IS THIS THE SHORTEST WAY TO CHINA?

Blog number nineteen

I really, really got "into" Eastern spirituality. I meditated several times a day for months, expecting some breakthrough or other, but nothing happened. I ate healthily, thought healthily, lived healthily. Then one morning I woke up and realized I had just quit. No more spiritual work for me. I immediately felt an immense freedom. No more mediation, no more "working." To hell with it.

It was a beautiful spring day. The kids were playing in the back yard. My wife had made me a white robe a few weeks before - why, I don't know. I put it on. I'm not sure, but I think my wife suggested I wear it. I think that is so.

We went outdoors. My daughter made a wreath of flowers and placed it upon my head. I was wearing a long white robe, barefoot, with a wreath of flowers on my head. I didn't think anything of it at the time. It had all happened in a casual unusual way. Nothing out of the ordinary.

We played with the kids awhile then my wife and I went behind the swimming pool, facing a pasture in the back. We sat there talking. I had an insight that I don't now remember and while I was telling it to my wife, I had another and before I could tell her that one, I had another, then another, then another and it felt like my mind was running away with myself. I felt myself sinking deep into the earth and immediately come shooting out through the grasses and the branches of the trees we were sitting under. At the same time, this deep, loud voice that seemed to come from everywhere said, "Do what you want. If you do what you want, everything will be all right." I started laughing and crying, trying to speak, but I couldn't. I was in ecstasy.

For months afterwards, I thought it was God that had spoken to me. I read once that often, when someone thinks that God has spoken to them it is nothing more than their own selves that they "hear." It seems to me now that what had happened is that I had such a glimpse of a Truth that the recognition of it seemed like a loud voice.

I also remembered reading that when a person diligently pursues a spiritual goal and then gives up, that what happened to me usually happens. Something about the hard work and then the giving it all up seems to trigger a response.

I also thought for months that everyone knew what had happened to me - that they had been inside my head at the time. My wife told me years later that she thought that I had had a psychotic episode. I can see now, that that would be a perfectly reasonable thought. Here was this man sitting beside her and all of a sudden he starts laughing and crying and babbling. Obviously psychotic, yes?

Over the next few months it seemed as if the universe was talking to me. It was like a rebus puzzle talking to me. All I had to do was put words to the pictures so that it made sense. I understood the previously not understood claimings of people that the "radio was talking directly to them." The universe was talking to me. I think it still does, but I can no longer "read" the puzzle. I talked to my mentor about this and he said that doubt always enters and stops those things. I saw immediately that that was what had happened.

He said that when he was in Japan he used to ride his motorcycle on top of a dike between the rice patties, real fast. On day he rode a bicycle over it and suddenly thought that he might fall into the paddy and he did. He said that after that, he could no longer ride his motorcycle over the dike, that he always fell in.

The very night that he told me that, I was walking a joist in the cabin that we were building. I was walking very fast, comfortably, and suddenly I thought that since it was dark, I might not be seeing very well and I might mistep into thin air, and I almost did. I sat down and scooted the rest of the way.

One big direct result of this event that I call a "cosmic experience" was that I could now look into people's eyes. I sat for an hour or so on a bench between classes at Sac State, looking at all the people, right in the eye. I noticed that most people immediately looked away. Those that didn't look away, both male and females, flirted with their eyes. Eventually one guy came along and did neither. He looked me square in the eye, acknowledged me, and went on. What the hell was that? He was the only one that did that, that day.

I was sitting in a class I thought stupid - "Psychology of Art." I thought, "What the hell am I doing here? I didn't want to do this." God had just told me a few days before to do what I wanted and if I did, everything would be all right. Ok, time to obey orders. I got up and walked out, started dropping all my classes, left college. Whee!

This reminds me of a guy I met though a circuitous series of events. He told me that he went to a monastery and as he lay in bed that night, he heard this loud voice from God telling him that he was to stay in that monastery. I said, "Wait a minute. God told you to stay there, so what are you doing here?"

He said that his back was hurting from working in the fields and the head guy told him, when he complained, to just keep working. So he left. I asked him what about God's orders and he said he figured out that the monks had did some kind of a ritual to make it seem like God was talking to him so that he would stay there. I thought, "Man, this guy has got some ego, thinking that all those people got nothing better to do that do rituals so they would have the pleasure of his company. I never told him that, but I thought it.

What I did think was that if he had stayed there working, that might have cured whatever was wrong with his back. I never told him that either.

