My First Vision Quest ~ June 2010 (posted July 4, 2010)

A week ago tonight I was watching the very same sun I am watching now, sinking into the sea, setting instead into the mountains 300 miles east of here, in the magnificent Las Plumas National Forest just west of Reno, Nevada. That night, one week ago, was my first solo night of my first vision quest.

The vision quest itself had actually started the day before, when I arrived in Quincy, California. Or perhaps it had started years before, when the idea of vision quest first came to my attention as something that interested me. As the idea grew inside of me, it made its way onto one of my intention tools, a flipchart that hangs on my office wall, a gathering place of possibilities that have made their presence prominently enough known in my mind to actually consider them as real possibilities, wrap words around them, and commit those words to paper.

It started getting very real when two dear friends of mine decided some months ago to create a special-focus ministry specifically to facilitate vision-quests for New Thought clergy. When I saw that announcement, I knew that the idea had shifted, become more than just an idea, and that it was time to put up or shut up.

These two women are very special to me. Hannah will always have a special place on my heart, for she is the one, through the magic and mystery of cosmic conspiracy, who first introduced me formally to New Thought. She took me to my first service at a Center for Spiritual Living, way back in a former life when things did not look, for me, as they do today. She saw something in me that I was not capable at that time of seeing in myself, loved me when I thought myself quite incapable of being a place where love could exist in any form or fashion ever again. Yes, Hannah and I go way back, but this isn’t the time or place for that whole story, which is a story in and of itself.

Michele I met some years later, when I was assisting in a class at a Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa. Once in a while you come across someone and there is a recognition, a resonance that makes no sense linearly, but there it is none the less. It’s kind of like a tuning fork in a music store. A few instruments will vibrate to a similar frequency. Michele and I were like that. So when these two came up with this new ministry, New Thought Nature, the tuning fork began to vibrate again, and I knew I had just slipped a lot closer to this idea becoming reality.

Four dates were offered this year, and despite the craziness of my schedule, one of the dates was open. It was then, in truth, that this vision quest began.

There is something that happens when we step into a mystery like this, something that we know, or more accurately that we sense, is sacred, and significant. Having had no first-hand experience with vision quest, I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. But I have been on this path long enough to be aware when I am drawn towards something in a significant enough way that eventually it will come to pass. This was one of those things. The draw was old and clear, the facilitators were old and dear friends who I would literally trust with my life. The date was available, and I had no good reason not to say yes.

So I contacted Hannah and Michele, and said yes. They were pleased and I was pleased in a reserved sort of way, still having no real idea what to expect, what I was getting myself into, yet sensing that it was a good time, coming up on my first year anniversary as a minister, to carve out the time and space to jump the tracks, take a breath, look around me from a different perspective, and see what I could see.

From that point on, that initial yes, things began to stir in my consciousness. The Universe began almost immediately to flow into this intention that I had said yes to and, every so slowly and almost unconsciously at first, shift began. Or perhaps more accurately I became aware of movement within my own consciousness in a different way.

It can be hard to wrap 26 letters around this kind of experience, to convey it accurately when there are really no words in our vocabulary that speak well to this kind of thing, so I will just have to trust that the reader – whoever you are – can get a little non-linear with me and feel what is beneath and between the letters and words.

As the date drew closer, a few themes began to emerge, things that were on my mind and in my heart that were the things that I was to take into this vision quest time. I made a pretty conscious choice to hold all of this very lightly, not to attach any well-defined expectations or parameters onto any of this. In my experience burning bush experiences are few and far between. The Consciousness of the Cosmos, the Mind of God – call it what you will – seems to be a little more subtle than that in Its communication with me. Not that subtle communication is any less prevalent, or omnipresent, or persistent than, say, a plague of locusts, but it does require me to be more aware, more sensitive, to pay closer attention. That’s my part. If I am doing that, Spirit will get Its message across to me just fine. I just have to pay attention.

So I didn’t want to go into this with any hard and fast, well, anything. I was going to see what I could see, feel what there was to be felt in this parenthesis in time and space that had been present in my awareness for many years. My part was to show up, be open, be as mindful as I could be. I figured God could handle the rest.

The week before my quest, I realized that it was summer solstice that week – the longest days of the year. It was also full moon, almost equally, the two nights that I was going to be on the land alone. It almost felt like the Universe was bringing together a lot of different components around this time. I didn’t know why, but I was noticing.

I began to gather my gear, to prepare as best I could for this time. What does one take on a vision quest? What does one really need? Michele had provided me with a list, and I had most of what she had suggested that I bring, so it looked like I was in pretty good shape, gear-wise.

My plan was to drive up to Quincy on Thursday afternoon, after seeing clients in the morning. It’s about a 4.5 hour drive, depending on traffic and the other normal variables, and I wanted to arrive before dark. We were set to head out onto the land, to a place that Hannah and Michele had pre-scouted, first thing Friday morning, and we did just that.

From Quincy we headed east, then north, into the heart of the Las Plumas National Forest. This is definitely four-wheel drive country, WAY off the beaten track. The old logging and forestry service roads provide the only access to these areas. The road we finally took was, in fact, a dead end. I know. From where we parked to set up base-camp, I walked to the end. For 10 or 15 miles this rutted, ascending track led us into the forest until you could go no further in a vehicle. Base camp was to be set up at roughly six thousand feet elevation, in a beautiful valley, with not another human being for miles around.

They picked a perfect place.

While Hannah and Michele set up base camp, my instructions were to take a day-pack and go find my solo-location, my quest place, my “power-spot”. So where does one go, standing in the middle of tens of thousands of acres of forest? It’s actually a viable question, and I was encouraged to sense my way, to trust my intuition, to find my place by feel more than by thought. After finding my spot, I was to return and tell them of my location, participate in whatever ceremony they had in mind, and then head off for my extended solo time.

After a little consideration, I headed uphill. I could see a ridgeline further up the track, above and north of base-camp, and I set off, into the mystery. After just a few steps, already in a rather heightened state of awareness, paying attention to everything around me as well as everything within me, something caught my eye on the leaf of a small plant on the ground in front of me. Bending down, I saw it was the empty shell of an insect that had crawled, after spending seven years underground as a subterranean dweller, up this plant stem and onto a leaf where it had changed its form, split the back of the hard shell that had been its identity for all of its life, and emerged with wings to fly, to eat, to mate, to briefly experience life in a very different way than it had ever known, and to end its life cycle.

In it’s not so subtle way, the Universe welcomed me loud and clear in my first few moments on the land, beginning my vision-quest, staring at the empty shell of, you guessed it, a locust.

I continued up the hill, all eyes and ears, all of my senses amplified. How does one go about finding their power spot after all? I was acting almost purely on intuition at that point, looking right and left, up and down the valley, putting one foot in front of the other. There was, out towards the center of the valley, a flatish spot, a little plateau that felt like it had been cleared at some point, populated now only by huge boulders. It felt a little like a mini-Stonehenge. But while it caught my attention, it was in the open, devoid of trees, and Hannah had told me to make sure that I chose a spot with trees, for shade from the midday sun. So on I went.

Further up, in a narrow cut of the canyon, was a lovely grove of aspen, green and lush in this early spring. It too caught my eye, but I saw no flat or open spaces that might make for a decent campsite, so continued on my way. This turned out to be a divinely-guided decision, for it was here, in this aspen grove, that Hannah saw not one but four bears the next day. One was a large male, golden in hue, and later there was a momma black bear with two very small cubs. We knew that this was bear country (and mountain lion country too, for that matter), but if one or more of those bears called that aspen grove home, I was happy to defer to their claim on that slice of forest.

The hill was getting pretty steep, and I had to be getting close to seven thousand feet of elevation. As much as my brain still likes to think I am somewhere around 23 years of age, in fact I am 51, and not exactly what you would call a gym-rat. My heart was pounding in my chest, but the ridge was in sight, and I had it in my head that the ridge was the goal, that if I could make it to that, that somehow I might have passed my first vision quest challenge. One foot in front of the other, encumbered only by a small day-pack that suddenly felt ridiculously heavy, I finally crested the ridge, found a sitting rock, and stopped to catch my breath.

The view was spectacular. I could see west to snow-capped peaks that looked to be no higher than where I stood, which I attributed to the curvature of the earth. It wouldn’t snow here would it? THIS weekend it wouldn’t snow here, would it? Perish the thought.

It had rained that morning, which was only slightly ominous. (Please God don’t let it rain while I am out solo. I would be a wet, cold, miserably doomed vision-quester. God? Are you hearing this?) The rain was supposed to be short-lived, and did serve to lay down the dust in what would surely have been an otherwise much dustier environment. The rain also served to supply the essential ingredient for life to be absolutely flourishing in that valley and on the ridge. An amazing diversity of plant (and bug) life was all around me. Te place literally buzzed with life, both audibly and energetically.

To the east I could see into lower Reno Valley, and the track continued over the ridge and into an even lusher, more thickly forested area. I had gone as high as I wanted to go, but since that onward direction was downhill (anything downhill looked attractive at that point), I pressed on a little further, still searching for my spot.

I wandered into thickly shaded forest, protected from the wind by the ridge, and very quicky realized that this was the home of the bug. I hit a wall of mosquitoes and flies and various and assorted flying, buzzing and blood-sucking residents. I looked down and noticed that my legs were, much to my horror, already densely populated by bugs that I could only assume had every intention of invading my body by every means possible and establishing a thriving community that would quickly result in me becoming some two-legged condominium incapable of sustaining life, a hollowed-out shell with a great view of, well, the next pile of dirt or fallen log or something. Already clearly well-occupied, this was definitely not my power-spot. I turned-tail and ran back to the ridge to reassess.

