What is this blog about anyway… and what do you mean by Alternative Ways to Enlightenment?

That’s a good question!  Let me try to answer it.  For me, It’s about finding the way out of the pain.  It’s an attempt to use the painful experiences of life to look deeper within–to look beyond the superficial circumstances and take a look at the bigger picture.

There are usually multi-layers and multi-levels to any situation, condition, or problem that we are going through, and I believe that we must examine these “problem situations” through as many angles as we can.  By doing this, we begin to take a long hard look at ourselves, and admit the part we played in the mess, er… I mean scenario, and use it as a learning experience.

In this way, we begin to use our painful experiences, as a catalyst for our spiritual growth and development–edging us towards enlightenment!  Conversely, we may chose to justify our part in the play, if you will, and continue to wallow in our pain and self-pity… staying stuck at the level we’re at… the choice is always ours.

The seeking of enlightenment doesn’t necessarily mean that we must live in a cave, or climb a mountain top, or even don robes for that matter.  But what it does require is that we take a good hard look inside ourselves.  And we must not only be willing to look within, but we must force ourselves to look deeper and deeper, even when we don’t like what we see–especially when we don’t like what we see!  We cannot be honest with others, let alone with the Universal Spirit, if we cannot, or will not, be honest with ourselves first.

And that’s why I entitled this blog, “Alternative Ways to Enlightenment”, because there are many ways, many alternatives, that can lead one out of the pain and toward the light.  And it isn’t so much about seeking the light at the end of the tunnel, as romantic as that may sound, but rather, it’s about seeking the True Light within us.

To me, enlightenment is about freedom.  Freedom to be secure in who I am and not wounded by the words or actions of others.  To be one with my True Self, the “SELF” within the self.  And to face life fearlessly, knowing that I am always safe, always protected, always provided for… because I am connected to the very Source of Life Itself!

But the truth is that I still have a very long way to go before I know that kind of freedom.  You see, I was raised in an alcoholic home–talk about an oxymoron, and I also wasted a lot of years drinking (keeping up the family tradition), so I have a lot of catching up to do.  But in spite of my challenged upbringing and often self-destructive behavior, or perhaps because of it, I was forced to search deeply inside myself for answers.  I knew that I, this Glenn character, couldn’t heal me, but I sensed that there was something greater inside of me that could… and that’s what this blog is all about.

I believe that whatever nationality, or race, or sex we are, that we are all more similar than dissimilar.  We are on this journey together, and we can help each other with our individual quest to reach our Higher Self, the God Within, Enlightenment, or whatever term you prefer.  Sometimes, I refer to God as Mom, simply because that’s what I needed the most… a loving, caring, and supportive Mother.

In the X-Files, Agent Fox Mulder used to love saying, “The truth is out there.”  And while there are certainly truths to be found in the external world, I would suggest to you that the real truth, the ultimate truth, lies within each and every one of us.  So, seek within, look within, and learn to listen to that Still Small Voice Within.  

And now, with you’re permission, I’d like to share some of my life with you… and not only the painful experiences, but some of the answers that I have found along the way as well.  I have no doubt that if we seek… we shall find, “Because, the truth is in there.  It is inside all of us!”

I truly want to thank you for being there, and for all of your supportive comments!  I truly appreciate them and my Best Wishes to each and Every One of You!!!

And with that, I’ll begin….

Some Internal Feelings and Insights

Ever feel like your lost in the dark, with only vague and sometimes ominous images surrounding you?  I know that I’ve felt that way for most of my life.  As the website title suggests, I feel like I was… BORN INTO DARKNESS!

Alright, perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic, but I can honestly say that I feel like I was raised in darkness.  And for most of my formative years, there wasn’t even a glimmer of light, at the “proverbial” end of the tunnel.  But as the above picture illustrates… a lighted path may appear even in the darkest of shadowy times.

The reason why I say that I was raised in darkness was because I was raised by, or more correctly, I was almost buried by three alcoholics, who just happened to be my mother, my grandmother, and my grandfather.  But it wasn’t only them who had damaged me, because years later, I began to realize that it was me who was continuing to do damage to myself… and this was long after they had passed away and lost all power and control over me.

And so, after many, many years of self-destructive behavior and alcoholic drinking, I somehow learned to stop burying myself.  But it took me over a decade to even slow down the digging process… let alone to stop digging my own grave period.