WALKIN', YES I'M WALKIN'

Blog number eighteen

So ... between the time I left my first wife in Estherville Iowa and hitchhiked to LA, California, I inexplicably, out-of-no-where, wanted to be a cop. At no time before in my life had I ever entertained the idea of being a policeman. To this day I have no idea as to when this impetus to be a member of the chase and grab club came into my mind. I only know that when I left Estherville, the idea of my being a policeman did not exist anywhere. By the time I got to Phoenix two days later, I wanted to be a cop. It wasn't my idea. The desire was forced upon me.

I checked the chances of becoming a police officer in Phoenix, but they were not testing for another six months and I wanted to get to LA. I almost stayed in Phoenix, but my kind heart nixed that idea.

The guy I got a ride with somewhere in Kansas was running away from his wife. Small world. We picked up another hitchhiker further on down the road. Our driver was a heavy drinker and I believe he was running out of money and needed another sucker. He had already talked me into pooling our money which resulted in me paying for his alcohol.

The guy we picked up was a rather heavy, sloppy unkempt fellow with a logic engine that had a bad plug or two so that he skipped a beat every once in a while. This was to have an unforeseen repercussion later on.

Our driver decided to go back to his wife once we reached Phoenix, so me and the unkempt fellow slept in the bus station. I planned to go out to Camelback Inn the next morning. They were advertising for help.

On the way out there the next morning I ran into my new friend coming back from there. He said they weren't hiring. Well, I knew that they would not hire him. They probably served food out there and I wouldn't want that guy messing anywhere near any food I planned on consuming. So I told him I would go out anyhow and ask -- couldn't hurt. He insisted they weren't hiring. I told him it wouldn't be any trouble for me to go out there anyhow. He insisted I would be wasting my time. I didn't want to push it any further under the probably mistaken idea that he would catch on that I thought it was HIM they didn't want to hire and NOT that they weren't hiring. I still think that if I had went out there I would have beenhired.

So I went back to Phoenix with him -- from my point of view, so as not to hurt his feelings.

Later we caught a ride with a trucker at a truck stop that was going to LA as soon as he finished eating. We rode to LA in the back of the truck. Got a little sleep. We arrived in LA. The journey begins.

As told in previous Blogs, I got kicked out of the police academy due to some psychological quirk (I believe that is the correct psychological term for my condition). In order to find out why I failed a psychological test, I took a class in Psychology at Compton J. C. In Compton, California. It was in that class that I learned about Freud and his dream interpretations. Eventually, step by step, I met Dr. Burke, was psychoanalyzed and became a much different person very quickly. I thought I was done, but I wasn't.

In the sixties Zen was big. Self growth was big. Transcendental Meditation, est, Scientology, the Moonies, dream work, meditations on sounds, sights, ideas and nonsense words was big.

It was a time, that time, when there was a movement away from the traditional materialistic drive that we affluent humans had and a turning inward toward a spiritual uplifting. This movement has since ebbed, much like a retreating tide, leaving a bad smell in places where the retreating tide has left its rotted debris. Spiritual groups no longer have the pizzazz they once had. But it was a great time for the spiritually minded

My wife was into this new spiritual growth folderol. Books by Alan Watts, Jane Roberts, Christopher Humphrey's, Chogyam Trungpa lay all over the house, irritating me greatly.

"Seth says..."

This

"Seth says..."

That.

"A pox on Seth! I don't know why you bother with all that crap," was my mantra at the time.

I was a scientific minded atheist at the time, you see. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why people couldn't see that all that airy fairy pie-in-the-sky crap was hog wash. And why did my own wife have to be so idiotic as to believe that stuff just because some other nuts believed it.

I never for one moment thought about the fact that I based my opinions on nothing but emotions. I never read one word of any of those books -- of those authors that I so authoritatively condemned.

One night we went to Tower books. A display of Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was stationed as you came in the door. I became hypnotized by the cover -- a painting of a steel wrench superimposed over a lily. I almost went over and picked it up, but I thought, "nuts," and walked to where the good books were. None of that nonsense for me, thank you.

A week later we again went to that bookstore and this time when the display caught my eye and my mind, I went over, looked through it and bought it. My first nonfiction book that was based not on facts, but on experiences.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a popular book back in the late sixties, early seventies.

What I got mostly from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was that not everyone was as talented toward certain situations as anyone else might be. The author was adept at fixing his all sorts of items -- including his motorcycle. He tells of a friend that had a leaky faucet, tried to fix it with a washer, it still leaked, the guy gave up on it as if it just was not something that could ever be fixed. Not everyone is a mechanic, not everyone is a SunTzu., not everyone is a Betty Davis. We are all different plants, seeding different growths.