The ridge itself was a plateau of sorts, so I struck out south along the ridgeline to see what I could see. A few hundred yards down the ridgeline I came upon a grandmother tree, a very old juniper, growing right out of the rocks on the western lip of the ridge, and she and I recognized each other right away. She spoke to me, not in words, but in another, much more subtle language. There was a sense of propriety in her – this was her ridge, her space – but also a sense of recognition that felt almost maternal. She would shelter and watch over me, she said, if I would agree to honor her space.

Just this side of her, among the rocky field that was the ridge-top, was a flat, rock free (or so I thought, until I tried to sleep on it… more on that later) little clearing perhaps twenty by thirty feet wide, just out of the wind behind the ridge and in the lee of the grandmother tree.

I had found my spot.

In hindsight, and even as I considered it then, going uphill and as far as I went to find this spot was not the smartest of moves, logistically. I knew I could make it back downhill to report my location to Hannah and Michele, no problem. Downhill travel was not what concerned me. The thought of lugging a full pack, and water, back up to from the valley to the ridge, however, did.

As I made my way back to base-camp, I started thinking of ways that I might convince Hannah and Michele to actually drive me back up the ridge. Was that allowed in vision-questing? Failing that, maybe an airlift of some kind? Ropes and pulleys? A Sherpa? Did they have sherpas for rent anywhere close by?

I surveyed the track a little more closely on the way back down to base camp and realized that even a four-wheel drive wasn’t going to make it where I had gone. So I had two options. One was to head out in a completely different direction, find another spot, closer to base-camp, preferably downhill or at least at a slighter grade with easier access, or, I could stick with where I had been led. To concede anything at this point though seemed like, well, conceding, not quite right somehow. Dismissing the thought of another, easier location, I knew that I was doomed to do it the hard way.

Base-camp came into sight, and I dragged my slightly-bedraggled self – bitten, scratched, sweaty but triumphant after my ascent, into camp where I plopped myself into the nearest camp chair. Hiking what must have been at least 10 miles had taken a lot out of me. Actually it was probably closer to three or four miles, but it’s my story, and if I say it was ten, it was ten. At least. Maybe fifteen. But I felt like I was on the right track, had found my spot, and was ready to proceed.

Other than a cup of coffee before we left the house that morning, I hadn’t eaten anything that day. Did I mention that fasting was part of the deal? I wasn’t quite sure why, how fasting fit into the picture, but Michele and I had talked about it the week before, and I agreed that I surely wouldn’t starve from not eating for a couple of days, so yes, if fasting was part of the gig, I was game.

Upon my return to base camp and seeing my condition, Hannah however experienced maternal pangs, and suggested that perhaps my eating a small fish patty prior to heading back out might be an acceptable addition to my fasting program. I knew then that I could do this thing, including the fasting part. Especially if it included food. Two bites later, I had seen the last food that I would see for a couple of days.

They had brought a large packpack for me to use, and I was pointed in that direction, and told to pack it up and get ready to head out.

Michele had included, in preparation for this adventure, a rather comprehensive list if items that one might want to consider taking on this kind of trip. Tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, tarp, various and assorted clothes, shoes, lotions and potions and accessories. My stuff was piled around the backpack, and I proceeded to start strapping and stuffing and arranging and rearranging, piling stuff on top of stuff, all the while acutely aware that it was I who was to haul all of this gear up Dante’s peak to Heaven’s Gate and my power-spot. Michele suggested the possibility of two trips, but I knew darned good and well that if I made it up there one more time it was going to be a miracle in and of itself. No way I was going to do it two more times. Not without a pack mule or airlift. I was going to make one trip, with whatever I could carry, and make do.

But once I was strapped and bound and stuffed and stuff and more stuff was clipped and tied on top of other stuff, this pack – which was under there somewhere – more closely resembled something you would strap to the back of a horse. A big horse. I could barely get it off of the ground, let alone onto my back. And no way all of that stuff was going up that hill. At least not via me as transport.

“Hannah, could you come take a look for me?” I asked.

After surveying my wheel-free moving van, tentatively lifting it herself, she said, “Yep, that’s heavy.”

Thanks Hannah.

“Ok, so what do I really, really need?”

“A tarp, in case it rains, a sleeping bag, because it’s going to be cold, and water. Oh and bug spray.”

It was no doubt a humorous sight watching me unpack, unstrap, unclip and unhook until I got this pack under about three hundred pounds. It was still heavy – I didn’t really realize until then that my sleeping bag was not one of those light-weight synthetic jobbies, meant for hiking, but rather a slightly huge, cotton filled model meant to be trucked in to ones campsite, and who knew that a tarp was something to be so significantly considered? A tarp is a tarp, right? Wrong. And isn’t there a lighter beverage than water?

Finally I was ready, again, and Hannah, bless her heart, said, “I will follow you with two gallons of water, and leave them halfway up the hill.” I could have kissed her. Maybe I did.

They had prepared some ceremony the preface my quest, styled after the native-American tradition, and we proceeded through that process of purification and blessing. I don’t remember every detail – indeed there are a thousand aspects of this trip that I won’t cover in detail in this narrative, partly due to time and space on the page, and partly due to some of it being quite sacred, and inherently private. I was already in a much different state of consciousness than normal by this point, and since as I mentioned I trust these women with my life, I followed their lead through the ceremony that they had prepared.

They told me that at the conclusion of the ceremony, I would be invisible to them, having crossed a threshold, and that our only contact would be non-direct, a check-system that had been prepared, that they would check on daily, to make sure that I was still alive.

Ceremony complete, I walked back to the track, hoisted my backpack, and headed back up the hill. Hannah followed at a distance with additional water – God bless her – but we were not to communicate. She was a shadow. An angel shadow.

It took me a long time to climb back up to that ridge. I don’t know how long, for sure. The stops were frequent, in order to try to keep my heart from exploding clean out of my body, the pack getting heavier by the step, my legs starting to feel like the bones were somehow not as rigid as they had been earlier in the day. We reached the halfway point – in truth it was more than halfway, and Hannah must have known that, but she followed anyway – and I indicated that she could leave the water trail-side. This is where our check-in sign would be, a rock pile to be rearranged by me in the mornings, checked by her midday. Though we didn’t speak then, we did perhaps bend the rules with a look, she looking deep into me with only love, and me looking through my sweat and grime covered eyes at my angel shadow. Lots of love in that moment. And then I set off again, truly alone.

I don’t have any idea what time it was when I reached the ridge again. It didn’t really matter. I dumped the pack, and sat on my rock again. Though not quite at my spot yet, I was close enough. I had, for all intents and purposes, arrived. After a rest, I made my way along the ridge and was greeted by the grandmother tree. I unpacked my tarp and laid it out, unstrapped my sleeping bag, took inventory of a few other small items that had miraculously accompanied me up the hill – hat, sunglasses, bug spray, knife, multi-tool, flashlight and a set of cold-weather clothes – and settled in for the duration. I had to go back to get the extra water, and by the time I was done with that, exploring further was not at the top of my list of things to do. I had exercised more already that day than I usually do in a month. Indeed, there was, by then, little to do but to sit, ponder, meditate, talk to God and the mother tree, and watch as the sun made its way across the sky towards the mountains in the west.

The human mind is a funny thing, especially when there is nothing to do, and nowhere to go. Despite the rigors of the day, I found myself casting about looking for what to do next. First things first, I decided that a bug-check was in order, One of those ticks I had evicted from it’s exploration of my calf earlier on the other side of the ridge was about the size of a badger, and I didn’t want any of those sneaky buggers to set up housekeeping in any unseen and unknown places on my body. I found something lodged in my right calf – could have been anything, a dirty scrape, a splinter from one of the million or so bushes I had navigated, but it also could have been a tick, and I couldn’t have that.

I had to laugh at myself. I wasn’t at all concerned with the big critters. I figured that if a bear or a mountain lion and I were supposed to have a face-to-face, we would, and somehow they and I would experience whatever it was that we needed to experience, and then walk away. I wasn’t afraid of the coming darkness, nor of being alone. I’ve had a peek into the dark places in my own mind before, and knew that I could survive whatever I was to experience there.

The tick thing however kind of freaked me out. Feeling rather manly, I unsheathed a rarely used buck-knife and began the extraction of whatever it was in my calf. Pain is funny too. With the proper motivation, pain recedes, and even blood becomes a good sign. I think I figured that if it was leaking out of my leg a little, that was better than it being ingested and turned into little baby blood-sucking creatures. As I write, my little excavation is healing nicely, with no sign of infection or of foreign residence, thank you very much.

Thus cleansed of foreign invaders, I re-settled and got quiet again. As I mentioned earlier, I had no real expectation of a burning-bush experience. My sense was that whatever was going on was going to be much more subtle, and that is indeed how things proceeded.

I realized that afternoon that this whole thing - from the weeks of pre-consideration, scheduling and preparation, to completely jumping the tracks geographically, the ceremony and isolation and fasting – was all designed to facilitate an altered state of consciousness, a parenthesis in space and time within which one could allow the normal, day-to-day structures and perspectives and positions and points of reference to be set aside, allowing things to be considered and experienced in a very different way.

As I sat and considered this, I was aware of that kind of softening around the edges, the opening of my consciousness beyond the norm, and just leaned into it, just a bit, not over-working it or over-efforting something that was way too big and way too vague for me to delude myself into thinking that I could manage anyway, but rather allowing, saying yes to whatever was there for me, whatever this time and space had to reveal to me.

By now the sun had arced just over the top of the grandmother tree to my west, creating the beginnings of shade where I had placed my tarp and bag, and I lay down on my tarp, just letting myself be, intentionally opening my consciousness even further, taking it all in, sensing it, aligning with it, even beginning, in consciousness, to merge with it. The lines began to blur.

