The Incorporeal Hereditament of Richard Llewellyn Williams

Sacred Places on Sour Soil

A Spiritually Based Autobiography

~Memoires De La Vie Privee Vita~

A Different View of My Visit to This Existence

A Preambulatory Remark

   “Sacred Places” are serenity candles lighting the way, often unidentified and sometimes disguised moments of discovery in my life when I came away with a lasting value.

 “Sour Soil” is the world of material distraction, the often darker side of my struggle to face and overcome the life-tests I have been given.

It is meant to be a first-person narrative document; hence, there is no reference to dates of birth, scholastic graduations, attempts at finding a life partner, etc.  Only rarely will I name anyone or anything and will do so only when I believe it necessary to clarify the meaning of my thought.  What I do feel to be necessary is a pen of open honesty and a paper of my best effort to banish the defenses of my ego in my recollection.  The object is to chart as truthfully as possible the paths I have taken either by choice or by circumstance.  I will speak of the choices encountered in the road as confrontations involving the exercise of my conscience (given my understanding at the time) and my cognitive free will to determine what of value resulted, and how I called upon those early lessons in the attempt to solve later life problems.  This, I believe, is why I am a visitor to this existence.

The baseline I will use is not complicated:  Security as defined on any material level is not permitted.  However, esoteric security is permitted and such includes selflessness, humility, inner honesty, tolerance, and whatever bank balance of Truth tools I might then have in my account.  The scope of testing is not set by me and hence it is not subject to modification.  Testing per se, both past and present, have occurred and will occur with minimal notice.

The form given to this testing is made to be understandable to everyone who reads this; its form is generically referred to as “life’s problems.”  These come in all sizes.  They are broken down into countless categories and variations, some of which are:  illness, divorce, the death of someone close to us, betrayal, arrest, a loss of job or home, etc.  So, this is an inventory too, not simply to uncover scars from the past, but to identify and organize my past inspirations of value in my life’s journey. 

I pray that at the moment of my departure, that these thoughts might frame my response.

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How Could I Be Prepared For That Which I Did Not Know?

 

A Precatory Thought…

“Anyone who talks of the divine encounter without at least wishing he could write poetry is talking about nothing at all.  He is guilty of the supreme conceptualism, offering something apparently alive, which is worse than offering something manifestly dead.  He is opening up before the thirsty wanderer the mirage that is the final exacerbation of thirst.”

                                                                                                                                                    

(April, 2011: Dom Sebastian Moore, a Benedictine monk of Downside Abbey (UK) for 72 years (aged 94 years), God is a New Language, 143-144).

The Spiritual Life Journey

A

pproximately three weeks after I was born, I began to drink alcohol.  Not beer or wine, but the hard stuff… Scotch whiskey, or so I was told.  I drank a one-ounce shot at bedtime each day for the first nine months of my life.  I was 6 lb. 6 oz. when born.

My father’s only brother died of malnutrition when he was three weeks old.  He couldn’t keep food down.  My father also had this condition.  I was told that it was “the colic” and evidently I had inherited it.  A bacterium in the stomach causes gas to form and this causes the infant pain… and I was keeping my parents up all night.  My father had to get up early in the morning and go to work.  My godfather had a brother who was a medical doctor.  Antibiotics were something then very new and not generally available so he did what medicine then held to be proper procedure.  A jigger of whiskey was put into my bottle of warm milk at bedtime.  The daily blood alcohol level given my averaged weight over my first nine months at best estimate would have been roughly .57.  

Evidently I must have slept well, and I can only presume that my parents did too.

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A

rriving nearly with my first streams of memory, religion was not a back seat item. It was there.  It might as well have arrived inside of a symbolic family box, and I remember it being somewhere behind the word “order” but ahead of “manners.”  That box, as I was made aware, contained all of the truths I was to place my “faith” in    -forever.  Likewise symbolic, I also seem to remember something about there being a small sealed envelope within that box that indicated some warning.  The meaning was unclear, but I think it was something on the order of:  ‘Spirituality: Advanced Users Only.’  I wasn’t supposed to touch this envelope and as a child I never did.  Never one time did it occur to me that my parents, my grandparents, or every nun and priest in the entire world might be mistaken about anything involving this matter they called “religion.”

  

I

was born in a borough of a big city and raise entirely in that environment.  There were Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics, German, and Polish Catholics, and I was sure these were among countless other varieties.  It seemed to me as if the religion of the world was the “28 Flavors of Catholicism.”  As my childhood progressed, the image of the symbolic box of truths seemed to fade but what it contained didn’t, to wit:  a mandate not to question anything respecting the subject of religion.

During grade school, occasionally a priest would be invited to our house.  It was always some friend of my mother’s or my grandmother’s, some son of someone who had gone into the seminary instead of getting married.  Each time just prior to his arrival the air became noticeably altered as if someone of great mystery and influence, someone bearing expressions of the divine manner, was coming to visit us.  I remember wanting to be invisible but I distinctly remember not being allowed to.  The priest would always have an informal name too, like “Father Bill’ or “Father Ed.”  When I was about five or so I remember Father Ed asking me if I would like to go to see the rectory with him that next Sunday afternoon.  I didn’t know what to say so in a very happy tone of voice I nervously blurted out something to the effect- “Sure, I’ve got nothing else to do!”  Immediately the mortified voices of my mother and grandmother shouted out my name in unison, this being followed by a litany of apologies submitted on my behalf.  Later, when my mother spoke of her embarrassment to my father, I remember that he simply said, “Out of the mouths of babes.”   My very first truism!  With this too came my first experience with the nuances of institutional religion… shame and guilt.  Every time, whichever priest came over, he would always leave after eating at a perfectly set table and having had the respectable three drinks and, just prior to exiting, he would bless something.  I believe this was where the household supply of Holy Water and Blessed Candles came from.

Public grade school meant the Wednesday “release from class” to go to catechism.  I never questioned about it not being a matter of my choice to go.  Order within every family I knew of was based on it being a loving dictatorship.  There was no voting on the unspoken law that was in place.

  Sometime after the time that the priest came over and I spoke inappropriate words, when I was in the second grade at about age seven, our teacher announced that there would be a “show and tell day” and each child was instructed to bring some favorite thing in to describe to the class.  Some brought in an Indian arrowhead, others a beautiful stone they brought back from a trip, etc.  My maternal grandmother had given me an electrically driven toy jeep that had a cord attached to a battery box.  It was the leading edge of toy technology then and went forward/reverse and turned right and left.  I said that I wanted to bring it with me to school the next day to demonstrate.  I remember that my mother and grandmother were delighted with my choice of what to bring but my father abruptly and in an absolute voice said no.  My mother and grandmother could not persuade him to change his mind.  He sat me down and spoke only to me.  He gently said that there might be some other boy who couldn’t afford a toy like this.  I didn’t fully understand why he said no.  He never used the words “jealous” or “envious;” he just inferred that it wouldn't be the right thing to do.  To my recollection, it was my first life-test involving choice, however postured by my father, as to the trappings of the material world and of being considerate of the feelings of others.

In mid-fifth grade, I found myself unexpectedly and quite abruptly being transferred to the local Catholic grade school.  It was again a decision made out of my hearing, and I am sure that saying goodbye to my first school friends was not a factor anyone took into consideration.  The work at Catholic school was much harder and the classes were three times larger.  So was the discipline and punishment dispensed.  “Religion” was a now a subject, no different than arithmetic, history, and, along with “Mass Attendance,” these were now additional graded items on my report card.

Growing up in our home gave me a front row seat as to the differences between the institutional religion of Catholicism and the essence of Christianity.  Both of my parents loved me.  I was very fortunate.  My father loved my mother and would always kiss her after dinner before he washed the dishes (my job was to dry them).  My mother allowed herself to be loved by my father.  She was ever mindful that she did not marry a wealthier man (a doctor was periodically mentioned), and I am sure that my grandmother routinely made this point clear to her.  That’s just the way the codfish were.

My mother taught me by her example as did my father by his.  She would bow her head when driving past a church and told me to do the same.  When my father saw a crippled person, he would never fail to comment, “There, but for the Grace of God, go you or I,” another early truism.  My mother was concerned about both her own image and that of the family, especially with regard to the neighbors; my father much less so.  “Either people like me or they don’t,” was my father’s outlook.  He never sought after popularity.  My mother said her daily prayers and concluded with the rosary, as was the ritual.  It would take her about a half an hour.  My father would always drop my mother and (her) family entourage off at the front door of the church and then park the car in a nearby dirt lot.  He would always leave about five minutes early, after communion and just before the final prayers (which ended with “Go in peace”), in order to have the car in front of the Church when we got out.  My mother’s people would routinely whisper criticisms towards him for this and I do not recall even once that they expressed appreciation for they not having to walk through the snow or mud or that the car was warmed and waiting in front of the church door when they got out.

In lieu of saying daily prayers, my father often got up extra early on mornings following a night when it had snowed.  In the still very dark early morning, maybe 6:00 o’clock or so, a number of times I awoke to hear the sound of a snow shovel scraping along the sidewalk in front of our house.  After five minutes of this there was always a pause of about fifteen seconds and then it would begin again, only this time the sound would be further away.  One morning I got up and looked out of my bedroom window.  In the light of the street lamp, I saw that he was shoveling the sidewalk in front of the house of the old lady who lived next door to us.  That evening I comment that I had seen him and he quickly hushed me up with a wave of his hand.  He didn’t want any mention of this.

My mother as well as her entire family drank daily.  It was their statement of being of the “manor born.”  As to my father, I never saw him even once drink a drop of alcohol but he had liquor in the house at all times to assure that guests and my mother could call upon it if wanted.  The weekly trip to the liquor store was as routine as going to the meat market.  My mother’s brother, an FBI agent, lived around the block.  At about nine o’clock, he and usually two or more neighbors (which often included the village doctor), would come over to our house nearly every night to socialize.  This primarily meant to have free drinks and to comment (gossip) about someone or about some local event.  After about fifteen minutes my father would politely get up and excuse himself, saying that he was going upstairs to get ready for bed because he had to get up early the next morning to take the train to work (evidently no one else did).  I never heard my father say anything behind someone’s back.  His way was to go directly to the face of the neighbor, a stranger or a relative whose path by words or actions had crossed that of the family.  I asked my father why he didn’t drink when all of the family got together over the holidays (which exclusively meant my mother’s relatives).  His response to my inquiry about his not ever being “three sheets to the wind” (his expression) was simply,

“I’m silly enough without drinking.”

