“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers.  The original meal has never been found.”- – Calvin Trillin

I have a rather fond recurrent memory of my Mom, one that stands out among all of the others.  I was thirty years old, visiting her, and she decided to lay this absolute bombshell on me.  I’m the youngest of 7 kids, 6 of us born in consecutive years, then “poof” – – I showed up four years after my sister Barb was born.  Mom tried in her gentlest tone to advise me that I was unplanned.  I honestly tried my darndest to keep a straight face, but given the stand-up material that was just delivered I started giggling and had to leave the room.  Such was the mark of the level of innocence my Mom managed to maintain throughout all of her years, though: she honestly thought she was unveiling a profoundly deep and shameful secret on me.  The good news was that since I obviously took it all as a great big joke, Mom considered herself forgiven.

There was much unintentional comic relief in my home that for whatever reasons (being active in an addiction might be one) I never really grew to appreciate til Mom was gone. I remember hearing about the version of forced marriage that her soon-to-be husband was brought into when my uncle Joe, Mom’s brother picked up the man who was to be my Dad, started driving, and as the story goes within seconds said, “Well, are you going to marry her, or what?”  So I guess technically since no weapon was produced, this wasn’t a shotgun wedding: let’s just call it a “threat-wedding.”

So my folks followed the good Mexican Catholic old school rules and cranked out one kid after another, until apparently Dad got tired of the whole deal and started seeing his mistress, an alliance that went on for years and years.  Mom also played the dutiful long-suffering stay-at-home mom role to the hilt, a role her genuine meekness made her a natural for.  And truly, what person needs to be subjected to cheating for years?  The huge difference between then and now in Mexican culture is that it is now looked upon with a little more favor to leave the cheating party after telling them in no uncertain terms where to go.  Mexican culture as I know it, still has a long way to go in this arena, at least to my knowledge of my extended family.

Mom really was quite uneducated, unscholared, and socially extremely awkward and shy.  I believe she made it up to fourth grade reading level when America called, offering her the opportunity to diss her education in favor of working in beet fields for slave wages in order to help support her family.  One of my saddest memories of her is her unabashedly announcing every now and then to anyone who would listen, “I’m stupid.”  I’m not sure what purpose this served to her, but I know it made me really uncomfortable to hear her talk about her self in such an abusive way, although I didn’t have the terminology to place on what I was feeling at the time.

There is no question in my mind that Mom felt trapped her entire married life.  Dad had a habit of picking places to live that were absolute dumps, effectively ending any dreams that Mom had of living in the palatial style that she would sometimes try to describe.  Luxury to her would have been a dishwasher: she was certainly not asking for the moon. Dad in turn validated her “stupid” status frequently while heaping on other abuse whenever the spirit moved him.

And so Mom resorted to whatever she could to make herself feel good.  She was a huge fan of soap operas.  Heaven forbid my getting hungry at 12:30 in the afternoon, because quite frankly, for Mom, the whole world stopped for “As The World Turns,” a show she got a belly laugh out of any time she heard Carol Burnett refer to it as “As The Stomach Turns” in her evening show parody.  After her first viewing of the Burnett show, Mom took to referring to her favorite soap very simply as “Stomach,” as in, “I can’t do that right now I gotta watch ‘Stomach.'”

One area that I continue to view with considerably less humor is the fact that mom had a number of JFK pictures strategically placed throughout the house, I’m assuming so as not to be without her fantasy partner if she could at all help it. I also believe that Mom was really quite lonely during her married life.  Parenting skills were obviously not there, and when I got into various recovery groups in the early nineties, I began hearing phrases like “they did their best, and their best wasn’t very good,” or things like “they were never ready to be parents.”  While those phrases were definitely fuel for recovery in those days, my question today is whoever is ready to be a parent? Nobody gets a manual.  I’ve yet to hear a single person say that parenting is a piece of cake. Not much of her life lived up to any of her fantasies as far as I could see.  I don’t think she had any idea what effective parenting might entail.  She could only know what she was taught.

I never considered myself particularly close to either parent.  Still, as I got sober I drifted further and further from mom, really beginning to resent a symbiotic relationship that had been enforced on me due to my Mom’s need for the proverbial “little husband.”  It’s not like Mom was the first person to ever do such a thing.  I remember a friend once telling me she had a tarot card reading in which the reader advised her that her mom was having an affair with a much younger man, something my friend protested because she knew her mom to hardly ever leave the house.  She then put two and two together to figure out that mom was “married” to her little brother.

As I began to find my own internal resolution to my patterns, I gradually let Mom back in.  It became a juggling act when I began dating someone, and Laura won out with my time.  When Laura and I broke up, however, I began to be a bit more dilligent in attempting to resolve our differences, and I do believe I made much headway.  The humor re-entered.  I used to absolutely love it when my sisters took Mom out to a movie and then after she would struggle to tell me the title of what she saw.  Mom was still heavily accented, and when she tried to tell me she had just finished seeing “Beaches,”  per her phonetic capability it naturally came out “Bitches.”  I think my all-time favorite was when the girls took her to see “Poltergeist” and she excitedly told me a few days later that they took her to see this really scary flick called “Pocket Full of Guys.”  The conversation usually ended with Mom snorting a “shut up,” as I laughed hysterically.  She was indeed a card, and miraculously, through all the misery that was visited upon her during her years, she somehow managed to hang on to and nurture her innate ability to laugh at herself.