I remembered that life knows how to do life, that the rhythms and cycles of nature and even of life and death are already well in place, and I began to sense that part of the reason that I was there was to remember that, to remember that that is me, in and as me, the same as it is in and as all things. Nature doesn’t struggle with itself. There are things that happen that can appear, at first glance, to be disharmonious, but ultimately these things are just readjustments, realignments. Things may find a new level of being – a tree may ‘die’, become home to other critters, be absorbed back into the earth, or a stream may burst its banks and find a new course – but is any of this good or bad, right or wrong? I don’t know that it is. I think that those are values that we – humans – assign, but ultimately they are what they are, all having a natural and normal place within the Whole.

The sun sank, the bugs buzzed, and my plateau hummed with the irrepressible energy of life.

As dusk approached, I conceded my aversion to the idea of putting bug spray – a relatively toxic concoction, one would think, despite it being artfully positioned by some advertising executive somewhere as ‘safe and effective family fun’ – wherever was needed to allow me to be present with the All That Is, instead of constantly distracted only by the All That Wants to Suck My Blood, one drop at a time. One has to re-prioritize at times, and I figured after years of ingesting all kinds of interesting of potentially hazardous substances in my youth and coming out the other side of that relatively intact, I wasn’t going to split-hairs on moral grounds of purity. Though more conscious and aware than ever of my stewardship duties to my body and to my environment, being overly-immaculate is not my forte’, and I did hope that sleep might be part of this experience at some point, so I slathered up and settled in for the night.

It had been a long time – maybe forever – since I had slept out under the stars and moon without a tent, a fire, a sleeping pad to cushion the little rocks and the big hips and shoulders that seemed to seek out those rocks and bumps in the earth like a heat-seeking missile. It was a target-rich environment.

But I lay and fidgeted and watched as a spectacular full moon rose over the hills to the south-east, lighting the landscape around me in its eerie bright light. Owls hooted and night-birds called to each other across the hills, mosquitoes continued to try to penetrate my toxic halo and small critters rustled in the bushes and trees around me.

I watched with a little concern as a few huge thunderheads drifted across the sky from the north, heading in my direction. They were driven by a cold wind, and I thought, if it rains, I will pull this tarp over me and my bag and be one cold, wet, miserable vision-quester. I imagined myself sliding down the hill into base camp on my backside, muddy and not happy, but knew that that too was a concession that I would be unwilling to make. One way or the other, I had to stick this thing out. But the clouds continued across the sky, blocking the moon and then moving on, time and time again, keeping whatever moisture they contained to themselves. God is good. And all the while the grandmother tree stood sentinel, watching over me, and after a while I was lulled, by sound and wind and cold and dark, into sleep.

I was awakened at some point during the night by something – something very much alive - running across my sleeping bag, and as a direct result, since I was in said sleeping bag, across my body, but by the time I came awake enough, whatever it was had long disappeared into the night. It was kind of cool, for while it had startled me awake, I knew that it was just a curious and harmless visit by one of the locals. A raccoon maybe, or a bat (it felt like it might have been flapping or beating its way over me), or a spirit even. Too big to be a tick, so I knew I was ok, and rolled over and went back to sleep.

It was one of those light sleeps, the kind where you open your eyes every once in a while, just a little, to get your bearings, or make sure there is something to see, or that you’re still on the planet, or something. The next thing I knew I was opening my eyes to a lightening sky, pre-dawn. I knew it was going to be a long day, and it was still really cold out, so I switched hips – again – stayed warm and snug in my bag, and floated in that half-sleep place for a couple of hours more.

When the sun began to warm the air and land, it was time to emerge, so I crept out into the clean, amazing air, drank some water, brushed my teeth (I had to have a toothbrush!), pee’d as only one unobserved and in the forest can, and considered my position.

And quickly realized that there wasn’t really much to consider. I was on vision-quest, alone on top of a mountain, what seemed like a thousand miles from anyone or anything, tarp, sleeping bag, water, the earth and sky, God and grandmother tree. And me. Here we were.

My primary thought upon waking was letting Hannah and Michele know that I was ok, so at some point in the morning I wandered down and rearranged the rock pile, our signal. I left a smiley face of stones there in the middle of the track for them to find when they checked later in the day.

It was a day mostly of very quiet being. My mental / spiritual state was rather altered by then, and I knew it. One of the longest days of the year, I watched the sun as it found its way across the sky, and when it got too hot I crawled deep under the branches of the grandmother tree and lay there in her shade, hour after hour, just being. I listened, I felt, I noticed movement around me and sensed it within me. I thought amazingly little. I worried less. I was, I was there, and that was enough. I let the space be, and the day did what it knows how to do.

There was some ritual that I had been invited to consider that day, and I did so, aware on a different level of any internal dissonance, or anything that might need tending. Like clouds across a sky, I watched my mind and heart and maybe even my soul simmer as if on a very low flame, not doing a lot, just simmering. Some things showed up, as they do when we create the space for them to do so, but I knew it was not the time to over-mentalize or over-effort them, but rather just to notice, and to let them be. I just held the space. That is how I passed my day.

I thought that it might be different than it was. I thought that there might be anger, or fear, or sadness within me that, given this space, might erupt like a volcano from deep within me. I know that those things are in there, somewhere, but they seemed instead to simply find their place and just be, too. Some plopped to the surface with all of the enthusiasm of an air bubble making its way to the surface of a tar-pit, but nothing explosive. Perhaps all of the work I have done on myself over the years has let off enough internal pressure, or healed enough wounds, that what I sense are simply scars, or echos of things that are no longer mine, or that no longer serve me. Sure, there are some current things as well, but they are fresh, and have not become toxic to the point of needing to be lanced. I noticed them too, and they are still, even as I write, finding their place within me.

It began to cool again, and I remembered that this, my second and last solo might, was to be significant. I was to leave something of my old life behind at sunset, and embrace something of a new life at sunrise. I had been invited to stay awake all night, to witness this dying and rebirth, so began to prepare myself to do so. When I was ready, I did the sunset ceremony, and settled in again to be with the darkness, and whatever was there for me.

The moon rose as it had the night before, turning night into a different kind of day, and I lay there, watching it traverse the sky, letting myself be.

I don’t know if I slept, but I don’t know that I exactly stayed awake all night either. I had wandered into a moonlit landscape both externally and internally, conscious and unconscious interweaving, linear and transcendent almost indistinguishable, one from the other. I was, and it was what it was. Night things sang and flew, and called to each other, and I did not, and still do not know if they were real things of the forest night or real things of the soul night. I honestly can’t tell you. Nor do I need to really. They, too, just were. No good or bad, no fear or desire even really. Just being. All things, just being. And so the night passed, and the planet turned, and night slowly reached and passed her zenith, until she relinquished her grasp on my world, and night became day.

I knew that I was nearing the end of this part of my journey now, and was reluctant for it to end. There had been no lightening strikes, to profound realizations, no stone-tablets delivered. Yet I sensed the subtle, and knew that somehow I was different, that movement had happened, that what needed to be revealed would do so in its own time and in its own way. Life knows how to do life, and the sea does not part daily. It does, however, rise and fall, and if we pay attention, we can know when it is time to move, and when it is time to wait.

So with some sense of sadness, I stepped out of the sacred circle that I had made the night before, and knew that I was leaving something, and re-entering something, crossing yet another threshold. I gave thanks to the land, to the plateau on the ridge that had welcomed and made space for me. As I repacked my minimal gear, preparing to return to base camp and the world that I had oh-so-briefly left behind, I gave thanks to the sun for warming me, to the earth for allowing me to stand upon her, to the birds for their song and their good company, to the bugs for their place in things, pollinating and feeding and all that they do, to the plants that populated this amazing forest in spectacular fashion and diversity and with stunning vitality. I gave thanks to God for the experience of life, within me and all around me.

And lastly, I poured the last of my water upon the ground that held my friend the grandmother tree, thanking her for her welcome, her patience with my silliness, her protection, her willingness to speak to me, shelter me and protect me. I thanked her for her presence on the planet, for her willingness to say yes to life despite the rocky soil and windswept outcrop upon which she stood. I said goodbye to my new, old friend, aware that she had witnessed something that perhaps I could not yet see, and that she had witnessed a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand such things, in different ways, in her time on that ridge. She, the silent but wise witness of Life.

I said thank you, and good-by, for now, and I headed towards the track, and down the hill.

Postscript:

It is now just five days after returning from my first vision quest. To say that it has been an odd week is a huge understatement.

The way I have described this week, after my return home, is that I don’t quite seem to fit into my body in the same way that I did before I went. Things have shifted, moved, and continue to do so. I continue to watch, to be mindful, to consider what presents itself, both internally and externally. I have no doubt that as a result of this time, this experience, this intention, more will be revealed, in it’s own time, and in its own way.

And in the meantime, all is well.

Blessed Be.

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The Village and The Mountaintop ~ May 22, 2010

Once upon a time there was a village. That village was home. It was sanctuary, it supported most all of our needs, and from it we learned most of what we needed to learn to navigate our life path. In the village were our parents, aunts and uncles and cousins and children and wise elders. There was love and commonality and understanding. There was security, and safety, and there was comfort.

From infants to elders, the village contained and sustained all. There was a lovely symmetry in this, an interaction and interdependence that was mutually beneficial. The young learning from the old, the old taking joy in the young, there was much sharing, organically, effortlessly, a giving and receiving not just of resources but of life itself.

A short distance from the village one could find isolation, time and space to commune with nature, to reflect, to meditate, or to pray. And when that need was met, one could return to the village, renewed and refilled, balance restored, and carry on.

Sure, some would leave the village. Young people are called to explore, to go beyond what they have known. That, too, was and is the nature of things. But the village was the hub, the point of reference, and even those who left it took something of the village with them.

This has been the way of things, in one form or another, since we first stood upright. That is, until modern times.