The author, I believe was stressing the idea that although quality couldn't be defined, everyone recognized it when they saw it.

A friend of mine read that book, started fixing his motorcycle himself instead of taking it to the shop for every little thing -- like an oil change. Everyone seemed to get something different from it. Strange book.

A side effect of my reading that book is that I no longer thought of Zen at least, as being something for the feebleminded -- the misguided. I was now able to look into other Zen books -- most notably those by Alan Watts. My first one of his had the enigmatic title of The Wisdom of Insecurity. Since I was a paradigm of insecurity, I liked the idea that maybe that meant I was wise. Worth a try, anyhow. Didn't turn out to be that way, but it did calm me down a bit about trying to get the world to work the way it was supposed to, and giving up on that gave me a lot of free time that was missing in my life. Made my life a lot less worrisome too. Danger seemed to decrease some 30%.

About that time my wife told me and the kids that we were going to learn Transcendental Meditation. I had no special interest in it, no special antagonism against it either. But by that time I had learned that if I obeyed my wife without question, my life got easier. So we all went, except for the second oldest child. I forget why he didn't want to go.

So I learned how to meditate.

My wife then took me to a class run by a friend of hers where I learned to do something that is called, "Beginner's Mind." This technique shakes loose the crud that solidifies the mind so that one is able to look at other possibilities without losing any pet beliefs.

One window-shops, one doesn't buy -- necessarily. This enabled me to branch out into books on Eastern religions, which is really a misnomer. These are not religious books -- they were not about Hinduism or Moslem, although the topic God is prevalent in them. They are more like philosophies -- ways to live a satisfying life.

I was still an Atheist at this time, but no longer stuck in a "scientific" mode of mind.

DON'T PUT YOUR FEET ON THE FURNITURE!

Stories, articles, books, have an ending and a beginning. Writing them, they grow from the middle outwards. The beginning is already there, as is the end. The only part that can grow is the middle. Now, this is fine for stories, articles and books, but Blogs? They can only grow from the end. Like a diary. So I gotta hop around a lot as I think of new things to write. Some of it is bound to be a repeat, since my memory isn't perfect. I'll bet yours ain't either, so don't go laying any trips on me.

So back to Dr. Burke and my analysis.

I once pulled K. P. at the cadet squadron back in 1949. I was so envious of them. I wanted to be a cadet so badly I could taste it. This was where I belonged. Where I could never be.

Years later, I took a test for OCS (Officer's Candidate School). There were some people in the testing room testing for cadet flying training. I didn't take that test because I didn't feel I had what it took to go through pilot training. I wanted to, but what was the use? I realize now that I did have what it took except for this damn self esteem problem. So on the other hand, I didn't have what it took.

I was standing outside the shop where I worked after taking the test -- knowing I had passed the OCS test when my buddy, who knew me well, said, "You know, as an officer, you'll, be required to go to parties." Bingo! To hell with OCS.

Did I tell you that at parties to which my wife drug me, that I would find a book or a magazine so fascinating to me that I would bury my head in it so that I would not have to "relate" to anyone? I figured that nobody would notice me, but of course this made them notice me all the more.

"Who is that nut hiding over there in the corner?" they would ask each other.

I thought everyone else knew how to party. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was expecting someone to come along and teach me how to live. I sure as hell didn't know how.

This was the guy who, while waiting for a friend at his house I overheard him say to his wife that I was always blushing. "Look," he says, "he's doing it right now!" I'm standing there blushing -- for no reason. Embarrassed. About what? Existing, I guess.

I always felt that everyone was always looking at me, judging me, condemning me. Dr. Burke once told me that I thought that people could see the inside of me by looking though my eyes. I recognized that right away.

I used to go on three day trips when I was on flying status. TDY (Temporary Duty). I thought, not being around my wife, that she would begin to see what a bad person I was. I felt I had to be around someone so they didn't have a chance to think about me. I could schmooze them. The fact that I couldn't schmooze a squirrel never entered my mind. Since I had given her an opportunity to see my true self, I had better attack her first before she could do it to me. I ALWAYS arrived home hesitant and defensive, sure I was going to be told to go away and never come back.

One time when I was fifteen years old, my girl went into a dance hall to talk to her friend a few moments -- maybe five minutes. When she came out, looking at her from below, on the stairs, I pointed a finger at her and said, "You can go to hell."