On December 9th, 1991, I stopped off at Mom’s to deliver a care package and visit for awhile.  Mom had suffered a stroke earlier in the year, lived alone,and absolutely refused being moved into a nursing home. As I got into recovery and found my voice and boundaries, clashes with my siblings ensued over what I considered to be unhealthy behavior, situations they obviously didn’t see anything at all wrong with.  Still, at the thought of possibly running into me and being called on some covertly abusive behavior, they began staying away from her house.  Mom was lonely again.  On this visit, at about 7:30 at night, I literally pounded on the door for her to come and help relieve me of some heavy grocery bags I was carrying. We had all pleaded with her to make her bedroom downstairs so she wouldn’t have to climb a flight of steps repeatedly, but she resisted as she did moving.  She finally made it to the door, parted the curtain, and gave me an extremely confused look before she fell backward.   The door was locked, so I sprinted for the liquor store across the street, grabbed their phone and dialed 911.  The paramedics were just around the block, so they broke in through the locked back door of Mom’s house and carted her away in an ambulance.  She was still conscious and reasonably alert. I still remember the doctor at the hospital very patiently trying to get out of me the list of medications and supplements that Mom was taking, occasionally telling me “you’re dolng just fine.”    She had just had stroke number two.

Mom died that night.  Then was brought back and we were told that she was alive but would need some extreme care going forward.  The next morning I got a call from the hospital saying that Mom had suffered a major heart attack,and might not live very long.  I remember the jolt, then straggling, quickly slipping into denial that I was now going to be totally without parents, and slowly made my way to the hospital.  By the time I got there she was gone again.  The doctor told me she had “a massive coronary right at the bottom of her heart.”  Though unintentional, he couldn’t have painted a more morbid, guilt-inducing description.  I immediately began running over and over in my head how long it took me to get to her, and to this day still the the look of what was obviously excrutiating pain that was frozen on her face haunts me.  With no one there to hold her hand.  Like I did for my Dad.  Like I did for my sister Rose.  Today is the first time I’m talking about the guilt that still hasn’t gone away completely.

Not long after Mom passed I saw the movie “Jacob’s Ladder” and considered that my “aha” moment around death.  Dad had also died on the table, was revived, and died again the next day.  I truly believe that they were both given an opportunity to see what lay ahead if they decided to stick around, and opted for what was behind door number two. I’ve tried on several occasions since 1993 to describe the sense of absolute desolation at losing my second parent, and coming to the realization that I won’t be issued any more of these, and have never even come close to putting those feelings of holy terror into words.  And I wasn’t even close to my folks.  I don’t envy anyone who is close to theirs what they have to go through. Just writing out some of this is relieving some of the guilt I’ve carried all of these years, guilt that I’m sure Mom wouldn’t want me carrying.  Guilt at driving the rest of her family away from her because I had become the perceived enemy.  Because I was learning to stand up for myself.  Guilt at not being there to comfort her as she died.  It really overwhelmed me today as I was talking to some friends.  Unlike Mom, I had the good fortune to not be alone at the time.

During the weekend that Mom died, I attended an angel workshop at a church in Woodbury,a workshop in which we were all asked to request angelic signs.  My obvious request was to know that Mom was ok.  Throughout the course of the weekend, not a sign in sight.  I had moved into Mom’s house and was sitting and reading (ironically) A Course In Miracles in preparation for that Monday night’s class at the same church.  It was really very windy outside, and I was sitting alongside a picture window that was taking a beating as I sat and read.  To my right was a  sort of trophy case where my mom used to put her collectibles, including a large Opus doll I had given her, as Opus was her favorite cartoon character.  All of the items were behind glass.  At one point during my reading, I heard this loud “whoosh,” and assumed it was the window taking another blast of the icy wind.  After finishing a page, I looked up and noticed the 12-inch Opus doll standing there.  Outside the trophy case.  I could’ve sworn it was behind the glass.  I had gotten my sign.

Dear Mom: In a practical sense, you came up a bit short in parenting skills.  In a more Universal view, you gave birth to me into a life and conditions that were perfect for setting me onto a path that has never been easy, but more often than not has been rewarding beyond my wildest dreams.  I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you to help you cross over.  My fear got the better of me.  I know you forgave me long ago, but please pardon me if I hang onto my feelings of inadequacy  for just a bit longer – – they’ve just become too familiar for me to let go of all at once.  You know how it works.  I remember the dream I had of you the day after your Opus doll shenanigans: I remember asking you if you were ok, and you giving me that exasperated look of yours and saying, “Oh sure – – they’ve got me walking and walking.”  Yeah, I kinda figured you were busy. I only regret not asking you what movie you had seen up there recently.  Just to hear you laugh one more time.