H

igh school saw me first going to a local parochial school but that frankly proved not to meet with parental satisfaction because of the “he has to get into a good college” criterion.  The public high school was generally accepted as being a better secondary education, at least for the science and math levels.  So in my second year I attended the local public high school; this is what my father had long advocated for.  He felt that we were no better or no worse than anyone else and said to me that someday I would have to ride on the same bus with all people.  Any form of pretentiousness was repugnant to him.  As to the public high school, it didn’t work out too well either but not because of academics:  my maternal grandmother had come to live with us.

The first time I sensed something not being in harmony on an incorporeal level regarding my faith/religious software was during the year that my grandmother came to live with us.  It was the end of my sophomore year in the public high school.  I must say something about my maternal grandmother.  She was a strong woman and had been a public grade school teacher.  And now her health was progressively failing.  Indeed she loved me; I could do no wrong in her eyes.  It wasn’t easy for my father because she was the matriarch of the family, the mother of his wife, and the widow of a “doctor” (who was actually a dentist).  In a multitude of ways she was accepted everywhere as the protectorate of the extended family regardless of geographical distance, that is… everywhere except in my father’s home.  To boot, she also had the loot… and she often lavished expensive purchases on my mother and me. 

My father simply could not afford to buy a new fur coat for my mother.

  

Around this time (I had not acclimated very well at either of the two secondary institutions), I chose to take to the road in late summer in my grandmother’s Chevy.  I had just turned seventeen.  It was accepted by everyone that she would never use this car again and I had just gotten my driver’s license.  One weekend I drove up to a large New England city northeast of us with a few dollars I had saved from working that summer.  It was mid-August.  One thing led to another and a few weeks later I found myself taking, without the knowledge of my family, an entrance exam at a preparatory school.

This particular school was founded in the 1920’s as a college and was, until the conclusion of the October Revolution, the Czarist Russian retreat for embassy personnel. Historically, it was known under a titled family name which was the origin name of the estate on the historical charter.  Following the vacancy of the Romanovs’, our government was not keen on turning over American real estate to the Bolsheviks.  Thus the government searched far and wide and eventually found, in Chicago, twenty three Lithuanian priests who in -strictly geographical terms- were the closest culturally-linked benefactors to the 360 acres and stately period buildings so situated thereon.

There were priests there when I arrived but they were among a number of lay teachers as well.  The majority of the priests stayed across the road in a noviate house about a mile or two away, but a few stayed on the grounds of the school.  On more than one occasion I saw two of them take off their cassocks and physically fight... I mean literally beat the tar out of one another.  They honestly seemed to enjoy the pain.  Also, I witnessed near nightly drunkenness and in one case a relationship with a female, the sister of a local mechanic.  I saw righteousness following each in the aftermath as if God had sanctioned their conduct.  This was the first time that I felt my religious static internally undulate.  I took this impression with me to college but my belief in religion as a part of my life remained intact.  The matter of my vagueness concerning the word spirituality, which I heard being used more and more, was still a hidden matter within the fabric of my religious understanding.  If asked, I would have defined these words as synonymous.

Preparatory school education is, well, what one takes from it.  It was there that I began an independent identity.  Frankly, there was no choice about it as it was a matter of survival.  I began refining my previously unexamined thoughts on the meaning of friendship, of love, and how to deal with the sensitivities of my ego.  There I made my first higher caliber friendships.  Being immersed in my first exposure to major literature, I was particularly interested in what made a man a “Byronic Hero.”  I was a stranger at this school and was alone for the first time in my life.  But really, I wasn’t.  When I went home for a holiday, after just a few days I wanted to go back… not to the school per se but to being a part of some new and not yet fully understood identity.  I felt inspiration and an inner strength for the first time.  Against the odds of youthful distractions, I began to find that learning was exciting.  I learned to play music and how to use music and writing as a form of personal reflection.  I learned the commitment within teamwork and first embraced competitive sports.  Most importantly however I began to understand what pro-active rather than reactive means and I took two tools with me from this experience.  In the face of someone, as my first experience with this… a priest attempting to bring me into their reality, someone one inch from my nose screaming and getting spit all over me, I learned to think of the mortar between the bricks on a large wall in front of me …and of nothing else.  I learned not to react when I was being pushed by someone to do so and not to show any sign of fear, sadness, or any other emotion that could be read when necessity called on me to do this.  I learned that there are times when someone will try to manipulate my emotions for their own purposes.  I came to understand that the highest form of abuse -indifference- sometimes needs to be utilized, but only in dire situations.  Secondly, I learned to step back in the face of crisis or a difficult decision by first asking myself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”  I believe that it was there that I began to learn that life itself is what I take from it and that I have to participate in life and not to be just a spectator to someone else’s.

C

ollege came for me by my going off to a well-known middle sized Midwestern city.  It was considerably smaller in geographic size and population than the other two cities I had previously come to know.  It was there that I discovered the Jesuits, the masters of the paradoxically ecclesiastic yin/yang.  The under-the-radar impression of them I had held prior to that point was something between being mysterious, very learned and being, well… sort of religious Marines.  And speaking of Marines, at that time the war in Indochina was escalating exponentially and it was polarizing the entire nation.  The reactions to this war were historically out of tune with previous enthusiasms held respecting our military participation.  People more than just questioned it; many vehemently opposed it.  And the word “morality” was being used more and more frequently too.  It seemed as though the entire country was experiencing a social nervous breakdown or perhaps even a national identity crisis.  Neither can I overlook nor do I minimize the tsunami-like entrance of marijuana that seemed to just come out of nowhere, and also the debut and mass availability of the birth control pill.

One day amidst all of this, the dean of my Catholic university decided to pose for the press along with the dean of the other even larger Midwestern Catholic university.  They were photographed arm-in-arm with the nation’s President in solidarity on the morning after the disclosure of his secret and illegal invasion of yet one more foreign country.  The two deans pledged not to allow their universities to embarrass the federal administration by permitting demonstrations or protests.  There went the threads that were holding the fabric of my religious structure together.  I stopped going to Mass on Sunday; it seemed hypocrisy to do so.  Religion was now political!  My reaction although emotional didn’t seem at all wrong to me.  But inside of me there was what I can only describe as a vacuum filled with unsettled feelings.  I wasn’t able to put a definition on what this was.  In reflection I believe this emptiness was a tear within my self-identity.

I wrote many songs that year, and among some two dozen or so one was entitled “The Conspiracy” and another “Pale Green Skies.”   I attempted to describe the spiritual crisis that was then going on within me.  Within the multi-faceted storm shared by so many of my generation I assigned this rejection of institutional religion to the back burner as being less important than other issues, some of which included:  ‘What did I want to do with my life;’ ‘The conviction that I had finally found real love with the woman I was then with;’ ‘The polarization from my family back East,’ ‘The what about money thing,’ ‘The constant presence of marijuana being increasingly a part of the social environment,’ ‘The distraction of never ending influx of incredible music;’ and, along with about another dozen things, ‘The constant reality about going to the Mekong Delta if my grade point average were to slip below a C.’

I

 n an attempt to simply boost my grade point and nothing more, I took an academic transfusion by enrolling in four theology classes.  One was from an Episcopalian priest, two were from Jesuits, and the fourth was taught by a layman.  The first three proved to be the predictable waste of time but the last one snuck up on me and it began appealing to something deep inside of me.  The syllabus listed this class as: 

  “Atheism and Theism.”

The first half of the term dealt with the mainstays of atheism:  Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, etc., and ended with Sartre and Camus.  We had to read one or two writings from each individual.  This was new and very heavy stuff for me!  At the mid-term, I was absolutely convinced that I was an atheist.    As the term started its second half, then it introduced “The Theists.”  I had no idea of what to expect but I remember taking note that it curiously did not deal with any of the expected religious types such as saints, etc., and it never focused directly on the man called Jesus.  I had heard that a Jesuit education might be one where I could expect to see a curve ball thrown every now and then, but this was a Catholic university and all of the theists presented, except for one, were Protestants!  Beginning with Kierkegaard (this also was my first contact with existentialism of any type), from Tillich to Van Buren to Bonheoffer, etc., well, I was absolutely blown away in a completely different direction.  The term ended with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in his day a world recognized paleontologist, and also a Jesuit.  I could not escape being beside myself with energy.  I felt inspired, as if I had just discovered electricity!  

A

 t about this same time I serendipitously came to meet a most unusual man.  He was about twice my age, maybe more, and appeared to be a quiet and calm fellow always dressed in an open shirt and casual trousers.  I was in the student union when I learned that this man who sat quietly just reading a book was actually a priest …and a Catholic one at that!   The circle of people whom I knew told me that he was a “Cistercian.”  I had never before heard that word.  He appeared to be someone different.

Again, after the Atheism and Theism class I absolutely understood that I was absolutely not an atheist.  Frankly, I didn’t know what I was.  I had not yet come to terms with the personal matter of religion in light of what I could see going on around me every day.

  

The next time I saw this man, who once again was reading by himself in the student union, I decided to approach him and introduce myself.  He was a very gentle type of person and he seemed to me not at all like the costumed religious men in black that I had been exposed to up to then.  I said, “Father, I have a problem finding God.”  He paused, and with a calming little laugh said, “Just what do you see in a newborn baby’s face?” and then immediately continued by asking me, “What do you feel when you wake up in the woods to the first light of dawn?” That’s all he said!  Not in a voice of instruction he suggested that it wasn’t important to put a face on feelings that I knew within me to be inherently true but had never really focused on …and that the words “beauty” and “innocence” were naturally insufficient to describe something so universally understood as such things consisted of so much more.  There was no image for God!   It wasn’t the “who is God” or the “who will save us” …but the “where” of God as in the reflection in all things in immensity of nature, beauty and innocence!  So socratically was this offered to me that he never had to address the issues of the institution of religion and matter of spirituality that I had sought answers for.  Rather, he tacitly gave me permission to at least consider that spirituality and organized religion might not necessarily be synonymous.

