Friday, February 17, 2012

The Big Events

Last evening my super intelligent 5 year old grandson asked me "Why did you take me fishing Grandpa?" I asked him if he had fun. "Yes" he says. "That's why." I told him. He then asks "Why did you let me fish Grandpa?" I asked him if he learned anything. "Yes" he says. "That's why" I told him... This morning, as he was leaving for school, after a hug and he stood there for a few seconds looking, with a serenity, into my eyes. There was a deeper connection. He was deliberate and aware of what he was feeling... My love for him is a love that abides in that space where the fabric of life is not whole yet not rent. No words may touch it, no image is pure enough...

I am inspired to share this story from my life.


I've been on the path of spiritual retrieval since I was a little boy. It started with an event when I was fourteen months old. I was in a savings and loan office with my parents in Louisville, Kentucky. The building was new and had opened prior to pipes along the walls that fed steam to the radiators being uninsulated. It was a cold winter so the radiators were full on. As my father consulted with a gentleman in another office my mother and I were waiting in a foyer. I remember an urge to touch the pipe. I went to it and placed both hands on the steam pipe. Instantly all the skin on both palms became ash and “I” was hurled into a white light. This was the beginning of memory for me.

The light remained close and evident until about the time I reached puberty then started to fade from awareness. Until then it was most evident when I was in the woods or alone. I took it for granted.

The skin was replaced with a graft to each hand from my left abdomen. My hands were totally functional once the grafts were completely healed in about six months later. There were a lot of struggles for my mother during this time. The doctors my mother took me to told her the long term impact she should anticipate. They were plastic surgeons, the best available, and neurosurgeons. They told her I would be an idiot and unable to talk or function properly due to the shock to my nervous system. They told her I would be accident prone. That part became true. Her response was “Not if I have my say in it.”

There were many, many trials and unexpected issues that came and went, a lot of violence. At some point I’ll share many of them. Regardless… I talked, a lot in fact. I said things that put other people on edge, especially my mother. My mind was open to information that apparently other people were unaware of and because I was undeterred by a sense of right and wrong, and out of control almost all the time, I did and said a lot of things considered out of bounds. I didn’t have a normal life and I was not easily indoctrinated. I asked her perspective once. Her response: “I could either put you in school on the chance you’d civilize or move to the desert and let you live as a savage.” School was an effort in futility until I was in my late teens. I failed at everything except art and speech and P.E. Those darkest years I really made a mess of my life.

I retired from my effort to ascertain the boundaries of mortality in my 21st year and went into a period of contemplation which soon resulted in another powerful awakening. This time I was safe at home. I had found work in radio. My last gig was an AM and FM radio station, running the production and “on air” side of things. It was situated on the edge of a swamp where I lived in a mobile home placed three feet from the stations back door. I was the first one to get there and the last one to leave, seven days a week.

I would spend hours each evening remembering the horrible things I had done; embarrassing others or creating situations they were forced to put up with and expend energy to rectify. I was filled with guilt and fear, I felt unlovable and ugly. I had no idea where or what love was.

There were no other buildings within a mile and those were associated with a fish camp usually closed at night. When I wasn’t in the building doing my radio thing I was in my hovel, fairly stoned, digging around in my mind, looking for the source of my existence and trying to understand how and why I had become such a pariah. I hated what I had become. I hated me.

In the isolation I used music, my only friend, as loud as possible to drive me deeply inward. Over time others heard about the “guy who ran rock station and lived in the swamp.” Frequently people would show up at my door wanting to get high, listen to jazz rock fusion, and occasionally discuss the nature of realty.

On a Friday in February of 1973, after being there for a year and a half or so, a new stranger showed up. Already a crowd had gathered and it was promising to be another night externally focused. As he passed through the door, he hands me a baggy with three psychedelic mushrooms in it. “Happy birthday” he says. I have no idea how he knew my birthday had been a few days past. I learned later he was born the same day of the same year 52 minutes before me.

If I’d had any idea what was about to happen I would have gone next door to the radio station and hid. Instead I popped them into my mouth and swallowed.

The next four or five hours became the most powerful non-violent experience of my life so far. It was beautiful. It was frightening. It was rich with visuals that were both chaotic and familiar. I saw things that were beyond my capacity to express or explain. Some were hallucinations others were visions, obviously archetypal images that seemed alive. I felt fear beyond anything I’d ever imagined. I have been shot at, stabbed at, beaten and maimed. I’ve wrecked cars, jumped out of airplanes and swam in barracuda infested waters while bleeding. Nothing could touch the fear I felt even at being faced with simple questions like “do you want to go outside” or “are you alright?” On that evening I went insane and became saner than ever before. Over several hours of overwhelming mystical experience I made some people smile and others to walk away in a huff. I said things to them I couldn’t myself understand and I recognized the difference between friend and foe simply by putting my attention on them.

After a while I realized there were only myself and the gentleman who’d brought me the mushrooms in the room. I was seated in the middle of the room facing the north wall. There was a vortex of electric, multicolor tiles, like a funnel, focused on my my forehead. There was a sense this was symbolic of knowledge pouring in. After a moment I felt there was another presence in the room. It felt benevolent and seemed to expect nothing and was everywhere, even inside me. Without effort I acknowledge it. It had no intention other than to be. I, for reasons unknown at the time, said to it “I give up.”

I must have slipped out of time for I suddenly found myself laying prone on my back on the floor with my feet to the eastern wall and face up. I felt good, very good. The beautiful mind-blowing images were gone and I felt my senses perfect in my awareness. There was a knowing of harmony beyond description. The urge to yawn began. I spoke aloud “I want to yawn.” My companion who I’d forgotten about said “Control the yawn.” “I don’t want to control the yawn” I responded and I allowed it. As my throat opened my back arched, the top of my head tipped the floor like the end of a bow and out of my throat came a single, pure sound not unlike a trumpet. I left my body, out through the top of my head into a sea of golden red bliss. As I took a breath the “I” which was evident and visible to an awareness which was me within fell back into the body. Another breath was taken as “I” entered. As that breath became a sound out of the body the “I” went out and awareness disappeared into the sea of bliss again. Over and over this occurred. I don’t know when it stopped. The next I knew was my body awakening in the morning in my bed.

All the suffering I had know for years had lifted. All the fear was gone and left was a peace that “passeth all understanding.”

Three days later I was brought a book by another stranger, a woman. The title of the book is COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS by Richard Buck, MD. It explained everything that had occurred from the moment I surrendered with “I give up.” It made sense out of the pain and suffering and how this led to my experience.

There are the beginnings of several side stories here in this offering. However my point is to relate this to the love that I feel for others which is mentioned in the comment regarding my grandson. That love has grown more evident over the decades since I became aware of Its source. Everything except the insanity of self hatred makes sense now.

Please know I do not recommend psychedelics as a means of achieving spiritual awakening. It is very dangerous and not permanent. There is an easier way now and the recovery of definition, which took me years to manage, can be done with a decision.