A friend of mine has said a few times that as her Mom was dying, she told my friend that going forward she was to “Just think of me as the sunlight on the lake.  Just think of me as the diamonds on the water.”   That’s you too, Mom.  In this shadow life I know you thought little of yourself.  From your current vantage point I hope you see yourself reflected on the water often.  You are indeed a whole cache of diamonds of eternity.  I loved you more than I ever said.  And I’m so sorry I didn’t say it more often.  Please know that in my heart I miss you so very much.  Happy Mothers’ Day.

Peace

     “Once upon a time there was a cowboy in a bit of distress, as he was walking alone in the dark, unaware of the darkness, and also unaware that he was alone.  Oblivious to the night, he continued walking in the cool desert air for miles until he came upon some train tracks, and in the distance saw the tiny light of a locomotive approaching.  Although the cowboy was unable to identify the inner rumblings he felt as the train drew closer, his best guess for a name for what he was feeling was “concern,” as he also noticed a stage coach perched on the tracks, disabled for whatever reason, and unmoving.  As the train drew nearer yet to the the coach, the cowboy decided to name his next inner disturbance “panic,” as it became more and more apparent that the train was going to strike the vehicle filled with helpless passengers.

    And so it did, and oddly, the train continued to move, eventually fading in the distance, as the toppled coach stayed on its side, miraculously unbroken, but still with passengers inside obviously traumatized by the experience.  As the cowboy hurried to the coach, he noticed first that the coachman was dressed entirely in black, and lay motionless in his seat in front of the carriages.  The black horses also didn’t move, still alive, yet so still it seemed that they were frozen in time.  The cowboy turned his attention to the commotion inside and moved to help what turned out to be a group of four women.

   The first wore a frilly pink dress, and as the took her hands to help her out of the coach, she said through sobs, “There was nothing we could do.”  The cowboy then helped another woman out, then turned to a woman who pushed away his hands, saying “I can do this on my own!” And so he turned his attention to the young woman in the red dress, who was badly shaken by the incident and accepted his help gladly.  As the other women assured the cowboy that they were all right and that help would arrive for them, they urged him to bring the young woman to a safer place, somewhere she could rest and regain her wholeness.  Although the cowboy couldn’t imagine where in the vastness of the dark desert help would be coming from to assist the other ladies, he agreed and picked up the young lady in red, as he had noticed her limping and having great difficulty walking on her own.  

     The cowboy carried the young woman for miles and miles, through what felt like different seasons, from cold air and blustery wind, to the opposite end of the desert’s cruel spectrum and it’s scorching heat.  The pair noticed that, oddly, both they and the group of women in the coach had no food or water to sustain them. They were surviving on their own substance. The two endured, and the cowboy continuously assured the young woman that everything was all right, and safety was in sight, although he was operating solely on something he had decided to name “faith.”  He also felt an odd sensation creeping up on him, one that explained to him that he and the young woman weren’t in fact travelling through various seasons, but only a single night.

    It was at daybreak that the cowboy noticed that he and the woman he continued to carry were still travelling on the train tracks, and as the sun rose, the heat began to envelop them.  In the distance there appeared to be a structure of some sort, maybe a cabin, although the cowboy wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t a mirage.  While taking his eyes off the supposed cabin for a minute, he felt the woman stirring in his arms and heard her say, “You can put me down.  I can walk now.”  She let out a small shriek as he bare feet touched the hot wood between the iron tracks, but then assumed a pleasant, small grin as she began to enjoy the freedom of walking on her own.  

     The two continued to walk excitedly as they noticed that the cabin was, in fact, real.  As they arrived at the cabin door and knocked, another woman came to the door to let them in.  She appeared to live by herself and was very open in welcoming her surprise visitors.  “There was nothing we could do,” explained the young woman in red to the lady of the house.  As the two continued to chat, the cowboy noticed that he was finding it harder and harder to be a part of the conversation,indeed the two women seemed to not even notice that he was there.  And so the two ladies continued talking of adventures real and imagined, the cowboy looked back outside at the darkness that seemed to be a season long, although he knew better: it only one more single night.,

     And so he walked alone in the dark for miles and miles, covering much desert ground beneath his gradually tiring feet.  As suddenly as the train hit the stage coach the night before, a beam of light came down from the night sky and surrounded the cowboy, leaving him no escape.  The cowboy felt another new sensation: he decided to call this one “pain.”  He did notice, however, a rather enjoyable bittersweetness to the the pain, a sort of melody that sang to him of the rapture of his own soul, while the newly named pain did its work and chipped away at some of the mortar the cowboy had surrounded his heart with,built over years of not exercising all that his heart contained.  And the cowboy continued to walk, until he noticed yet another new sensation, a sound coming from his mouth. He decided to call this one “whistling.”  And so the cowboy kept walking in the night air, looking near and far for those who may need to be carried until they can walk on their own.  Once upon a time there was a cowboy .. . “

     The above is my story version of a “past-life regression” that I had in early 1990.   Since then, I’ve come to “believe” more along the lines of infinite “parallel lives,” something that still is difficult to wrap my head around once in a while.  What I more importantly am trying to illustrate in the above is a sort of exquisite archetype that exists in all of us, including, to my amazement at times, myself.  The events above did in fact happen in real time.  In early 1990 I began dating a young woman who was in fact in some emotional turmoil, and quite often in our early going.  As our relationship progressed, she became more and more independent, she outgrew her need for me, and our relationship, sadly, ended.  While there were certainly other circumstances that brought us to our close, I’m eternally grateful to remember our brief alliance as my first time acting out my “regression.”  I was actually given a transcript of my regressive work by the hypnotherapist and promptly threw it in a closet somewhere.  It wasn’t until long after Mary and I broke up that I rediscovered the transcript, and was awestruck at it’s content.  Mary had indeed been carried by me until she could walk. She frequently wore red.  And she also loved going barefoot, which she did during our first walk together . . . along some railroad tracks in Minneapolis.  