The early days…

I really don’t remember my father ever being around.  My mother and him got divorced when I was two and he was nowhere to be found.  To say that my life lacked guidance and nurturing is a gross understatement, but on the plus side, I could pretty much do whatever I wanted to, as long as I didn’t interfere with their drinking.

Unfortunately, I am not alone in having, for all intent and purposes, absentee parents, which is putting it mildly!  And indeed, there are many people who have had it far worse than I had, so it’s safe to say that there are a good number of us who are in this together… and that’s what this site is all about.  I hesitate to say that we are legion, but people like us, who were raised by lost people, seem to be growing exponentially.

So, what did I do to escape the feelings of anxiousness, and anxiety, and all of the other feelings that I couldn’t even label at the time?  Well… I drank…. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I had access to alcohol at a very, very young age.  And I didn’t even have to sneak it or steal it either… and that’s because my mother was supplying it to me.  In fact, Mom was giving me wine when I was six and scotch when I was eight.

At breakfast time, I remember Mom freely pouring wine on my grapefruit till it overflowed, or mixing it in my orange juice, till it turned bloody red, and then beaming  how she had just made me an Orange Blossom.  However, when it came to scotch, Mom was much more conscientious and would only allow me to use the smaller end of the two-shot metal tumbler.

Friday and Saturday nights were not only the biggest drinking nights, but also the biggest bonding times for Mom and me.  On those nights, my Grandmother would fall asleep early–being practically comatose from drinking all day, and my Grandfather would be at the bar, so that only left Mom and me to spend the night drinking and watching TV together.  We’d watch shows like the Avengers (I know she pictured herself as Emma Peel), Bonanza, etc., but the truth is that I didn’t care what we watched, as long as I could drink.

The alcohol made me feel all warm and tingly inside, but more importantly, it made me feel like things weren’t so bad.  Drinking created an illusion of hope for me.  It comforted me and made me feel good about myself, at least for a little while… at least until the screaming and fighting started up again, and the police started knocking on the door.

I didn’t know that I was living in an alcohol-induced illusion at the time.  But what I did know was that my good feelings began to fade as soon as the alcohol wore off.  But illusion or not, that’s the way that I wanted to feel all of the time.  I wanted to feel good about myself… I wanted to like myself, I wanted to feel like I had hope… so I drank every chance I got.

Of course, drinking wasn’t the answer, and it would take me longer and longer, and more and more drinking, to get me to that “comfort” state.  I didn’t know it at the time but what I was doing was self-medicating myself.  And while the truth is that the drinking only served to strengthen my illusions, and actually weaken me, another truth is that it helped me to hang on for at least one more day.  It helped me to hang on to the slimmest of  hope that somehow… someway… tomorrow would be better.

It was my desperate hope that somehow my Mother, Grandmother, and Grandfather would wake up, and not only see what they were doing to themselves, but see what they were doing to me as well.  I conned myself into believing that, any day now, they would wake up!

But such are the dreams of damaged little children and the sad truth is that my “fantasied tomorrow” never came.  And, as the years passed on, my Mother, Grandmother, and Grandfather drank themselves into oblivion, as my hope that somehow tomorrow would be better, morphed and mutated into, “I’ll hold on today, and if things get worse tomorrow… I’ll kill myself then.”

My first therapist told me that that was absolutely brilliant, because it helped me to hang on for at least one more day.  But it sure didn’t seem brilliant to me.  I didn’t want to “hang on”, and I certainly didn’t want to feel like I was at the whims and mercy of my Mother, Grandmother, and Grandfather, and pretty much everyone else around me for that matter, but at that age… that’s pretty much how it was.

I even went through a phase where I felt like everybody up-there, in Heaven, was laughing at me, and that my life was a joke, and little more than entertainment for them.  And what increased my paranoia, that everyone in Heaven was laughing at me, even more, was the fact that the more I prayed… the worse things got!

I tried to live with the fact that nobody was there for me physically or spiritually, but what made it even worse was that I knew that I couldn’t be there for myself either.  But how could I?  Nobody had instilled any confidence, or sense of self-worth within me… or even made me feel like I was worth anything at all.  But on the plus side, I still had plenty of toys to distract me, a vivid imagination to hide in, and all of the alcohol I needed to buy into the illusion that somehow tomorrow would be better… somehow?