I

recall it to have been this way:  Every single day the air seemed to be electrically charged.  Tearing down the walls of what I had previously accepted seemed to be the destiny of this time and I needed to be a part of it; very little now seemed to be off-limits.  However, the vitality of change contained flaws in my emotional thinking that were perhaps somewhat similar to the “all killing is done in the name of liberty” issues that history recorded during the French Revolution.  I didn’t remember my father’s words to me when from time to time he would quote George Bernard Shaw…

“Youth is such a wonderful thing; it’s too bad that it’s wasted on the young.”

I thought I had enough conclusions to speak and then act on them.  I thought I had better answers than those the previous generation had given me.  I thought this flood of freedom had given me a revolutionary new enlightenment that entitled me to some newfound and grandiose self-confidence.  My father had said to me numerous times when I was growing up that he had once been a “young Turk” in his earlier thinking; I never thought about what he meant by it.  The challenge for my generation to do what was suddenly deemed acceptable or at least idealistically now possible, almost as a mandate to discard all that was seen as restricting and long overdue, appeared as almost my individual duty to pursue.  To the understanding I then held, I was a part of a generation that was on the outside of the curve and we somehow understood what true freedom really meant and it became the singular identity of what we were now a part of.  Everything was a matter of “can do” -from fixing racial inequality, going to the moon, to the getting rid of a politically corrupt administration.  It was our country and we were a generation larger in numbers than any that came before it.  In the name of freedom we wanted everything and just assumed “why can’t we?”  The institutions of politics, of organized religion, the very fabric of education itself, and in fact, who we were as a society, were under constant review.  And so questioned was the word, “marriage.”

S

ome no longer believed in marriage.  But I did.  I wanted to be the hero in some woman’s life.  My traditional Catholic upbringing instructed that men and women were to postpone their urges until we knew who we were and could take on the responsibilities of such a commitment.  This postponement seemed impossible but I inherently agreed with the “to the exclusion of all others” part that was customarily attached to this.  Others didn’t.  This reality saw an embracing of the pill in times then absent of the “forever” consequences of the sexually transmitted diseases, as well as scrapping the puritanical fences of female conduct via the pill, the previous norm.  I never took time to listen, much less to ask, those who loved me the most.

I was proud to share my identity with this one special person who had intertwined herself with me and felt that I was fortunate to have someone like this consider me to be her life’s partner.  I believed that she and I were the perfect set of ‘his and hers.’  I saw my role in marriage to be primarily one which involved protecting and providing for my spouse and my future children.  My thinking software however also included my preparatory school thinking of would Lord Byron show all his cards to a woman?  I never questioned whether this Romantic period model of the male mystique might not be a valid one.  I chose to hold some of my cards close to me.  I played with matches from day one.  I obviously did not understand very well the concept behind the word partnership.  I saw this word meaning equal but gender-separate in application as to different realms of family decision making.  All families that I had been privy to inclusive of my own seemed to have worked this way.  I never questioned what “love” meant because I thought that I knew the subject satisfactorily and that it was okay to leave this somewhat suspended in some point in time.  Likewise was my concept of what “home” meant, and even the word, “success.”  I didn’t believe that my understandings could be all that different from that of the woman whom I felt truly knew me and was to be my wife.  But I never asked her and these matters were not often discussed.  Perhaps I was in some ways unapproachable.  I heard but rarely did I truly listen to her heart.  I was ill-equipped and hence not ready to enter into a life-lasting marriage, but I thought that the learn-as-you-go option was one that would just naturally be there.  Sometimes it isn’t.

Ego had a singular dimension, and self …well, I then understood this to be the foundation of strength, perhaps in the context of self-confidence.  In any case, as in selfless, this shared identity was discounted before it even went on the new chapter table except in solitary resolution.  Rather it was more like separate in the hope that it might become a mutually supportive response of coming to the aid of one another if ever called upon.  This being said, intimacy then meant something quite one-dimensional.  There was little focus given with regard to the support and encouragement towards my spouse as to her dreams and aspirations.  She had chosen me for being me and I chose her for being her and, frankly to me, this then seemed to be the extent of it.  I thought I knew too what tolerance, patience, and ‘just being there’ were.  I felt that compassion, understanding, and the importance of time spent alone with my life partner were things that didn’t need a special thought.  I felt that I was fair because no one had ever told me that I wasn’t, or at least I don’t remember hearing this.  Rationalizing was as much a part of me as shifting through the gears of a car in order to get somewhere.  The value of resentment was a spice I sometimes used to season unpleasantness.  I never truly placed myself entirely into someone else’s shoes, even those of the woman I was sure I loved.  I didn’t know what many important words meant, and…

I had just become a college graduate.

W

hen our first child was born, I remember well how overcome I was with becoming a father.  As a man, I felt that a great gift had been given to me.  I remember thinking …this child will someday be the one who will bury me, and I felt the joy of the third dimension in this thought and feeling.  I felt something new and complete in me, and it stayed with me.  I felt very happy for both of us and for our parents too.  For the first time I was able to say that I understood what loving someone more than myself meant without any reservation.  I told this to my father and the absence of a response from him told me that he understood exactly what I was saying.  I wanted to work harder, not to waste time, to plan and to dream for what was now truly a family.  

I felt that I had entered into a new awareness of life.

When I turned that corner, I learned that entirely giving up one’s prior ways is often more easily said than done.  This was a big new neighborhood.  It seemed that simply to protect and provide -what I thought encompassed my male mandate- abbreviated the flight manual.  I thought I knew what I needed to do but I didn’t comprehend the depth of the “and care for” part which was considerably more than just implied.  I worked, came home, but acted not truly as I needed to within a balanced marriage.  It never occurred to me that I, up to that point successful in nearly all I had set out to do, might have a defective understanding of this critical issue which was affecting many other lives.  As silent witness my spouse became worn in a vacuum without spiritual solidarity and over time I felt the unspoken distance.  I rationalized that stress and not making enough money were the causes; those indeed were difficult financial times.  I routinely excluded her without realizing that I was doing so.  I placed other interests ahead of hers often without giving a second thought.  I drifted further into the “me” during times of financial pressures and used diversions of playing music, grandiose home projects, ever-larger camping trip entourages, and unilaterally decided on business expenditures to avoid the actual reality of our family’s needs.  However, albeit without intention, my gift to her had become one of loneliness and a ticket to a life of predictable complacency.

There were five and one-half years separating the older children and the little boys.

O

ur fourth child was born at home.  Times continued to be dire in terms of the economy and attainment always seemed to be somewhere just over the next horizon.  And there were the three new small children at home -a job equally if not more stressful as mine was each day as I attempted to bring home more money.  Fatigue set in over months, and these months became years without relief being anywhere in sight.  This childbirth, however glorious, was a silent culmination of the months that had preceded it.  Despite occasional pleasant moments, the norm at home was one of emotional non-solidarity.  I thought that in time it would just go away, that things would get better.  I believed I was doing what was required of me but I failed to appreciate the depth of the necessary and sacred subordination that I as a male must completely surrender to during this time when a new life comes into the world.  I simply did not understand what I needed to know.  Following this birth there was a widening distance rather than a renewal of the bond that was felt after the births of the first three children.  And the quiet reverberations became more frequent.  I wrongly felt that my contributions to the family were not being appreciated.  I didn’t understand the selflessness that was required of me, a comprehension of what true partnership was, or even how to define the real meaning of intimacy.  It was if I had inherited a complete absence of references.  I was lost and didn’t, or wouldn’t, recognize it.  However I reacted, in truth it was out of confusion and I often felt internal anger; I too was suffering and I too felt alone.

Over time and in my own silence I tried to fathom what I could.  It began with why, over the lengthy birth process, had I felt so troubled in my role as a husband.  Over time I began to understand that it involved the letting go of my “self” in a natural surrender and this had to do with a lack of reflection which pertained to my ego.  I was a man and not the bearer of life; my role was to be of assistance to my wife in her primary task within the childbirth process.  I felt some small degree of enlightenment come from this realization that I needed to be of service to her but sadly little more.  

After childbirth there is a need for calm and collective happiness within the family and this was not the case.  Our next child was again born at home in our bed.  All of the children were there and it happened largely without real medical presence.  I recall the wonderment as this son’s hand appeared first and then his little arm aside his head.  He seemingly to be waving “hello” to the world.  I felt more at ease with the feeling of being a partner in service, and I felt a peaceful freedom from being of quiet assistance.  A much needed vacation did not remedy the tension however as now there were five and the economy had actually gotten worse.  Finding that enough income was becoming more difficult to achieve and I wrongfully attributed the unhappiness of my spouse to this lack of security.  This was my job, I thought, and I was failing at it.  I blamed myself.  I had never known defeat before.  I gradually began to feel unworthy and for the first time felt that maybe all things might not be possible.  It was not a matter of it being a dishonest analysis:  I lacked the skills of self-reference.  The pregnancy of our sixth child, not the birth, triggered more isolation.  It was disruptive.  With this came a feeling of desperation in us both, a ‘where will it ever end’ feeling, and most certainly a deeper feeling of separate emptiness.  I couldn’t find the problem that was all around me.

I thank the higher sense within me that alcohol, drugs, gambling, or any outwardly abusive behavior were not present when the demise occurred.  Our youngest son had just had his fifth birthday.  I did not have any idea that the end was coming.  I was in prolonged disbelief and had no understanding of how to remedy what I couldn’t comprehend.  I indeed tried.  This was my first and only experience with anxiety and I learned about it by way of its catalogue of symptoms.  I could not sleep and felt that my identity was suddenly absolutely undefined as a husband and that I had no power of my will to even locate a starting point.  I wondered who I then was and what could I do …about anything.  Moreover, I had no third dimension vision of what the future would be.  I attempted to gain some stability by trying to understand what “love” -the kind that can last a lifetime- meant.  I had no place to go to that offered any relief, so I found myself at the library at night.  I filtered through definitions and found but five meanings that had value out of some fifty.  But it didn’t relieve the constant awareness that my children were also suffering deeply as witnesses to this and that I could not offer any plan for real hope of the family repairing itself.  I prayed that this dark dream would end.