     Who doesn’t need to be carried sometime?    The greater gist of what I wrote above is that we’re all in the process of leading each other back home.  In first acknowledging my own worthiness to carry such a beloved inner working, then allowing it to work through me as others do, I’m given repeated opportunities to have the Divine move through me in order to get to you.  I too have my sources.  I’ve certainly not lived this long without assistance.  Following the story I’ve been privileged to have been given is validation that we all are living our own version of the poem “Footprints,” because as a minister told me once, “People are how God gets around.”  I thrive on the beauty of this process. It is my reason for being. It is why I try not to let a day pass without at least once, mentally, and hopefully otherwise, telling as many individuals as I can “thank you.”  Each and every encounter is an opportunity to heal my loveless places, and when the conversation becomes one of being asked  for a few minutes to be listened to, whatever difficulties I may have had up until then in my day fade instantly in the distance.  You make my day, you bring me back alive.  And there are those of us in 12-Step groups who know what its like to have the same person calling over and over, and over again sometimes seemingly never moving up the next rung of the ladder, until finally that “eureka” moment hits.  Sometimes, whether it be a program person or not, I will hear the person speak about “guilt,” for coming to me a perceived one too many times.  To the contrary.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, every time I’m trusted as a sort or “father confessor,” the rest of my day invariably goes better.  My soul lights up like a Christmas tree.  I get to feel that exquisite beauty of Something I Cant Quite Name moving through me in order to get to you.  In the throes of our own desert disasters, we not only hold each other we up, we carry each other until we’re able to walk again.   For the many times I’ve been privileged to be relied on, there is no way possible I could say “thank you” enough.  I can’t count that high. We are one and the same.  There is indeed a cowboy.  And you are my Once Upon A Time.

Peace

“Love thine enemies, for they are the instruments of your destiny.” – – Joseph Campbell

     I quit drinking alcohol shortly before I turned 32 years of age.  I also took great pride in telling people that in all of the years I drank, I didn’t get a single DWI.  However, I did sort of forget to include that I didn’t get my license and first car til I turned 33. Details, details.  Anyway, I do fondly remember that ’86 Nissan Pulsar NX.  I loved that li’l red car! I also have etched in my memory the fact that the very first song I heard on the radio while driving was “Follow Your Bliss” on KQRS in 1990.  I also remember being amazed to learn that the song was written and performed by the B52s. No matter, it became my new theme music, and ironically, I was soon also introduced to the world of Joseph “follow your bliss” Campbell himself via the PBS Power of Myth series.  

     It’s taken me a mere 24 years to heed the calling of the song and Mr.Campbell, all the while encountering the “enemies” that he’s referring to.  The fact that I’ve been writing and/or intending to do so for a living for approximately 40 years speaks volumes about the aforementioned foes.  As trite as being afraid of success can sound to me, I really have no other explanation for it, other than the accompanying non-existent self-esteem that prevented me from doing just about anything enjoyable for any length of time for many years.  Another contributor is the family philosophy that the world is hard place to be, and one works for a living, preferably doing manual labor. 

     There are three solitary activities that provide me with, or more accurately, generate bliss flowing through my fifty-seven year old veins.  One is running.  I’ve done a dozen marathons, have another coming in October, and still would really like to test my limits all the way up to a 50-miler one day.  Performing music is another, although my real love for it includes playing for an audience.  The foremost is writing.  Whether or not my writing is received well is sometimes a non-issue.  I certainly want to be read, and of course it would be very difficult to earn a living sitting here at my laptop and not having anyone view my work, still I get an amazing amount of gratification from completing a piece of just about any kind of writing, sitting here by myself and putting my thoughts down on paper.  The simplicity of basically regurgitating life experiences with 26 little characters and their accompanying punctuation, at this stage of the game anyway, provide me with a joy and contentment that spills out over into just about any other of my activities. 

     On the other hand, the obstacle course I’ve needed to navigate to get this far has been very interesting.  I effectively talked myself out of even remote possibilities of making it in the music world by chanting “I’m not good enough” over and over again like a mantra for years until I believed it. These days I rather enjoy my singing voice and the way I play my guitar, and for sure have great sentiment attached to some of the songs I’ve written, with songwriting being an invaluable vehicle for expressing and purging emotion.  In short, I enjoy how I perform and love playing for audiences.  While I don’t lose any sleep over it, I do occasionally muse about what things may have been like had I believed in myself sooner.  My final point on it these days however, is that while the likelihood of having my picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone anytime soon is pretty slim, I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction and joy from playing.  Now is now, in regard to music. And everything else, really.