Cast of Characters in My Life

When I was around 12 years old, my grandma, who’s name was Sara but insisted on being called Sadie, passed away.  She was a self-professed invalid, who used to lay in bed all day moaning for someone to get her a beer, and usually that someone was me.  She had been this way ever since I can remember, so her passing wasn’t all that unexpected.  I was told that earlier in her life, Sadie was quite a con-artist.  She’d go into stores like the old Woolworth’s, cut her finger on a jagged piece of glass, and then threaten to sue.  I was also told that the manager would always give her some money, or a gift, to forget the whole thing.  Quite the accomplished little actress!

Gramps, which is what I called my grandfather, was something of a con-artist too.  As an example, my grandfather would drag me to various diners, in Jersey City, and with his best “lost puppy dog face”, he would tell the waitress how he had just lost his wife, and that I had lost my grandma and how brokenhearted we both were over it.

But the thing that he didn’t share with the waitress was that when he wasn’t working at the factory, he’d be drinking at the bar, and so, the truth is that he was hardly ever home.  Plus, he and his wife hadn’t been intimate for years and didn’t even sleep in the same bedroom–let alone the same bed.  But in any event, his con always got us free deserts and sometimes a free meal as well.  You know, come to think of it, my grandfather was a pretty good actor too, because, as I recall, he was even able to produce a tear or two during these heartfelt spiels… and he never failed to gain sympathy from his audience either.

But believe it or not, as far as my family went, my grandfather was the cream of the crop.  His name was James, but everyone called him Jimmy.  And he was a Jimmy too… a likable, affable guy when he wasn’t drinking, and how he loved his drinking!  The thing is that he loved me too… but the sad thing is that he loved his alcohol even more than he loved me.

Jimmy was a former minor league baseball player, who knew all of the politicians in the Hague era in Jersey City.  He could have had it made but the drinking did him in.  It seems that Grandpa Jimmy was somewhat gullible, and easily swayed, and someone had talked him into doing something illegal.  I don’t know much about it, but it had to do with fraud, or writing bad checks, or something.  Anyway, whatever it was, he wound up doing some time in the county jail for it.  So, while my grandparents may not have been the most moral people in the world, and not even close to being the best grandparents, or even competent ones for that matter, no one can say that they weren’t colorful.

Getting back to my grandmother, I can’t say much about her, because she never said much and never got out of the apartment.  Oh, she could hobble around a bit–enough to get to the bathroom, or hit the fridge for a beer when I wasn’t around to get it for her, but that’s about it.  Like I said, she was a self-professed invalid, who used to lie in bed all day watching soap operas, while sighing about how hard her life was.  Looking back, I can see now that she was mentally ill, but I didn’t know it at the time.  Back then, things like alcoholism and mental illness were never mentioned–let alone discussed… at least that’s the way it was in our home… and I use the term “home” very, very loosely, indeed!

All three of them had tremendous character defects, but the one thing that nobody could ever say about them was that they were cheap.  My mother and grandparents were very generous and I had the best of everything.  But while it’s true that I had everything that I wanted materially… I never got what I needed the most… love and guidance.  Before I warp up with my grandmother, I’d like to share a funny story from my memoir about her.  The memoir goes up till the time I was thirteen years old, and that was the age that I found my mother dead.  If you’d like to read it, the link is: https://glenng117.com/memoir.

Getting back to the story, My Aunt Loretta, who used to believe that evil spirits were communicating with her through the radio, told me that when I was little, my grandmother would always take me shopping with her.  We’d go to Journal Square, which was the shopping hub of Jersey City at the time.  And my aunt said that whenever my grandmother would take me on the bus, I’d begin squirming, laughing, fidgeting, and even dancing.

At that point, my grandmother would get this concerned look on her face and begin praying over me.  As if that weren’t enough, she’d begin dowsing me with holy water, while making the sign of the cross over me!  And of course, the only thing that her antics did was to make me even more hyper, and once I’d reached my peak of hyperness, she’d raise both of her hands up to heaven and start wailing, “He’s got Saint Vita’s Dance!”  And for her finale, she’d begin begging and pleading with the other passengers, on the bus, to pray along with her for my soul!

This must have been quite the riot for everyone on the bus, and even though it sounds like a cute story from a fun loving grandma, it was really my baptism into their world of drunken insanity.  Of course, I couldn’t know it at the time, but it strikes me now that mental health was optional in my family, while excessive alcohol consumption was apparently mandatory.