It took a very long time.  I tried not to give up hope even after it ended.  This was my family, my only family.  I turned to and returned again to organized religion but to no avail.  I knew too that throughout this it was not any easier for my spouse; when a fist strikes the other hand, both hands feel pain.  I had no choice but to give time and space a chance.  But this was unbelievably difficult.  I read many books, I spoke with those who had the courage to try to talk or offer a few hours of music, or just walk with me in the woods.  I came to realize that my willpower had no benefit in matters such as this, but this understanding did not immediately show itself.  I felt this must be happening for some need to cleanse something within me.  I asked for hope and faith to continue trying to understand what was being asked of me.  I was also afraid of what the false reality of anxiety would sometimes say to my mind.  I came to understand that in this life one cannot believe everything that he or she thinks.

 

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark.

The real tragedy of life is when men/women are afraid of the light.

~Plato

F

ifteen years following the dissolution of the original family unit I had a longing desire to give myself to just one person once again.  I have always believed in marriage where a man can give to one woman and a woman can care for some man in her life and extend the converse to each other.

Like all else in life it is a choice and this time I devoted much thought to what I felt I was looking for in a life partner.  I didn’t do this analytically but by reference to commonly held values and enjoyments.  After fifteen years of reflection I did not want to fail again.  Indeed it was a long time of self-questioning and attempting to rebuild an identity that was worthy enough to deserve such a person.  I hoped to find someone who would likewise consider herself fortunate in finding me.  I wanted to be of special meaning to someone.  Over time, one day this opportunity did come.

I

n the aftermath of my first marriage, a period of very deep loneliness set in and I did not recognize it at the time as being one worthy of too much attention.  I remained quiet about it, and over time I thought that I would outgrow it or that it would just pass.  In the days following the divorce I felt that I was damaged goods, a rejected and discounted person.  Loneliness led me to seek isolation and this isolation saw me gradually avail myself of the use of alcohol late in the evening.  

At first it seemed to work, at least for a few hours before I would sleep.  I thought that it brought me a feeling of happiness but it gave me a lack of focus and reduced energy to live life.  Over three years’ time, drinking in the evening became nearly a daily occurrence for me and I didn’t realize that I was no longer able to drink socially as I once had.  I didn’t realize that it was a problem.  It began to have an effect on my most important element of my life, my children and my true friends.  They saw it develop and were concerned and I am sure saddened, they being the ones who loved me in the bad times as well as the good.  They saw where it was going long before I did.

  

Once impacted with the truth, after being stopped one Thursday evening, I knew what they did -instantly.  There was no period of being in denial.  I knew that I had to seriously and permanently re-adjust my thinking if I was to have any chance at holding on to any inner honesty and self-respect, to say nothing about keeping my family from further pain.  I recognized the sacrifices that each had made on my behalf, especially that made by my new wife …and all of them were very great.  I knew too that now the example I had to set was one of someone who saw the difficulty and chose, with help, to overcome it.  What I needed to reestablish left no room for gambling given what was at stake.  I was not afraid that if I chose to drink again, just one time, that terrible problems would result; I was afraid that nothing would happen and the pattern would return and all that I had gained would be destroyed.  I could not change the past.  I focused on the only thing of any value I could ever leave to others -my example.

    

"...ornament your soul with what concerns you most:  temperance, justice, piety, kindliness, reasonableness, understanding, steadfastness, love of all that is beautiful, ardor towards all that is sublime; for these are the truly flawless jewels of the soul... for though you yourself depart from life, you will never cease associating with men of education and conversing with men of eminence.”

Lucian of Samosata (c. AD 125 – after AD 180)

T

he first time that I entered the door of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I believed that it was strictly for the purpose of my sobriety, a tool at best and nothing more than that.  I went there immediately after my aforementioned realization, and I went there voluntarily with a mindset of “what harm could this do?”  I really wanted help from an impact that had left me completely mortified.

                                                                                 

What I had learned from the Cistercian priest about spirituality being a whole separate concept from that of a religious organization was certainly not on my mind that day. Neither were the thoughts on the subconscious, of what Grace was, and that “change wasn’t bad, just different” from my earlier exposure to M. Scott Peck, M.D.  That, and from the collection of truisms that I had earlier gathered, was the extent of the unorganized “good inventory” that I brought in with me on that day.  My knowledge of inspirations were no more than pleasant slogans affixed to an imaginary refrigerator door such as, “The more you give, the more that comes back to you,” and “Things happen for a reason.”  I had my lifetime of building materials within me but I didn’t know the meaning of their importance or their value to me on that spring day.

T hat day I was ready to surrender to a lot of things which I did not know of.  The first thing that newcomers deal with when they initially enter AA is the matter of “Is this some sort of religion?”  I believed that there is nothing conceptually wrong with any religious institution if it gives comfort, a feeling of community or has an inner inspiration for someone.  I understood that such institutions sometimes provide a sense of security in the contact that they provide and sometimes there’s even a rich tradition attached that has value.  I recognized from my immersion in Catholicism that I took at least two gifts, one of which was answering to my conscience, and another being the ability to forgive myself.  

Despite my imperfections, I internally have always known when something is inherently true or untrue, at least when within a non-alcoholic or otherwise affected mindset.  So thank you, Catholicism, for this benefit of conscience!

T

hat being said, I found that acceptance by others wasn’t a hurdle for anyone within the Fellowship.  I first gathered a cursory understanding of how it works and at the same time began scanning, literally everything, up down and sideways, for some type of scam which I presumed just had to there somewhere.  I never have found anything like this.  The further along I got I began, first unconsciously, to put the inchoately separated religion and spirituality understandings into an actual framework.  For some reason now it seemed possible and for some unexplained reason this excited me.  Maybe it meant that I was at long-last ready for some way out of my internal sense of unhappiness.  I frankly didn't know.

As to my initial skepticisms, coming inside I as a new person brought in some air of the “outsider” distrust.  So, I began by starting to read at length the history from the first days of the Fellowship -from non-Fellowship sources- of how this strange group of misfits came to be.  America has given birth to some outlandish movements, from the Ku Klux Klan to the temperance crusaders, and I thought that possibly I might find that this was a cousin to something that spun off of this back in the thirties.  Instead, my investigation found that how it even happened at all was nothing short of miraculous.

The more I researched this most unusual organization the more fascinated I became with it.  Nowhere was it religiously jump-started!  There was something a bit Svengali about it.  There was no money engine or even an ego platform for anyone.  I came to realize that “The Big Book,” Alcoholics Anonymous, might be the only book I ever read that’s written in the first, second, and the third person, with the first person section evolving in each subsequent edition as to the telling of some new person’s story.  I took note that not long before he died, M. Scott Peck M. D. stated in his Beyond the Road Less Travelled that the founding of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous was the only miracle he had witnessed in the 20^th Century.  I concurred with his words the moment that I read them.

T

hat yet unresolved issue of whether uncloaked spiritualism could truly stand alone from religion, the one that I had approached the Cistercian priest with more than half a lifetime ago, strangely came to center stage.  Such value became clearer to me with each passing week.  In those little rooms there was a place where guilt, shame, politics, money, and righteousness -all too often the negative trappings of institutional religion- had no place or relevancy.  It was without the structure of an institutional religion.  I saw a room without mandates and even without a presence of leadership beyond someone who proctored a meeting for an hour without requiring any money.  Money and educational level meant absolutely nothing.  It was spiritual socialism in its purist form!  People felt safe there and perhaps for some this occurred nowhere else.  I repeatedly said to myself that this is where that “storge” type of love (one of five lasting types I discovered in the library when I was seeking answers during my divorce) must reside.  The only “dogma,” I came to understand, was a personal desire, even just for that moment, to stop drinking.  I began to realize that the Fellowship gets its energy from the courage and the inspiration drawn from others in the telling of their stories and in support of someone in need, and at that moment I finally understood what Grace truly means… an energy of collective strength and inspiration.  All of the two dozen or so words that Roger Grabner, the Cistercian priest, had given to me became absolutely clear.  It was a higher power within as well as without.  Simultaneously, I understood more of what I had gathered from reading Scott Peck which had become integrated within me too.  Suggestions of what had worked for others became a hunger to reformat my very out-of-tune ego, the not reliable battery behind my willpower thinking.  I understood that the gift of conscience within me was actually a “super-ego” that could be called upon to confront and reformat the cognitive ego directing my will power.  Indeed, I was ceasing to become a spiritual spectator and beginning to become a true participant beginning on the day I said to myself, “I want what you have.”

I began to temper my ego by focusing on my reaction process; I started by employing an outlook of being proactive instead… by stepping back from the situation at the moment a problem appeared and pausing for a non-reactive direction.  This led me to writing down my entrenched negativities as a measure of their identification and the influence on me.  It began with my previously unacknowledged resentments, my suppressed guilts and my deeply guarded fears.  I admitted openly and with complete certainty that I didn’t know I had held onto most of these matters as rancid luggage inside of me.  I had thought that I was without resentments.  Once discovered, I gave no second thought to pressing the delete button as to continuing to hold onto the sludge.  It became instantly clear to me why those in desperate need so openly exclaim their desire for relief from the inner spiral of their day-to-day insanity.  Lastly, it suggested everything to me by a means which seemed to be inspiration -and I had never identified the awareness given through sheer inspiration on a level like this before.  More than once I found myself asking, “Where did this thought come from?”  I was like learning how to breathe.  I began to feel that this time I might really become the star of my own life’s movie.

A

t the same time as this “inside of me” realization was going on, I began to become aware of the Fellowship outside of me too.  I was apparent that some within AA just show up, have coffee, and wait in hope that the next shoe involving a relapse wouldn’t fall that day; I now noticed that some didn’t come to the Fellowship with this as their primary reason.  It seemed to mean something more to these people.