     I’ve taken umpteen aptitude tests since 2001 and have been told for mysterious reasons that, per the results, my bliss would lie in being a respiratory therapist, a math teacher, or a chemical dependancy counselor,  Among other things. I decided to pursue the latter for a while, and have yet to figure out the other two.  I have zero interest in being a respiratory therapist, and if there’s such a thing as a “mathaphobe,” that’s me. 

     The driving force and catalyst that is finally getting me into the writing world is a spirit that is demanding expression, confronting, blasting through, going around, or doing whatever is involved in dissolving obstacles.  There is a heavy component of forgiveness, that is to say a long time practice of viewing shortcomings and transgressions past and present as “grist for the mill.”  These are the blocks that need to be removed: the parts of me that when forgiven, are in effect “looked beyond” after having been viewed with a more loving perspective.  Once my internal enemies have been loved, I notice that they were there to be useful for me all along.  Whether or not I think of myself in a positive or negative light is ultimately irrelevant – – they’re opposite sides of the same pole.  Once I begin to accentuate the positive of any “lack” situation, I get the gift of noticing that I can transcend both positive and negative. The opposite poles have been there to provide me with inspiration if I only give them attention that way. 

     So, “I’m not good enough to write for a living.” “There are way to many obstacles that will prevent me from making a living at writing.”  “Why even bother with such a glutted market?”  Bullshit.  All of these (and more) are the internal fantasies of an insane ego.  There is no excuse for me to not meet and ultimately live with bliss as my companion.  While I’m hardly Victor Frankl or Anne Frank, I grew up in circumstances that often included what  could easily be described as atrocities. I’m still here. I’m surely not in the woeful situations many are, starving, living on the street, living under a daily threat of death.  I’ve been gifted with a relatively level playing field from which to create my lot. The main thing my enemies have taught me is that they are illusory.  No matter what form my chosen blissful activity takes, the same gremlins are there to tell me that I don’t deserve that particular form.  It’s the inner enemies that I’ve come to love, indeed to lick my chops at sometimes at the thought of how happy I’ll feel once they’re transformed into the Love that they truly are.  It all depends on how I look at it.  Speaking of triteness, everything is Love.  There is nothing else.  I just sometimes choose to look at the world through shit-colored glasses.

     A few weeks ago I wrote about my late friend Paul, and didn’t include a piece of the story that now seems apropo.  Connected is a conversation I’ve had more than once.  The repeat conversation I have includes talking about people I don’t like, even though I’ve never met them.   A hatred for celluloid images, but what can I say?  My ego will seek out anything to project its wrath onto.  

     So, back in the proverbial day, I developed an intense dislike for Eric Clapton because he swiped George Harrison’s wife.  I knew none of the details, and obviously didn’t know either of them personally, but this was George Harrison, for chrissake!  I seethed underneath whenever I heard the name Clapton. Then one year he and Patty Harrison came to the cities as Clapton was playing at the old Civic Center in downtown St. Paul (yes .. . there was once life there).  They visited Town Center and the Berman’s store where my friend Paul’s sister Mary worked.  As it turned out, Mary and Patty struck up a pretty quick and strong bond.  So, whenever Clapton was in town, Patty would go to Berman’s to visit with Mary.

   It was in 1983 that Clapton had a date scheduled once again at the Civic Center, so Patty and Eric and their entire entourage went dutifully at Patty’s request to visit Mary at Berman’s.  As fate would have it, Mary was working at the store alone that day when she got the call that her kid brother had died.  As Mary frantically called to find relief help so she could be with her family, Eric, Patty, every one of the entourage stayed to console Mary until she was able to leave about three hours later.  No doubt they had sound checks and other professional obligations that were set aside.  What became more important to them is that they be with their hurting friend.  Though I’ve never met him, Eric Clapton became my friend that day.  I had unwittingly had an initial experience of learning to love my perceived enemy, with absolutely no inkling that this was the route to following my bliss.  I imagine it may come off a bit odd to Mr. Clapton if I relayed all of this to him, but I still would like to thank him one day for being with my friend at what was truly her darkest hour. All of this has been in my imagination from the start, just like Einstein said.  If I can bring myself to let love into my “loveless places,” even for a little bit each day, that is the road to my bliss.  Eric Clapton has led me to writing.  So did my parents and the rest of my family.  So have you who are reading this, and I thank you so much for doing so, because it ties the cords of our respective realities together.  I’m fifty-seven years old and loving Life like I never have before.  I am indeed following my bliss at the behest of the dream that has called to me so loudly for years, that I finally reached a point where even a seemingly infinite number of “enemies” could not drown it out.  I beg to differ with the late, great Lou Gehrig.  He was not the luckiest man in the world.  That would be me.  And finally, to anyone reading, I implore you: please, please don’t ever stop dreaming.