The industrial age made us mobile, and we were on the move. Villages spread and diversified, and got larger and busier. Families spread out, the young going further afield, often leaving the old behind. The fragmentation of the village had begun in earnest.

Historically, this is a very recent occurrence. In the blink of an eye, a mere blip on the human timeline, our whole social structure has dramatically changed. Yet our needs – the inherent, hard-wired nature of human as social animal – have not changed. There simply hasn’t been time for us to adapt well.

So we find ourselves living in what is essentially a model that is foreign to all of our historical frames of reference, one of suburbs and cities where we don’t even know the names of the people living next door, let alone being in any real way mutually supportive. Families are no longer nuclear, and the only real commonality of villages is geography.

Now, another shift has begun within our culture. Because we still have within us all of the needs that the village provided to us, we are developing coping mechanisms to address them. And, like the development of any new tool, we are still going about it rather clumsily.

What we are begging to see now in our culture is a drawing of people towards aspects of what the village used to provide. This is showing up as polarity, and while there are extremes, there is, mostly, all of the degrees of balance in between. Since we are all unique and individual, our needs and desires are not present in each person to the exact same degree. Even within the balance of the villages of old, some have always leaned more towards community, while others have always leaned towards a more solitary experience.

The extreme swing of the pendulum, the starting place, or brackets of you will, for this emerging model, is that there are village people, and there are mountaintop people.

Village people think mountaintop people are odd. Reclusive, quiet, inclined towards rural introversion, mountaintop people tend to sit back and watch, and consider things, sometimes overly so. They are happy listening to the wind in the trees, water flowing in a stream, or the silence of night.

This inclination is how we are trying to address security and safety, renewal restoration, and balance.

Mountaintop people think village people are nuts. Generally more extroverted, village people are more urban oriented, do well in towns and cities. They thrive on the hustle and bustle, are more impulsive, better in crowds. They are happy going, doing, on the move.

This inclination is how we are trying to address the family aspects of the village, the busy-ness, the interaction and interdependence.

I haven’t come across too many people who are all one way or the other, because whether we are aware of it or not, we all still have the same needs and desires somewhere within us. No, most of the rest of us fall somewhere in between. All of us have aspects of both in us, and the sooner we become aware of our inclination, where the scales currently stand in our hearts and souls, the more comfortably we can navigate our daily life.

And the fact is that we live within a society where both present themselves for us to choose, in what degree we participate in them, and how we navigate that participation.

And therein lies the challenge.

Part of us craves the solitude, the peace, the symmetry and beauty and organic nature of nature itself, of the mountaintop. But the fact is that the grocery store, the gas station, the experience of interpersonal relations - loving each other – in essence, the community that we also want, need and desire to be a part of are all to be found in the village.

And our wants and needs are not fixed in position. The scales of need and want within us may currently stand in one position, and next week, next year, 10 years from now that may change. It’s not a stable thing, our inclination. Mine has changed over the years. The opportunity here is to keep a finger on our own pulse, so to speak, to feel the subtle – or perhaps not so subtle – leanings that our heart and soul are communicating to us, in order that their needs be heard, honored, and met.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and thought that city life was normal, just the way things were. I did fine there when I was young. I had no other points of reference, so while somewhere in my heart and soul I knew at some level, even then, that my natural leaning was not towards being a city boy, I had nothing to compare my current environment to. I didn’t know what I was missing.

Then somewhere along the way Mom sent us kids to spend a summer with my grandparents on their farm in Indiana. In the course of one day I went from Los Angeles to a teeny tiny little town named Andrews, whose population, according to my research, was somewhere between 72 and 107 souls, most of whom were scattered far and wide on farms spread over the countryside. I quickly learned the meaning of the word culture-shock .

Indiana is the flattest place on Earth (I’m sure some atlas or another has statistical proof of this), or so it appeared to me, and is actually dark at night. And quiet. Not silent, but quiet. There are sounds and smells there that are not man-made. There is space where there are no buildings, no asphalt, nothing but dirt and grass. There are woods, and lanes, farm-ponds, and the muddy but mighty Wabash River. There are barnyards and chicken coops and fireflies.

Indiana is magical.

After I recovered my senses, and got past literally being physically sick from being so disoriented, I began to explore. Though not exactly a mountaintop, Indiana was the closest thing to it that I had experienced in any real way.

Oh I had been to real mountaintops before. Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead are Los Angeles’s version of the mountaintop. Since it’s so close to L.A., and since L.A. people must have all of the comforts of home strapped to their roof-racks, that area of the San Bernardino mountains is, well, a suburban mountaintop. Traffic and track-homes and smog do not, in my mind, a mountaintop make. It sure isn’t Indiana.

Interesting, the synchronicity of things. I stopped writing to take a call, and an acquaintance was asking about this very village / mountaintop thing.

“Where are my people?” she asked. “Where are the people that I can be myself with, where I can be comfortable and authentic without fear, where I can hang out and have real conversations?”

“Funny, I was just thinking about that.” I replied.

“Well,” she said, “I’m not sure where I am going to end up this summer. I may keep working here in Marin County, but I may hole-up in a cabin somewhere.”

Check. I get it.

This is exactly what is making the mountaintop more and more attractive for so many people. We can’t find our people. And for those who are inclined, even slightly, towards the quiet side, city life can be a pressure cooker quite capable of driving one completely mad. I’ve seen it. Ok, I’ve felt it too.

Unfortunately, since mountaintops are at a premium, we’re creating them elsewhere; in our own homes and apartments, in our own minds and hearts. We’re isolating, because the village has become, for many, unsafe. So we withdraw, mentally, energetically, emotionally, even spiritually from what villages do exist.

But this then creates conflict within us, for we are, at our essence, social creatures. Interaction is vital to our well-being. Sanctuary is likewise critical to our well-being. So how do we find our way, how do we navigate this ever changing, ever moving line between a desire to be in sanctuary, to have a place where we can be safe and real and peaceful, and our need to interact, to be stimulated and to give and receive love?

First, as with most things, we must become aware that this dynamic exists in our culture, and in our hearts and souls, because without awareness, it’s too easy to just assume that we’re nuts, that there is something inherently wrong with us, which just feeds into the very sense of separation that we are seeking to heal in the first place.

There is nothing wrong with you. Let’s get that out on the table right now. There is nothing wrong with you.

Everybody is wired a little differently, has different needs, and navigates this balance between village and mountaintop a little differently. That is as it should be, as it always has been. We are each unique individuals, yet we have also latched on to this rather odd belief that we are supposed to be like everyone else. We’re not. Get used to it. Then go beyond just getting used to it. Get comfortable with it.

The big invitation here is for you to get to know yourself, to become aware of, familiar with, and then comfortable with your needs, and your inclinations, and then learn to navigate accordingly.

When I don’t get enough nature time, when it’s too busy in the house for too long, when there to too much noise or too much running around, I get cranky, and I know exactly why. I need some mountaintop time.

I have a good friend who lives out in the country, not too far, just far enough for her liking. It suits her. Before she retired she used to drive in to town – which is really a fair sized city here in northern California - most days to work, go to church, do whatever she needed to do, and then drive the 20 or so miles back out to her place in the country, her sanctuary, her mountaintop. It took her some time, and some work, but she figured out and now knows her village / mountaintop balance point pretty well. When she gets her fill of the village, she has no compunction about saying, “Had, enough, gotta go!”

We don’t all have that luxury of a place in the country. Some people wouldn’t want it if they could.

I have another friend who is all city oriented. She cracks me up actually. I asked her recently is she might be interested in joining a group of us to go white-water rafting.

“I don’t do dirt.” She told me. “I need clean sheets, cable, a taxi when I need it, and Starbucks. If they have that, I’ll think about it.” She’s so City.

Where to you fall on the village / mountaintop scale? And, more importantly, are you meeting your own needs?

I see a lot of people for one-on-one counseling, and the majority are out of balance in this area. If anything we, as a culture, are over stimulated, and have forgotten what sanctuary looks and feels like. We live in a wound up state, from the moment we wake until we collapse into bed at the end of the day. Run, run, run, faster, more, these are the unspoken agreements that we have made, culturally. And it is taking it’s toll, on our bodies, our minds, our hearts and our souls. It’s taking it’s toll on our relationships, on our self-image, on our worldview. It is, as a whole, way, way out of balance.

I can’t count the number of times that I have assigned, as homework to a client, a half day at the beach, or at the river, or a daytrip to an amazing grove of redwoods that we have nearby. They come back transformed. I had one person actually ask me, about the redwoods, “How long has that place been there?”

Oh, about three thousand years, give or take.

It also helps to seek out and find – if not create – villages where you can find some degree of comfort and commonality.

I see more and more of that happening in our society. Since the dissolution of the old village, we are creating new ones, villages that are safe, where there is commonality, comfort, giving and receiving, and the opportunity to give and receive love in all of it shapes and sizes and ways that shows up.

I’m not speaking of actual villages where one lives full time. There are those, but what I am speaking of is the places that we can go, that will meet some of our needs. They may not be like the villages of old, where most or all of our needs could be met in one place. We may need to participate in multiple villages in order to experience the balance that we seek. It may not be perfect, but it’s a start.

I see art and collective farming ‘villages’ here in my area, there is a renewed interest and movement towards spiritual villages. Ecologically oriented villages, and now even virtual villages like Facebook and MySpace are meeting some of these needs.

I have a friend and colleague who facilitates vision quests. She takes people out into the desert and they go off on their own and spend time with nature, with the silence, with themselves. Can you ever remember the last time you did anything like that?

The bottom line is that we all have our needs, in varying degrees. Figure out what yours are, then decide, consciously and intentionally, to address them. When you do that, some degree of balance will begin to restore itself within your being.