What had happened in my mind was that she would find someone in there who was head and shoulders better than me. Out of maybe fifty men in there, there had to be at least forty-five who far outshone me. Better I dropped her than she dropped me, like she was obviously going to do.

Besides being shy, I was angry. Not being able to stand up for myself, not wishing to offend anyone, I could only respond to what I considered an imposition when I was angry. Then I didn't care what they thought of me. It gave me a freedom in which I could make my voice heard, although my actions were usually way out of proportion to the perceived injustice. Besides a sense of injustice setting me off, any suggestion -- by word or action that the person thought I was stupid would do the trick.

I took a book back to the college book store for a return and the paper cover had been accidentally bent (while in my care). The man refused to take it, which made me furious. On the way out of the store I took a book from a display as a substitute and stormed out of the place. Looking through is on the way to a coffee house type of edifice, I noticed that it was a book of poetry. I felt cheated. I was outraged. How dare they? I immediately turned around, stormed back to the bookstore, gave a little more thought to a replacement, picked it up, left the poetry book and walked out. I remember a girl at the checkout counter watching me, but I must have looked and acted so dangerous that nobody said a word.

Another time I bought something in a grocery store, went outside where I discovered I didn't want it for some reason I can't remember now. I took it back to the same girl that I had bought it from and she said it wasn't listed on my receipt. GOD DAMN IT TO HELL! I stormed out, but at the door I blindly threw the item back into the store as hard as I could. One of my sons told me that he saw it hit a customer in the back. I wonder what the customer thought -- where did he think the item came from? Why him? Hah!

These stories are difficult for me to disclose. I don't even like to think about them. I ain't gonna tell about the time I punched an old man in a fit of road rage. I was not a good husband, I was not a good father, I was not a good person.

Dr. Burke once commented that he thought it interesting that Americans used the word, "mad" when they meant "angry." My anger sure made me "mad."

I remember an argument with Dr. Burke in which I stated that if a man walked up to a woman and asked for sex, he would be refused, but if a woman walked up to a man and asked for sex, he would probably oblige. The argument was about whether or not women were as difficult to get into bed as it was to pick coconuts in Iowa.

After that session I walked out to my car which was by a park and I saw a woman sitting on the grass. Scared as hell, I went over to her and engaged in small talk. In no way was I going to initiate anything more than that. It was a test to see if she would shoot me.

Everything went well. I left, but I wonder nowadays what that woman must have thought of that incident. "Seemed like a pickup, but yet not. Did he think he knew me? Did I smell? Did he just come out of analysis and was trying out something he learned there?"

It was not too long after I began analysis with Dr. Burke - a week or two maybe, that I learned that whatever happened during the time between sessions, Dr. Burke would make it better. I began to get my first taste of confidence. A very pleasant sensation.

I was with my wife and a friend of hers in the Sac State cafeteria. I was carrying a plate of spaghetti to our table when I spilled it all over the floor. I cleaned it up as well as I could and went to get another serving. It wasn't until we were in the car on the way home that I realized what had happened. I had felt no embarrassment at all. Ordinarily I would have dissolved into a red-faced flushing pool of quivering ashamedness.

I discovered that no one knew how to live. We are all doing it for the first time. I was free to do whatever I wanted. There are no rules except those we make for ourselves. I could be clumsy any time I wished. There never was a rule about clumsiness.

I began to identify emotions I never knew I had.

I started wearing neon colored socks of different bright colors. Neon red sock on one foot, neon blue sock on the other. I bought a pair of gold colored corduroy pants with matching vest which I wore at parties with my wife. I enjoyed a freedom I never suspected existed.

PSYCHIATRISTS ARE TO MANUAL LABORERS AS THIS IS TO THAT.

This blog of mine is still a work in progress.

I wanted to tell my story about how I went from being a shy, sleepwalking, blind idiot to what I am now -- a (fill in the blank here). I don't want to fill in the blank myself for two reasons.

One, because it would look like I am full of myself -- which I might be, but I don't want to appear that way. Remember what I said about people not caring if you know they are stealing from you or lying to you, as long as you don't call them thieves or liars? Same holds true for braggarts. We can brag, but we don't want anyone telling us we be one.

And two, I might not be seeing myself with unbiased eyes.

I tried to find what episode I am on this journey from what I was to what I am now, and I realized two things. One, the titles I put up are in no way related to the subject matter of the particular blog, entered strictly for cutesie-pie purposes, and two, I needed to number them so I can relate which blog I am talking about. So from now on, the titles will relate to the subject matter and the Blogs will be numbered. Hallelujah!