Peace

“The world we see merely reflects our own internal frame of reference – – the dominant ideas, wishes and emotions in our minds.” – – all quotes from A Course In Miracles,pg  xi/preface

     I read somewhere once that 95% of all behavior is unconscious.  While I can’t vouch for the percentage, I concur that the sleeping giant underneath my conscious mind dictates the direction any part of my given days can go.  I do believe that most of us operate in “default” mode most of the time, that is to say the our ego speaks first before we actually recognize an opportunity to think differently.  When an egoic idea looks so appealing, beautiful, wise, or rewarding, it’s very difficult at that time to consider the possibility that as beautiful as that sunset appears, as wonderful it is to be and feel “right,” as liberating as it seems to have the possibility of untold wealth at my feet, all of the above are merely shadows of what’s truly possible. Whatever my ego can conceive, “God,” the “higher self,” “the Is,” can conceive of it, oh, maybe just a little bit better. Maybe.

The long and short of what I’m getting at is that I came down with a pretty nasty fever this weekend and fortunately, fairly quickly, made a link to a conversation I had with an old friend early Saturday.  There are many attractive traits to my friend: he’s a nice guy, he’s very bright and well-read, and his sense of humor is almost as twisted as mine is.  However, the coffee I’d had yesterday morning began to churn sourly in my stomach about an hour or so into our visit when I realized that we were once again letting our talk degenerate into a rundown of all of the awful things that the people on or combined shit-lists have done over the years and consequently doesn’t allow them to measure up to our greatness.  In addition, I let myself take a parting shot at my lateness in keeping our appointment and blew an chance to set a boundary.  I had just spent two solid hours ignoring a golden opportunity to repair an internal behavior while being given a perfect reflection of areas in myself, “loveless places,” as Marianne Williamson calls them, that need forgiving. My friend was merely on the receiving end of my projections. The rest of the day held no plans for me to spend time with anyone. Rats. Holding ill will toward someone, like holding a resentment against my friend for his parting shot, usually works so much better when I can get a few people to agree with me what an asshole or bitch the person is. That way I feel “better” than them. For a little while, anyway, and then my mind spits out another projection and I have to start the whole process again. But no other people today,so instead a fever.

“We look inside first, decide the kind of world we want to see and then project that world outside, making it the truth as we see it.”

The idea of forgiveness loses the pious image I sometimes give it when I define it as “looking beyond.” As the Course itself says, “forgiveness is selective remembering.” The only person who gets hurt when I think of someone in a less than flattering way or when I hold a grudge is me. As I’ve heard it said many times, “resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Knowing that these principles are so easy for me to forget, it would behoove me to also cut slack to others on their various paths, as they too likely don’t have the idea of holding everyone in their world in the highest esteem as often as the human ego will let it, which is rarely, if ever. It’s only when choosing with a different Source that the other person begins to look like what they truly are underneath their mask, which incidentally, is the Latin definition for the word persona. I just don’t have it down pat yet. Neither does anyone else that I know of. None of us has wings just yet. Then again, every person in my world bears an angelic presence in that they offer me an opportunity to forgive myself. As I treat others, I treat myself. As I treat myself, I will invariably treat others. This very much includes thoughts as well as actions. It’s so much easier to seek out allies to hate the people I want to hate with me. Strength in numbers, like I said.

“If we are using perception to justify our own mistakes– our anger, our impulses to attack, our lack of love in whatever form it may take – – we will see a world of evil, desruction,malice,envy and despair.”

I in no way am suggesting that if I see someone murder another that it makes me a murderer. What I’m suggesting is that when I see another person who is easily identifiable as an “asshole” or some other creative description, I likely have a similar trait, have acted the same way in the past, am acting the same way currently, or bottom line have a like attribute within me that I’ve not forgiven myself for. It is impossible for me to have unforgiveness of myself within and not project it outward at some point. I can take heart in the fact that reflections can be distorted: maybe I’m not being a jerk or a bastard to the same degree as that person over in the corner, but I’m giving myself a major snowjob if I’m denying any sort of reflection whatsoever. Whether I treat someone with ill will, or if I even think of them repeatedly the same way, each time I’m not only denying myself a healing opportunity, I’m spending more time doing damage to the world I live in rather than making it a better place like I sometimes like to believe that I do.

“All this we must learn to forgive, not because we are being ‘good’ or ‘charitable,’ but because we are seeing what is not true. As we learn to recognize our perceptual errors, we also learn to look past them or ‘forgive’ At the same time we are forgiving ourselves, looking past our distorted self-concepts to the Self That God created in us and as us.”