Find a mountaintop, whatever your mountaintop may be, and go and sit there for a while. Notice what you feel. If you can, sit there long enough for your mind and heart and soul to get quite. It just might change everything.

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God in the Midst of Challenge ~ May 14, 2010

I am realizing more and more as time goes by that awe and wonder - noticing the presence of God in things, big and small - and life challenges are not mutually exclusive. Instead, it's one of those paradoxes that we, as conscious people, get to dance with on a daily basis. There are going to be challenges. Things will go 'wrong' (if there is such a thing, which may be another line of thinking altogether), we will experience 'problems' (another one of those words that I use rarely anymore, much preferring 'challenges'). Life is not an immaculate experience.

But what I am finding is that the challenges that used to occupy days or even week or months of my life, almost exclusively, have given way to an increasing awareness that, while they happen, the actual experience of them is relatively small int he scheme of things. In truth, they occupy mere moments of my day.

It is when I choose to hold on to them, to relive them in my own head, to focus my attention and energies on them long past the actually event, that I get into trouble. 

The key to this new kind of life navigation may well be simply practicing the presence. In other words, when I am present, I am not reliving some challenge that happened an hour ago, or yesterday, or last week. Nor am I borrowing trouble from the future that does not yet exist. Instead, I am present, experiencing whet is before me to experience. And what I am finding is that what is before me to experience is most often the magnificence of God.

Much of my writing is done sitting at my desk in my home office, and I look out the widow before me to the park across the street, to the people that take their children to school and often walk through that park to get to school. I delight in those kids, watching them, and in those moments there is nothing else in my world, just delight. No matter how busy I am, what is on my plate, what scares me or frustrates me, what I might be judging or 'working on' in other areas of my life, I can experience delight.

The same thing happens when I am working with clients, or giving a talk, or teaching a class, or digging in the dirt or out on nature somewhere. I am completely present, experiencing God, no matter what else is going on.

Because the things is, in those moments, nothing else is going on. It's all in my head. I can stop thinking about everything in the world, and the planet continues to spin, the sun continues to rise, my garden continues to grow, all without my efforting, all without me choosing to distract myself from what is right in front of my eyes. 

The challenges that we face are so relatively small compared to the beauty and majesty that is all around us. And the more I practice this, the more I am coming to see the presence even in those challenges.

What I am finding is that there is no need, nor do I want to miss single moment of this awareness of the presence of God in all things, all circumstances, in every moment, no matter what. It all falls into God... if I let it...
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The Exquisite Gift of Life ~ May 2, 2010

I should know better than to blog after a day like today.

It was a spectacular spring day. Sun and wind, spring urging forth irrepressible life.

And, I said goodby to a friend today. She too was spectacular. Another friend I met with yesterday, and we spent some hours sitting, talking, looking at the end of her days, at least in this incarnation, wondering...

They are my age, more or less - funny how we all become more or less the same age at this point of the journey. And each of them is spectacular, in their own way, like the flowers of spring, the stars in the sky, the streams, finding their way... Yet they - we - regardless of how spectacular, are gifted with just so much time to live this life... Yes I know of the eternality of things, that life just changes, evolves, ascends. I know.

I really do know, firsthand, that there is a human soul, distinct from the physical body and not subject to the linear experience of time. I know.

And yet I watch, and walk with these people - me, you - as we navigate time. I have begun to notice the things I used to miss - the exquisite thing that this human experience is - thinking that I had all of the time in the world... Now, I am realizing that I do not. I am 51 years old. I have a few decades, a few thousand short days, if I am truly blessed, to live - at least to live as Jeff, as this experience of life. And there is so much life to be lived, so much love and beauty and awe and wonder to be experienced, shared, expressed...

The Spirit of Life is immortal. I take great comfort in that.

And I wonder, tonight, under this amazing, windy, starry spring sky, how to most fully live this mortal life, to appreciate the gift for what it is, to not squander it with petty concerns, worrying, wasting, making mountains out of molehills...

I am becoming more and more aware of just how amazing and valuable and precious this lifetime is... and in this moment, I am most exquisitely grateful for that gift...

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God in my Garden... April 24, 2010

There is something amazing about dirt. Plain old, regular dirt. Well, maybe it's not so plain... not when it's in my garden...

Today I took advantage of the spectacular weather, and prepped my little garden area, started more seeds, and stuck a few things in the ground under a glorious spring sun. It never ceases to amaze me what the creative intelligence of the cosmos can do with a wrinkled up looking little thing no bigger than the head of a pin which, when placed in that plain old dirt, becomes something vital and alive and amazing. It's become something of a ritual for me, each year, to plant. I see the symbolism clearly, and enjoy it immensely, for it reminds me that there is so much possibility, so much beauty, so much life just waiting for the right season to spring forth into color and scent and bloom.

It also reminds me of what my part is, and what God's part is. I keep the soil clear and ready, receptive, well tended, but i could not and cannot grow what It grows. That is way above my payscale. But I know that if i do my part, God seems to always do It's part, and something amazing and beautiful happens...

It's a good teacher, my garden...

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Beyond the Bucket ~ Thanksgiving Day, 2009

There is a storm out there somewhere. I can feel it. All of my senses are almost assaulted by it. Not in a bad way. I don’t define the storm as bad. Quite the contrary, in fact. Rather, my sense is of something of immense power. And it is something that is not separate from me. How can it be separate, when my experience of it is so visceral? There is no separation. I have no defense, nor do I require any. I feel it in every cell of my body, in every aspect of my being. And I revel in it.

It was the vibration, rather than the sound of the waves crashing on the shore that woke me this morning. And in that lovely time of sensing, between sleeping and waking, when definition is deliciously blurred and ego requires no answer, I again remembered that I am It, and It is me.

It was and continues to be this visceral experience of Oneness that pervades my senses. It is from that place that I write. It is in the air all around me, a palpable thing. I cannot separate myself from it. Nor do I desire to. It rises through the soles of my feet as my eyes witness the ripples that are huge waves, travelling from a powerful center that is beyond the horizon. No, I cannot see the storm. It is beyond my sight. But that does not diminish my experience of it. I know that it is there, as surely as I know that I am here. As surely as I know anything.

The air vibrates with it. Life Itself vibrates with it, for it is Life Itself, the very Power of The One, a demonstration, a reminder to me that I am One with the waves, one with the storm, one with the air and the vibration and with Life Itself.

In Religious Science we often use the metaphor of the ocean as the Allness of God, that each person is like a bucket of that ocean, an aspect of The One, the elements and qualities and attributes within each bucket the same as The Whole.

Yet my experience this morning was a clear realization that, while the bucket that I am does indeed contain within it the elements and qualities and attributes of The Whole, I cannot separate that bucket from the whole and take it away from the shore without radically altering the power inherent within it. I cannot take my bucket, and make it separate and distinct, and present it to you and say, ‘See? Here is the ocean. Here are the waves crashing on the shore, Here is the storm and the immense power of the storm, beyond the horizon, beyond that which you can see. Trust me, it’s in there.” I cannot convey to you that power, that visceral experience. That is something you must experience for yourself.

What I am this morning, and what I desire to convey to you above all else, is the experience of no bucket at all. It is in that place, more than in any other, that I know Oneness. Not a mental knowing, not an intellectual understanding, but something that cuts through mentality like a hot knife through butter. It is a transcendent knowing that requires no thought, indeed, requires that our seemingly insatiable mentalizing be at least temporarily suspended, the linear way cleared to make room for the whole knowing of the non-linear.

I cannot help but laugh at myself at this point. I watch as the numinosity of the experience begins to fade, as transcendent experiences do. Distraction creeps in. My teeth need to be brushed, again, and people in the house begin to stir, and contribute their own energy to the mix. And my experience of Unity recedes. My bucket reappears.

I want so desperately to retain it, to live constantly in that unified awareness. So I grasp at it even as I know that it is not something to be grasped, managed, or chased. I go back outside, attempting to recreate something that need not be recreated. It need not be held. The storm has not gone anywhere. The power of the ocean is not in any way diminished, simply because I am distracted. The storm continues to unleash it’s power into The Whole of the ocean. The waves continue to crash outside of my door. The vibration that awakened me today continues to pulse through every aspect of my being. It is my attention that has shifted, that is all.

I mourn the recession of the experience, for I know that it was never designed to be recreated exactly. That is not the nature of It. I will never pass this way again for it is constantly recreating Itself, no two waves ever identical, no season the same as the last. Yet all are of the same origins. It is from the same Cosmic Storm, somewhere over the horizon, originating some place that I cannot see but can and do experience, that all of my life experiences come. And that Source, that great Storm that is the Mind and the Heart of The Cosmos is infinitely churning, just over my human horizon, sending out ceaseless pulses that are the amazing waves, crashing upon the shores of my consciousness.

This is Thanksgiving Day, in the year that we have rather arbitrarily designated as 2009. It was the vibration, rather than the sound of the waves crashing on the shore that woke me this morning. As I take up my bucket, say good morning to Mom, and go to brush my teeth, that vibration continues to resonates within me. I give thanks for quiet moments, for thin veils, for moms and for families and for toothbrushes, and for this lovely visit, beyond the bucket.

Rev. Jeff Anderson

Thanksgiving Day, 2009

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Misfit Mystic

If there’s one thing that going through hell will give you, it’s perspective. Hell is funny that way. Once you’ve been there, nothing ever looks quite the same again. Not that I would recommend that particular route as a path to spiritual consciousness, but if you do find yourself on that path, and if you survive it, it certainly does get your attention.

If you’re on a spiritual path, and in hell at the same time, it can really get confusing. A person can’t help but wonder, “What IS the MATTER with me? If I’m such a spiritual being, how did things end up like THIS?” It can make one feel rather like a misfit among the enlightened, or at least among the wise.