One day, my grandmother sighed for the last time and quietly past away.  She hadn’t even moaned for a beer that day and my thought was that she had simply given up.  And with her death, my mother really started to go downhill.  It seemed strange to me, at the time, that my mother took it so hard, because the reality was that my mother and my grandmother weren’t really that close.  In fact, I never heard my mother call either of her parents mom or dad, but always referred to them by their first names.

The truth is that she had little use for her mother and just seemed to tolerate her, so I think that this “withdrawal from life” was the consequence of a guilty conscious.  And the reason why I say this is that after my grandmother died, I innocently remarked, “I guess we all could have treated her better.”, but instead of acknowledging her part in it, my mother just glared at me and angrily shouted, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I treated her like gold!”  We both knew that that wasn’t true, but with that as her response, what else could I do but let it go.

My mother continued to go downhill, and about a year after my grandmother’s death, my mother died as well.  Her death certificate read that the cause of death was phenomena, but it really should have been stamped “ALCOHOLISM!”  And now, I was acutely aware that I was left alone with an alcoholic grandfather, and even though I knew that there wouldn’t be any physical abuse, and that I could pretty much do whatever I wanted… I also knew that I was more alone than ever.

Many years ago, I took a memoir class in college, because my therapist thought that it would be very therapeutic to write about my childhood years, and it was.  I already showed you an excerpt, from the memoir, about my grandmother, and I’ve provided the link again If you’d like to read it:  https://glenng117.com/memoir.

The memoir covers a lot of the pain that I was going through, and with regards to my mother I wrote, “Even at five, I knew uneasiness around her.  I knew too many things for a five year old.  I knew she was a liar… I guess at five, I would have called her a fibber.  I knew I had to be careful of what I said around her… and I knew she liked to drink.”

This makes me think of the old joke about how psychiatrists always blame all of your problems on your mother.  The joke goes something like this:  A man goes into a psychiatrist’s office.  The man sits down, but before the man can speak, the psychiatrist says, “Look, I can save you a lot of time and expense.  All of your problems stem from your mother!”  And while this joke is probably, more true than not, in my case.  It doesn’t excuse me for not taking charge of my life now.  Yes, I got off to a bad start, as many of us did.  But at some point, I’ve got to take responsibility for my own actions… or I can continue to drown in my own self-pity.  The choice is mine.

The truth is that the choice is always ours.  When I was working as a counselor running groups in a psychiatric, partial hospitalization, unit, I would say that, “The sad thing is… is that all you have to do is try.”  That all we have to do is try to improve our life, work on on faults and weaknesses, and things start to get better.  Just changing our attitude can, and does, work wonders–even miracles, but we must sincerely “try” to change, and give it a sustained effort… a genuinely sincere effort.

I know this works, because I’ve done it myself.  And I’ve also seen more than one person, labeled with severe mental illness, try to change for their own betterment, and succeed big time!  They say that the proof is in the pudding, well… the results are in the trying.  And the greater effort you put into trying, and continued doing, the greater your results will be… I guarantee it.  It cannot fail because it is part of the Universal law of cause and effect… “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you shall find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7, NIV). 

We must do the work, but if we are willing to do the work, the results are assured.  Easy to say… harder to do!  But the more you are willing to look inside yourself and push through your pain–not only the pain that others have caused you, but even more importantly, the pain which you have created for yourself… the more the answers will come to you… and they will come faster and faster, as you progress on your path.  By facing yourself and facing your life, you will not only come to know yourself, but you will become aware of the God Within you as well.. and then, your purpose in this lifetime, and the actions you need to take will become clearer and clearer.  

We all start out so beautiful!

So… what happens to us, as we ride merrily along through life?

Life Happens… and in my case, one of those “happenings” was alcoholism!

Drinking My Way Through Life

When I was drinking heavily, a therapist said to me, “You don’t even know who you are.  You don’t know yourself.” As I sat there, staring back at her, I thought, I know exactly who I am.  When I’m drinking, I’m alive… and the real me comes out!  Needless to say, I never went back to see her again… she was obviously clueless!

But looking at it deeper, the real truth is that she was both right and wrong. She was wrong, because she made a superficial statement just for shock value, which not only served to turn me off, but tuned me out from listening to her any further.  But she was also right, because apart from drinking, I really didn’t know who I was.