Not long after I began going to AA, it was curious to learn that, other than those strictly there to get a probation list signed, there are essentially two types of motherboards of thought co-existing within the Fellowship …one resigned to alcoholism, and the other truly accepting of it.  Given the openness that exists inside, I came to understand that the first type believes that this disease is life-long and that they can never drink socially again, and they do sincerely acknowledge this, but that’s pretty much it as far as real understanding is concerned.  God love them but they believe in their head and not necessarily within their heart that by simply keeping out of temptation’s way, by attempting to stay sober by coming to meetings and having a like-minded copasetic type of sponsor, well, this is what it’s all about.  The other alcoholic, the type that fascinated me, understood and accepted all that the other type does (and just as seriously), but they also seem to be driven by a continuing “I want what you have” desire, i.e., a real inner and lasting happiness, and they try to pursue it daily as though it were an insatiable thirst for water.  This type of person seemed to understand that the Fellowship is sort of an evolving university of the inner spirit.  These individuals see the Fellowship as a gift, and that it exists to help find spiritual strengths in a belief that keys to greater awareness to answers which are often gathered by selfless service to others in need.  From honest and humble inspiration in the community of a meeting, they could repeatedly discover that which leads to a greater sense of serenity.  In other words, I came to realize that some in AA act on a resolution not to drink, and some act on serious decision to do this -one which they previously had made.  I didn’t want to join a club.  This second type captured my interest as to the dream of spiritual evolution being more than a fairy tale.

Again, and without any pre-warning, inspiration threw open the warehouse door that held my Teilhard de Chardin exposure that had remained dormant so long inside of my memory.  As what I might do with these at that point, I still did not know but I had a premonition that I might find out if this new river of awareness kept running within me.

M.

 Scott Peck, M.D., in a lecture late in his life, had referred to alcoholism as the “sacred disease” because AA led the mind consistently to an openness to accept that the strength of spirituality that comes from within.  It also gave the strength of a support structure by way of meeting with other alcoholics through suggestions being made from a forum of a non-judgmental community.  It spoke of matters both big and small which appeared as problems as a “testing” given repeatedly and often in different forms over the duration of our individual lives.  He presented the matter of Grace as a living force both within me and also outside of me in all of nature and in others, and what is within me quite possibly may have something to do with actual instruction being given from my own subconscious.  When it manifests itself, I came to understand, it is a form of communication to my cognitive mind by way of premonitions, notions, hunches, and, of course, by inspiration, all of which usually just seem to come out of nowhere.  For most of my life I had ignored such things or maybe I just simply dismissed them.

A number of years ago I found that a particular meeting named “New Hope” was a most unusual one but I didn’t initially understand why this was.  It was an old meeting in terms of time that it existed and also because of its strict adherence to the original charge of staying on-topic regarding the Big Book and the Steps.  John was chairing it then.  In New Hope they didn’t play party games by allowing discussions to drift into subjects such as dysfunctional families, passive/aggressive behaviors, etc.  They didn’t have to inquire whether Grace might show up because she always showed up!  There was little rhetoric and there wasn’t the disappointment of redundancy.  In that meeting, well, it didn’t just seem to work …it did work and not just for me.  I tried never to miss John’s meeting.  After a few months, I was again moved to go back and read for the third time M. Scott Peck’s, Road Less Travelled.  I seemed to understand so much more of what it speaks of in simple human terms.  I began working the Steps again too and found that I had seemed to have reached a new level of awareness.  At New Hope, I was silently aware that I wasn’t ever alone and that my Grace could enjoy an hour of the inspirations of many other “Graces.”  Often the roof seemed to rise. 

About fifteen months later, John’s two-year max on Chairing was approaching its end, and Friday he asked me if I would take over New Hope.  I did not feel myself worthy or anywhere near ready.  I felt deep doubt in my ability to be of any real service on this level, but I found myself accepting.

W

hen I agreed I felt the need to work the Twelve Steps yet again and this time I did it with improved and seasoned guidance of one with understanding.  About this time for some unknown reason I was also driven to locate the old folders which held my college theism papers, and within just a few days I actually found my Tillich, Bonheoffer, Chardin, etc., research that I had written back in college.

 I remember being not at all at ease for my first meeting as Chair.  I stumbled through what it says to do on the laminated Chairperson’s sheet.  I do recall that I had thought I might begin the meeting by using the name of New Hope as the name of an imaginary town towards which a train full of souls was going home on.  It didn't work very well.  I cannot remember what the topic was that day, but I do remember that it mercifully wasn't a “default” for which I would have to choose a focal point.  The next week wasn't much easier.  I remember feeling as though I could never do this job as John had done for so long.  But my enthusiasm didn't wane at all.  I started to do more reading.  I also joined a Big Book meeting near my home.  I wanted to hear the old and new stories.

I started with the history of how it all began.  Over long evening hours, I read story after story of the accounts of those days.  I became fascinated with a serendipitous meeting in Austria of Carl Jung and Roland Hazzard, and then with Ebby and Bill, and thereafter with Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob Smith with Bill Dotson in Ohio.  About two months into this first term as Chair, I became likewise fascinated with the early influence of the Oxford Group on the yet to be formed Fellowship and what that early excitement was all about.  Meanwhile, I was on the 4^th Step again, just past the commitment of being ready and the surrender.  The Friday 5:35 meeting came and went and over time it had become easier.

About the third month in, as I was handing in the donation money to the woman who worked behind the coffee counter, I was approached to talk at the Speaker Meeting.  I was caught by complete surprise and I didn’t know how I was to respond but simply indicated that I would.  How could I say “no” when asked to be of service to the Fellowship?  The thought of speaking to a very large group, many of which were old-timers, seemed almost absurd to me -and that I had said “yes” seemed equally crazy.

That week I did my best to invoke some inspiration and I chose to direct my thoughts on the amazing series of events that led up to the formation of Fellowship.  I also focused on “the prince of imperfection,” the genius that was within Bill Wilson.  Equally, I felt that this beginning to become spiritual awakened had everything to do with a collective agape type of love and the unqualified acceptance within the storge factor.  I wanted to speak of this as being a vehicle for the spiritual evolution of the Fellowship as it moved into the future and of its increased relevance to the entire world.  However, I was a newcomer in terms of the wisdom of the old timers who would be there en masse.  When that day came I became so caught up with this inner enthusiasm that I never did what I was there to do... to tell my story.  I delivered what I had found in the Fellowship and what I felt to be so moving in the hope that maybe someone else might feel the same way.  Well, I said my words.  Sometime later, I reflected on it and I wished that I had better understood what had worked for Bill W. rather just being so excited by who Bill Wilson was.  At that time I had failed to understand what I was there to do.  I had spoken largely in the third person and far too little in the first.

Things did get better for me at chairing the New Hope meeting.  I became more honest with myself and found a peaceful sense of humility.  Some people left but more people began coming at that most inconvenient day and time.  The meeting started to grow.

 Outside of New Hope I started to “4^th Step” many things in my life… my business, my family role, even my stagnant bowling game and I found that the courage and inspiration actually began making a difference nearly everywhere.  I decided to try to balance my personal “all-star team” of theists with Carl Jung, the inspiration behind the 2^nd Step …the one which involves the acknowledgement of intuitiveness and strength of the spirit within me in my dealings with the outside world if I only choose call upon it.

 S hortly after beginning my second year at chairing, I had to take care of numerous health matters.  Of course I became tired and physically stressed given the additional economic hardships which this brought about.  As I entered into the last six months of my term as Chair, I felt a different form of internal pressure for the first time and it wasn’t anything like anxiety, rather it was quite the opposite.  I began to receive insight almost constantly.  I can only describe it as like repairing things with the speed of Lt. Commander Data.  It didn’t come as a response to anything that I was aware of.

For some reason, I recalled what my father had said to me numerous times regarding the subject of reincarnation.  He had minored in Eastern religion and philosophy while in college during the thirties.  He said,  
“Do not believe or disbelieve.  They (the Hindus) have many more miracles that we do; they’re more recent and better documented.”  
I have never had a problem not disbelieving in things that I might not be able to comprehend.  I began remembering other things from my past too.  Those few words that the Cistercian priest had said to me many years before -about being witness to a higher vision beyond what could be sufficiently described, and that there isn’t a face to the upper reality except through where, whom or what that I experience it from.  

In one instance, a memory came to mind which involved my youngest son.  The event happened some twenty plus years prior.  Some mice had found their way into the house in the early in the fall and I had set out some poison.  One day I came home from work and my son, then about seven or so, was in the basement.  He had found four baby mice wandering around with their eyes not yet open on the laundry room floor.  He showed them to me.  He looked at me and said, “They can’t find their Mom.”  I got a plate of milk and put the baby mice outside saying that things would be okay.  But he and I knew they probably wouldn’t be.  He knew that their Mom was gone and felt the baby mice were lost and afraid.  A few months later in the spring I came home and my son was by the pool.  He said to me softly, “I saved six bugs from drowning today, Dad.”  I remember saying to him, “Good job, Matt.”  I saw again what that priest had said to me.

Shortly afterwards I recalled yet another instance where an impossible to adequately describe feeling came over to me.  I remembered a time when our family dog had to put down.  This involved witnessing the inner spirit coming from within the soul of my middle son.  At that time our dog had been the only dog in the lives of our six children.  A previous summer she had had a run-in with a porcupine when we were camping and my spouse and I tried to hold her down and pull the quills from her nose, lips and tongue.  We thought that we had gotten them all but evidently we had missed one that must have been imbedded too deeply.  In the late winter of the following year suddenly she went blind and from there things quickly worsened.  The vet explained that from the x-ray he could see that a long quill had worked its way up her nose and had now entered her brain.  There was no saving our dog.  My spouse and I agreed that I would come home early from work the next day and that the children would stay home from school to be with our dog as it was to be her last day with us.  When it came time to drive to the vet, we gave a choice to each of the children of either to go or to stay at home.  Our second son, our daughter, and this middle son were firm in their decision to go with us.  At the vet’s office our dog was lifted onto a stainless steel table and shortly afterward an injection was made.  It took about ten long seconds for our dog to die.  I tried to fight the emotion but tears welled in my eyes.  Every one of us felt that moment so deeply and we all shed tears of grief.  On the way home I held our middle son and he just could not contain himself.  He grieved so hard that he barely could speak… stuttering in gasps, and I took him next to me.  I said gently, “Why didn’t you stay home with your brothers?” He had just turned eleven at the time.  Through the spasms while trying to speak he managed to say, “Because I thought that Mavis would be scared if I wasn’t there.”  From a choked exhalation I forced the words to him, “Nate… you are a man.”