Experiencing hell - or the Dark Night of the Soul, call it what you will - however, and hand in hand with that experiencing the feeling of being radically unqualified to embody even a basic level of cosmic wisdom can, apparently, be a significant part of remembering our Truth. Think about it. Most of the powerful avatars in history have been through their own version of hell. Why is that? Because without it, they would not have the perspective that allows for an expanded vision of the bigger picture.

Some of us have, I believe, an especially strong soul purpose. I don’t know why, and won’t pretend to know what goes on in the cosmos prior to being born. It seems clear however that many people come into this life with something big to work out, or remember. And one way we get to what it is that we are supposed to remember is via hell.

In his book Seat of the Soul author Gary Zukov postulates, “To the degree that our soul desires its wholeness, will we experience it’s opposite.” When I first read that statement in 1998 I thought, “Wow! My soul must have a REALLY strong desire to know it’s wholeness!” I was at Extended Stay Hell at the time. I don’t know if what he says is true or not, but I have remembered his statement and refer to it often.

Having been forged in the fires makes for quite a story. But, it’s just a story. Everybody has one. Stories can serve a purpose. They can give people hope who are walking through their own Dark Night. The problem is that often we get so stuck in our story that we cant get beyond it. We become so identified to ourselves as misfits, we never escape that self-imposed label to discover Truth. We must learn to carry our story lightly.

I know too that there is life on the other side of hell. It is survivable. It’s also very local. I’m not one of those who believes in the hell of my youth, the fire and brimstone version, hosted by a fire-breathing guy with horns and a red suit. In my experience you don’t have to go nearly that far to find hell. It can be as close as your next step. Or your next thought.

I’m not particularly fond of hell stories anymore. Honestly I don’t know that my story is particularly important. Or yours for that matter. It’s not that I’m not interested, I am, really. But lets face it, we all have a story. And most, if not all of us have wandered, briefly or for an extended stay, into our own version of hell. The story is just the route we took, and there are as many of those as there are people who experience it. The story is just the details.

The main reason I’m not too fond of hell stories is this; We give them way too much power. We forget that they are not who we are, but rather are simply a path that we have walked.

For a long time I did just that, gave my story way too much power. I let it define me. I let it confine me. I let my story hold me hostage long after I had actually emerged from hell. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was familiar. Or as a friend of mine says it may stink, but it’s warm.

My story was never really my Truth, but it was certainly high drama and a great excuse for me to give away my power and stay small. To be a victim. In fact I became worse than a victim. I became a volunteer. On some level I agreed to embrace my story, for in truth, for a long time my story was all that I had. And that is a sorry state of affairs.

I have learned that there is a significant difference between my story, and my Truth. The story constricts my experience of life. The more attached I am to my story, the more confined by that very story my life will be.

Truth on the other hand liberates me. The Truth transcends my story. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what version of hell you’ve experienced. It’s just a story. And it is, without question, not your Truth.

The two, our story and our Truth, have quite an interesting relationship.

We must walk our story. It’s a part of every human life experience. I had to walk mine, and you have to walk yours. It’s how we relate to each other, how we find commonality. Along the way however we accumulate more and more beliefs, perspectives, fears and definitions. So as time goes by it can constrict us more and more. Yet our story, our path, is also the only thing that can lead us to our Truth. And ironically, the Truth is the only thing that can liberate us from our story.

Another problem with our story, if we give it enough power, is that it can actually stand between us, our Real Self, and our Truth. I’ll show you how.

Your Truth is this:

>You are a conscious and intentional intersection in time and space that Divinity has created out of Itself.

>You are exactly where you are supposed to be at exactly the right time, every moment.

>You are a vehicle through which The Divine expresses Itself in this world.

>All that you feel, and think, and say, all that you dream, is The Creative Consciousness expressing Itself.

>You are a place where Divinity experiences Itself, as you and as the world around you.

>You are the eyes, and ears, the hands and feet, the mind and heart of God.

>You are immersed in a sea of infinite possibility.

>You are a co-creator of your own life experience.

>You are completely at choice, every moment, as to how you walk through your life.

>You are free to be any kind of person that you choose.

>There has never been anyone more Divine than you.

Now let me ask you this; As you read through that list, how did you feel? Were you in complete alignment and agreement with it? Was there a resonance and a recognition of the Truth of each point?

Or did you find yourself resisting any of it, questioning. Was there a hesitation anywhere in your mind, a clench in your jaw, a clutch in your gut, a hesitation in your mind. Did you find yourself thinking, “That may be true for someone else, but not for me.” ?

If you find yourself in this category, the good news is, there is only one thing standing between you, and that Truth; your story.

When I used to hear words like the ones you just read, that list, and someone would even dare to imply that a list like that was the Truth of who and what I am, I couldn’t even relate. My story, my accumulated beliefs, doubts, fears, insecurities, even early religious training would not let me identify with that Truth. I thought that somehow I was different, less worthy, less Divine, less powerful, somehow less of a place where God shows up in this world than someone, anyone – everyone - else. I had come to think of myself as a misfit, some kind of cosmic mistake - here, breathing, existing in the world, but defective, less than. My own story had convinced me that this was so.

But what I have discovered since then is that my story is not my Truth. What I once believed about myself was not my Truth. Much of what I was taught, and learned along the way was not my Truth. I have discovered that I have much to unlearn.

Some of it may have been true to some degree at some time in my life. It sure seemed that way. But Truth can be funny that way. If I say to myself, “I am inconsiderate.” The chances are, I will be inconsiderate. Fill in your own blank, “I am… whatever”, lazy, fat, poor, unhappy, powerless. Pick your poison. If you believe that to be your Truth, it probably is. Why? Because that’s your story, and you’re sticking to it!

We LOVE our stories! And it’s pretty easy to see why. They define us, give us something to hang on to. They give us a point of reference. And soon they become a point of comparison. We start comparing our story to other stories, and, our ego’s being what they are, we start ranking ourselves, and others. We begin to judge.

Consider this; What would you be if you let go of your story? What if you stepped out of any accumulated beliefs about who and what you are, and are not, about how the world works? What if you were to let go of your fears, all of the reasons why you can’t, or shouldn’t? For most of us, to even consider such a thing scares us to death.

But think about how powerful our story can be.

Parts of my early story were; I am a sinner, I am a good boy, I am a bad boy, my body is something to be ashamed of. I was the only male child, the only one with dark hair. Soon I was a problem child, a challenge, a handful. I was hyperactive, emotional, angry, sensitive, stubborn. My dad lived somewhere else, had another wife, another family.

When I was little there was an animated Christmas show about an island where all of the misfit toys went, and there was a little misfit elf that ran away and went there too. I understood why, and related to that little misfit elf. Early on, that’s what I became, that’s how I saw myself; a misfit.

My story is not unique, and not in and of itself really important, but I share parts of it because in so doing I hope to break us out of this illusion that we have created for ourselves that we are somehow different. The fact is, we’re not different at all. In fact in the years since I have become involved with 12-step recovery, and more recently since I have gone into professional counseling as a career, I am realizing that quite the opposite is true. Much, if not most of what we have come to believe about ourselves is simply not true. For the Truth is there is nothing wrong with us. There is nothing wrong with you.

Everybody has a story. Everybody has quirks, and thinks goofy things about themselves. But regardless of my story I am no less viable, no less worthy, no less Divine than the next rock on the block. Regardless of your story, neither are you. Because your story is just that, a story. It’s not the Truth of who and what you are. But see, no one tells us! Nobody told me that I was not my story! So I wandered on, believing my story, and it became, as stories will do, a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Somewhere along the way someone told me I was just like my father. I believed them. Someone told me I would never amount to anything. I believed them. Someone told me I was born into sin. I believed them. Someone told me that I was a criminal. I believed them. Someone told me I was clinically depressed, I believed them. Someone told me my back was broken, that life would be a struggle, and I would never be the same. I believed them.

So I ask you; what’s your story? What have you come to believe about yourself? And are those beliefs even yours, or did you just borrow them from someone else along the way and forget to give them back? Are you thinking, conscious, present in the moment? Or are you just thinking from some default position – most often an unconscious default position – that leads you to keep repeating the same patterns over and over again?

More good news: if we can learn it, we can unlearn it. I’m not saying unlearning is easy, it takes practice, and patience, and commitment. But it can be done. We have a lot to unlearn, and as a wise friend once told me, “It took you a long time to walk into the forest. It may take a little while to walk out.”

Once you become mindful of this differentiation though- conscious vs. unconscious, mindful vs. default, story vs. Truth - you will begin to notice, to ask yourself as you feel, or think, or speak, or react; it is mine? Is it really how I feel, or want to feel, or think, or act? Am I consciously, proactive choosing this, or am I just doing it because I’ve always done it this way?

Just because you have picked up some erroneous beliefs along the way doesn’t make you a misfit! Everyone has them! So you had a dysfunctional childhood, some accident or diagnosis, some situations or circumstances in your life that have been especially challenging. At some point in your life you will reach a crossroads and be clearly offered a choice. You can hang on to your story, or you can choose something else. If you are to be truly free to live in Infinite Possibility, to slip the limitations you have accumulated and live life as big as you are here to live it, you’re going to have to get over yourself!

As used to the idea as you may have become – and I hate to burst your bubble here, but it’s true - you’re really not that different! You are unique. You are individual. There has never before been nor will there ever again be anyone like you. But just because you’re different, doesn’t make you any less, any less worthy, any less viable, any less anything! Your uniqueness does not have to be terminal!

Is one snowflake any less of a snowflake because it looks different from all the rest? Or because the wind blew it off course, or it hit a tree on the way down? Or ended up looking like something totally different than it thought it might, an icicle maybe? Or a raindrop? Do you think it’s having a nervous breakdown and has to go to therapy for years because of it? Of course not! Because there’s nothing wrong with it! It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.

Just like you, and me.