However, had we explored the other side of the coin, we could have discussed what I perceived as the benefits of my drinking, because a lot of the “real me”, or at least the me that I wanted to be, was that me when I was drinking.  The alcohol released a lot of my fears and inhibitions, and it even allowed me to be more outgoing–even enabling me to talk to girls… how great was that!  It also gave me self-confidence and access to feelings, hopes, and dreams that I never allowed myself to acknowledge, before. BUT?

But, the problem was that the feelings never lasted.  The good feelings, or rather, the illusion of those good feelings would always ebb away.  They would always wear off leaving me in even deeper despair.  So, what did I do to rectify this situation?  Well, my brilliant solution was to drink even more.  I kept thinking that the next time would be different… the next time something will click and the feelings will last!

It’s like Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  And as you may have guessed, the results were never different, and what made it even worse was that it took more and more drinking to achieve my so-called perfect state.  On top of that, an additional irony was that even though I drank more and more, the desired effects that I sought from drinking lasted less and less.

An interesting thing that I noted from my drinking was that even though I couldn’t maintain that almost perfect level of balance that the alcohol provided, at least I knew that it existed.  I knew that there was a certain point where the alcohol worked for me and helped me to feel good about myself.  It was a very fragile point, indeed, but it existed nonetheless.  And so, one of my greatest wishes was to attain this state of balance without the use or aid of alcohol.

I wish I could tell you that that was the day that I put alcohol behind me but I can’t.  The truth is that I went on drinking myself into oblivion for many, many years to come.  And writing this, it becomes clear to me now that the main thing that I was doing wrong was that I was “wishing” instead of
“ACTING”… but no one ever told me that!

Wishing, Hoping, and Praying…

What did I wish for?  Pretty much everything!!!  I wished I could stop drinking, I wished I had good parents, I wished that someone would come and rescue me… and quite often, I even wished that I was dead.  Besides all of the holy relics spread around the house… we also had a huge hand painted picture of Jesus, hanging in the living room, that was actually very life like.  My mother claimed that his eyes (Jesus’s eyes) would follow you across the room, and while I never experienced that personally, I will say that his eyes were haunting.

The painting of Jesus was my mother’s prized possession… actually, her prized possession was alcohol, but she was to much of a “good Catholic” to ever admit to that.  The painting showed some ware and was ragged around the edges, which, in my opinion, even served to give it more character.  But of course, my mother didn’t see it that way and decided that the picture just had to be framed.  It just so happened…

Jesus is reported to have said, “Ask and you shall receive.”  But, for me, I found that it was a bit more complex than that.  You see, I had asked, and begged, and demanded for much of my entire life and nothing ever happened.  Indeed, I grew up in an apartment filled with holy statues, and crosses, and even potted plants in the likeness of Mary, St. Anthony, and various saints.  My mother even slept with a fake gold-plated coin of St. Anthony, under her pillow, to heal her tooth but it never worked.  The truth is that nothing ever worked and nothing ever changed.

 

(to be continued…)

And I think that there are a few reasons for this:  One is that whenever I drank, especially toward the end of the drinking, I could actually feel my connection to God being cut off.  Another reason is that after the way I was raised, I will not allow myself to be controlled by anyone or anything, as I’d stated previously.  In addition, that therapist was right, when she said that I didn’t know myself.  I thought that the person, who I was when I was drinking, was the real me.  But now, for the most part, I like the way I think… but what’s even more important is that I know that if I start drinking again, not only are all bets off, but I won’t have a chance at becoming what I could become.  And from a practical standpoint, life is hard enough sober (at least for me), and if I start using, and later relying on a mind altering chemical, then it’s as I said… “All Bets Are Off!”

However, there are keys to unlocking the jails that we put ourselves in, and that’s what I’m going to talk about next.

Abandoned by Those I Trusted

Looking back, I realize now that I was always alone.  I mean, if you can’t trust your own mother, who can you trust?

Was I Wrong  About God…  or  Was It My Concept About God That Was Wrong?

And God Said To Me…

“There is no God in the Bible.

There is no God in the Quran.

There is no God in the Bhagavad Gita.

There is only one “I Am”… One God… and that means that, as “I AM”… “You Are!”