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t New Hope I was finding it increasingly difficult not to speak of these sudden awareness’s that were occurring.  However my role was to Chair and being Chair necessitates a proctorship which involves my often speaking in the third person.  I am there to be of service and Chairing, in part, is to facilitate others.  In this one truly safe place, everyone else speaks entirely from within themselves because that’s just  “How it works.”  

The meeting was getting ever larger and even the newcomers were moved to openly speak their feelings.  The topics became more centered on less topical AA issues and were focusing on ‘just why the tables work,’ ‘the source of inspiration,’ and similar esoteric thoughts.  The old timers were doing their job …they were speaking in words understandable even to the newcomers about the Steps and the value of the tables which pertained to courage, strength and collective inspiration.  Sobriety was becoming an essential grounding element to awareness and not just a matter of tunnel vision dialog.

During this time, I became aware of another new feeling.  I began experiencing an inner happiness and a true and lasting sense of calmness.  I wanted to talk about it but it seemed that there was simply no one to speak to.  I wanted to find that Cistercian priest!  It seemed that I still needed -and wanted- so much more and I just couldn’t stop the pursuit.  Inspiration inside of me was telling me where answers were, even to questions that had nothing to do with ego, the Steps, or any inner matters at all.  I was researching work that related to matters not at all akin to Fellowship issues …of music, science, history, and dozens of others that had been questions left open or “unfinished”

inside of me over the course of my life.  This wasn’t a 4^th Step “inventory” rather it was as if a force of energy was pulling me forward and not pushing me.  During the latter part of April, it settled on me that I needed to return again and find Teilhard de Chardin.

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I asked myself, “If my newly recognized deficiencies were the result of my conscious thinking when it was entirely in control of my life then, given that, why not let the ‘back seat driver,’ that which resides within my subconscious, at least share in the driving?”  While I was in an unconscious denial of even the possibility that there could be some instruction to this internal voice, and given the consistent reoccurrence via premonitions, notions, hunches, and sudden inspirations, etc., my conclusion was that I had been allowing the far weaker and less reliable mechanism exclusively make all of my life choices!  If I had understood that I could even share my decision-making process with my very own higher intellect, one that is always with me, would I not have wanted to subjugate my willpower to my higher intellect?

As I was driving to a New Hope meeting in late April, I remembered an occurrence which again had involved my middle son, something that he had said to me just after he turned twelve.  Two months following the death of our dog, the family was deeply impacted with the reality of being amidst a devastating divorce.  It came suddenly and it was quite hard on everyone especially the children.  Everyone searched in their own way for answers and reasons.  This son came to me and said with a matter-of-fact tone that the “soul” of the family was within our dog and that when she died the family unraveled.  I couldn’t dismiss that the loss of our dog had been felt deeply inside each of us and this dog was indeed a part of the family so I simply replied by saying, “Really?”  He was the child who gave deep thought to nearly everything.  I forgot his words until that moment while driving when it crossed the path of my father’s earlier words about “Out of the mouths of babes”…about truth coming from a child.  A child is closer to the pure truth and innocence carried on arrival from paradise.

l have known nearly all of my life that a dog or other animal can have an unexplained therapeutic effect on children, and especially on older people by giving comfort and a sense of meaning to their daily lives.  Dogs don’t verbally converse but somehow they do communicate none-the-less.  The cognitive part of a dog’s brain is quite small.  It can learn simple commands and not to have accidents in the house by signaling when it’s time to go out.  But this communication is not the feeling that is felt by sick children in a hospital or by isolated older people.  It is not what constitutes the “soul” of a dog.  It seems to come from a spirit that is within the dog, the subconscious instinct or some intellect that likewise tells a dog how and why to bury a bone or what to do when birthing puppies.  That intellect is not learned from their mother, father, or from a dog school.  Like our soul or our subconscious source of thinking, it’s something that doesn’t appear on an x-ray.  To science it is unexplained.  I concluded that it came with the dog when it was born and that inherent “just knowing what to do” is its subconscious instinct.  I realized that I can’t see from the dog’s eyes whether it is thinking from its cognitive brain or from its instinctive subconscious nature -or from both at the same time.  It seems that an untraumatized dog knows instinctively the correct thing to do regarding matters of survival and nature.  A dog’s cognitive brain is dwarfed by the power of the invisible instinctive essence within it.  Would a dog choose drugs or to drink alcohol …is it capable of entertaining resentments?  A dog, I acknowledged, is also most forgiving.  Yet I ignored my own subconscious instinct and had allowed my willpower alone to make virtually all the decisions in my life.  When a child is born, just when does the innocence get suppressed?  My father told me that Hindus believe that all life forms have a spirit in them.  He had told me not to disbelieve in miracles that other claim, that there just might well be truth in them.  How can it be that we have such a blinding reliance on our vastly smaller guidance system, the cognitive brain, when we were given so much more?

I began to realize that through all of this I truly wasn’t a human being just having a spiritual experience, and if I was just experiencing this, well, this isn’t enough.  I began thinking that if I am home to a spiritual essence, the instinctive power which I have now come to call “Grace,” then why not consider this as primarily who I am?  Am I a spiritual being that is temporarily in a human form?  To this I had to answer, yes.  I thought about this in terms of reflecting the object of what I was looking for in my attempt to find the subject in the answer.  I felt that I needed to have a dialog that would be constantly going on within me …from my subconscious to my conscious.  What the New Hope table had given to me was nothing less than knowing that I am interconnected with others in a community of souls, that I am never alone, and that each soul offers, supports, encourages, and draws a collective strength from and to one another. 

I said a greeting to Chardin’s Noosphere and to a new understanding!

I came to understand that Pierre’s Noosphere is a community of universal love which is the driving force of the river of spiritual evolution.  The phenomenon is one of connection to one another for the strength that it gives to the inner spirit of each.  I was not able to find a reason for my life so I felt emptiness.  Drugs and alcohol and other momentary pleasures couldn’t alleviate this and only left me emptier.  I began to understand that the emptiness I had experienced through loneliness which then led me to find a false comfort in alcohol was because I didn’t feel the source of life.  It really wasn’t very hard to find.  It was within me all along.  At last …a positive egotism!  It seemed to bring me in sight of a brighter upper reality, as a small light just before dawn, and not just on some quest to find a higher power.  “Finding” a higher power implies that the higher power is somehow lost and needs to be found; it was me that was lost.  The higher power has always been there …in nature, in the universe, and in all of us… again, just as that Cistercian priest said it was.  I recalled when I was about nine during the McCarthy Hearings, I had asked my father why there were so many people doing bad things in this world.  He said to me that in some eastern religions they believe that there is a good and an evil force which are forever fighting inside of each of us, one of them feeding on hatred and having power over others and wrought with selfishness, and the other one on tolerance, compassion and giving to others.  I asked him, “Dad, which one wins?”   He responded to me as a matter of fact…

“Well, my boy, whichever one that we choose to feed.”

The aspiration defined itself in a small prayer: 

When I chase pleasures that can never be fulfilled I will feel empty.  

Without the belief that I am principally a spiritual being within my human body, and without allowing my conscious mind to be led by Grace residing within me, I will remain empty never having a chance to find an evolved awareness and without the chance to completely become one with the Truth …at becoming one with all that is nature.  Figuring things out for myself is the only real freedom that comes with my life.

 

My time of chairing had come to an end.  New Hope found an exceptional soul in Emily, our new Chair.  I once again could speak with honestly, humility and

…entirely in the first person!

 So, as this is my story, one that is written to myself, I continued to ask for the inspiration to help me understand.  I realized that silence as well as the humble and honest dialog with others was what was needed to be focused on in an attempt to open up the conversation with my inner self.

I recalled a biblical story where Jesus of Nazareth went into the desert for forty days and nights.  As I thought about this I realized that he went there to meditate and pray for guidance -alone.  I also thought about the impact that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s visionary insight had on me and I realized that much of his thoughts were formulated during the many years he spent in isolation in the Gobi Desert as a paleontologist.  As a priest, he prayed and meditated –alone- in silence.  Both Jesus and Pierre came away with answers that I believe certainly came from insight received during this inner self-dialog.  Given this, I began to set aside an hour each day in silence away from all material thoughts and distractions and tried to make this time devoid of any judgmental thinking.  It wasn’t easy to do at first, but over time it became easier.  Dialog did begin to happen in me in the form of inspiration if I focused on dreams involving nature, such as a vision for a garden, hope for my children and grandchildren, and the quiet joy felt when I gave service to someone.  It provided a roadway of sorts and I thought that just maybe I might find Grace coming down that road towards me …just for a visit.  

I was in the midst of yet another working of the Steps, and this time I felt a different level of calmness assisting me.  I needed to work on what comes after the removal of the damaged and unsellable goods …the way of true and lasting forgiveness, but this time not involving the forgiveness of the self but rather the true forgiveness of others from within me.  It centered on left-over feelings of hurt that I held deep inside me pertaining feelings over hurt from my former spouse, whether they were intentionally inflicted or otherwise …well, this wasn’t important.  What she might hold in her heart towards me is not my business.  So with care and respect I quietly put her on trial within me one morning; I submitted all of my evidence and then I convicted her of hurtful things that I felt were done to me.  I felt that this was the necessary prerequisite to achieving a complete and non-illusory amends; the past is forever gone... and the now is the present. I guess that’s why it’s called “the present” …because the now is my gift of the moment. 

And then, I made a simple act of pardoning her... for everything whether it is or was true -or wrongly perceived.  It's my right alone to erase something thought to have been done against me by the act of pardoning.  Inspiration gave to me an avenue to avoid the trappings of false forgiveness, the type that momentarily dismisses a hurt as “forgiven” but which deeply remains and often comes back to life again at another time.  Words like, “She was doing the best that she could under the circumstances…” or “We all make mistakes…” do not truly forgive.  (I smiled as I thought that perhaps only Richard Nixon was pardoned without first having been convicted.) One morning at seven AM, alone and in my garden this is what I did.  A pardon cannot be undone or again reviewed.  It is forever closed.