Last October my car was broken into, and considering what was stolen I made an impromptu assessment of the character of my thief. A) As my group therapy book for school was taken, I had a scholarly person and possibly a budding therapist break into my car. B) My “Sargent Pepper” cd was left behind, so my friendly thief was apparently not a Beatles fan. C) A set of Course In Miracles cds was missing, so possibly my thief pal was also an aspiring holy person. I was really pretty upset for about an hour or so after I discovered the theft when I began to laugh out loud at the irony: the title of the box set of Course cds that was stolen was “Be Kind, For Everyone You Meet Is Doing A Hard Battle.” I began to think of the life my thief was leading and what brought he or she to the point of stealing. Apparently they needed my goods more than I did, or at least their value. Text books can be pretty expensive these days. Maybe the person hadn’t eaten for a few days. Maybe they had circumstances that dictated they turn some cash in a hurry or face dire consequences. I actually learned more from the theft than I allowed myself to learn from the cds themselves. It was a good reminder as was my past weekend. Now, if someone is just plain trodding on me, its in my best interest to set a boundary. Humility is not synonymous with being a doormat. What I still need to remember is that the person I perceive to be the biggest jerk in the room is potentially my greatest teacher. The degree of conflict involved is directly proportionate to the amount of healing I can glean from both the person and the situation. It is also possible to set boundaries with a person and do so kindly. Life in the world is too short for me to pass up so many opportunities. I do not have the power to change myself. I do have the power of free will and consent to have a Power greater than me do so. The world looks so much more beautiful when I know I’ve done my best to allow harmony to establish Itself around me. Each of us has within us the means to change the world, beginning with considering that the person I’m perceiving as wrong, or that I’m having conflict with may have had a terrible upbringing that they haven’t even begun to heal from yet, and they are indeed fighting a hard battle. Or maybe they’re just having a bad day. Or week. Or a bad year. I’ve had them myself. What I perceive is usually not real. True perception comes from a Loving heart, not the projections of an unhealed mind. All of us have been entrusted with helping each other get back Home. Projecting unforgiveness of my own transgressions, the mistakes I make and then blow out of proportion so I can beat myself and inevitably others up with, is not the way out. Healing happens when I remember that it all begins in my own mind. When I allow myself true perception, I forgive both your mask and my own, allow both of us to be human, and simultaneously enable myself to see you for the beautiful, amazing, spiritual being that you truly are.

Peace

“A dream left unexamined is like a letter from God left unopened.” – – Alfred Adler

A few days ago I posted the following quote on Facebook: “Until we have seen someone else’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are.  Until we have forgiven another’s darkness we don’t really know what love is.”  Having lived a rather sheltered emotional life, there are few I’ve let get close enough to experience both poles with me, and thus few I’ve reciprocated with.  My late friend Paul was one.  In the late 1960’s my family moved in the West End of St. Paul.   We were the first Hispanic family in the neighborhood, and the neighbors kids reminded us of our ethnicity in the most unflattering ways they could dream up.  Anyone who thought civil rights had won out and equality was the order of the day either was caucausian or never visited my area when things heated up.

Across the alley from our home lived a family totally oblivious to any ethnic differences.  Paul was the youngest in their family at age three, and with me at age five, we struck up an instant friendship that would last his remaining 21 years.  Long before bullying made the headlines it does nowdays, I took it upon myself to become Paul’s more dominant half.   No matter what deed I perpetrated on him (boy, I could be a little creep . . . ), Paul would come back the next day as though nothing had happened.  Not that my nasty behavior was constant: we had plenty of memorable times together.  Those days as a kid when you get so into your play that you literally lose track of time?  We had lots of those.  The one disconcerting memory I had of our youth was that Paul and I always seemed to end up on the same little league team.  I was a pitcher and Paul a second baseman.  A second baseman who usually botched my perfect game by fumbling a grounder hit right to him. 

As high school called for me, we went our separate ways for a while,  occasionally running into each other, engaging in whatever activities for a few days and then separating again.  It wasn’t until Paul graduated from college that we took up again on a more “permanent” basis.  We ran into each other in a liquor store and we were off to the races.  Our most frequent activity was retiring to the basement of Paul’s parents to drink beer and play our guitars into the wee hours.  Paul’s sister Mary often joined us, and it wasn’t unusual for me to head across the alley to my own home at around six a.m.

After one of our early morning escapades, Paul apparently slept a few hours and then headed out for an outdoor music fesitval.  With temperatures in the mid-nineties, and Paul severely dehydrated, he died that day.  Heart failure at age 24.  In addition to just plain feeling enormous grief, the guilt I felt was huge, and lasted what felt like an eternity.  I had kept my friend out all night and caused his death.  Despite repeated reassurances from others, it was years before this dissipated.  Regardless, my friend was gone.

It was about ten years later while I was going through the residual grief of a relationship breakup that I had a dream that I was playing in a baseball game.  I was playing right field.  A batter lined a ball out to me and I attempted to throw the runner out at first, a rather unsusual maneuver in a ballgame.  I let fly with my best throw toward first base and as I released the ball my heart sank: Paul was playing first base.  Paul who had trouble fielding a ten-hop grounder.  As the runner bore down on the bag, Paul reached out for my throw.  The ball hit his glove, and of course, he dropped it.  As the runner continued to steam toward the base, Paul casually reached down, picked up the ball with his bare hand, and just as casually, without ever looking at the runner, tapped his back foot on first base.  Runner out.  The whole time Paul wore his usual big smile.  As the umpire gave the out signal,  Paul looked out at me in right field, wiggled the ball in his bare hand and shouted, “See? It’s ok to miss an opportunity.”

I kept in touch with Paul’s sister Mary for quite a few years, and she became a regular at my music shows.  I believe it was in 2006 that I told of yet another dream I had about Paul about six months prior to my show.  This one was brief: Paul and his dad were walking down a flight of stairs.  The only other real memorable feature of the dream was that there was a blinding white light at the top of the staircase.  As I recited the dream to Mary she began to cry softly.  She then explained to me that her father had “died on the table” about six months earlier and been brought back to life.  He was doing just fine at the time.