In other words, do not look for God in books (even if they be called holy books).  And do not look for God in religion, for religions were constructed by men.  Look only for the god within.   There is only one presence in the universe…. One Being… so, seek to be part of that oneness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is no god to Curse… there is no god to Praise… not an external god anyway.

If you meet the Buddha on the road… kill him, because the ultimate truth is within.

Key #1:  Self-Awareness… The Key to Unlocking the Door

I made the following picture for a photo-shop class over twenty years ago.  It was the storage closet door in the downstairs hallway, and the steps leading to it, at a place I used to live at in Bayonne, N.J.  I call it, “What’s Behind the Door?”  The truth is that I’m behind the door, and only I hold the key to unlock the door and let the real me out… and that key is self-awareness.

Becoming Self-Aware

So, what do you do with a mess of a life like the one that I’ve been describing, which happens to be my life… ouch!    How does one, not only survive a traumatic, painful, and guilt ridden life, but grow from it?  Well, as I’ve said, for me, the answer was to (and is) to look within.  Just how I began this process, or even when I began it, I have know clue.  But I can tell you that eventually, I simply got tired of looking at myself in the mirror, and not liking what I saw… actually hating what I saw.

Socrates is attributed to have said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  And after many years of coning myself that things were really  okay, or hoping that someone would save me, or trying to get over by manipulating everyone around me, while looking for the easier softer way at every opportunity, I have come to realize that Socrates was right.  I have also come to know that the easier softer way is never easy or soft… not in the end anyway.

When I was living that way, living in an illusion, or what Buddhism refers to as Maya.  I was conning myself that somehow, someway, life would magically be better tomorrow or certainly the day after.  This is the illusion that my mother, and grandparents believed in… that someday their ship would come in.  And it was an illusion that the alcohol permitted me to live in for many, many years.  The sad truth is that if my mother, grandmother, or grandfather would have examined themselves and their lives, even a little bit, they would have seen that their ships (individually and collectively) had been lost at sea a long, long time ago.

To look at yourself honestly means that you have to be willing to crack open your illusion, and they weren’t even interested in peeking under the veil.  And as they drank more, and more, the more that veil grew tighter and tighter around them.  And as time went on, I learned how to envelop that alcoholic veil around me too… only I did it tighter and longer than any of them.

So, this is why I believe that the way out of the pain is to look inside ourselves and face the pain within.  We must begin to face our fears, question our beliefs, and take our own inventory on a daily basis.  I don’t really believe that the other person is the problems, at least most of the time.  Oh, they might be a hindrance, but ultimately, it’s my reaction that’s my real problem.  So, I believe that it may be our own ego that is at fault most of the time… at least, I think that that’s the first place we should start.  I mean, I know that I can’t control what other people say or do, even though I often think I can, but I do know for a fact that I can control how I’ll react.  That doesn’t necessarily make it easy, but it does make it doable, and something that I can work on.

One of the reasons that I started reading Zen books, in my early twenties, was that many of those guys talked about how nothing that anyone could say about them could hurt them.  They implied that they were insult proof, because they knew who they were, secure in themselves, and could see where the other person was coming from.  This didn’t mean that they let everything go, or that they always turned the other cheek, but what it did mean was that they knew how to respond appropriately, without letting their ego get in the way.  And when I read that, I knew that I wanted that, because, to me, that meant freedom.  Freedom from my knee-jerk reactions.  And while I don’t consistently have that kind of self-assurance, that healthiness, I know, by my reactions and interactions,  that I’m moving closer to it.

Another thing that I read recently, from a Tarot Card no less (truth can be found anywhere), was that being self-defensive was a form of “Weakness!”  And I’ve worked far too hard, and come too far, to allow myself to become trapped by weakness-especially one of my own devising.  It has been said many, many times before that we can become our own worst enemy, and not only do I know that this is true, but I also know that I have been my own worst enemy for the better part of my life…

So, given this, perhaps the best way to break though our illusion(s) is to Break Through the Ego….

EGO Can Be Deadly

Who’s behind those eyes?

And what’s my motivation?

Is the image that you see in the mirror the real you, or are you merely looking at the image you created… the image that you present to the world?  Are you giving people what you think they want to see?

For many years, the answer to this question for me was yes… I’m merely playing the role that’s expected of me.  And to be honest, there are times when I still do; however, I am now aware that I’m doing it, and make a choice to do it.  I am aware of the times that I am manipulating others for the benefit of my situation.