But immediately afterwards something very disturbing began to happen. 
I am not able to adequately describe these moments in words.  I suddenly began to clearly see things as if it were through her eyes… an inspirational appeal of the truth or an additional gift of that moment, I just don’t know.  It was as though I was seeing things aside from my body, things I had never known or understood before, and it was convincing.  I was so unsettled that in truth my heart raced.  I saw a deep sadness and a sense of hopelessness in a future with me in her life.  It was her life and she needed to freely and honestly live it herself and not through mine.  For the first time I began to understand the pain of her fight against a discounting, of being at one with her motherhood within the marriage by being with someone who was not spiritually akin to her.  I saw the fear of the immense difficulty and of the unknown prospects that such decision might lead to.  I suddenly understood that the two of us had been sharing a locked cell with one high window and, at night, she saw only the bars on that and I saw only the stars beyond them.  I saw the choice, as she looked to the future, as one with little chance of fulfillment if she chose to be silent any longer …if she did not act.  And I saw too that she feared for the example that would be given to the children by the lack of action, one that they then could not comprehend.  She needed to protect herself and the children from me in terms of calm and normal. 

I believe that this awareness came over five minutes time but I’m really not sure.  I felt a momentarily crushing reaction to all of this and I found myself becoming reflexively afraid and angry.  Here it was… reaction.  I felt a strong urge to internally apply a battery of explanations to help me rationalize and counter these devastating thoughts but something else happened after just a few more seconds.  I felt that something inside of me say “Stop!”  And then quickly continued:  “What’s the value of knowing the Truth?”   At that very moment I remember asking myself in some silent reply “…Could this really be the Truth?” 
  

But I knew that it was.  I truly believe that this was the inner dialog between the two sources of knowledge that make up my solitary entity--one my “ego” and the other my “super-ego,” conscience.  And then, without much of a pause, the faces of my older children appeared in my mind to me, those who were old enough to remember that time.  In the eyes of each of them I silently inquired and instantly understood what they knew to be the truth:  that it was better for the family, calmer and more peaceful for everyone, without me being with them under one roof.  It somehow was not threatening to me any longer.  Their love for me has always there.  Not too long afterwards, I presented these thoughts to two of these children.  I expected that there might be some form of softened response from what I was to say as there is much compassion and empathy within their natures. To each of them, said on separate occasions, I spoke the words of my understanding of what I now understood as having been the truth of those days.  There was no disagreement or even an interruption of my words; there was only a respectful silence during those moments.  In reflection, when I finally got myself out of time’s way, when I finally disarmed my cognitive mind from fighting with my instinctive higher truth, I saw that my debt to my spouse had not been repaid.

I  focus back to my original quest to extract spiritual truth from the anti-flow within earthly institutional religion, that which imperfectly clothes the spirituality within us.  As I had been raised within Catholism, I had never read the Old Testament which was sometimes referred to as the Jewish bible.  I only had heard passages read from it.  It wasn’t after all our book... we had a newer testament, and that’s just what we called it.  In the Jewish book, there are fables which contain lasting truths that were put there to be understandable for the primitive and uneducated people of the day and, hence, these were often related in stories.  It described a righteous God who became angered and took His vengeance on those who went against the will of the Almighty.  This led to a hallmark of Judaism… “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth...” i.e., to repay injury with injury.  The New Testament describes nearly the converse in that there is a loving God, one that is most forgiving and compassionate, and this evidently leads to the opposite hallmark of… “Turn the other cheek,” i.e., to repay injury with kindness.  So, I surmised that is why Catholism shies away from promoting the very reading of the older testament… it simply isn't our book to highlight.  We have our own.

But within the fables of that older book there are truths of lasting value.  It is my understanding that in the beginning there was this place referred to as “paradise.”  And there were two people, a man and a woman, who weren’t any longer deemed to be worthy of paradise.  They were not forgiven for their human flaws and they were evicted, -thrown out- …banished.  And they weren’t allowed to come back in, ever.  Why not, I thought?  Because Genesis 3 says that that they were forever banished and that angels with swords of flame prevented them from returning… at least by that route.

Is serenity not inner peace and calmness?  Is not this vision of being at one with nature and the universe not one of being in a communion (as in ‘communication’) with the higher entity?   Does the higher authority not reside in a state beyond us that is referred to as “paradise?” Evidently, there must another way to get back into paradise.  But I can’t get in by going backwards… there are Cherubs with flaming swords!  And each new child being born, in its complete innocence, is pure and at peace when coming into this existence, each spiritually perfect, and as such straight from “paradise.”  I thought that perhaps this might be why women in traumatic situations stopped menstruating, such as in concentration camps, as the portal from paradise must be temporarily closed because of an unfair playing field for a new spirit to be tested in this existence.  But while we are here -once we are born into this reality- I thought that we repeatedly try to take this dead-end easy route of going backwards against the biblical prohibition in the attempt to find the lasting happiness of paradise via power, fame, money, alcohol, and drugs, etc.  It seems to give a temporary false vision, mirage, of attaining happiness in this life, a glimpse of some pseudo version of having attained entrance into paradise.  But the high from the intoxicants of money, fame, power and drugs only lasts for a short time and then is replaced by even a deeper emptiness and fear reappears; the job, the title, the fame, the wealth …the “security” disappears and from behind the removed ego mask the fear of exposure comes and an even greater emptiness of internally being alone is exposed.  All of this pain and fear then falls upon the weaker cognitive mind and its fault-filled will power.  The cognitive mind is not in dialog with the higher directive voice that fights against in total denial of the higher essence’s’ very existence. 

The road back to paradise has to lie somewhere else.

I then asked myself what biblically inferred “other way” is there to get back to paradise.  Is it possible that the circumstance of this brief earthly existence actually has a way, and that it’s more than just a “testing session” that we’re undergoing?  Is the human cognition alone capable of fulfilling this task?  I continued by asking why are there over thirty-three thousand Protestant denominations of record and a hundred or more other Christian sects, plus hundreds of splinter affiliations of the Hindu, Buddhist, the Judaic, etc. -all promising to give the sole route to attainment?  It occurred to me that Jesus of Nazareth, the man, but for one example, did not set up an institutional church …he set up a spiritual community.  Constantine established an institutional religion of Christianity some three hundred and twenty five years later when he replaced thirty six major and minor Roman gods with a newly discovered official god:  “Jesus” -no longer “of Nazareth” primarily, but now titled “the Christ.”  Within the next seven years Constantine orchestrated the behind-the-scenes manufacturing of a hierarchy of religious rankings within his new institution as well as overseeing the dilemma of proclaiming mystery of having three separate “persons” within the one new god (plus proclaiming the half man/half God nature of Jesus to fill in any blanks).  Those who disagreed were put to death of course, all in the name of the newly referred to

“Prince of Peace.”

If the invisible higher power is within me to guide me throughout my life instinctively, just when does this placement begin?  I reason that it has to begin at the conception of life and grows with the physical entity throughout gestation and passes from the womb into independent human existence.  I began thinking that the woman therefore carries within her a second higher power for nine months.  I thought that perhaps this might be the foundation for the mother/child maternal instinct and hence the powerful bond of motherhood.  For that unborn child, the womb logically is the passageway for the spirit from paradise and acts as a conduit into earthly existence.  The passageway backwards (as in the insanity of going back into the womb) into the paradise, the place of no pain, inner peace and calmness, certainly is not the route that cannot ever be reentered; that’s what the older Testament refers to… one can’t re-find paradise lost using that route.

When I consumed alcohol I turned backwards to the insane impossibility of finding happiness and I repeatedly found it to be only an illusion, one which left me with a reality of even a deeper emptiness.  The insanity of a quest for relief from worldly problems that the greedy, powerful and ego-famous individuals take in their attempt to escape into the illusion of security is little different from that of the drunk only it’s less obvious and more acceptable to the materially minded human community.  Alcoholism is not hidden as being an absolute “wrong direction” as with the other false ego-based routes.  I asked myself …does the narcissistically inclined ego that fails to be reflective and is incapable of being honest with its inner self actually not create the opposite of paradise in the attempt to seek shelter from the void of being isolated and alone?  Does it not create a route into a perpetual spiral of fear, pain, and hidden guilt?  I came to believe that it is the walking forward through the desert of the unknown in life, away from the direction of the portal of the symbolic womb with tools of honesty and humility in communication with others and with the directive of selfless giving without an expectancy of there being relief or comfort along the way except in acceptance, that this must be the “life-test” route back to paradise from which I originally came.  This path sees only the occasional light of serenity showing the way as I proceed through life.

One way that I have learned is the freedom from anxiety which begins with tempering immediate reaction and ends with the knowledge of not being a character in someone else’s life, i.e., the way that nullifies the potential of being manipulated by another.  The person who is proactive and self-reflective before responding by words or actions is not concerned with being judged by others; it is not relevant to his or her inner self-reflection.  That individual is immune from the shame, the guilt, and the manipulations of others who seek to elicit control even in a self-proclaimed name of righteousness.  There exists no ego mask and hence no fear hiding behind it.  Their identity is not coupled with the expensive car or residence, the large bank account or the powerful position that may instantly be lost.  These ego-based people are the object-reflective people, those who live with an unformatted ego.  When he was confronted with this type of person, I recall that my father would silently mentally measure the size the person’s internal head capacity -as in a hat size- and would quietly comment,  
“Ah, righteous indignation, 6 and 7/8ths.” 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Those who choose not to go backwards to find the paradise lost but choose instead to go on conviction forward into the unknowns of life, in the direction that brings an ever-expanding self-awareness have no ego mask to hide the ever deepening fears of being exposed to the opinions of others.  These fellow travelers are self-reflective people.  I have come to realize that anxiety does not mean a failure to cope with one’s reality.  Rather, it appears to me that it is the false reality of a materially-based direction that has become exposed; even with the numbing effects of drugs that are made specifically engineered to calm anxiety can do little more than temporarily cloak it.  I believe that the gagged and locked away super-ego, the inner voice of the conscience, pleads to give direction to the worldly focused ego that is imprisoning it; the internal scream –the sound of which is anxiety- is the inherent cry for help for the release from the insanity of going in the wrong direction.  It seems clear to me that those who deny the dialog with their inner self create a place of emptiness, an increasingly deep hell of the present, and that when the life of testing is over they will take this with them …in place of the ego masks of false security that they leave behind.