You see, you’re no misfit, any more than I was, or am. A little odd maybe, but so what, who isn’t? We’re not cookie-cutter people, all alike, same size and shape and flavor. We’re not. Nor are we meant to be. We may well have picked up some beliefs along the way that no longer serve us. So what? Who hasn’t? But here’s the thing; we have choice. Always, always, we have choice.

We can choose to look at and see ourselves however we want. We can choose to believe about ourselves whatever we want. We can choose to unlearn and let go of what no longer serves us. We can choose to step out of the confines of our story, and into our Truth. All it takes is willingness, and mindfulness. We have to be willing to step up to the plate, to be aware of our thoughts and feelings, and what we are basing those thoughts and feeling on. We have to be willing to get more honest with ourselves than perhaps we have ever been.

Quite honestly I don’t know that most people are up to it. The status quo has it’s appeal. It may stink, but it’s warm. It’s much easier not to question, to go through our days relying on default thinking, mucking along, doing basically the same thing day after day. It takes work to get different. But if you’re willing to take a good hard look, the rewards, the liberation, and the Infinite Possibility that will unfold before you may be the richest thing you have every experienced.

Regardless of your story, you are only a misfit if you continue to believe it to be so. You’re here to do big work, to be a place where Divinity shows up in this world. A little daunting, perhaps, but, you’re up to it, if you so choose. Step out of the story, and into the Truth, and you will find that, sure enough, the truth will set you free.

Rev. Jeff Anderson

Center for Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa

2008

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Co-Independence

(This article is excerpted from a talk that I gave April 13, 2008, at CSLSR)

I was recently asked; What is the difference between compassion, and co-dependence?

Co-dependent has become a buzzword, used rather liberally, yet there is confusion as to what it means, and how, or if, it affects our lives. When does something that can feel and look like compassion, even have compassionate motivation, cross a line into being something unhealthy?

I think we can agree that compassion, as we generally define it, is a desirable quality. It speaks to kindness, acceptance and understanding, tolerance, and grace. In Religious Science we might go so far as to refer to qualities like this as qualities of God.

When, then, does something as good and as noble as compassion cross a line into being unhealthy? When do we begin to dis-empower someone by over-protecting, or rescuing, or fixing?

That may well be the point of demarcation to be aware of, the question to ask ourselves; Am I empowering someone, or dis-empowering them?

To empower is “to promote the self-actualization of”. This is ultimately what the mid to long-term goal of compassion is, or should be.

There is a pathology that has arisen in our culture in the last couple of decades, and that pathology is; I have drama, therefore I am. The news if full of it, soap operas and other television and media provide a steady diet of it, tabloids make a fortune at it. It has almost become desirable to be in drama of one kind or another. It can even feel like a drama competition; my drama is bigger than your drama.

As that pathology has emerged and matured, there has been another, sympathetic pathology that has followed it up the scale of awareness, and that one is; I rescue people in drama, therefore I am.

We seem to have forgotten, somewhere along the way, that we learn and conquer our fears by experience. Emerson reminds us, “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.”

One thing that happens with this emerging pathology is that we overlay our squeamishness onto someone else, cleverly disguised as compassion. Based on how we see the world, or a situation, or a challenge, we impose those perceptions onto someone else’s life. The inner dialogue is, “I think this is a bad thing that is happening to you, it is causing me pain to watch you walk through it, therefore I am going to step in and short circuit your process.”

We have become afraid, somewhere along the way, to fail and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice, and we deal with that fear by rescuing someone else.

How then do we practice compassion and still maintain a healthy relationship? We do so by walking through another person’s version of hell with them, and not judging their situation as good or bad, or right or wrong. We refrain from overlaying our own fears onto another.

We trust that the Universal Consciousness knows what It is doing, that it may be doing just fine without our corrections.

None of us likes to see those we care about in distress. And, when is their distress really our own distress? When do we see something as distress when its actually someone learning life lessons, valuable life lessons, without which they may be less well equipped to flourish in the world? When do we begin to disempower someone by over-protecting, or rescuing, or fixing?

When are we saving someone from something that they don’t need to be saved from?

We all have to live our own lives. I cannot do it for you in the name of compassion, for to do so would be to cheat you of the satisfaction of coming to know just how powerful you really are.

You’ve heard the saying, “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.“ That, I believe, is an accurate metaphor for what we are really trying to accomplish with compassion. Naturally, if you are starving, I will give you a fish. As soon as you are healthy enough, I will teach you to fish. If I continue to give you fish after you are healthy enough to begin to learn to fish for yourself, that is not compassion, and does not empower you. Rather, it dis-empowers. This is co-dependence.

Religious Science teaches us that our thoughts have tremendous power. With that kind of power comes responsibility, responsibility for ourselves, responsibility for our choices. This can be one of the most empowering and satisfying things we ever discover in life. This is the whole basis for the Science of Mind philosophy.

So what if, no matter what you thought or chose, someone came along and short-circuited that process by absorbing the consequences of your actions and choices? It does have a certain appeal, since it absolves us of responsibility. And, in the long run, we would never learn how truly powerful we are. We would never know that satisfaction.

Many years ago I was encouraged to take an inventory of my life to that point, to look at my relationships, my actions and my choices and see what I could learn from them.

It was hard, because I knew that I would see that I had made a colossal mess of my life. Yet for perhaps the first time in my life I was encouraged to take responsibility for my own choices, for my own power, to step out of the victim role, to take responsibility for my part of the mess. As a result of that process, I had one of the biggest realization of my life; if I could make that big of a mess of things, WHAT IF I were to apply that same power, the power of thought and of choice, and try to make something good of it? I began to do just that, and life has gotten very different. But here’s the caveat: I had to embrace what appeared to be failure, in order to realize my own power.

I want to propose to you a new word: CO-INDEPENDENCE. And here’s the working definition: I love you, and I will walk with you through hell. But I will not disempower you. I practice compassion by loving you so much that I will let you discover how truly powerful you are. I will not short-circuit that. I will not abandon you, but I will not rescue you if you choose to make the same choices over and over again. I will not overlay my fear onto you, but will trust that the path that you are walking is the right and perfect path for you to learn what it is you need to learn. I will let you learn your way, not my way. I trust completely in the Infinite Wisdom within you, knowing that you will find your own perfect alignment in the perfect time, in the perfect way. The power of the Universe lives within you, and I trust that above all else.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Anderson

SpiritPathCounseling.com

SpiritAsJeff.com

April 14, 2008

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Are You a Prisoner to Your Story?

We all have a story. This story may or may not accurately reflect our life path, but it is our story none the less. It is how we have come to think of ourselves, and how we choose to present ourselves to the world around us.

Our stories are our beliefs about our lives, about life in general. They are compilations of what we have learned along the way, the experiences that have shaped our minds, how we think, act and present ourselves to the world.

Many people firmly believe that they are their stories. We can become so attached to it that it defines us, and limits our experience of life. We forget that it is our past, not our present. This does not necessarily have to be so. We need not be bound by our past, or defined by our story. We are what we believe ourselves to be. And we are free to be anything we choose.

I invite you to think about liberation from the story, the possibility that many of the beliefs that we have accumulate along the way are not in fact The Truth. Not our Truth and not God‘s Truth. I believe this to be so, and I have spent more time unlearning than I have in accumulating new information. I have stepped out of my story, and into my present.

We each have the power to change our story at any time we choose. We have the choice to release our story completely, to free ourselves from our accumulated ideas of who and what we are, and what we can and cannot do with our lives. The fact is that the present moment represents our Truth much more accurately than our stories ever did, ever could, or ever will.

We are as free as we give ourselves permission to be.

I invite you to look at your story. I ask you to be more honest with yourself than you have ever been in your life. I ask you if your story is your Truth. I invite you to consider letting go of what you were, in order to step into what you are.

What if you were to release old thoughts and beliefs, old patterns and anxieties and fears that have limited your experience of life, indeed that continue to limit your experience of life today? What would it feel like to wake each day with a blank canvas before us, upon which we could create anything we choose? Can you even imagine the possibility?

Our ego likes things just the way they are. Even if we are miserable, there is a certain comfort in the familiar. We know how to be when we are how we have always been.

I invite you to step out of the familiar, to trust yourself and your God, so that you might come to know the real you as you are today, in the present moment, to see yourself apart from your story. This may bring up feelings of fear and resistance. Ego may even now be standing firm in your mind saying, "Of course I know who I am." I invite you to have the courage to look again.

You are, quite probably, different than you have come to believe. Perhaps it is your time to come to know who and what you truly are today. Perhaps it is your time to become liberated, free to be authentic, to embody your Truth, regardless of your story.

We all have a story. There may, however, be a significant difference between our story and our Truth. If you can get past the fear, past the sureness, if you can just for a few minutes ask yourselves if your story, and the old beliefs that go along with it is in any way limiting your experience of life today, the answers you find may surprise you.

We are what we believe ourselves to be. And we are free to be anything we choose.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Anderson

SpiritPathCounseling.com

SpiritAsJeff.com

March, 2006

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Transcending the Status Quo

Einstein said, “ We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them.”

Why is it then that we wake up day after and think the same thoughts and feel the same feelings and do the same things that we did the day before, yet somehow expect the results to be different?

It has become very clear that the models that we have been working with, as individuals and as a society – hell, as a planet – are not working particularly well. But we seem to be so busy blaming each other – the oil companies, Dubya, our parents, whoever – that we expend all of our energies pointing out what’s wrong, rather than opening to new models, new levels of addressing our problems.

It’s not like we don’t know what we’re doing. Sure, there is a significant percentage of the population that, due to lack of education and opportunity, or just plain old fear, remains stranded in the mire of the status quo, but we cannot fall back on that default position any longer. It’s an excuse, plain and simple, and nothing more.