And I am not going to place a judgement on it by saying that it’s right or wrong, because the truth is that it can depend on where “someone is at” in their life journey, and it can also depend on the circumstances.  But what I am saying is that I am less and less comfortable with manipulation for whatever reason.  So, more and more, I seek to be genuine in my relations and interactions with others–despite the fear of what it might cost me, such as getting a job, or a promotion, or an award, or whatever.

But the funny thing is, or more correctly, the Universal Truth is, that the less that I attempt to manipulate a situation, the more it seems to work out for me, even when I don’t get what I want.  And quite often… especially when I don’t get what I want, because it wasn’t right for me in the first place.  So, I guess what I’m talking about it trust.  Trusting and being true to myself.  Trusting in Divine Guidance and Divine Intervention and holding true to my values and what I have come to know as true.

When I was in my early twenties, I got into The Who, and in this one song, “The Real Me”, written by Pete Townshend, from the album Quadrophenia (1973), Townshend asks:  Can you see the real me doctor?
Can you see the real me mother?
Can you see the real me preacher?
Can you see the real me, me, me, me, me????

I was working in the U.S. Postal Bulk Center, in Jersey City, unloading mail trucks.  I was working from 7 at night to 3:30 in the morning, and on Friday and Saturday nights (actually early morning), I would head over to Manhattan, the “Big Apple” itself and blast The Who as I drove through the Lincoln Tunnel. (to be continued…)

One of the books that I cherish is called the Bhagavad Gita.  And the truth is that I only read it, because I heard that Gandhi read from it everyday of his life, and was even buried with it.  So, I thought, if he felt that strongly about it, then I might as well read the thing.

The Bhagavad Gita is about the struggle within… sometimes the war within.  The Gita, as it is often called, is set on a battlefield, with Krishna and Arjuna on one side, and Arjuna’s relatives and friends on the opposing side.

At first, Arjuna does not know that it is Krishna himself, who has agreed to be Arjuna’s charioteer, but later, Arjuna learns that he has been in the presence of Krishna (God) all along.  We can look at this imagery, as Arjuna representing the small-self, while Krishna represents the larger-SELF (the God-Self).

I can really relate to the fact that Arjuna didn’t recognize that it was Krishna, or God Himself (for the purposes of this discussion), and as such, was attempting to function in his limited small ego-self–instead of tapping into the Universal Intelligence standing right beside him.

In the story, Arjuna agonizes over that fact that he has to fight his own family–despite the fact that he knows that they are doing evil things, and that the populace will suffer greatly at their hands, if they win the battle and become rulers of the land.

I liken this to the struggle that I have within, between my ego-mind,and my intuition or God Consciousness.   And while I don’t have Krishna, Jesus, or Buddha standing right beside me, I have come to truly believe that God lives within me.  BUT… but it is up to me to tap into that God-Mind, and I can only do that if I loosen the reigns on my self-imposed ego.

People may disagree that the ego should be lessened, or God forbid, gotten rid of altogether, which probably isn’t even possible in this body/mind state.  But I am not talking about subjugating our egos, or self-worth, or self-esteem to others.  What I am talking about is subjugating our self-will, and our ego, to the the Higher Consciousness that lives within us.  The Higher Self that knows what’s best at all times.  I am talking about tapping into the Universal Consciousness that gives us access to all things… all answers.  I’m talking about becoming one with that Consciousness.

This can be a very harsh world, and even the Bible tells us, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves:  be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16, King James Version). 

To me, this means that I need to keep my  innocence at the core, but not to be naive or stupid either.  I need to see people and things, for who and what they truly are, but I can’t lose myself in the process either.  

It is of the upmost importance that we keep our innocence, as it is the purest part of ourselves, and our direct link to God.   As this passage in the Bible illustrates,  “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?  He (Jesus) called a little child to him, and placed the child among them.  And he said:  Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18: 1-4, NIV).

It is our innocence (lack of ego) that keeps us close to God, but our worldly self, the self that has to function in the material world, must be as sly as fox’s and as wise as serpents.  We must discern, and know when to take action.  We must listen to that Still Small Voice within, as to when to follow the rules and when to break the so-called rules.  We must do as David did when his men were starving and needed food to sustain them, “He [David] entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to eat, but only for the priests” (Mathew 12:4, Berean Study Bible).

