowardly to commit suicide. I did not know where to go. I felt trapped in this eternal damnation. Life seemed like an everlasting punishment.

Since I had studied eastern traditions I wondered in there was truth to the concept of reincarnation. I also knew that Christianity believed suicide to be a mortal sin that would condemn those who committed suicide to eternal damnation. This made me feel trapped in life. No way to deal with life and not way out.

I came to the realization that I did not know what to do. I had to have faith that what needed to happen would happen. I had to let go and let God. Not my will but Thy will be done. These were things I read at the time that made sense to me all of the sudden.

I recognized that most of the problems that I had were a product of my exercising my will based on my faithlessness.

All along I had been questioning my beliefs and letting them go. I was working at being honest with myself for I saw that beliefs are just self deception. If I believed that God exists then I was only hoping that my concept of God existed. I was not open to reality. I saw that beliefs closed me off to a greater reality that I could imagine.

I remember about this time reading a book by an unnamed fourteenth century Christian mystic titled "The Cloud of Unknowing". It impressed with is the simple, childlike attitude that left me open to a greater reality than I could imagine.

I would question all my beliefs down to some very intimate concepts like God and soul. I wanted to see the reality behind the concepts. Eventually I had to let these concepts and ideas go. I wanted something, I termed it as God, but I really did not even know what it was that I wanted.

I did now even know who or what "I" was. I had to let go of even that thought, the thought of self. About this time I was in utter intellectual exhaustion with no argument left in me. I had no concepts or ideas to defend. I had no beliefs. I had let go of all my desires, including my desire to continue living. I gave up my belief in a soul so there was no heaven or hell nor opportunity to reincarnate again.

I still thought about my life, my family and friends and about humanity in general. I saw that in order for me to go onward I would have to let go of all of this too. But I did not know how to do that, for they were with me all the time.

My heart hurt from all the pain of separation and loss that I was experiencing from the letting go process. I hurt so much that I just wanted to die.

Then I had a vision. I saw myself flying a jet plane over the earth. First I saw my self, at least my body, and all my possessions. As I flew over them I felt myself letting them go. Then I saw my family, friends, country and humanity at large. As I flew over them I noticed that I was gaining altitude and it was easier to let them go. I could see the future off in the distance but I was loosing interest in all that was manifest.

In this vision I became aware of something above me. It was not actually a something only a calling, a feeling that I was being called upward. It called me upward to what I did not know. But the strength of its attraction became intense.

I was aware that all the things of the world below me were calling to. I could hear my family and friends calling. I could hear humanities cry but I nothing to offer them. I could only suffer watching their suffering and the pain of that was too much. It seemed that my only way out of the pain was death. Earth represented life, for it is what sustained me, both body and soul.

As my attention became more and more dominated by that which was calling me above I noticed that the plane was angling upward more and more. The pull of earth, the pull of gravity was trying to hold me back but the engines were pushing me forward, upward. But I began to run out of power. I did not have the power to go beyond the pull of earth, of the gravity of humanity. I was beginning to stall.

Then I noticed a lever in the cockpit that I had not seen before. I instantly know that if I pulled the lever I would jettison the wings and landing gear. This would mean that there was no turning back, no coming back to the world and all that had sustained me before, no service to humanity.

I put my hand on the lever and trembled with great anguish and outright heartbreak. But I knew that I had exhausted all options available to me. I knew not what I could do for myself or for my family, friends and humanity at large. I was of no value to myself or others. Pulling the lever meant that I was going to die and that hurt, but I had no options available to me.

I pulled the lever and the plane immediately felt lighter. The plane (or should I say rocket now) immediately surged ahead to the unknown, to the deep and dark space and that which was calling me. The vision ended here, but I realized I was utterly and completely defeated...

I also realized that my desire was what stood between me and what I wanted. My desire was my will. As Jesus had said, "Not my will but Thy will be done." (Luke 22:42) My last desire, my last effort of will was to know God. I had to let go of this desire too. This desire was all that had motivated me for years. It is what I thought I wanted. I had suffered much just to get to a place were I even knew what I wanted and now I knew that I had to let this good. I was totally defeated.

My sense of defeat here was as complete as it could be. There was nothing left in me. I had no fight left in me. I did not even desire to eat or do anything to keep my body alive. I was done with everything. I did not care about ANYTHING any more. I had surrendered my soul.

I learn a trick here that really worked. If I had some belief or habit that I realized was not working for me then I would offer it to God or the Universe as a gift. I might say to God, If you want this to go then take it, otherwise leave it with me. In doing this it took the burden off my hands and relieved me of the stress of changing myself. Later, I used this technique on some of my more obnoxious behavior that people kept telling me had to go. I was not sure they had to go so I gave them up to the Universe and if they stayed then they were suppose to stay and if they left then that was what it should be.

Meditation is the skill of letting go.

I had many hallucinations while meditating. One particularly nice one was this experience of tremendous softness. I felt as if I was in the hands of God. I felt so cradled and protected.

I remember that television advertisement for Allstate Insurance where they would say, "You are in good hands with Allstate," then cup their hands together and then a family was superimposed into the hands. I felt like that family only the hands were God's.

This feeling was so soft and gentle after having such a hard time lately that I wept deeply.

This experience was no different than the experience of being bitten by the monster except it was more pleasant, much more pleasant. I felt afterwards as if everything was going to be alright. I really did fill that my life was in the good hands of God and that He would take care of everything now.