Too many people on this planet are now conscious to claim ignorance any longer.

We are in a period of cultural awareness unparalleled in modern times. Even science, via theoretical quantum physics, is now telling us that what we choose, how we think and what we look for determines what we experience in life.

We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them.

The challenge to this point has been lack of models for implementing a different level of thinking. Religion has tried, and some have actually presented viable tools with which to begin. But religion has accumulated so much baggage along the way – or more accurately, our perception of religion has accumulated the baggage – that many have closed to the door to that area of exploration. Worshiping instead The God of Materialism, we have opted to confine our experience of life to what we can see and touch and accumulate. We have become a nation of Stuff Worshipers. But hey, that’s the model we had to work with, the American Dream; the house, the cars, 2.2 kids, the dog and the picket fence.

Let me ask you this; How well is that working for you?

Here’s what happened; the American dream picked up it’s own baggage along the way, and has now become so cumbersome as to be archaic. The model doesn’t work anymore.

Madison Avenue has convinced us that we must have stuff to be happy. It doesn’t even matter what kind of stuff any more. Almost any stuff will do. But in the process we have become so focused on materialism that we have seriously depleted the resources of the planet. Indeed, in our own shortsightedness we have sickened our own environment to the point where there are ecosystems on this planet that cannot even sustain life.

We have confused success with acquisition, joy with how much we spend in the pursuit of it, awe with dominance and oppression, even love we have confused with over-dependence, power, control, ownership. We have become isolated from each other. We have picked up quite a load of our own baggage along the way.

So how then do we begin to change it? I mean really change it, how do we jump the tracks and re-define our models, how do we let go of what is no longer working and begin to nourish and nurture better models to create a world that works for everyone?

Perhaps an even better question is not how, but rather, do we have the courage to do it. Are we really, honestly willing to begin to step out of our own self-serving little worlds into a place of bigger awareness?

Honestly I’m not convinced we’re ready to do that yet. Even those of us who profess to be conscious and progressive and open at the top still hang on to our separation from the whole of humanity. Why? Because it still serves us. Why, really?

Erica Jong hit the nail the head some years ago when she said, “Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

The problem is, we still need someone to blame. That is the root of the problem here, individually, societally, and globally. We need someone to blame, because if we let go of that, we would have to truly step into a place of responsibility for our own actions, our own thoughts, our own experience of life, our own planet. And for all of our talk and bluster, I don’t know that we have yet reached a point of maturity where we are truly ready and willing to take responsibility for ourselves.

We could though, if we really, really wanted to. We have “new” models emerging, and ancient ones re-emerging that we could apply right now, today, that would radically change our world in a very short period of time. And there is something within us, individually and collectively, that is starting to re-awaken to this truth.

Movies like What the Bleep Do We Know and The Secret are bringing into the mainstream a new level of thinking with which we can transcend our problems. Every single one of them.

Science is now reinforcing what may of us have known since our species first stood upright; that consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all being. This means, simply put, that what we think and feel and believe, what we focus our attention on, what we expect, all factors in to what our world looks like, and our experience of it.

It means that we can change our minds, and in so doing, change our life, and our planet.

There are countless places to look, where a new level of thinking is taking hold, where change is starting to happen. 12-step recovery has a wonderfully simple model with which a personal inventory can be taken. Do you even know what you think, really? Maybe it’s time to find out. Take an inventory. Look at how you think about every single thing in your world. You may be surprised. You may even be shocked at what you find. But before we can begin to operate on a new level of thinking we must be familiar, intimately familiar, with the old level. We cannot set out on a journey to a new place if we have no idea where we are to begin with.

Psychologists tell us that every one of us thinks an average of between 65,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day and 90 to 95% of those thoughts are repetitive. We have become numb to our own thought, yet we wonder why the same thing keeps happening. I’ll tell you why; it’s because we don’t know what we’re thinking. Literally.

There are the teachers of our day that are spreading the word of modern day transcendence. People like Deepak Chopra, M.D., and Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle and Mary Manin Morrissey, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Iyanla Vanzant, Amit Goswami, Ph.D., and Dr. Albert Einstein and Dr. Ernest Holmes and the Reverend Dr. Michael Beckwith are putting together the pieces and presenting them again for our consideration. They are articulating a different level of thinking that they will be the first to admit is nothing new, but rather has been known since the earliest of times.

The Buddah is quoted as saying, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become."

These are smart people, yet they recognize that we share something essential; we share our humanity, and all that that entails.

We are beginning to experience a resonance again that we recognize is perhaps even the sound of creation itself. It is something we have in common. It is, perhaps, life, perhaps that drive for survival that is calling us together as never before.

There is a place within each person that transcends the status quo and our current models and judgments and labels and fear and beliefs, that cuts through baggage and dogma and greed and fear. It is the place that is recognizing and admitting that the way we have been doing things for the past few hundred years isn’t working so well anymore. Something has to change. And we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them.

Rev. Jeff Anderson is a Religious Science minister and licensed spiritual practitioner/counselor in private practice in Northern California. Visit his website at www.SpiritPathCounseling.com.

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Gender Shame

My earliest vivid memory of childhood is what I refer to as ‘The Last Fight’, the one where Mom finally left my father.

My father was an alcoholic, and a rage-a-holic, which made for an interesting early childhood. The time period I am referring to being the early 60’s, things were not as they are now. A hard working man was not discouraged from being a hard drinking man. It was almost expected. Domestic violence too was a well kept secret, a ‘family issue’ if it was looked at as an issue at all.

I vividly remember that night, 4 or 5 years old, watching and listening as my father, drunk, abused my mother. This night was different though. Mom fought back. I can still hear the yelling, ‘Sit down and shut up!’ my father bellowed, pushing my mom into a kitchen chair. I didn’t understand at the time really what was going on, but I remember pots and pans flying, the phone ripped out of the wall, blood, lots it seemed like, on both of them, neighbors outside, police. And as mom finally got us kids into the car, neighbors looking on, the man in the house bellowing like a wounded bull, I now know what it is I felt; shame.

I was the only male child, with two sisters, and always felt different. Perhaps it was just gender, perhaps shame, perhaps the fact that I inherited the alcoholic gene from dear old dad, but it was always the women, and me.

From the house that night we drove a block over to my grandparent’s house, where my grandfather, the story goes, told my mother to ‘get back home to her husband where she belonged’. I loved my grandfather, but again I felt shame that The Man of the family, the patriarch, could be so cold and insensitive and locked into the male role that he would tell his own daughter to go back to a situation that was obviously unsafe, for all of us, simply because she should ‘stand by her man’.

That experience set the tone for a good portion of my life, until just a handful of years ago.

As I matured (such as it was) I found most of the men that I experienced to be users, bullies, insecure, so overcompensating with a macho façade that it hindered them from being human. We were not supposed to feel or display emotion, and most of the men that I saw followed these societal dictates well. They hid their emotion, except for anger, which was accepted. They were men after all.

And now I begin to understand the underlying reason for so much of that anger, realizing at long last that when emotion is suppressed, it will, like anything else in this universe that has a natural, normal flow that is blocked, find an outlet, somewhere.

I was ‘sensitive’, more so than I was ‘supposed’ to be, which is probably why I participated so fully in my disease of alcoholism for so many years. I was led to believe by family example and by our society that I was not supposed to be experiencing what I felt, so I deadened it for a long time.

But even in my numbed state I watched as men raped and pillaged, ‘led’ our government into turmoil and chaos, war, death, mismanaged families and seemingly every affair that they were assigned or chose to lead. I watched them spit, fight and intimidate, seemingly emotionless. Role models that reflected The Truth of what a man really is and should be were, and still are, few and far between.

I have discovered that early on I took upon my shoulders the sins of my gender, and have been slowly bending under the accumulating weight for many years.

I have tried to compensate for the wrongs that I saw and continue to see, extending kindness and gentleness and safety to the best of my ability and limited experience wherever I saw men lacking to do so, which is everywhere. It has led to dysfunction, through overcompensation on my part, in my life.

A friend told me recently that I can not change the world. I responded that maybe I can. While I certainly cannot balance the scales myself, perhaps by stepping out with articles such as this I can affect the awareness of men, and the perception of men. Perhaps I, and people like my classmates Brad and Bill and others that I have been blessed to meet lately, who have begun to shift my perception of ‘all men as insensitive pigs’, can indeed begin to shift the bigger consciousness. In doing so perhaps we can give men permission to be human, feel emotion, drop the macho veneer and experience the natural normal flow of feelings that come as a part of the human design. And maybe, just maybe, though certainly far from perfect and with many lessons yet to learn, we can begin to regain the respect of women and others, just by being who and what we truly are.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Anderson

SpiritPathCounseling.com

SpiritAsJeff.com

May, 2001

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NON-BALLERINA

It has not always been
with the utmost of grace and coordination
that I have performed on this stage we call life.
The critics have often been harsh,
the reviews unfavorable,
I, naturally, my own worst critic.
But I am committed to the dance,
for I have realized
that ultimately it is not the final performance that we live
but the unending hours, days, years, lifetimes of practice
that make us what we are.
So all I ask is that you not judge too harshly
as I practice my dance of life.
I will stumble, I will fall, I have, and will again.
I ask you to look beyond the practice, to the commitment,
to the intention, to the man, the soul beneath the performer,
for that is where my truth lies.
The dance has taught me many many lessons,
and I continue to learn,
because my heart is open, I am willing to try,
I am willing to fail.
I have come to know the truth,
I have come to believe in myself,
and if I never receive a standing ovation,
if I never receive the acceptance and approval
of those I seek to please with my dance,
those things will be reward enough,
for I am a seeker, dancing on an uneven stage...
a nonballerina...

Rev. Jeffrey R. Anderson

SpiritPathCounseling.com

SpiritAsJeff.com

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