So where were we..? Oh, yes, in Blog number 10, I related my hitch-hiking from Estherville Iowa to LA a few days before Christmas, 1974. In Blog number 11, I related flunking out of the Police Academy in LA and enrolling in Junior College for the purpose of taking a class in Psychology in order to find out what was wrong with me, if anything. Here I found Sigmund Freud.

In the late sixties I had a dream where I was in a cavern. In this cavern were large blocks of concrete about twenty feet cubed. The concrete cubes were standing in deep running water. I was standing on one of the cubes, looking for a way out. Pretty bleak scene.

I started jumping from one block to another, searching for an opening. Eventually I saw a bright light -- an opening, made a running leap for it, dove head first, and woke up.

I couldn't get that dream out of my mind. I talked about it, trying to get someone to tell me what it was all about. I tried to make a painting of it, couldn't get it right. That thing was on my mind constantly. I have had many dreams before this one. I never, ever, kept one on my mind before for more than a few hours. I could accept recurring dreams -- even nightmare recurring dreams without ever being obsessed with them as I was with this one. One of the puzzling things about it was that it was such an innocuous dream. Why was it preying on my mind so? Do you know? I don't think so.

I remembered from my college class that Freud wrote a book about dreams. Maybe I could find something in there. I was going to college in Sacramento at that time, so I went to the college library and searched for any of Freud's books pertaining to dreams. The book entitled, "Interpretations of Dreams" was checked out. Now what? I thumbed through a few of his other books, hoping that one of them might have something about interpreting dreams in them. I picked up "Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis" and was immediately hooked. That book had magic in it!

I eventually read all of Freud's books. One thing I discovered over the years was that anyone who ever criticized any of Freud's writings had never read any of his stuff. What they had read was something someone else had written about him. I have found this same phenomenon whenever I have run across any criticism of a "humanity-helping" person. The criticisers never have any personal relationship with the person's works. Their knowledge of their expertise is garnered from gossip by discontents. Go figure.

Yeah, I know - I may be grouping everyone in with most everyone, but this IS MY Blog! I got axes to grind.

I worked in an office with a secretary -- not mine. I got her interested in Freud and she started reading him. We talked about him and one day she told me a dream she had had about her sister, who was living with her. I interpreted the dream very hesitantly because it involved her sister leaving her house, which I thought might upset the secretary -- my saying that, but instead, she recognized it. My first bit of doing psychoanalysis. A success.

The thing about Freud's dream thing is that he claimed that when we dream, often it is our unconscious telling our consciousness what is really true about what is going on with us.

The interpretation of her dream was obvious to me because I had no stake in its revelations. She, however, was hiding from herself the idea that she wanted her sister out of her home and hearth. Thus the dream.

I just now thought of this, but when Iwas undertaking psychoanalysis for that year or two, six days a week, not once did I ever mention that fateful dream of mine to Dr. Burke. That seems pretty weird to me now. Also weird is that I never realized that fact until just this moment.

My wife, Teresa, was at this time, in graduate school for Social Work and she was doing an internship at a halfway house for the mentally impaired. One night there was a party at that house -- for the inhabitants, the Social Workers, and whoever else wanted to come. I was one of the latter. At this party was the resident psychiatrist, who happened to be a Freudian who had been psychoanalyzed by an English Jewish doctor by the name of Dr. Burke.

I was a real kook in those days, unbeknownst to me, and my wife was looking for someone to talk over this problem of hers -- me. This psychiatrist at the party told her about Dr. Burke.

As an aside, years later this same psychiatrist was my wife's supervisor and boss when she worked in the prison at Vacaville, CA.

She started going to Dr. Burke. I was envious. I wanted to go 'cause I wanted to learn how to do psychoanalysis. Fortunately, two things dovetailed. Dr. Burke was one of those special saints God sometimes gives us so that we don't lose all hope and he made his fees very acceptable to us poor people. Also, I was in the Air Force and part of his fee would be covered by the Air force. We got by cheap, let me tell you. I got to go learn how to do psychoanalysis. I was in hog heaven.

I once went to a counselor at Sac State (Dr. Burke had left for England - pissed at the U.S., you know. Cheated him out of a lot of money.) I was telling the counselor about Burke and I mentioned that Dr. Burke never charged for the initial interview and the counselor said, "Everyone charges for the initial interview," and at the same time we both said, "but not Dr. Burke." Hah!

So that's how I met my first life-changing happenstance.