It isn’t always easy to do the right thing, to be true to yourself, to stand-up when everyone else chooses to remain seated.  But the road to God, the road to true liberation isn’t easy, as it states in the Bhagavad Gita, “Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth” (Chapter 7:  Knowledge of the Absolute).  And similarly, in the Bible, “Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14, NIV). 

I have chosen the easier softer way throughout my life.  And I have also walked on that wide road, with countless others, for most of my life, only to realize that, not only is there nothing at the end of the road, but that there is no end to the road–period.  It is simply a way to try to avoid the pain, like taking drugs or alcohol.  But it only masks the pain and creates the illusion that there is no pain, or at least, that the pain isn’t so bad.  But the pain just accumulates, at an interest rate, that I wish my bank account had, and on top of that, the “pain interest” compounds multiple times on a daily basis. 

I presently live in Las Cruces, NM, facing the Organ Mountains.  And when I finally stopped drinking, and began to take a good look at myself, and at what I’d done to myself, I realized that the mess and the problems that I had created were higher than those mountains.

What was I going to do?  I didn’t know what to do, so I began to listen to motivational speakers on YouTube.  I don’t remember who it was, but after hearing some great positive affirmations, and feeling pretty hopeful, he said something like, No one is coming for you.

The phrase hit me like a ton of bricks!  It felt like a house fell on me, because I knew it was true.  All my life, I’d secretly hoped that someone would save me…that someone would rescue me.  When you never had a mother or a father, you kind of look for a mother and father in everyone you meet.  At least, I did, and in my case, I was mostly looking for a mother.  I even tried to make my therapist my mother or at least a sister, but as you can guess, that didn’t work out so well.

What he said hit me so hard, because I knew it was true.  I knew I had to do the work.  I had to save myself and I had to care enough to do that.  The problem was that I had drank for most of my life and lived in what I call an alcoholic bubble.  Now my bubble had burst, and I was panic stricken, alone, and afraid.

Somehow… something inside of me… the God inside of me kept me going… I know it wasn’t me.  So now, seven years later, I know that I’m not alone, I know that God is with me, even in me, but it still isn’t easy.  I know that it’s not a delusion, because I see too much evidence that it is God.  At least, It’s something greater than myself.  And now, the name I have for God is Mom,  because I needed a mom, and now I have the greatest Mom of all!

I wish I could say that all is wonderful and that there is nothing but peace and love in my life… but I can’t.  And that’s because I have come to the realization that the more you see, the more you truly understand, and the more that has been revealed to you… the more pain you see and feel.  And I’m not just talking about my own pain but you feel the pain of others as well.  Your empathy level seems to increases exponentially.

But I’d rather live with this kind of pain than live in the greatest illusion ever created, because I know that the way out is through the pain.  And up until now, I wasn’t willing to face that pain.  But by wanting to be one with God, to be one with my Mother, and striving to listen to that voice within, and worse yet, obeying it, because I am a lot of things, but compliant isn’t one of them, I have come to the realization that there is no other option but to walk the narrow road, as I continue to search for the small gate, which leads to the way out of the pain and the birth/death cycle of reincarnation.

Key #2:  TRUST – Put It To The Test

Trust!  What is that?  In my case, how does someone who couldn’t even trust his own mother, even begin to trust in an invisible concept known as God?  Short answer… it ain’t easy, but this is one of the things that this blog is about.

What I’m learning, and more importantly practicing to do, is to trust within, and while saying it ain’t easy is an understatement, I can say that it does work.  It doesn’t always work in the way that my ego-mind wants and expects, but the truth is that it always works better than I had expected or ways that I hadn’t even imagined possible.

Key #3:  Feel the Fear and DO IT ANYWAY

This is what I’ve come to do.  And of course, I’m not talking about doing silly things, which we should be afraid of like jumping off a cliff.  But rather, I’m suggesting that we face our irrational fears.  So, when I’m faced with something that I don’t want to do, even though I know that I should do it… I ask myself, “Are you not doing this because you’re afraid (of whatever it might be) to do it?”

And if the answer is yes, then I say, “So, what do you do you do when you’re afraid.”  And I actually answer myself by saying, “I do it anyway.”  And then I do it, or take the steps to go about doing it.  This hasn’t been easy, and I’d like to point out that it took me decades to get to this point.  But I also want to point out that when I face my fears, it always works out for the best, and believe it or not, it gets easier and easier to do.