The number of years since I’ve seen Paul now surpasses the number of years he was alive.  In a body, anyway.  I’ve not had a friendship so rich and full since then, but then what can rival a friendship that begins at the ages of three and five? Still, I have hope.  I have friendships in the making with people who have sampled my less than savory idiosyncracies, and they still remain.  I’m sure I’ve been forgiven more than once.  With Paul I had the privilege of being able to convey without words how much he meant to me on an almost daily basis during the time we spent together.  There are those of you out there who I hope I do the same with.  You know who you are.  Sometimes it’s the fear of letting myself be vulnerable, sometimes its shyness, sometimes its just plain fear: these are the things I let prevent me from telling you how much you mean to me.  I’m promising myself to do better.   In the meantime I’m hoping that I convey to you during each of our meetings what a beautiful world you make it for me.  Sometimes its just the sound of your voice, sometimes the sight of you, sometimes even just a Facebook picture of you that reminds me how bIessed I am.  If a friendship the depth of the one I had with Paul is the end result, a few moments of vulnerability is a ridiculously small price to pay.  I’m all in.  I’ve experienced proof that friendships can indeed last a lifetime.  Sometimes longer.

A friend of mine today expressed to me that she misses a mutual acquaintance of ours.  The acquaintance is someone who was reaching out to me to talk several months ago.  I’m not sure what the topic of discussion was to be, but it seemed quite important.  Through several episodes of scheduling difficulty, it never happened, and the person has since been away for an extended period of time.   I’ve regretted it ever since.  One of the credos of the world I live in is “whenver anyone, anywhere, reaches out, . . . for that I am responsible.”  I’m very much hoping that Paul is right again.  I’m hoping that all that was lost was an opportunity.

Peace

“There are two types of writer;  those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.” – – Brian Aldiss

     I hope to make you wonder.   Wonder strikes me as a state more akin to innocense than thinking, which we all do in various endeavors if we’re not doing what we love at the time.  There are of course those who have taken the leap to become musicians, or writers, or movie stars and just plain wouldn’t accept no for an answer until the ethers succumbed and granted them their dreams.  Approaching age 60, I’m finding with childlike delight that my dreams are far from impossible, and that in fact even the rudimentary  beginning actions are something that I can get a huge kick out of, rather than have them enslave me as something I “have to” do.

     I know of little that satisfies me as much as sitting in front of a “blank pad” as it were, getting into a nice calm, centered state, and letting ideas and words fly onto the formerly blank space in front of me, especially when I’m allowing my Unconscious do the bulk of the work, with my fingers becoming almost irrelevant.  This past January I performed my annual birthday show at the Coffeegrounds in St. Paul, likely the single most blissfully enjoyable performance I’ve had the joy of being connected with. 

     I suggested the same consequence of my guitar playing as I have with writing in the past – – if I’m truly “plugged in,” my fingers do indeed become irrelevant.  The true bliss is in the giving, allowing something higher to be channeled through me to others in attendance with a guitar and vocals being used as the medium, hopefully carrying all of us away feeling at the very least, a little happier than when we all walked in the door.  When I perform on stage, I too expect to be entertained by the presence of an audience that essentially has the same goal as me: they’re looking not as much for the medium, but for the feeling the medium, music in this case, can give them.

     It took me some time, and a few twists and turns in the road to figure out that writing would be the direction I would take to hopefully fulfill what I do believe is my path of least resistance to a happy life.  Until September of last year, the plan was to become a chemical dependancy counselor, until I found out that filling out forms would take up a large portion of my days.  Hence the shift over to writing, as I determined years and years ago that one needn’t be a counselor in order to help someone reach their soul. 

     Still, much like being a counselor, it takes having a person on the receiving end to truly complete the loop of going inside, connecting with my inner self, coming back out, and giving away what I’ve found, and enjoying what I once heard a pitching coach describe as “the cool of the evening,” that after glow of knowing that someone is enjoying something that has been produced not necessarily by me as much as it has been produced through me. 

     Daily interaction with others provides me with the possibility of several distinctly different blessings: 1) playing music for others, which happens with the least frequency. 2) listening to someone who needs to be listened to, unpredictable frequency, but immensely rewarding  3) Writing and having my work received by another.  Hopefully this one will happen weekly. In all three activities, the feeling of well being at the outcome is directly proportionate to how successful I am at “getting out of my own way” and fostering the beautiful, almost palpable “child” that’s born out of the interaction itself, and placing said child squarely in the lap of the recipient.  My reward, of course, is in the fact that the energy needs to pass through me first in order to reach anyone else.  So it is indeed a selfish endeavor, but I prefer to think of it satisfying the Self of me that begins with a capital “S.”

     So my first attempt is complete, and I’m hoping that someone out there, maybe more than one someone will read the words above and feel themselves in a slightly different place than they were upon reading the first sentence.  I get paid to work 40 hours a week to provide service to customers.   My real pay comes from giving service not only to those who call into my workplace, but to any who may need an occasional broken wing mended regardless of what office or building or outdoor space they’re occupying at the time.  According to  A Course In MIracles, “it is your job to heal the room.”  It’s a job I take very seriously. In the process, I hope I’ve made you wonder.

Peace