Some of those who did not seek fame or influence, those who didn’t aspire to find wealth or power through manipulation, include Mahatma Gandhi, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonheoffer, Mother Teresa, and Jesus of Nazareth. These, among numerous others, spoke by their example of selfless service to others.  All shied away from earthly comforts which promised the false glimpse of finding paradise within this brief existence.  All walked into the unknown and unfamiliar desert, away from the safety of the womb from which they came, all endured pain, fears, and some even death.  They chose asking (praying) for their will to be instructed, and indeed it was.  Those who likewise choose to seek, look to these people as lighthouses of sorts -as teachers by the example they left.  Further, it need not be only those who are solely dedicated to the quest of spiritual evolution.  It can be an ordinary person like me.

The rules of this testing, as with the prohibition of coming back into the paradise as described in Genesis 3, further infers that there will be no cheating by way of assistance beyond that given to all within the human circumstance.  Hence, I have come to believe there will never be a voice instructing specifically what to do while in this reality.  Private prayer… the honest and humble asking for direction, I believe, is the only medium to communicate with the inside guidance.

In this hour spent in silent non-judgmental thought I sought to find examples of ordinary people of the secular world who chose to follow their inner voice into the darkness of the unfamiliar desert of this life.  I thought of George Washington, imperfect as all of us being tested in spiritual terms.  In material terms, he also happened to be the richest and most powerful of all the colonial subjects of the king.  My father once said to me that, in his opinion, George Washington was the greatest American because he had the most to lose and that he put it all on the line for a dream to benefit all society despite all odds being against him.  I must recall too that he said George freed all of his slaves… but not before his death.  He told me this because George was just as much of an imperfect worldly man as anyone else and subject to material desires.  But as to his greatest spiritual test, it required great inner faith.  I thought that surely during the frigid winter at Valley Forge, that this was such a moment.  He had not a single victory up to that point in time and was up against the most powerful army and navy in the world with few provisions or the promised pay for the farmers and merchants who made up his army.  His reality was amidst daily desertions that forced the ordering of executions to maintain discipline; he saw waning enthusiasm even among his officers.  He was armed only with the weekly writings of Thomas Paine’s The Crisis and his faith in doing what he believed was right.  He must have silently asked for guidance from the higher power both from within and from outside of himself during those darkest moments.  He had to have resorted to the meditation of silent prayer for strength and he heard no voice that told him any answer (or we certainly would have heard about it).  He proceeded forward by following his inner convictions.  I am convinced that he was guided by inspiration, courage, and strength which he received from Grace within himself.

During my lifetime, as a young man I witnessed John F. Kennedy go up against the prevailing advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the voices within his Cabinet, and the majority in both Houses of Congress by making the choice not to react but instead  chose to pause proactively to consider.  To invade Cuba following the realization of the Soviet placement of missiles ninety miles from our shore would have surely caused nuclear conflict of a proportion that may well have destroyed the civilized world.  Instead, he chose to agonize, to pray, and to ask for guidance during that night in the Oval Office with only his brother being present.  He heard no voice from above telling him what he should do.  In the morning he chose to “quarantine” rather than to invade.

One morning in my garden I reflected on words from the New Testament.  If Jesus would have known the future or of his future historical notoriety, of the tens of thousands of churches that would be built in his name, I felt that surely he would have considered saying a quick “yes” to crucifixion.  Why was he afraid?  Because, it is my belief, He just didn't know.  He had no idea of what his followers, the disciples, would do.  There was a real chance that they would just run away and hide to avoid a similar fate as opposed to continuing on this radical and dangerous path …and this must have been very real to his thinking.  Jesus of Nazareth, the man and the teacher, in the garden on the night before he was taken and thereafter put to death, did by the words of the New Testament “sweat blood” in his agony and repeatedly asked by praying to the higher power for what was wanted of him.  ‘Lord, just tell me what you want of me and I will do it’ surely must have made up His plea for guidance.  He heard no voice beyond that which was within him.  He chose to act in accordance with what he knew inherently was the voice of his inner truth, the emissary of the higher authority.  While He was dying on the cross, he continued to ask for direction, for some sign that he was doing the right thing.  Again, hearing no voice of instruction he asked…

“Father, why hath Thou forsaken me?”

I too can never expect to hear a voice directing me what to do; I have come to understand this as being a primary rule in the life-test I am undergoing.  I must accept that I am to rely on the dialog of instruction from my inner self.  The Truth is that I must want it, and the price I have to pay for this is to ask the question of myself over and over again.  Often being completely lost is so close to finding what I seek if I but ask myself this one question.  I believe that there will come a time when I will walk away from the drama and all of the people who create it and that I will surround myself with the people who make me laugh.  I will forget and truly forgive the bad that I have known and will focus only on the good, and I will love the people who have treated me right and that I won’t think judgmentally on those who didn’t.  It has become obvious to me over time that life is too short to be anything but happy.  Serenity, the calmness and inner peace that I have come to understand, is within me and it assumes a personal definition.  For me it has become the envelope of ongoing personal prayer in silent dialog.  And within this realization I have come to understand that falling down, the acknowledgement of my failings, has allowed me the awareness to learn and this is the essential part of life which shows me the light to recognize the gift of getting back up to live it.

So the question of where this is taking me is to consider this life as a journey on a personal river.  I am an ordinary twig.  The river is moving.  I don’t have any idea of what lies beyond the next bend.  But I know that I can float because I was born buoyant and I have faith in this despite the fear.  If I choose to pause on the safety of a mud bank because I am afraid to go on eventually I will begin to rot and I will lose my buoyancy.  There will be trials ahead, fast water, and sometimes I will be temporarily submerged but I will surface again and eventually there will be a serine bay that I will discover in its beauty and maybe it will be around the next bend.  I believe that is the self-transcending passage of inquiry.  In saying this, I understand that self-transcending is the personal elevation of our individual awareness, passage meaning a movement through or across, and inquiry as the work of the mind via science or spiritual inquest.

                                                                                                                                               

I believe that it begins in our life experience with curiosity and questioning.  The beginning of insight started with me from experience, and then from information I received, further proceeded to an understanding, and then onto the quantum of the “maybe” …the “hunch” -either to be verified or dispelled but certainly to be tested. 

Teilhard de Chardin, the thought-contemporary of Carl Gustov Jung -the inspiration behind the Second Step of Alcoholics Anonymous, became increasingly reserved in his writings from the 1920’s up to his death in 1951 to mention things about or even using the word, God, directly.  I feel that he did this with reverence because he believed that the essence of God is not an object but rather a ‘deeper than our human circumstance is able to comprehend’ higher reality.  As such, and as with the Cistercian priest, I further have come to believe that he became less and less interested in the “who” of God, less and less interested in the “who is saved by God,” and more and more interested in the “where” of the higher essence; his passion of direction moved him into the understanding that you can experience God by the finding in the perceivable matter within our present reality.  Instead of the “who” of God, I feel that throughout his later writings he acted as a quiet pastor of sorts to those who pursue a scientific and spiritual understanding of the reality beyond this reality in quest for a greater awareness.  As a world renowned paleontologist intimated with the hands-on evidence to substantiate evolution, and as a Jesuit priest sent to the Gobi Desert in China for years on end, his inspiration and increased awareness led him to formulate an insight which can best be described as one of a “spiritual evolution” in the direction of the beyond our human circumstance to earthly comprehend.   He wrote thirteen volumes of spirituality, all of which were published after his death because of the religious censorships placed upon him before his death.

It seems clear to me that he chose to use both an analytical and a synthetic approach as foundations to his process that led to inspiration in his quest to understand “the maybe” as he was both a scientist and a theologian.  The noosphere (the mind), he believed, is being accelerated expedientially by the pull rather than push towards what he terms as this “Omega Point” which is doing the pulling –to a point in time where human knowledge increases at a rate incomprehensible to a singular soul and hence joined by necessity to an interactive collective human community.  It is the essence of transcending the human experience in terms of spiritual evolution. 

In the 1930’s, surely he could have never envisioned the internet as an accelerating driving force which would link all people in the world in the search and discovery of spiritual, technical, scientific and informational communication without the restrictions of a significant passage of time.  But, in the sense of the increasing homogenization of the human community, he did describe this acceleration as a component leading to the point of the human spiritual evolution.

                                                              

Life    begins as arriving and not being on time for the special performance. 

I’m to figure out what the plot is about, what direction that it is taking me, as well as the story line that I am to assume.  I am also supposed to not bother those next to me with queries about the particulars as I am inherently instructed to remain silent.  And then I’m suddenly engaged in dialog with those same others to distract me from understanding absolutely anything about the conclusion.

The truth is that I just found myself being dropped off from high space into the spiral of this life.  It was apparently designed to initially appear to be without any obvious support I could cling to.  I didn’t know where I was going or even what I was falling so deeply into.  It just began happening and it continued.  No one told me that it was a test.  Changes came so fast and gave so little chance to adjust as I searched to find any points of stability or reference.

In the depths into which I’ve been dropped, anxiety sometimes appears as ugly graffiti on the walls.  My hope is to transform the chaos of the deepening emptiness outside of me into the inner calmness and peace of the place which was mine prior to my birth       –that reality I don’t even remember except by an occasional epiphany.  Somehow I know that I am here to be called upon and my task to direct my participation from persuasions that are made to lead me -again and again- only to increased personal sadness to voluntary acts of choice which go towards the unknown that I know I must be a part of.

But instructions did come and it became both simple and clear… in the life experience that I am here just visiting… only two things are ultimately important: 

Getting honest about myself, and me getting honest with you about me.

I understand that every life comes with a death sentence.  

And as such, I must be willing to let go of the life that I think it will be to have the life that is waiting for me.  I have realized that if I follow someone else's path I will never uncover my potential as a spiritual being.  The privilege of my life is being who I am. 

I believe that I am not to look for the meaning of life but for the experience of being alive.  All of my failures have been awareness’s that came too late and I have come to know this as absolutely true.  But I know too that each of them carried a sacred gift of awareness from that failed experience.  Nor were all of my hesitations which resulted in lost opportunities wasted.  I know that my higher intellect within me has many secrets that it holds in reserve and rarely will Grace disclose these to me unless required.

      

My Sacred Place is where I can find myself …over and over again. 

Richard Llewellyn Williams

Undated and unfinished until it’s my time to leave.